Here are all the new releases for December 8th through January 11th. Releases reflect proposed North American scheduling, if available. Expect to see most of these albums on shelves or distros on Fridays.
See something we missed or have any thoughts? Let us know in the comments. Plus, as always, feel free to post your own shopping lists. Happy digging.
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New Releases 12/8 – 12/14
An Axis of Perdition — Apertures | Apocalyptic Witchcraft | Black Metal + Industrial Metal | United Kingdom (Middlesbrough, England)
An Axis of Perdition return with their first album in 13 years, though with a few caveats. First of all, it’s essentially a Michael Blenkarn album because Brooke Johnson wasn’t able to contribute to it. Secondly, the Silent Hill theming is far in the background, though its sonic influence lingers. Blenkarn’s vocals are slippery and hollow, complimenting the nightmare-logic that drives the compositions. As a whole, Apertures presents avant-garde black metal as cerebral rather than esoteric or cosmic, slotting itself as an alternative to what Blut Aus Nord have been doing the past few years.
–Colin Dempsey
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Monte Penumbra — Austere Dawning | Norma Evangelium Diaboli | Avant-garde Black Metal | Portugal
If your holidays were too enjoyable, your cousins too excited to welcome you, your travel too smooth, and your gas bill lower than expected, then fear not. Austere Dawning will reopen the gap in your heart and reignite the hurting that drives you to avant-garde black metal. It is a cacophonous and dense album, one that’s averse to harmony. More importantly, it’s challenging to decipher without being challenging to enjoy. Put another way, the webs on tracks like “Murrain Unveiled” are murky for your delight.
–Colin Dempsey
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Cranial Vortex — Infinite Interactions | Independent | Progressive Thrash Metal + Death Metal | United States (Green Bay, Wisconsin)
Cranial Vortex’s debut album contradicts death-thrash’s proclivity for fast, rough, and sloppy playing by embracing patience and consideration. Infinite Interactions is as if somebody internalized Coroner’s and Death’s discographies then learned guitar by exclusively playing solos. As such, it’s just as brainy as it is looking for every opportunity to shred.
–Colin Dempsey
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New Releases 12/15 – 12/21
Skagos — Chariot Sun Blazing | Independent | Post-Rock + Atmospheric Black Metal | United States (Olympia, Washington)
Inarguably the most conventionally stunning black metal album of the last month (ignore that the competition wasn’t all that stiff), Chariot Sun Blazing places black metal into a post-rock skinsuit. This is to say that in Skagos’ decade away from music, they learned how to better implement black metal in places it shouldn’t belong. The harsh vocals and tremolo riffing are accents to their post-rock, which pulls from Talk Talk in the manner that Skagos create spontaneous music, the kind that feels as if it was captured by a camera’s flash rather than rehearsed in band practice.
–Colin Dempsey
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Hexenbrett — Dritte Beschwörung: Dem Teufel Eine Tochter | Dying Victims Productions | Heavy Metal + Black Metal | Europe
From Ted Nubel’s track premiere of “Imhotep”:
Drawing on the rich history of European horror soundtracks and cult cinema, the blood-spattered album oozes with sleazy shock and thrills. Bizarre synthesizer lines and hushed chants, woven in alongside the band’s vicious riffs, make it feel like the backdrop to a moody 1970s slasher.
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Pandemic — Phantoms | Dying Victims Productions | Thrash Metal + Speed Metal | Poland (Kraków)
The distinction between speed metal and thrash metal is like when one color becomes another; you can’t describe it with words, but you know the difference when you see it. Pandemic are acutely aware of this and blur that line as much as possible, cranking up the NWOBHM guitar melodies on “Bane of Brook Hall” and then snarling on “Santa Muerte.” On an absolute level, these are small variances, but they provide Phantoms a diverse air.
–Colin Dempsey
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Epitaph — Path to Oblivion | My Kingdom Music | Doom Metal | Italy (Verona)
Much of Path to Oblivion exists outside of its riffs. “Nameless Demon” and “Kingdom of Slumber” each employ a quiet-loud-quiet dynamic to build tension, for example, with that tension coming from Ricky Dal Pane’s vocals, as bare-chested as Conan, existing in the purgatory between choruses. It all builds to the eventual release in the form of huge riffs, but that conclusion is obvious. What matters is how Epitaph get there.
