New Metal Releases: 2/25/2024-3/9/2024
Here are all the new releases for February 25th through March 9th. 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 2/25-3/2
Bruce Dickinson — The Mandrake Project | BMG | Heavy Metal + Rock | United Kingdom (England)
Bruce Dickinson’s non-Iron Maiden career has always felt like an alternate universe to me — yeah, it’s not fair to pigeonhole him into just one role with just one band, but I still sometimes do a double-take when I hear Samson or his solo project, where his voice takes on an even bigger slice of the sonic pie. The Mandrake Project is a fun, heavy record where Dickinson’s vocals shine — no big surprise there — although the riffing can be cookie-cutter at times. It’s hard to care about that too much with the lush sci-fi and fantasy theme that runs through the album and so much else going on, though — and I especially liked the lil’ song sequel to “If Eternity Should Fail.”
–Ted Nubel
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Angmodnes — Rot of the Soul | Tragedy Productions | Funeral Doom Metal | Netherlands (Utrecht)
From Ted Nubel’s full album premiere:
Anguished power chords and room-filling drums never overpower the diverse vocal approaches or clean instrumentation (including a tagelharpa), and often find themselves further amplified by the latter. Perhaps best embodied by the closing title track’s half-sobbed vocal break, Rot of the Soul is truly sad in a way that’s easier to connect to than a lot of higher-concept approaches to the same thing.
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Etiole Filante — Mare Tranquillitatis | Northern Silence Productions | Atmospheric Black Metal | France
Etiole Filante fly close to the sun with regards to how polished atmospheric black metal can be before it loses its grit. Fortunately, they peak right before diminishing returns kick in. Their production is sparkling without stripping away any weight, resulting in a clean, digestible serving of black metal.
–Colin Dempsey
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Uzlaga — Depthdweller | Intertidal Recordings | Black Metal | United Kingdom (Bristol)
Uzlaga shows how easy it is for black metal to be both immediate and atmospheric. “Light of the Moon,” for example, compresses what would take other groups 10 minutes into three while maintaining the marathon-running appeal of atmospheric black metal. While patience is a virtue, Uzlaga shows that it isn’t a necessity; a sentiment you can chalk up to his readily apparent punk influences.
–Colin Dempsey
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Suldusk — Antithesis | Napalm Records | Dark Folk + Blackgaze | Australia (Melbourne)
Five years ago, Suldusk was the solo project of Emily Highfield, but she’s assembled a full line-up for her second album Antithesis, and the record greatly benefits from it. On it, Suldusk roughly stitch dark folk and blackgaze together, giving rise to jarring yet captivating leaps between genres. The transitions aren’t always smooth, but the additional members provide some much-needed force that accentuates the bluntness. It’s charming in its own imperfect way.
–Colin Dempsey
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Celestial Sword — Nocturnal Divinity | Death Prayer Records | Black Metal | United States
Byronic flourishes abound on this raw black metal masquerade, revealing its grim mysteries under a perverse romantic moon, with phantasmal dungeon-synth passages swathed in grainy cobwebbed ambience and the melancholic yearning of tunes such as “Last Dance of the Night God” jettisoning their unrequited demonic impulses into maelstroms of feral fuzz. Disorientating, psychedelic and eerily satisfying, Nocturnal Divinity plays out like a spooky romp through Mariano Caiano’s confounding Nightmare Castle, with guest vocalist Zofie Siege’s banshee yowl proving a worthy proxy for Barbara Steele’s life-shattering screams.
–Spencer Grady
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Volcandra — The Way of Ancients | Prosthetic Records | Melodic Black Metal + Melodic Death Metal | United States (Louisville, Kentucky)
Proggy, blackened, heavy, ripping, all are adjectives that describe the newest release from Vulcandra. Introspective and atmospheric black metal is great, but sometimes you just want to listen to a ripper, and this is it. This might not be the deepest or most self-reflective release of the year, but it will be one of the most fun.
–Addison Herron-Wheeler
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Suicidal Angels — Profane Prayer | Nuclear Blast | Thrash Metal | Greece (Athens)
The theme of my blurbs this week seems to be thrashy, ripping goodness, and the latest from Suicidal Angels does not disappoint. There are flavors of metalcore, but those show more in the melodic riffs than in the presence of heavy breakdowns. This is one I’ll be spinning over and over.
–Addison Herron-Wheeler
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Clouds Taste Satanic — 79 A.E. | Majestic Mountain Records | Stoner + Doom Metal | United States (New York)
Packing two LP-side-length long-form jams, this new release sees the group indulging in their trademark brand of heaviness: loosely structured rock that runs from floaty prog rock all the way to full-on stoner metal.
–Ted Nubel
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Haunt — Dreamers | Independent | Traditional Heavy Metal | United States (Fresno, CA)
The one-man heavy metal machinery has slowed down a bit since releasing a bunch of albums during the Pandemic, but Haunt’s last few albums have notably taken more risks and dreamed bigger to fill the gaps. Dreamers isn’t lacking in fist-pumping riffs or anthemic choruses, but its bold leads and hair-metal-ish production seem to hone in on a style Haunt has been chasing for the past few years with increasing success.
–Ted Nubel
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New Releases 3/3-3/9
Apogean — Cyberstrictive | The Artisan Era | Technical Death Metal | Canada (Toronto, Ontario)
Apogean’s vast well of influences for their debut album includes Fareinheit 451, 1984, deathcore, black metal, and prog, but glances at them through technical death metal’s windowsill rather than shoehorning each of them in. As a result, Cyberstrictive is dynamic and varied without biting off more than it can chew.
