Summer might be over, but the autumnal album release calendar is just getting warmed up. This week we've had an abundance of names both old and new jumping out with new singles as we hit the last quarter stretch of 2022. The year's not over yet...
First, we have the winners of last week's vote. Orbit Culture's Vultures Of North just might be the band's heaviest single to date, but that didn't stop it marching past the likes of Parkway Drive and Pretty Reckless to take top spot. After incendiary performances at Download, Pulse Of The Maggots and Bloodstock, its fair to say that band are well and truly on their way up.
This week it's all to play for as Architects go big with newest single Deep Fake, Nita Strauss flexes her metal muscles on Summer Storm and In This Moment give their 2012 hit Whore a Stranger Things style makeover. We also have comebacks from Suicide Silence, Tallah and previous vote winners Irist. So as ever, don't forget to cast your vote below!
VV (Ville Valo) – Echolocate Your Love
We’re sorry? What your love? Still, if anyone get away with dropping fancy words, it’s former HIM frontman Ville Valo, aka VV. His second single mines the same stream of swooning 80s-influenced goth as this year’s Loveletting, laying the big, chiming guitars on thick. Like all his best songs, its got darkness in its heart and a rose in its teeth.
Architects - Deep Fake
When Architects’ For Those That Wish To Exist climbed to the top of the UK charts in 2021, it cemented the notion that the Brighton band were reaching higher than many of their peers could possibly dream. Unsurprising, then, that Deep Fake feels like a massive stride towards radio ubiquity, the thrumming electro and massive chorus begging for enormous crowds to belt it out at every opportunity. With arena tours beckoning, it doesn’t look like we’ll be waiting long.
Suicide Silence - You Must Die
Halloween comes early in the corpse-filled video for Suicide Silence’s You Must Die. Presumably taken from the band’s upcoming record Remember… You Must Die, the song is a brutal blast of classic-style deathcore, not so much punching the listener in the face as taking a jackhammer to them until all that remains is pulp and powdered bone.
Nita Strauss - Summer Storm
She might be playing with Demi Lovato now, but Nita Strauss is still a shredder at heart and Summer Storm puts that front-and-centre. An epic instrumental with a video filmed across her headline tour of the US earlier this year, Summer Storm is an all-thrashing show of Nita’s guitar hero prowess.
Pierce The Veil - Pass The Nirvana
The first new Pierce The Veil song in six years, Pass The Nirvana is appropriately titled, its repetitive riff feeling like exactly the kind of thing you could imagine the kings of grunge breaking out on Bleach or odds n sods collection Incesticide. But if the riff is culled from Nirvana, the wider song is pure Pierce The Veil through and through, snarling post-hardcore taking aim at the “many horrible traumas that the youth of America have endured over the past few years,” according to frontman Vic Fuentes.
Charlotte Wessels - Toxic
Proving she has more arrows in her quiver than just symphonic grandeur, Toxic shows a very different side to ex-Delain singer Charlotte Wessels. The third single from her upcoming album Tales From Six Feet Under Vol. II, the song combines percussive electro beats that wouldn’t be out of place on a Puscifer record with stunning vocal melodies and even a few bilious snarls.
Irist - Surging Ablaze
With riffs spearing out into the cosmos, Irist follow up the crushing Heal with the more progressively inclined Surging Ablaze. Moving away from the earthly confines of sludge, Surging Ablaze has the same sense of enormity and scope as Mastodon’s sublime Crack The Skye or Gojira’s Another Planet, adopted into a post-metal framework and sent hurtling from the heavens when everything comes crashing back down.
Tallah - Shaken (Not Stirred)
Nu metal revivalists Tallah are roaring back to life with Shaken (Not Stirred), taken from their upcoming album The Generation Of Danger, out November 18. Yes, the main riff sounds a bit like Mudvayne’s Dig, but it’s also a killer thrust of crushing heaviness that works perfectly against the song’s more melodic inclinations that betray arena ambitions.
In This Moment - Whore 1983
A decade since they went Gold with Blood, In This Moment are restyling the album’s biggest songs with an 80s aesthetic. The original Whore was built around a thumping beat, but its redux pins focus back on Maria Brink’s vocal, stripping the instrumentation back until a mid-song climax that throws up shades of Simple Minds.
Hoaxed - The Call
No sooner have we proclaimed the death of summer than we start getting gothy offerings in time for the autumn chill. Portland, Oregon duo Hoaxed are first past the post with The Call, taken from their upcoming debut Two Shadows. Built around driving rhythms and weightless vocal melodies, The Call is an alluring taste of what Hoaxed offer, mixing goth, traditional rock and metal in an intoxicating brew.
The brand new issue of Metal Hammer is onsale now. Order your copy now and have it delivered to your door.
