Happy Friday! We're back with a whole heap of brilliant brand new music for you this week, including new music from Chelsea Wolfe, Creeper and Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter (formerly Lingua Ignota) as well as a brand new video from OC heavyweights Avenged Sevenfold.
But, we're getting ahead of ourselves - first, the results of last week's vote! It was a tight battle for second place, Ghostkid narrowly beating out UK prog metal titans Tesseract with their latest single Heavy Rain. But there could be no denying who took the crown this week: Danish death metal newcomers storming to the top of the board with Impenetrable Leather, taken from the band's upcoming debut album.
As ever, there's a mix of familiar and (potentially) new names for you to peruse this week, covering everything from extreme metal and alternative to nu metal and metalcore. We want to know which song excites you most, so don't forget to cast your vote below!
Avenged Sevenfold - Mattel
Even Avenged Sevenfold aren’t safe from Barbie fever. Granted, the band had written - and released - Mattel long before Greta Gerwig’s own take on the plastic icon had hit cinemas, but the Orange County’s new video is all about the life in plastic gone wrong, set to one of the more straight-ahead heavy metal bangers from the band’s new album Life Is But A Dream… and showing that A7X still know their way around an arena metal anthem even as they push the boat out stylistically.
Helmet - Gun Fluf
The gaps between Helmet albums might be getting longer, but the New York band remain true to their vision of hard-hitting, all-riffing, all-clanging alt-metal. Taken from the upcoming Left record - out November 10 - Gun Fluf sounds like someone brutalising a pop composition and flinging it down the stairs, a cascading, clattering track that nonetheless feels infectiously hooky.
Creeper - Black Heaven
After stylistically pushing the boat out with 2020’s Sex, Death & The Infinite Void, Creeper are fully re-embracing their goth roots on Sanguivore. The spectre of Jim Steinman looms large in the massive theatrical production of the record, while thrumming synths lend the track a vintage 80s feel that perfectly fits in with the Lost Boys like direction the band are taking this time out. In short, this is absolutely killer and we can’t wait to see what the band do with it live.
P.O.D. - Drop (feat. Randy Blythe)
Almost 30 years since they first emerged, P.O.D. are still delivering bouncing, thunderous nu metal. New single Drop sees them team up with Lamb Of God vocalist Randy Blythe and while he might add his characteristic growl to proceedings - albeit after a rap/spoken word verse of his own - the track is vintage P.O.D. with a pogoing riff and massive hook that’ll stick with you for months to come.
Chelsea Wolfe - Dusk
It might be four years since Chelsea Wolfe’s last record, but she’s hardly fallen quiet in the time since, contributing to the score of new horror franchise X back in 2022. Dusk feels like a bridge between the folky stylings of 2019’s Birth Of Violence and the melancholic doom of Hiss Spun and Abyss, possessing the oft-minimalist, steady pace of the former whilst bringing in walls of fuzzy noise in the song’s final minute-and-a-bit that subsumes the listener entirely. Bliss.
Go Ahead And Die - Desert Carnage
After the more punk flavouring of their debut album, Max Cavalera and son Igor Amadeus’s side-project Go Ahead And Die’s second record Unhealthy Mechanisms is branching out further into the hinterland where 80s hardcore intersects with thrash, grindcore and beyond. If Bolt Thrower were binging Discharge records, it’d probably sound something like Desert Carnage, a furious extreme metal blast from the past that sees Igor Amadeus Cavalera spit venom and bile while all hell is unleashed all around him. It’ll be criminal if this doesn’t get a tour.
Scene Queen - Pink Push-Up Bra
With just a couple weeks to go before she comes back for a headline tour of the UK, Bimbocore pioneer Scene Queen is back with a brand new banger in Pink Push-Up Bra. There’s a big ol’ dollop of nu metal to the new single, whooping sirens and thumping, stompy beats providing a foundation for another venomous examination of abuse in the music industry that doesn’t hold back in its fury. God save the Scene Queen, indeed.
Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter - I Will Be With You Always
Kristin Hayter may be preparing to lay Lingua Ignota to rest, but already the iconoclastic artist has laid the seeds for what comes next. Fans of Lignua Ignota’s brand of moving, oft-minimalistic post-everything will surely be pleased that she isn’t departing those sonic realms with her new project; I Will Be With You Always bears the same baroque, classical sensibilities as what came before, still as hauntingly cutting and powerful even as she buries the trauma of the past.
Dead Icarus - The Vultures Circle
These days Atreyu have long since departed the snarling metalcore territories that brought them acclaim in the early 2000s, but former vocalist Alex Varkatzas is still keeping the flame lit in his new group Dead Icarus. In fact, The Vultures Circle feels decidedly heavier than even Atreyu’s early material, a stomping, rabid beast with some serious riffs and the kind of vocal lines you can’t help but want to scream out until your throat is mincemeat.
Silent Planet - Anunnaki
A vicious fist to the face, Anunnaki is the latest single from California’s Silent Planet taken from the band’s upcoming album Superbloom, out November 3. Metalcore with heavy emphasis on the ‘metal’, the track tears out the gates with vicious beatdowns and blaring, near electronic tones that chuck up a few comparisons to the likes of Code Orange and Jesus Piece at their most visceral.
