New Music Report – August 6, 2021
Oh man, it took me forever to track down all the singles for this week. There are even a few that I had to omit from this list in the interest of space. But man, what a busy week, it’s really cool to see so many great singles coming out, it speaks volumes for the albums that are going to be coming from these bands later this year. I think the last part of this year is going to be absolutely packed with incredible releases, so definitely keep an eye on these lists, and in the meantime, definitely check these singles out.
Ov Sulfur – This album is gnarly. It’s kind of a mashup of several different genres at once, a bit of deathcore, a bit of old school metalcore, a bit of thrash, and a bit of straight up hardcore, and the result is honestly really fucking cool. Also, pretty damn heavy too. I suppose you’d expect this sort of thing though, cause Ov Sulfur is the new project of former Suffokate vocalist, Ricky Hoover. It’s just an EP so it’s hard to get too much of an idea of what a complete full length album would sound like, but it definitely feels like they’re cramming a ton of content into an EP; it feels longer than it is. Of course, the downside to this is that, at times, it feels a bit busy, like there’s a little TOO much going on, too many different sounds trying to compete for a limited amount of time and space. But that’s also sort of something that’s just endemic to extreme metal in itself, so it’s hard to knock it for that. When it comes down to it, when we’re looking at a debut album for a band, even one with such an acclaimed vocalist, we’re dealing with something seriously impressive here; this album absolutely rips.
Lingua Ignota – It’s so hard to explain Lingua Ignota, it’s a mix of folk, neo-classical, and just some crazy, heavy, emotional themes and sounds. The most apt word to describe this, is ‘intense’. Everything else stems from that. This is a crazy, dark folk masterpiece, composed with traditional Appalachian folk instruments, and featuring members of deathgrind band, Full of Hell and avant garde noise metal band, The Body. I mean, how fucking cool is that? It blends these folk roots and crazy metal musicians with operatic and classical melodies and the resulting album is just incredibly powerful. It’s such a truly unique experience that it’s really hard to convey what this album feels like, so unique in fact that it doesn’t even feel anything like her last album, but man, is it worth experiencing. This sort of thing isn’t going to be for everybody, it’s deeply experimental and challenging, but worthwhile for anybody willing to give it a shot to experience something straneg yet incredibly profound.
Singles/Albums – Brand of Sacrifice (Deathcore), Frontierer (Mathcore), Full of Hell (Deathgrind) Archspire (Tech Death), Dying Wish (Metalcore), Wolves in the Throne Room (Post-Black Metal), Underoath (Metalcore), Purity Ring (SynthPop), The World is a Beautiful Place (Post Rock/Emo), Deafheaven (Shoegaze), Sleep Token (Post-Hardcore), Sentinels (Metalcore), Spiritbreaker (Metalcore), Waking the Cadaver (Death Metal), Memorist (Post-Hardcore), Wage War (Metalcore), Don Bronco (Post-Hardcore/Alt Rock)