Upcoming Metal Releases

Upcoming Metal Releases: 1/19/20 -- 1/25/20

Upcoming Metal Releases

Here are the new (and recent) metal releases for the week of January 19th to January 25th, 2020. Release dates 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.

Send us your promos (streaming links preferred) to: [email protected]. Do not send us promo material via social media.

Sivyj YarГоре | Avantgarde Music | Black Metal | Russia

Горе (English: “grief”) is black metal done right, no questions about it. Sivyj Yar continues a trend of impressing me; with a debut album that’s over a decade old now, this band has a slick formula figured out. That doesn’t mean they don’t experiment, though, and Горе sees this outfit more dramatic and powerful than ever with extra emphasis placed on atmospheric ascents and descents across its undulating wavelengths. Extra bonus for the absolutely sick vocal performance as well.

— Andrew Rothmund

DefiledInfinite Regress | Season of Mist | Death Metal | Japan

Defiled continue their storied tradition of writing old-school death metal with absolutely zero fluff — only two of the 15 songs on Infinite Regress are longer than four minutes. Each song uses its short runtime to deliver a surprising amount of variety, smashing out ear-catching riffs at furious speeds with no shortage of atypical sucker-punches to shake up your already beleaguered psyche.

— Ted Nubel

Thy CatafalqueNaiv | Season of Mist | Experimental + Avant-Garde | Hungary

These Hungarian masters of the avant-garde are back with their fourth release Naiv. Rife with everything from fretless bass to citera and viola, this album is a musical delight as well as an emotional one. It honors both Hungarian folk and hard rock (among a myriad of other influences if you dig deeply enough), showing that Thy Catafalque is limited only by the scope of their imagination.

— Andrew Rothmund

WormGloomlord | Iron Bonehead | Doom | United States (Florida)

From Jon Rosenthal’s premiere of Gloomlord:

Gloomlord is exactly what its name entails: a journey through the warm negativity which is gloom. What sets Worm apart from other “negative” artists is the organic nature of the sadness which fuels artist “Wurm”‘s music. These lugubrious hymns feel more human, at least in some twisted, transformative regard, and twist themselves into the bizarre in a natural way. Fusing the mournful nature of the early Finnish school of funeral doom metal (check the final song title for a frame of reference) with the strange character of late 1980s Italian black metal, Gloomlord‘s lengthy songs leave no stop unpulled, taking every turn possible to create something weird, something immediate, something undeniably gloomy. The Gloomlord rises.

T.O.M.B.Thin the Veil | Dark Essence Records | Black Metal | United States (Pennsylvania)

Raw, sinister, evil shit from the depths below.

— Andrew Rothmund

Kirk WindsteinDream in Motion | Entertainment One | Heavy Metal + Sludge | United States (Louisiana)

Kirk Windstein essentially laid out the blueprint for what sludge vocals should sound like through his 30-year-and-going-strong career with Crowbar, and now he’s deservedly stepping out into the solo artist battlefield with the skulls of three decades’ worth of foes hanging at his belt. Dream in Motion includes Windstein’s trademark gritty vocals but establishes his solo sound as an entirely different beast. This is heavy metal with an apparent sludge influence, but shares influences from American rock and traditional doom, adding an emotional appeal to the riffing and incorporating a significant amount of bluesy, head-nodding groove.

— Ted Nubel

MortiisSpirit of Rebellion | Omnipresence Productions + Dead Seed Productions> | Industrial + Ambient | Norway

Originally intended as a re-recording of Ånden som Gjorde Opprør, it turns out that Spirit of Rebellion ended up being much more. Prepare your mind for luscious forays into ambient, synthy atmosphere, to say the least. Mortiis is playing a Chicago show on Saturday (with T.O.M.B. too, mentioned above, no less). Stay tuned soon for an interview with Mortiis himself.

— Andrew Rothmund

Mono & A.A. WilliamsExit in Darkness | Pelagic Records | Post-Rock + Alternative | Japan + London

Post-metal and post-rock might be the best basis for metal collaborations, if only because they’ve already shown a willingness to cast aside conventions if it gets in the way of making cool music. While not every such project yields a result worth listening to, this one is — Japanese instrumentalists Mono have collaborated with London-based solo artist A.A. Williams to create a quietly beautiful EP that pulls some of the best elements of all contributors together: Exit in Darkness is an unnaturally powerful offering that should not be skipped.

