Upcoming Metal Releases: 1/9/2022-1/15/2022
Here are the new (and recent) metal releases for the week of January 9th, 2022 to January 15th, 2022. 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.
Send us your promos (streaming links preferred) to: [email protected]. Do not send us promo material via social media.
Things We Missed
Dead Sun Rising — As Above, So Below | Independent | Post-Metal + Doom | United States (Chicago, IL)
From Ted Nubel’s track premiere of “Under a Diamond Sky”:
Dead Sun Rising’s nuanced, musing approach to “doomgaze” (as they’ve aptly tagged it on Bandcamp) sonically takes notes from doom and sludge metal in a lot of places, keeping the drums thick, tucking its vocals just a bit underneath the guitars, and leaning on a meaty bass tone. However, they put these pieces together with their own interpretations of post-rock, shoegaze, and more in a way that immediately stands out as being something markedly different. Sometimes mournful, sometimes aspirational, and never obvious, As Above, So Below is an intriguing mystery to unravel.
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Upcoming Releases
Wiegedood — There’s Always Blood at the End of the Road | Century Media Records | Black Metal | Belgium
Wiegedood step away from their De doden hebben het goed trilogy with their newest full-length. I’m not well-versed enough in Wiegedood to say a whole lot here, but the combination of throat singing and screams is super effective on top of their melodic, almost surreal, black metal.
–Ted Nubel
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Mizmor — Wit’s End | Gilead Media | Black + Drone + Doom Metal | United States (Portland, OR)
From Cheryl Carter’s interview feature today:
With Wit’s End, Mizmor presents us with two new tracks, one of which is the Mizmor we have come to know and one which takes the music we associate with the band to an entirely different place. “Wit’s End” follows a more traditional route in terms of the heavy doom elements that we expect from Mizmor and incorporates an emotional spoken word passage as well as heighted screams and low, guttural vocal lines. “Pareidolia,” however, turns Mizmor on its head and runs backwards, gathering curious melodies and ambient waves in its wake.
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Tony Martin — Thorns | Battlegod Productions | Heavy Metal | United Kingdom
I don’t think it’s an especially hot take, but the Tony Martin era of Black Sabbath, save for choice bits of Forbidden, was fantastic. Martin’s voice has the perfect balance of power and control, always seeming to toy with madness: an excellent vocalist for the band, even if his albums somewhat suffer from the inevitable aftermath of Black Sabbath having invented the genre in the first place: they feel like, y’know, heavy metal, not something groundbreaking.
Anyway, this is Martin’s third full-length release as a solo artist since 1992, and he’s still in top-notch control of his voice—almost frighteningly so. Thorns is gloomy, epic metal that definitely relies more heavily on vocals versus putting down riffs, with a few sort of weird nods towards modern metal, here and there, that narrowly escape being bad by virtue of Martin’s vocals being that damn good. This is easily a must-check-out if you, like me, treasure Headless Cross.
–Ted Nubel
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Ereb Altor — Vargtimman | Hammerheart Records | Viking + Black Metal | Sweden
Ereb Altor has pretty much nailed their brand of epic, pagan black metal, and although that’s sure a lot of adjectives, it just barely begins to cover it—they seamlessly integrate black metal with rousing accompaniment and powerful vocals.
–Ted Nubel
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Descent — Order of Chaos | Redefining Darkness Records + Caligari Records + Brilliant Emperor | Death + Black + Hardcore | Australia
“New year, new me” says the fool trying to shave off their excessive love handles, wasting their energy on an incline treadmill. A better way to welcome in the new year is by embracing tradition. They could welcome the brutality, the pitch-perfect tones emboldened by Kurt Ballou’s mastering, and the wrecking ball that is Descent’s new album.
–Colin Dempsey
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Eliminator — Ancient Light | Dissonance Productions | Heavy Metal | United Kingdom
There’s a strong NWOBHM presence here, where soaring harmonies and driving rhythms pump up the energy. The challenge with this approach is always going to be making said harmonies/melodies actually interesting, and they’ve got a good handle on that here.
–Ted Nubel
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Horndal — Be Evil | Prosthetic Records | Sludge + Hardcore | Sweden
I actually don’t have a promo for this one, so I can’t say anything specific—but more of Horndal’s forceful and moody sludge-meets-hardcore is never a bad thing.
