New Music Report – November 19, 2021
The year is winding to a close and we’ve only got a few more albums that are really big on the horizon, but we’re not done yet. It’s hard to put a cap on any year when there’s still a Converge album coming out. These albums this week are some of the perfect ways to start wrapping up this year, both of off the rails side project and a true return to form, summarizing a lot of what we’ve been going through, both on a personal level, and musically this past year. Just so happens they’re both pretty damn good too, which is also very on brand.
Blood Moon (Converge/Chelsea Wolfe/Steven Broadsky) – I’ve honestly been waiting on this album for five years now. Back at Roadburn 2016, Converge played the first Blood Moon set with Chelsea Wolfe and her guitarist and Steven Brodsky from Cave-In. It was very different from what we usually expect from Converge, but kind of exactly what you’d expect if you’re familiar with the intersection of all of these artists. It’s a lot more atmospheric, sludgey, and slow-burn heavy than you’d traditionally expect from a Converge album, but you honestly shouldn’t think of this as a Converge album. It’s so much more than that, and the final product that you get is really perfect. If you do look at it form a Converge-centric perspective though, it’s really not that far out of line. If you listen to all their albums over the past 15 years or so, you can hear them slowly leaning more towards post-metal and sludge elements in their songwriting, and bringing in guest spots from bands like Neurosis, which is absolutely on brand with this sound. And what you get here is really the extreme of that, and the final product is frankly incredible. If you understand just how big this collaboration is, then you’re surely going to love this album.
Volumes – This album very firmly marks the return of Volumes. Technically, they’ve always been, but man this band has been through some shit. They kicked out the original vocalist and they made the other vocalist the lead vocalist and he also started rapping? Then in 2020, he was kicked out, along with his brother, the lead guitarist, who passed away a week later and they brought back the original vocalist. I honestly don’t know how they made it through all of this, but they pulled it together and put together a truly remarkable album. They deserve all the credit in the world for still carrying on, letting alone being able to put together such a well done piece of music right on the other side of all of this. This album honestly narrowly misses out on my top 10 list, but it’s just not quite there. However, it does feel like a fresh start for Volumes. It feels genuine, it feels cathartic, and it feels like something that was very important to these guys on a personal level. This is a really great album, and it’s really great to see these guys continuing on.
Singles/Albums – Maybeshewill (LP, Post-Rock), Obscura (LP, Metal), Mayday Parade (LP, Alt Rock), Silverstein (Post-Hardcore), Wolves at the Gate (Post-Hardcore), Animals as Leaders (Progressive Metal), Teeth (Metalcore/Hardcore), Khemmis (Doom)
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New Music Report – November 12, 2021
Man, the big hits just keep on coming. Honestly, it’s been really hard to keep up with these lately, I’ve been so busy so I’m sorry for being late, but I’m glad I’m able to catch up and share this music with you guys cause man, it’s all been just so good. We’ve been really lucky with great music this year, and I’m excited to see what the last few weeks of 2021 have to offer. This week has been another big one for me though, so enjoy.
Silent Planet – Silent Planet has been one of the bands that I’ve been trying to hype up for the past 5 years. When I heard Everything Was Sound, I knew this band was incredibly special. Over the past few years, it almost feels like the metalcore scene has been flooded with really, genuinely good bands, but there are a few that have stood above the rest. And then there’s Silent Planet. Not only are they just very good at making metalcore, they’re out there pushing the limits of the genre with incredibly intricate, syncopated drumming, deep, thoughtful, progressive lyrics, one of the best vocalists in the game, and honestly just a group of some of the nicest and most sincere people in metal. From there, I watched them grow and give back to the community, writing songs about indigenous people, homeless LGBT youth, those so suffer from PTSD, and then turning around and using those songs and subsequent merch to hold a fundraiser for those affected. I just can’t say enough nice things about this band, and it’s a damn good thing they have the talent to back it up. This album is their best yet, I know I had high hopes for it – the singles were incredible – but Silent Planet always tell a story better throughout an entire album, and this one is no different. Not only that, but they all sound much more dialed in. Garrett’s screams are even better, Thomas’ clean vocals seem to have found their range and sound much more comfortable. It’s all just perfect, honestly. I know I’ve got a few weeks left, but spoiler alert, I can’t think of anything that can really compete with Silent Planet and ETID for album of the year.
Singles/Albums – Memorist (EP, Djent), The Halo Effect (Ex-In Flames, Death Metal), Northlane (Nu-Metalcore), Rolo Tomassi (Progressive Metalcore), Bailer (Hardcore), Coheed & Cambria (Progressive Rock), Four Year Strong (Easycore), August Burns Red (Metalcore Christmas), 200 Stab Wounds (LP, Death Metal), Code Orange (Hardcore), Idles (LP, Avant Garde Punk), Burial Waves (Post Rock)
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New Music Report – November 5, 2021
Music release season continues with some absolute heaters, some of the brightest bands in the game, both young and old, are cranking out some excellent new music this year. It feels like a giant build up that’s still carrying over from last year, but I’ll absolutely take it.
