New Music Report – February 3, 2023

Yet another week of the singles being more impactful than the albums themselves. There have been a few good albums this year, don’t get me wrong, but when you have weeks like this where both Currents and Invent Animate – two of the absolute best bands in the new age of metalcore – are putting out new music and hyping up their upcoming album releases, it’s hard for much of anything to beat that. If these singles are any indicator, there’s a very good chance these are going to be two of the best albums to come out this year. I know that sounds incredibly hyperbolic to be saying this in early February but given the strength of the singles we have and these bands back catalogs, it’s absolutely not a far-fetched statement by any means. I’ll be looking forward to these two releases quite a bit, and until they come out, I’ll have these singles on repeat. Everything else this week is just gravy.

That said, it’s not like everything else this week was pointless, Sanguisugabogg put out an absolute ripper of an album, in fact, one of the best death metal albums I’ve heard in quite some time, I can’t recommend that enough. But perhaps an even bigger deal, Thrice went back and re-recorded Artist in the Ambulance and released it as a surprise on Thursday. Now, it’s rare that a rerelease of an album is going to be met with much fanfare, but this is a complete re-recording of one of the absolute most iconic post hardcore albums of all time, so it deserves every ounce of hype that it gets. I just can’t believe that album is already 20 years old.