–Ted Nubel
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In Loving Memory — The Withering | Funere | Melodic Death + Doom Metal | Spain
Though they sound like opposites, morose riffs and enchanting melodies both play a big role on The Withering, whose five-dimensional-tree-brain album art kind of hides away the fact that the music inside is exceptionally emotional. Still, it does feel a little more cerebral than a lot of melodic death/doom bands that are more targeting a ‘weeping on tombstones in foggy cemeteries” mood—I guess this is kind of a cosmic sadness.
–Ted Nubel
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Inferno Sunn — Injustice Plagues American Lives | Independent | Thrash + Heavy Metal | United States (Indianapolis, IN)
Rocking a groove-heavy style of thrash largely absent today, Inferno Sunn’s debut is excellent for two things: indulging in your daily “headbang to sweet chuggy riffs” quota, and remembering when you couldn’t predict what a thrash album would sound like by its album art.
–Ted Nubel
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Oshiego — Jaljalut | Horror Pain Gore Death Productions | Death Metal | Singapore
Extremely slick death metal, with instantly appealing riffs and some technical intensity thrown in for good measure. I’ve always been a sucker for throwing together unusual melodic modes with brutal riffs (thanks, Nile) and this is another great example of that.
–Ted Nubel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWdNJAf7fOY&ab_channel=DeathMetalPromotion
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Party Cannon — Volumes of Vomit | Gore House Productions | Slam + Brutal Death Metal | United Kingdom
Believe it or not, beyond being the hilariously out-of-place logo on fest fliers, Party Cannon does indeed release music—though, rarely, as this is only their second full-length. And, honestly, a 51-minute full-length album seems like an oddly detailed and in-depth effort, especially given that said full-length’s album art and sleeve was apparently fashioned using “over 200” photos of their fans throwing up. Good thing it’s not a fit for the vinyl format, huh?
But hey, while the band might be best experienced live, this makes good driving-in-slow-traffic music, and with some fun guest vocal features, campy samples, and… interesting… song titles, it’s a full, disgusting package.
–Ted Nubel
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Lament in Winter’s Night + Obsidian Grave — Yearning for Darker Days | Atrocity Altar | Black Metal | United States + Australia
Some tape-ready black metal for your wintry consumption, fashioned in bedrooms thousands of leagues apart—both sides focus on melody-heavy, triumphant black metal, but Lament in Winter’s Night aims for a synthier, slightly less acerbic production compared to the harsh tones that Obsidian Grave employs.
–Ted Nubel
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Anna von Hausswolff — Live at Montreux Jazz Festival | Southern Lord Recordings | Neoclassical | Sweden
The most serene mise-en-scene I’ve experienced was listening to Anna von Hausswolff’s Dead Magic while touring the Bran Castle torture chambers in Romania. Her new live album, a recording of her performance at the 2018 Montreux Jazz Festival, bears that same operatic gothicism.
–Colin Dempsey
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Maule — Maule | Gates of Hell Records | Heavy Metal | Canada
This is blazing hot, traditional-as-a-Catholic-wife, heavy metal. Maule supply blasting twin guitars, vocal melodies that take flight with a falcon’s wings, and a solo that shreds like it’s trying to light a fire.
–Colin Dempsey
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Crawl Below — Its Ministers On Earth | Lawnmowerjetpack Records | Doom Metal + Black Metal + Death Metal | United States (Connecticut)
Crawl Below’s newest album collects material written way back in 2014, sewing the vile seeds of a corrupted doom metal foundation. The one one-man project integrates punk tonality alongside nihilism into an end product that’s more dour than it is crushing.
–Colin Dempsey
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Goreskincoffin — Release My Suffering | Funeral Goat Recordings | Blackened Death Metal | United States (California)
Goreskincoffin prefer slicing and stab wounds rather than bludgeoning. By that, their vocals are bloodcurdling and their riffs are jagged. However, their sharpness pairs well with their unctuous breakdowns.
–Colin Dempsey
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Aethereus — Leiden | The Artisan Era | Progressive Death Metal + Technical Death Metal | United States (Washington)
Aethereus sound like they’re challenging music’s structure through their technicality. It’s not a million-notes-per-second-tech-death, but more a search to locate the thin line between progressive and technical.
–Colin Dempsey
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