–Colin Dempsey
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Beneath Moonlight — Beneath Moonlight | Debemur Morti Productions | Black Metal | United States
With its hocus-pocus of theatrical piano-led gambols, rascally tremolo-picking and an inebriating supernatural mustiness cut through with silvery beams of selenian poetry, this latest phantasmal offering from the ever-enigmatic Ordo Vampyr Orientis sinks its fangs into the lost art of witch-hunting while insinuating a horror that’s less Hammer House and more Ed Gorey.
–Spencer Grady
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Wędrowcy~Tułacze~Zbiegi — Droga do domu | Devoted Art Propaganda | Post-Punk + Black Metal | Poland (Katowice)
Wędrowcy~Tułacze~Zbiegi’s fourth album is too urban for black metal devotees and not post enough to truly be post-punk, but it still exists in the center of the Venn diagram between the two genres. Black metal’s intensity is present, though subdued by production values suitable for public listening. It’s the match that starts Droga do domu‘s fire and allows stranger entities to also catch flame, like the electronic burbs and tweets on “Jak spalić wieś?”. It’s doubtful many people hungered for this style of music before hearing it. And the record’s most damning sin is that, after listening to it, there’s nothing else that will scratch the same itch.
–Colin Dempsey
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New Releases 12/22 – 12/28
Sacred Son — Grief Commodity | Independent | Black Metal | United Kingdom (London)
Previous Sacred Son records used their casual covers as Trojan Horses to sneak melodic black metal to unsuspecting ears. Grief Commodity doubles down on the first part of that equation with an excessively chill photo. To counteract it, Sacred Son deliver their rawest album yet, as all tracks were recorded using Voice Memos on their iPhone. It’s not as punk-informed as raw black metal tends to be, playing out instead as a slow-churning mood piece that uses the poor recording quality for extra atmosphere.
–Colin Dempsey
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Black Negative Domination — Reborn in Darkness | Independent | Black Metal | Germany + United States
The members of Black Negative Domination played crowd-pleasing genres like thrash and power metal before releasing their debut EP in 2019. Those experiences carry over to their first full-length Reborn in Darkness and provide impetus to otherwise mechanically-sound black metal. It lacks the mystique that can elevate lesser acts, though the group is comfortable trading it for a streamlined delivery.
–Colin Dempsey
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LaColpa — In Absentia Lucis | Brucia Records | Sludge + Doom Metal + Noise | Italy
From Ted Nubel’s full album premiere:
In Absentia Lucis fundamentally is a pairing of opposites: chaos against order, light against dark, that kind of thing. Combining antagonistic themes and musical elements often leads to an undesirable mess — think ‘bucket of nails going down a staircase’ — but here, LaColpa has unified disparate parts into a turbulent, cohesive whole. It sends the mind down dark but crucial pathways of thought.
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Tony Tears — La Società degli Eterni | I, Voidhanger Records | Doom Metal + Progressive Rock | Italy
A long-practiced disciple of Italy’s “purple doom” sound, Tony Tears’ solo act breaks out the organ-heavy proto-metal to take us all back to the 1980s. Expect lots of glorious weirdness within.
–Ted Nubel
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New Releases 12/29 – 1/4
Pale Cremation — Communion [Soviet Tapes 1984] | Independent | Psychedelic + Doom Metal + Synthwave | United States (Cleveland, Ohio)
Framed as a previously lost-in-time record now recently restored, Communion [Soviet Tapes 1984] melts time and genres into a haze. Particularly “Indistinguishable to Human Eyes [Soviet Version 1984],” with rattles off machine-gun riffs after treading in loose synthwave. It’s as if it exists outside of history because it lapses between vintage analog production and modern crunchy doom segments.
–Colin Dempsey
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Gonemage — Entranced by the Ice Storm | Independent | Symphonic Black Metal + Chiptune | United States (Dallas, Texas)
Gonemage’s latest EP is a preview of their upcoming album, Coldest Keep in Bitter Heavens. The two tracks included here meld late 1990s symphonic black metal, the bombastic kind rather than the prosthetic and gothic variant, with SNES and Sega Genesis sounds. Is it unholy? Of course, but Gonemage is a wizard when it comes to pairing the shared nuances between disparate styles.
