Employed To Serve - The Warmth Of A Dying Sun
“Sharing the crushingly heavy and chaotic spirit of its predecessor, songs are caustic, craftily paced, and a smart mix of oppressive and defiantly positive. As ever, Justine Jones is a veritable powerhouse of pronounced, abrasive fury.”
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3TEETH - shutdown.exe
“The recording of 3TEETH’S second album was delayed after the LA industrialists were handpicked to support Tool on their 2016 US tour. Happily though, it’s is worth the wait. The quartet’s grinding machinery is still heavily influenced by Ministry, Skinny Puppy and Rammstein, but the combustible, twisted metal and scabrous screams on tracks like SlaveGod make the buzzsaw guitars of the band’s self-titled debut sound positively tinny by comparison.”
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Malevolence - Self Supremacy
“Sounding, as Malevolence are so fond of doing, like Dimebag Darrell has joined Hatebreed to work on a sludge album, it’s a hell of a gut punch. From there on in the levels of aggression, brutality and, most importantly, quality rarely dip.”
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Ex People - Bird
“With a multifarious past in riot grrrl and noise bands, Ex People were never going to be entirely without edge. Although superficially rooted in sludge and doom, this London-based quartet use their hypnotic, propulsive riffs and air of pot-enlightened obstinacy to facilitate some authentic lyrical insights in a genre that generally prefers to languish in a fog of arcane daftness.”
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John Frum - A Stirring In The Noos
“With The Dillinger Escape Plan approaching their final tour, we are now awaiting what their various members do next. First out of the traps is bassist Liam Wilson, and if John Frum are any indication of the level of quality we’ll be getting, then we’re in for quite a treat. If you were expecting any nods to the more expansive and melodic strides Dillinger have made over the last decade, then you are in for a rude awakening here, as A Stirring In The Noos is grinding, disgusting death metal.”
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Oceano - Revelation
“Compensating for a lack of enterprise by being heavier than everyone else, Oceano’s new lineup attempted a more diverse, if flawed, approach on 2015’s Ascendants, and this fifth effort takes a leap forward in their evolution. The grim tones, bullish intensity and Adam Warren’s belched-from-Hell vocals still form the bulk of the sound, albeit with an increased loan from the bank of Meshuggah.”
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Harvestman - Music For Megaliths
“Neurosis’s Steve von Till’s third offering as Harvestman is an experimental nexus within which form, structure and genre are arbitrary and on which he plays a diverse array of instrumentation, from effects-laden electronica to the hurdy gurdy, painstakingly put together at his Idaho home studio.”
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Loss - Horizonless
“Formed in 2004 in Nashville, lachrymose death/doom quartet Loss dropped a load of deep-underground CD-Rs and splits before releasing a suffocatingly mournful debut LP, Despond, in 2011 to a rapturous reception among connoisseurs of ornately down-in-the-dumps doom. Six years on, Loss’s tortoise-like career reaches a new height with Horizonless.”
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Ulsect - Ulsect
“Sharing (ex-)members with dissonant black metal band Dodecahedron and progressive metallers Textures has led Ulsect to incorporate many a shifting sound into their self-proclaimed ‘post-death metal’. Ulsect beat with a discordant heart and chaos signifies the beginning of their debut with Fall To Depravity striding on off-kilter rhythms and guttural cries before Our Trivial Toil fans the flames of darkness with fractious guitars playing off Dennis Maas’s spiteful vocals.”
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The best new metal albums you can buy this week