–Colin Dempsey
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Isenordal — Requiem for Eirênê | Prophecy Productions | Doom Metal + Black Metal + Neofolk | United States (Seattle, Washington)
Every track on Isenordal’s latest LP Requiem for Eirênê plays like it could sustain an album by itself. The group eloquently crosses through funeral doom, black metal, and neofolk, with each subgenre possessing a flair that serves the narrative. Despite the long runtimes, the tracks aren’t necessarily epic but panoramic, encompassing a variety of moods that don’t include metal’s typical victorious spirit. Resultingly, Requiem for Eirênê is dramatic, covetous, and forlorn.
–Colin Dempsey
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Doodseskader — Year Two | Independent | Sludge Metal + Noise Rock | Belgium (Ghent)
The second album from Doodseskader, Tim De Gieter from Amenra’s side project, is filled with sludge metal’s gurgling bass lines and sour vocals, but those are its only ties to the subgenre. Year Two toys with electronica and enticing vocal melodies to draw you in. It’s a non-aggressive approach that primes the distortion to strike much harder when it finally arrives.
–Colin Dempsey
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Ecclesia — Ecclesia Militants | Aural Music | Heavy Metal | France
There is a specific vocal quality that activates neurons and lubes up our axons, gearing them for the oncoming serotonin flood. It’s a combination of gruffness and raw power typically found in doom metal acts like King Goat, Khemmis, and, of course, Ecclesia. The group’s vocalist, Arnhwald R., commands their latest album Ecclesia Militants through 10 witch-hunting tales, filled with hooks that clamor for your attention and red-blooded riffs.
–Colin Dempsey
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Exhorder — Defectum Omnium | Nuclear Blast | Thrash Metal | United States (New Orleans, Louisiana)
Exhorder’s well-played fourth album, and second following their (real) reunion, confirms that the streamlined songwriting of 2019’s Mourn the Southern Skies wasn’t a one-off. Most of the explosive insanity from their two unfuckwithable ’90s records has been buffed away, leaving behind a sleek yet gnarly version of themselves. They can still pummel when they want—thanks at least partially to former Cannibal Corpse guitarist Pat O’Brien and his, ahem, arsenal of riffs—but these days, they seem more comfortable in a lower gear. Your enjoyment of this, then, hinges on how you interpret that.
–Steve Lampiris
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Midnight — Hellish Expectations | Metal Blade Records | Black Metal + Thrash Metal | United States (Cleveland, Ohio)
For Midnight’s sixth album, Althenar (a.k.a. Jamie Walters) has decided to redline this motherfucker. The result is the project’s shortest and most immediate record to date—a rightfully stubborn refusal to downshift at any point. (Indeed, the thesis is offered in the opening song: “Expect no quarter / Expect no mercy / Expect total hell.”) Combine that with excellent production, the beefiest guitar tone Althenar’s ever used, and his most rabid vocals ever, and you’ve got a helluva fun record.
–Steve Lampiris
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Skeletal Remains — Fragments of the Ageless | Century Media Records | Death Metal | United States (Los Angeles, California)
Thrashy death metal masters Skeletal Remains are back with an album that rips just as hard as their previous work, but also carries a lot more substance when it comes to the art and the lyrics. This sci-fi epic is a ton of fun to listen to, and the songs are catchy as hell. Don’t miss this one!
–Addison Herron-Wheeler
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Slimelord — Chytridomycosis Relinquished | 20 Buck Spin | Death Metal + Doom Metal | United Kingdom (Leeds, England)
With virulent toxic-mulch riffage, crustal-splitting harmonics, and field recordings of a rabidly honking goose, idiosyncratic UK death-doom quintet Slimelord ferment the sickening score to a rural idyll in revolt – the sound of Gaia delousing itself of human infestation – while ominous goo-gushers such as “Splayed Mudscape” and “The Hissing Moor” relocate the eerie vibes of Colin Eggleston’s cult eco-revenge flick, Long Weekend, to the Yorkshire Dales.
–Spencer Grady
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Early Moods — A Sinner’s Past | RidingEasy Records | Doom + Heavy Metal | United States (Los Angeles)
The fascinating thing about Early Moods is that whether you consider them to be pure doom metal (in the classical, Sabbathian sense of the term) or half doom, half heavy metal, they’re still doomier than damn near anything else out there. I’ve been kicking myself for years for missing every chance I had to see these dudes roll through Chicago, and this album is steel-toed reinforcement of that exact same guilt. Wielding face-melting doom riffs chiseled from the bones of fossilized 1970s occult rockers and a much-harder-to-place aptitude for gleeful, devilish metal, each track on A Sinner’s Past goes somewhere pretty different, even if it drags you to hell all the while. To be honest, as a massive fan of vintage doom and proto-metal, this is probably the best doom metal I’ve heard this year. Make sure you hit this — and see them live, dammit!
–Ted Nubel
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Mutilated by Zombies — Scenes from the Afterlife | Redefining Darkness Records | Death Metal | United States (Iowa)
From Ted Nubel’s track premiere of “Headcount Rising”:
Switching tempos, feel, and generally recklessly avoiding complacency at all costs, Scenes from the Afterlife dabbles in rhythmic trickery delightfully frequently, and they do so while also delivering up-front, violent metal with no shortage of groove. It’s a concoction custom-built for death metal fans looking for a serious case of whiplash and too many riffs to reckon with.
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