SeeYouSpaceCowboy – These guys are the hottest new band in the scene, bar none, and they’re just going to keep on their stratospheric rise in popularity and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a damn thing out there that can stop them. And the cool thing is, they aren’t REALLY doing anything new. In fact, it’s pretty old. A whole 15-20 years later, they’ve managed to re-invent the old school screamo/emocore (bet you haven’t heard that word in a while) sound into something that sounds incredibly fresh. As much as I love all those old bands that laid the foundation for this sound, hell, those bands were the soundtrack to my high school years, but SYSC might actually be the best ones to ever do it. They’ll never have that same nostalgia factor, but there’s still something about the sound in general that has this inherent nostalgia. It’s almost like I’ve heard this before, and yet it’s brand new. These guys are simultaneously stuck in the past and absolutely blazing a trail to the future and I’m loving being able to watch it. This new album is just another definitive step forward for what is sure to be an incredibly bright career.
Emma Ruth Rundle – Emma Ruth Rundle has been one of my favorite artists for a long time. For the longest time she got caught up in Chelsea Wolfe’s wave to success, which is sort of a generalization cause they really sound nothing alike. ERR has a distinctly dark and bleak sound that sits bare against the musical arrangement. Either with her band, or with her earlier solo work it all felt incredibly personal and direct. It was raw, dark, and absolutely beautiful. Though her last album delved a bit more into bringing in support from her backing band, making it feel a bit more complete yet more impersonal, which is interesting because her last album was some of her best work and the instrumentation provided a lot of strength to the arrangement. This new album, however, strips things down with dark, sparse, yet incredibly powerful instrumentation. Her vocals and lyrics have always been such a centerpiece, allowing this album to meander along that theme accentuated by finely populated melodies and plucking piano adds more depth and intensity to her already incredibly intense work. This somehow feels even more personal and it’s just gorgeous, I love it.
Singles/Albums – Greyhaven (Southern Metalcore), Portrayal of Guilt (LP, Hardcore), Like Moths to Flames (LP, Post-Hardcore/Metalcore), Slipknot (Metal), Senses Fail (Post-Hardcore), Blood Moon (Converge & Chelsea Wolfe, Sludge/Metal/Post-Metal), Hammock (LP, Ambient)
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New Music Report – October 29, 2021
I’m not gonna lie, I’m still riding the high from Radical, but it’s really difficult to ignore the caliber of music coming out right now. I mean, new Mastodon? That’s not exactly something to sleep on. I always love this time of year cause it’s just chock full of new releases, and man are there some good ones this year.
Mastodon – The other day, I was talking about the lengthy Mastodon discography with a friend of mine, and he asked me what their best album was, and of course, the answer was Leviathan and there was zero debate. It’s been more than 17 years since that album, so expecting them to put out carbon copies of that masterpiece is a bit of a reach, but this newest album certainly came as a surprise either way. It’s still aligning with their more mainstream sound from their past few albums, which I expected, but it’s a bit slower, a bit more ballady, a bit more sludgey in place, it’s just overall a very different experience, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed. And one that I think pretty much everyone else can enjoy too as long as they aren’t holding it to their previous high-water marks.
Archspire – This is fucking wild. There are a bunch of bands out there that have just ascended beyond my understanding as a musician and they’re playing on levels that I just can’t comprehend. Bands like Animals as Leaders, Frontierer, etc, but good god, I don’t know what it is these guys are doing but it’s insane. They’re playing on a level that’s just beyond comprehension, if you didn’t know better, you’d swear it was just concentrated noise. It’s so fast, it’s so chaotic, but with a bit of understanding it’s easy to see that it all feels incredibly deliberate, they know exactly where each note should fall, and they nail it every single time. I just don’t know how when there are so many notes happening at once. It’s just absolutely insane technical death metal and just the biggest flex a musician can make. It’s nearly exhausting to listen to but boy, is it worth it.
Singles/Albums – Bodysnatcher (Deathcore), Whitechapel (LP, Metalcore), Ghost Bath (LP, Black Metal), Marissa Nadler (LP, Dark Folk), Minus the Bear (Live Farewell Album, Indie), Comeback Kid (Hardcore), Being as an Ocean (Post-Hardcore), Underoath/Ghostmane (Metalcore), Impending Doom (EP, Deathcore), Monolord (LP, Doom Metal), Fit For an Autopsy (Deathcore), Volumes (Djent)
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New Music Report – October 22, 2021
Ok, so I’m gonna be honest here, there’s only one album I really want to talk about this week. There have been lots of great albums and singles coming out this week; Sentinels put out an incredibly technical metalcore album, Silent Planet singles are always awesome, SeeYouSpaceCowboy are still one of the best new-ish names in the game, and Phaeleh’s music is always breathtaking. But holy fuck this ETID album.
