Rise Against - Wolves
“Rise Against’s heavier, punky days are behind them, but their songwriting skills remain triumphantly strong. Eighteen years after their formation, their passion is unwavering, their lyrics earnest and their energy inspiring. As with their 2014 album, The Black Market, Wolves leans strongly towards radio-ready rock, the attitude proving rather spikier than their sound, which is inarguably engaging but grows steadily more accessible and melodic.”
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Anathema - The Optimist
“Anathema have coloured their music with electronica in the past, but from opener proper Leave It Behind here those textures are often pushed to the forefront. With Vincent Cavanagh and Lee Douglas renewing their lush, swoon-inducing vocal partnership, growls are of course conspicuous by their absence, and the arrangements of Endless Ways, Back To The Start and The Optimist itself are aurally intoxicating.”
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Barrabus - Barrabus
“The brainchild of the ever creative UK underground legend Paul Catten, Barrabus were officially resurrected last year. A genre-bucking beast, the besuited band’s self-titled debut is a criminally good offering packed with speaker-shaking, giant-slaying riffs and unhinged howls.”
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Dawn Of Ashes - Daemonolatry Gnosis
“Hailing from Los Angeles – perhaps not the first territory you’d associate with black metal – Dawn Of Ashes have been at it for quite some time, having crafted no fewer than six albums prior to this one. Having made a curious musical journey, beginning life as an EBM/cybergoth/industrial outfit and morphing toward the symphonic black metal with industrial touches we see today, it’s unsurprising that Daemonolatry Gnosis presents black metal in about as polished and clean a form as you could imagine.”
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Foscor - Les Irreals Visions
“Foscor’s coming of age on fifth album Les Irreals Visions is a marked departure from the withering second-wave worship of the Catalonians’ 2004 debut. The tremolo-picked tritones and feral recriminations have been eschewed for the sense of melancholic, beautiful tragedy that first found voice on 2014’s Those Horrors Wither.”
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Schammasch - The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite
“Swiftly following their Triangle triple album, Schammasch return with the first of a number of releases exploring the 19th century poetic novel, Les Chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont. Centred around a protagonist who opposes God and renounces morality’s conventions, this long-prose poem certainly lends itself thematically to an ambitious metal act.”
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The best new metal albums you can buy this week