— Ted Nubel

Bonus: check out our live report from Mono’s Chicago performance last year.

Dawn of SolaceWaves | Noble Demon Records | Doom | Finland

It’s been 14 years since Tuomas Saukkonen released the first Dawn of Solace album, and now he’s back with a follow-up called The Darkness. That’s a long time to wait, but good things usually come with such a stipulation; in the meantime, he’s made a name for himself with Wolfheart, so in some ways Dawn of Solace could almost be a side project. Returning back to doomier shores, though, Waves lays out a singular vision for melodic doom metal that’s fantastically mid-tempo and memorably structured, produced with enough grit to avoid being over-glossy while still presented excellently.

— Ted Nubel

Nero di MarteImmoto | Season of Mist | Post-Metal | Italy

Ranging from avant-garde post-metal to gnarly death metal to neo-classical interludes, Immoto is a whirlwind of artistic expression defying simple categorization. Even the lyrics are in two languages. Nero di Marte’s vision lashes the chaos together: a fascinatingly consistent air of malcontent permeates the record, and where often post-metal prefers to build towards the glorious and transcendent, brooding here is often replaced by pure antagonism. It’s darkly theatrical and unpredictable, a surefire winner when it comes to experimental music.

— Ted Nubel

MidnightRebirth by Blasphemy | Metal Blade | Heavy Metal | United States (Ohio)

Ohio’s Midnight have enough grit and riff to sear an entire landscape if they wanted; instead, they funneled all that energy not into exploding Earth but writing Rebirth by Blasphemy, a speed-limit-breaking album in all the right traditional heavy metal veins. We’ve got an interview with the band coming up very shortly. I hope your face melts off!

— Andrew Rothmund

Acid MammothUnder Acid Hoof | Heavy Psych Sounds | Stoner Doom | Greece

Gargantuan stoner riffs are nothing new, but rarely are they executed so captivatingly — even at its slowest, Acid Mammoth’s latest proboscidean offering Under Acid Hoof keeps things moving forward with intriguing variety. Wailing guitar solos and a classically Ozzy-like vocal delivery offer plenty of tribute to the classics in the genre, even if the guitar tones are pushing the theoretical limits of today’s fuzz and distortion technology.

— Ted Nubel

JordablodThe Cabinet of Numinous Song | Iron Bonehead | Black Metal | Sweden

From Jon Rosenthal’s premiere of “Hin Ondes Mystär”:

The frenzied, diverse sounds found within Jordablod’s second album, titled The Cabinet of Numinous Song, are an exciting departure for black metal — undeniably a part of the genre, but stylistically separate and furious in its energetic performance. Jordablod doesn’t care about being a part of anything, as evidenced by the vast post-punk influence which pops up at numerous points in the album. Jordablod’s performance is more about expression than it is about conformity, and The Cabinet of Numinous Song‘s disparate performance proves this band to be one of black metal’s more singular acts.

ZifirDemoniac Ethics | Duplicate Records | Black Metal | Turkey

Zifir’s off-kilter black metal, like the cover of their latest release Demoniac Ethics, brings to mind holy paintings twisted into a rendition of mutual suffering rather than trials stoically endured. Just underneath the Eastern-tinged leads and blast beats, some number of rhythm guitars stir up a frenzied howl, unwilling to be buried and stabbing outward. It’s atmospheric, but tightly bottled with no room for air and not long to live. Within these glassy prisons, malaise yields to fury: there’s a vengeful spirit seeking release.

— Ted Nubel

Bohren & Der Club of GorePatchouli Blue | Ipecac Recordings | Ambient + Jazz | Germany

Just listen, soak it in, and sink down deep into the mesmerizing sound of Bohren & Der Club of Gore. Words do this album little justice, so during a moment today that you find yourself needing a little escape, put this one on. Trust me.

— Andrew Rothmund

AtenaDrowning Regret & Lungs Filled With Water | Indie Recordings | Metalcore | Norway

Atena’s Drowning Regret & Lungs Filled With Water closes out their three-album concept of five years’ development — you can listen to this one without extensive knowledge of the last two records, however. Implementing an incredibly kick-drum- and low-end-heavy metalcore sound and mixing it with a highly rhythmic vocal delivery makes songs like “Domestic Abuse” feel nearly nu-metal in their cadence, but there’s still plenty of breakdowns and electronic tinges to move the slider back into the “metalcore” zone. I didn’t know Norway allowed metalcore bands, actually.

— Ted Nubel

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