Upcoming Metal Releases: 2/20/2022-2/26/2022
Here are the new (and recent) metal releases for the week of February 20th 2022 to February 26th, 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.
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Upcoming Releases
Blood Incantation — Timewave Zero | Century Media Records | Ambient | United States (Denver, Colorado)
Blood Incantation venture further into space, far beyond the Milky Way, and past the stars on their new release. It’s composed of two lengthy ambient tracks that ponder the same questions of humanity’s place in the universe as their prior death metal albums.
–Colin Dempsey
Make sure to check out our latest podcast episode where we talk with the band about this record.
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Allegaeon — Damnum | Metal Blade Records | Technical Melodic Death Metal | United States (Colorado)
Allegaeon’s newest album is an immaculately polished work that exemplifies the upper pinnacles of technical melodic death metal—using voluminous sweeping guitar work and atmospheric pads to craft a narrative. The use of clean vocals is probably going to be a turn-off for those interested in more malicious approaches, however.
–Ted Nubel
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HammerFall — Hammer of Dawn | Napalm Records | Heavy + Power Metal | Sweden
HammerFall’s melodic power metal focuses on emotion and poignancy over blazing speed, though don’t expect a slog either: the band delivers some truly anthemic tunes here.
–Ted Nubel
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Svrm — Червів майбутня здобич | Independent | Atmospheric Black Metal | Ukraine
Otherworldly and fully immersive, Svrm’s latest album is like a warm blanket of cozy black metal to pull over your head. Their ever-mysterious aesthetic and similarly intriguing melodies help fully separate the music from reality.
–Ted Nubel
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Last Piss Before Death — Last Piss Before Death | Raging Planet Records | Thrash Metal | Portgual
Last Piss Before Death sound just like their namesake. They expel all their waste without remorse or a filter. It’s thrash metal that pulls from the genre’s early-90s landscape with grunge-afflicted choruses and groove metal vocals.
–Colin Dempsey
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Mountaineer — Giving Up the Ghost | Lifeforce Records | Doom + Sludge + Post-Rock | United States (Oakland, CA)
Giving Up the Ghost is a soaring interpolation of post-rock and doom, notably skewing more towards the airy emotional headroom of post-rock versus post-metal’s tendency for chunkier, denser riffs — expect some big riffs, too, but framed within a reflective expanse.
–Ted Nubel
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Sin Starlett — Solid Source of Steel | Metalizer Records | Heavy Metal | Heavy Metal
I was a little unsure about what an album with entirely chrome-plated album art would sound like, but it turns out that it fucking jams. Bouncy, swaggering heavy metal with memorable lead lines and harmonized riffs, complete with vocals just weird enough to add to the charm without distracting from the instrumentals.
–Ted Nubel
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Deathbell — A Nocturnal Crossing | Svart Records | Doom Metal | France
Deathbell’s doom metal is both intensely personal and supremely mystifying at the same time—not many bands have really pushed the idea of ‘occult doom’ forward in the last decade or so, but Deathbell’s rich compositions feel like a step across the threshold of “just” being doom metal into occupying their own supernatural space.
–Ted Nubel
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Firebreather — Dwell in the Fog | RidingEasy Records | Stoner + Doom Metal | Sweden
While Firebreather’s stoner-metal-wrought riffs weave melodic odysseys, they’re delivered with roaring fury and matched in intensity by the gruff vocals and thunderous rhythm section.
–Ted Nubel
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Meslamtaea — Weemoedsklanken | Babylon Doom Cult Records | Black Metal | Netherlands
Meslamtaea takes a progressive, expansive slant to black metal, slowly breaking down any preconceived expectations to the point that when the brass textures arrive, they’re not really even unexpected—just an inevitable next step in the story the band is telling.
–Ted Nubel
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Sepulchral — From Beyond The Burial Mound | Soulseller Records | Death Metal | Spain
From Beyond The Burial Mound packages HM-2 delight with a gluttonous bass tone. It never strays away from that vision, but makes up for its lack of innovation with its consistent energy.
–Colin Dempsey
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Dark Worship — Flesh of a Saint | Tartarus Records | Industrial Metal | United States
Dark Worship twist machinery to examine the human psyche’s bleakest regions. Their production is overblown and fuzzy, but that only empowers their vision.
