Upcoming Metal Releases: 3/13/2022-3/19/2022

Here are the new (and recent) metal releases for the week of March 13th 2022 to March 19th, 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

Slaegt — Goddess | Century Media Records | Black + Heavy Metal | Denmark

Slaegt’s compelling mix of black and heavy metal made The Wheel an amazing discovery—on Goddess, they lean a bit harder into goth rock territory (‘pulling a Tribulation,’ if you will), but it’s still very interesting, weird stuff packed with great riffs.

–Ted Nubel

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Dark Funeral — We Are the Apocalypse | Century Media Records | Black Metal | Sweden

Dark Funeral returns with a new record, packing sacrilegious black metal with tight production and equally slick music videos—in fact, so polished you might initially be worried about overproduction, but to my ears this is a pretty classic approach. Dark Funeral isn’t reinventing black metal here, but they’re not making it any worse either.

–Ted Nubel

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Aeviterne — The Ailing Facade | Prosthetic Records | Experimental Death Metal | New York, USA

From Colin Williams’ full album premiere:

Aeviterne’s first full-length album, The Ailing Facade, is a soundtrack for crumbling foundations. The record is a timely meditation on humankinds’ inability to escape Sisyphean cycles of violence and irrationality. It embodies, both in its content and its musical approach, the very breakdown of social order we’re witnessing in real time in 2022. This is death metal by way of Camus.

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Déhà — Decadanse | Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions | Black Metal | Belgium

Mixing punishing electronic elements into black metal, Déhà’s latest offering is dynamically intense: the record packs two twenty-minute tracks full of experimental and aggressive sounds.

–Ted Nubel

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Black Fucking Cancer — Procreate Inverse | Sentient Ruin | Black Metal | United States (San Jose, CA)

Vomit-streaked, frenzied black metal intent on wreaking havoc…messily. With inflamed, perhaps infected vocals at the forefront, the big, nasty drums and serrated riffs accomplish their goal handily.

–Ted Nubel

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Starer — The What It Is to Be | Fólkvangr Records | Atmospheric Black Metal | United States

Expressive atmospheric black metal that adds in post-metal more creatively than many of its peers: Starer is unafraid to retreat from traditional black metal territory to nail down a motif, taking its time and using pacing and dynamics to conjure massive vistas.

–Ted Nubel

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Stone Axe — Stay of Execution | Ripple Music | Hard Rock | United States

From Chris Rowella’s full album premiere:

While the back half of Stay Of Execution contains previously released (though hard to find) material, the first four tracks are seeing daylight for the first time. Unsurprisingly, they run the gamut of hard rock/proto-metal influences from Nazareth and Seventies Judas Priest to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blind Faith. Have you ‘heard it all before’? Sure, but that misses the point. Stone Axe exists not to innovate, but to celebrate. And when it’s good, brother, it is good.

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Achelous — The Icewind Chronicles | No Remorse Records | Epic Heavy Metal | Greece

Drawing from fantasy literature for inspiration, The Icewind Chronicles plays out like a sprawling adventure, its frost-bitten epic heavy metal valiantly braving the elements.

–Ted Nubel

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Glemsel — Forfader | Vendetta Records | Black Metal | Denmark

Like its album art, Forfader seems almost sepia-tinted, burying some deceptively fragile inner workings under a harsh exterior. And harsh it is, with bitter screams and icy guitar work sucking the life out of everything.

–Ted Nubel

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Uncle Woe — Pennyfold Haberdashery & Abattoir Deluxe | Independent | Stoner + Doom Metal | Canada

Misanthropy and misery gush out of this album like water from a burbling spring; only here the spring dispenses an indigestible cocktail of whiskey, sewer filth, and blood. Gloriously fuzzy riffs wrap your brain in numbing cotton as the druggy jams unfold.

–Ted Nubel

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Knight & Gallow — For Honor and Bloodshed | No Remorse Records | Heavy Metal | United States (Sacramento, CA)

This is an impressively catchy work from a young, talented band—their demo showed promise but also seemed incomplete, and their debut full-length just two years later aptly demonstrates their jubilant attack’s appeal.

–Ted Nubel

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Mount Saturn — O, Great Moon | Independent | Stoner + Doom Metal | United States

Mystical, occult doom with some serious riff firepower to back up the trippy atmosphere and hazy vocals.

–Ted Nubel

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Zwaard — Bloed en wijn | Argento Records | Black Metal | Netherlands

From Jon Rosenthal’s full album premiere:

Sounding as if it was recorded direct-to-tape and left in a shoebox behind some old socks in your older sibling’s closet for decades, there is a certain sense of discovery to Bloed en Wijn. As such, the black metal held therein sounds distinctly old, but not necessarily dated. Zwaard’s desiccated corpse doesn’t necessarily shamble across an empty, dark plane, but there is a certain “dead” quality to their music–something that isn’t vivacious in full, but rather something which exists beyond the pale and reaches out to the listener through sheer sound.

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Axids — Kids With an Axe | Squirrel Records | Hardcore Punk | Germany

Highly vitriolic punk with snarling vocals (courtesy of Hyems vocalist Andreas Jäger), skull-splitting riffs, and far more puns on their band name than you were probably expecting. Definitely no genre innovations here, but the vocals and garage-y production make for a swift, nasty treat.

–Ted Nubel

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