How is summer nearly over already?! While the weather has been less than fantastic over recent weeks, the run of exciting, fresh metal being released into the world remains hotter than ever - which is exactly why we have four absolutely killer new bands and artists for you to wrap your ears around.
This month we've got everything from history-obsessed power metal to sonically claustrophobic noise from the innermost shadows of the soul. It's all brilliant, and it all deserves your time. Get stuck in below.
Lana Del Rabies
Saman's third album as Lana Del Rabies nearly didn’t see the light of day. Still reeling from the recording of the claustrophobic, industrial purgatory that was 2018’s Shadow World record, she had considered dropping the project and starting afresh.
“I was in a chaotic, self-destructive, may-not-have-made-it-out-alive type of place when I wrote that record,” she admits. Working in child welfare in her native Arizona, seeing the effects of the Trump administration’s child separation border policy up close and undergoing the collective trauma of Covid understandably gave way to a sense of exhaustion.
“When you’re in this place of wanting to heal,” says Sam, “reckoning with your own childhood shit, being face to face with this all-at-once-feeling, that’s a lot of where the new record came from.”
Strega Beata does sound exhausted – not in the sense of giving up so much as having gone beyond the anger and ordeal of Shadow World.
“Writing Strega Beata was cathartic, but a slow burn, whereas on Shadow World I just purged it all out,” Sam says. “But that’s what healing is, right? It’s not like you go to therapy one time and you’re good. You have to be in it for a while, and that’s what this record was for me.”
Taking the perspective of a deity looking down upon the foibles of her children, and the limits of the power they assume, its combination of looped pneumatic beats and rich, corrosive atmospheres is a means to step back, unburden and, ultimately, forgive.
“I almost feel like forgiveness is a tool for personal peace more than it is for making things right,” she says. “Even if there’s never going to be closure, can you forgive people who harmed you, or yourself? This was a way to take a step back and ask: why are we so destructive, can it be changed, and how can we reach acceptance?”
Ashenspire
Ashenspire's second full-length album, Hostile Architecture, crept online back in July 2022. Just before Christmas, it was reviewed by Anthony Fantano, the internet’s busiest music nerd, who boasts some 2.6 million YouTube subscribers.
“We got 6,000 new listeners on that day alone,” recalls Alasdair Dunn, the Glaswegian collective’s key songwriter, drummer and vocalist. “We need to order more merch!”
It’s a weird situation for a band who identify as ‘red and anarchist black metal’, sure. Pilfering from jazz/hip hop group BadBadNotGood as much as they do Altar Of Plagues, Ashenspire are the sound of hope dying... artfully. Alasdair’s Nick Cave-choking-on-fibreglass screams, the sax, violin and hammered dulcimer, fighting against Rizla-thin guitars and blastbeats...it’s bleak, repressive noise worthy of the record’s title, pulling from philosopher Mark Fisher’s take on modern life, Capitalist Realism.
“Some crustpunk and hip hop has that vibe,” says Scott McLean, who played piano on Hostile Architecture as well as producing, recording and mixing the album. “Metal just has that energy you can use, but there’s not that much protest music within metal.”
He’s not wrong. Listen to every washed-up nu metal C-leaguer pissing out ‘rallying anti-establishment anthemsTM’, and then Alasdair’s declaration in Cable Street Again: ‘I hope you like poverty, breathing in soot, and the Asbestos taste of leather off Britain’s boot.’ “The idea is to make the unseen, seen,” Alasdair explains, citing German philosopher Karl Marx as inspiration for his barbed prose. “There’s something heavy metal about Marx, when he really gets into it. It’s pure Manowar. ‘Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!’”
Grief Symposium
Grim, brutal and avowedly esoteric, Grief Symposium are self- proclaimed descendants of the early UK death and doom metal scenes. The band’s debut album, ...In The Absence Of Light, is a deeply atmospheric affair with its roots in the early 90s.
“We grew up in underground metal at a time when creativity and exploration were key,” says vocalist SJT. “The pace of evolution was rapid: Paradise Lost went from Lost Paradise to Icon – four incredible albums in four years. We wanted to recapture that boldness.”
From full-on death metal to surreal, otherworldly ambience, the band’s first full-length is full of surprises. Perhaps the biggest is that, despite its remorselessly morbid vibe, the lyrics to songs like Veil Of Transformation paint an unexpectedly positive picture.
“Fundamentally, ...Absence is actually about hope, hope born from internal resolution and choice,” explains SJT. “It’s about having a will to reflect, to repent, and to seek a path to renewal no matter the darkness you are in.”
The final track on the album speaks volumes about Grief Symposium’s fearlessness. Eighteen minutes long and wonderfully odd, The Amber Kiss Of The Sun has a spoken-word cameo from one of their most exalted forebears: Aaron Stainthorpe from My Dying Bride.
“We were already in conversation with Aaron and he agreed to work on some narration ideas,” says SJT. “He wrote an extremely moving set of lyrics and also gave the song its title, so he really delivered for us. He’s an absolute gentleman. Meet your heroes!”
Warkings
Heavy metal loves a bit of panto, but even in a world of Sabatons and Turisases, Warkings feel like an especially joyous blast of trad-flavoured power metal. Forged in the heart of Europe in 2018, the band’s story revolves around a group of historical warriors (a Viking, Spartan, Crusader and Tribune) who met in the afterlife and decided to form a band to sing about their exploits. Daft, yes, but then that’s rather the point.
“Heavy metal is meant to be larger than life,” explains bassist The Viking. “We’re not so serious – we’re not Manowar. We won’t die for heavy metal... we’re already dead!”
With four albums under their belts and tours alongside Powerwolf and Feuerschwanz getting them out to the masses, they’re accustomed to seeing huge crowds enthusiastically roaring along to their historically themed epics.
“The band hadn’t even existed for a year when we were booked for Wacken – we played to 10,000 people,” says The Viking. “We want to bring all visitors into our world and make them forget about the harsh realities outside, and give people a good time.”