–Colin Dempsey
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Mutagenic Host — The Diseased Machine | Independent | Death Metal | United Kingdom (London, England)
It seems fitting that OSDM, which speaks to living organisms by virtue of its vileness laying beyond computer comprehension, would rally against artificial intelligence on The Diseased Machine. But why stop at that? Mutagenic Host work in a few hardcore-adjacent riffs to increase blood circulation and overload the machine. This is neanderthal music for cavemen that no AI could replicate.
–Colin Dempsey
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Am I in Trouble? — Spectrum | Independent | Progressive Metal + Avant-garde Black Metal | United States (New Jersey)
On their debut album, Am I in Trouble? honors avant-garde black metal from the early aughts. They tap into the unpredictability of its source material, and shift between genres on tracks. It’s a progressive-minded approach that cherry picks elements without dragging along their dead weight. As such, precise black metal riffs, crystal clear vocals, folk straight from The Shire, and even flamenco are all present on Spectrum.
–Colin Dempsey
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World Eaters — Hounds of Blood | Independent | Death Metal | Canada (Guelph, ON)
The Warhammer 40k-inspired OSDM outfit rides again, chainsaws at the ready. Though their Bolt Thrower influence is alive and well, there’s plenty of their own signature here to spice things up: some heavy rock grooves thrown in among the double bass and well-crafted melodic segments.
–TODO
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Estuarine — Corporeal Furnace | Independent | Experimental Death Metal + Grind | International
At times feeling like melodic death metal fractured and subdivided into a million bizarre pieces, Estuarine’s new album puts a rare spin on what ‘technicality’ in death metal can look like. Here, it’s intense syncopation, rapidly changing meter, and weird genre-absconding sounds, not just trying to playing the fastest 16th notes possible. Even with this unpredictable backdrop, the international outfit maintains a sense of catchiness throughout that’s even more impressive given everything else going on.
–Ted Nubel
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New Releases 1/5 – 1/11
The Cimmerian — An Age Undreamed Of | Independent | Doom Metal + Thrash Metal | United States (Los Angeles, California)
All the information you’re about to read refers to the only track available ahead of An Age Undreamed Of‘s release, “Darkwolf.” It disfigures a slow-burning doom metal build-up into a primitive thrasher and makes it appear seamless. Furthermore, The Cimmerian act with scope and bite, never breaking the tension too early or letting the song fall limp in its promenade. Hopefully, the rest of the album will maintain these same qualities.
–Colin Dempsey
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Satan’s Sigh — Impaled Nazareno | Murder Records | Black Metal | Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)
The first record from Satan’s Sigh offers more than first-wave black metal worship. Of course, they can dish out hellish and inebriated ragers, but they’re careful not to blow their load on every track. Instead, they brandish clear ties to metal’s machismo (listen to that guitar squeal on “Cold Dark”) and a degree of humility when it comes to speed.
–Colin Dempsey
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Faithxtractor — Loathing and the Noose | Redefining Darkness Records | Death Metal | United States (Cincinnati, Ohio)
On their fifth album, Faithxtractor laces doom metal into their old-school death metal. It leads to doom creeping into the musical front (as heard on “Cerecloth Vision Veil”) and the overall pessimistic fragrance. For the most part, it reads as straight-forward OSDM, just lacking the style’s exuberance. Creating metal that’s both depressing and energetic is finnicky, but not for Faithxtractor.
–Colin Dempsey
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Mourn the Light — The Magic is Calling | Argonauta Records | Heavy Metal | United States (Connecticut)
The cover of Black Sabbath’s “Headless Cross” on this EP speaks to its direction. The Magic is Calling is pop-adjacent heavy metal that crushes nostalgia whippets before band practice. The genre’s soul is on full display here, and that soul is pure sensation and performance. It’s a potent soul, for sure.
–Colin Dempsey
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Plaguewielder — In Dust & Ash | Independent | Sludge Metal + Gothic Rock | United States (Ohio)
In Dust & Ash is metal to show your coworkers who don’t listen to metal. It possesses the slight Southern drawl in its guitar work and the grit of a man who chews coffee beans ’cause drinking them is like injecting chemtrails. Yet, Plaguewielder retain many tenants of rock music that are familiar to those outside the metal bubble. There’s an easy-to-follow track structure, distinct choruses, and sweetly melodic riffs.
–Colin Dempsey
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