Every Time I Die – I don’t know, man, what do I even say here? ETID is one of the few bands I’ll actual fanboy over, and I’ve been waiting for this album for like 2 years thanks to Covid. Of course I’m gonna love it. But man, this is fucking sick. This is so good. First off, Goose is the best drummer they’ve ever had, and that’s a very high bar. Everyone talks about how ETID is one of those bands that manages to raise the bar with every release, and this is just another example of that upward trend. Radical feels like the most complete ETID album, bringing elements from their back catalog and all their past sounds into this lengthy masterpiece. It features some of their chunkiest, heaviest riffs, clean vocals from Keith that sound like the ETID version of a Damned Things song, some of the most quotable lyrics Keith has ever written, and their most touching song ever with Andy from Manchester Orchestra on guest vocals. I mean, honestly, it’s pretty much a perfect album. I’m definitely biased about this, I adore this band, but this album is a perfect example of why.
Singles/Albums – Sentinels (LP, Metalcore), Thecityisours (LP, Post-Hardcore), Phaeleh (LP, Downtempo/Ambient), Bullet for my Valentine (LP, Metalcore), Waking the Cadaver (LP, Deathcore), Cradle of Filth (LP, Metal), Circa Survive (EP, Post-Hardcore), Silent Planet (Metalcore), No Bragging Rights (Hardcore), Obscura (Progressive Metal), Void of Vision (Nu-Metalcore), SeeYouSpaceCowboy (Screamo), Arch Enemy (Metal), Kublai Khan (Metalcore), The Word Alive (Metalcore)
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New Music Report – October 15, 2021
Now we’re getting into the thick of new release season and man, do we have some heaters this week. I’ve mostly been looking ahead to next week when the new Every Time I Die album comes out, but man, I’ve been so caught up on some of the releases from this week, I’m having no problem waiting another week for that album. Knocked Loose especially, quite literally came out of nowhere and killed it this week. This has been a really exciting year for music, and even this late in the year it still feels like we’re just getting started.
Knocked Loose EP – Haha holy shit this thing bangs so hard. A couple weeks ago, Knocked Loose started hinting at something, I sort of just assumed it was a new single, which would have been fantastic, but man, they really came out swinging. They dropped an EP with a full video production to go along with it. And it sure is a monster. This is definitely one of the heaviest things I’ve heard all year, but it also marks a new high point for Knocked Loose. Before this, they were just a hard-hitting hardcore band with a unique vocalist, this album introduces a whole new degree of song writing complexity that we haven’t really seen from the band before. It almost reminds me a bit of pre-Jane Doe Converge with better production quality. I’ve been feeling for a while that this year’s best releases have all been EPs, and man, this gave some serious weight to that argument. I’ve legit had this on repeat since they dropped the video production, and every second has still hit super hard. Actually, not gonna lie, I kinda hate the ASMR whisper outro part, but that’s a personal thing, it’s flawless otherwise.
Vildjharta – First off, nobody ever though this album would actually exist, so that’s an accomplishment in itself. This Swedish progressive metal band have been promising a new album for about a decade now, and it just seemed like it was never actually going to happen, but here we are. And usually when an album has that much hype and takes that much time, it’s gonna flop. The old “Chinese Democracy” syndrome. But somehow this album managed to exceed expectations. It’s an incredible display of musicianship, song-writing ability, and a novel approach to what it truly means to be heavy. This is simultaneously a crushing, slow grind, and also a technical whirlwind. Honestly, I have no idea how this band manages to remember all their parts, or how they combine such disparate sounds into something so cohesive and mesmerizing. This band is honestly on a different tier than just about anybody else in the game and – likely because of their long absence – are criminally underrated. But if you want to hear what metal is really capable of, check this out.
Ice Nine Kills – Ok, I feel like I should talk about this one and I’m gonna be objective about it. So when I lived in Boston, these guys were not really anything more than a bigger local band that got some occasional Warped Tour runs and that really felt like the end of the road for them. But man, credit where credit is due, they’ve blown up and really polished their songwriting along the way. To be honest, this is what I like to call Hot Topic-core. If this were released in 2005, back when I had Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, this album would probably quite literally change my life. But here in 2021, a horror movie-themed metalcore album feels a bit cheesy. And make no mistake, it’s cheesy as fuck. But they’re doing it very, very well, and if they keep this up, they have a really solid upward trajectory ahead of them. I didn’t think they’d actually be able to follow up their last album – which was also a horror movie themed metalcore album – it felt like a one and done thing, but they sure proved me wrong. I won’t really be listening to this album very much, but I absolutely understand the appeal, and I know the exact audience for this sort of thing, and they’re going to love this.
Singles/Albums – Volumes (Post Hardcore), Angelmaker (Deathcore), Whitechapel (Deathcore), Betraying the Martyrs (Metalcore), Wolves at the Gate (Post-Hardcore), Emma Ruth Rundle (Dark Folk), Impending Doom (Deathcore), Left to Suffer feat. Will Ramos (Deathcore), Upon A Burning Body (Metalcore)
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