–Colin Dempsey
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Volcanova — Cosmic Bullshit | The Sign Records | Desert Rock | Iceland
An astronaut skeleton surfs on a hoverboard in outer space on Cosmic Bullshit‘s cover. You can tell what Volcanova sound like from that image alone, and if you’re hunting for loud rock music that is the perfect mise-en-place for an astronaut skeleton surfing on a hoverboard in outer space, then you probably don’t need more encouragement to check this EP out.
–Colin Dempsey
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Bloodstained Ground — Horrors of a Withered Dimension | Independent | Melodic Death Metal + Black Metal | Switzerland
The tension on Bloodstained Ground’s newest comes from the touch-and-go nature of their riffs. The group jump between black metal fury and tethered melodeath. They also broaden their scope with violas, violins, and a sitar.
–Colin Dempsey
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Everson Poe — The Night Country | Trepanation Recordings | Doom Metal + Post-Punk + Ambient | United States (Chicago, Illinois)
Mae Shults’ sixth full-length in under two years time examines gender and mental health through fairy tales. It’s ambitious both in scale and sound as Shults stretches her vocal cords and oscillates between genres like she’s trying on clothes. Half of the enjoyment comes from the novelty of not knowing where Shults will pivot to next.
–Colin Dempsey
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Brood of Hatred — The Golden Age | Gruesome Records | Progressive Death Metal | Tunisia
Muhammed Mêlki traverses our notions of memories and how we maintain our states of mind in his newest album. Read more in our full premiere here.
–Colin Dempsey
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Metalucifer — Heavy Metal Ninja | Iron Oxide Records | Heavy/Speed Metal | Japan
Nobody else sounds like Metalucifer, honestly, though much of that comes down to vocalist Gezolucifer (of Sabbat) wailing away in his inimitable style, since their instrumental approach has always been to worship at the feet of the heavy metal gods. This new release carries on that legacy, dedicating all four tracks to heavy metal—which, weirdly, works for them just fine.
–Ted Nubel
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Ritual Necromancy / Fossilization — Split | Everlasting Spew | Death + Doom Metal | United States + Brazil
Y’all like that nasty death metal, maybe with a little doom thrown in for extra purulence? This is probably the premiere release this week for it, so dig in.
–Ted Nubel
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Shape of Despair — Return to the Void | Season of Mist | Atmospheric Funeral Doom Metal | Finland
Shape of Despair’s atmospheric funeral doom is suffocating in its immensity, but uncannily tender all the same. Femme vocals and choked growls lay out verses like pinpricks at the heart atop layers of guitars and strings, charting a voyage into nothingness.
–Ted Nubel
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Tuskar — Matriarch | Riff Rock records | Stoner + Sludge + Doom Metal | United Kingdom
A complex, but eviscerating cavalcade of sludge and doom metal that marries jaw-breaking riffs to curious melodies.
–Ted Nubel
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Inerth — Void | Abstract Emotions | Death + Doom + Industrial + Sludge Metal | Spain
From Colin Williams’s full album premiere/interview:
Madrid’s Inerth have fashioned a death metal patchwork on their first LP, Void. The entire record is a sort of Chuck Close painting—from afar, it looks familiar, even timeless, but zoom in and you’ll see colorful splashes drawn from post-metal, old-school death metal, even 70s alt-rock and early hardcore.
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Beastiality — Sacrificial Chants | Invictus Productions | Death + Thrash + Black Metal | Sweden
From Jon Rosenthal’s full album premiere:
Sacrificial Chants glorifies early black-and-death metals and brings them to the present, but without the glut of modernity. Don’t go into this expecting anything new or original, but that’s the point here: Beastiality are a portal to the past from the present, and from that portal emerges riffs and horrifying nightmares.
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The Mountain King — WolloW | Cursed Monk Records | Doom + Drone Metal | Germany
From Ted Nubel’s full album premiere:
Upon first hearing […] WolloW, I was reminded of how it feels waking up from an incredibly realistic dream, passing through that space where reality and the imaginary are temporarily interchangeable. Combining billowing clouds of atmospheric drone textures, cosmic-scale doom and psychedelic grooves, the record is a hypnotizing foray into the spacier and weirder side of doom and drone.
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Kyoty — Isolation | Deafening Assembly | Atmospheric Sludge + Post-Metal | United States
From Ted Nubel’s track premiere of “Ventilate”:
[The] riffing aspect of Isolation is a particular highlight: they’re unusually doomy and arrive with a savage immediacy, packing in old-school aggression that sharply contrasts with the dreamy atmosphere of the album. Expressive tremolo leads and cavernous drums set forth apocalyptically-sized compositions, and within them the band’s riffs yield attention-getting results.
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