Upcoming Metal Releases: 3/20/2022-3/26/2022
Here are the new (and recent) metal releases for the week of March 20th 2022 to March 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
Abbath — Dread Reaver | Season of Mist | Black + Heavy Metal | Norway
Abbath’s third full-length sits at an unusual intersection of black and heavy metal: while musically there’s a lot that’s not black metal here, the hissing production and Abbath’s signature snarl kind of makes the whole thing feel like pure, bombastic black metal—so as much as there’s some great heavy metal elements to the record, they don’t compromise its seething, dark core.
–Ted Nubel
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Falls of Rauros — Key to a Vanishing Future | Gilead Media | Black + Folk Metal | United States
From Brandon Nurick’s track premiere of “Poverty Hymn”:
Where the previous single “Clarity” indulged in the band’s more progressive tendencies, “Poverty Hymn” gloriously boasts a more straightforward, melody-centric style. The guitar interplay between guitarists Jordan Guerette and Aaron Lovely approaches transcendence, and the chemistry they’ve cultivated throughout the band’s time together fully comes together here. It’s not just those two, however; like all previous Falls of Rauros material, “Poverty Hymn” is powered by many moving parts—blast beats, atmosphere-building keys, and frenzied caterwauling—all working towards the song’s climax, a euphoric swell of harmony that sees the band climbing higher than they’ve ever dared to tread before.
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Nite — Voices from the Kronian Moon | Season of Mist | Blackened Heavy Metal | United States (San Francisco, CA)
Coursing with glittering melodies and blackened atmosphere, Nite’s second full-length takes the mysterious blackened heavy metal of their debut Darkness Silence Mirror Flame and further invigorates it: a little less somber, a little more reckless, but still just as dark and wonderful as before.
–Ted Nubel
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Eucharist — I Am the Void | Regain Records | Melodic Death + Black Metal | Sweden
Whoops, we had this one in an earlier UMR, but it’s actually out this week. Please enjoy this mostly recycled blurb.
Eucharist’s first full length in 24 years isn’t quite like the melodic death metal that defined their early career. It has, I suppose, been over two decades!
This new album is much more black metal-oriented, though it does bring in some of the nice melodic leads that made their classic albums appealing. With such a large hiatus, it would honestly be strange to repeat their past exactly, anyway.
–Ted Nubel
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MWWB — The Harvest | New Heavy Sounds | Doom + Stoner Metal | United Kingdom
Formerly known as “Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard,” the now-acronymic druidic doom band takes their airy, riffy doom into space on this new album. Expect some tight jams and floating vocals, plus plenty of bizarre synthesizer oddyseys.
–Ted Nubel
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Cirkeln — A Song to Sorrow | True Cult Records | Melodic Black Metal + Dungeon Synth | Sweden
From Jonathan Carbon’s track premiere of “Thine Winter Realm Enthroned”:
A Song To Sorrow is a bold declaration of escapism which brings the listener to a world of vivid color and grand emotion. For the first time, the scale of Cirkeln’s music can be fully appreciated with a production suited to its ambitions. Cirkeln populates their world of melodic black metal with lengthy synth introductions which cascade over eventual blast beats and guitar chaos.
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Bomber — Nocturnal Creatures | Napalm Records | Heavy Metal + Hard Rock | Sweden
Bomber calls back to the leather-jacket-clad era where hard rock and heavy metal intersected to rousing effect, combining punchy choruses and sinewy riffs for an anthemic debut album.
–Ted Nubel
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Astral Tomb — Soulgazer | Blood Harvest Records | Death Metal | United States (Denver, CO)
Is the “1990s math textbook” album art a surprising contrast with the jarring, brain-eroding death metal that lies within… or is it exactly what the lobotomist ordered? Astral Tomb’s debut full-length consists of lengthy, annihilating death metal opuses that rattle and crush all the way through.
–Ted Nubel
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Luzifer — Iron Shackles | High Roller Records | Heavy Metal | Germany
Though it’s obviously inspired by traditional metal’s past (the band notes Quartz and Heavy Load as inspirations, for example), Luzifer’s debut album is in a league of its own, mostly because the songwriting is just stellar. Heavy-hitting choruses and steely riffs, nifty organ licks—vintage instrumentation and sentiments are put to excellent use here.
–Ted Nubel
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Sahara — III: Hell on Earth | Regain Records | Heavy Metal + Stoner Rock | Argentina
Sahara’s rough and sleazy heavy metal always delivers on the energy front, and their latest album even includes some markedly more progressive-minded stuff to go hand-in-hand with the riff beatdowns. If you like your doom metal as close to hard rock as you can get (and recorded in a dingy basement), this is the path to follow.
–Ted Nubel
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Mortify — Fragments at the Edge of Sorrow | Chaos Records | Death Metal | Chile
Gasping, groaning death metal that unceremoniously tears its way through into the world of the living, dragging discordant riffs and gravely melodies in its wake.
–Ted Nubel
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Frogoroth + Homeskin — Frogskin | Independent | Black Metal | Unknown + United States
Homeskin, an experimental, unstructured, and chaotic black metal project of Garry Brents (Cara Neir, Gonemage) joins forces with Frogoroth, a black metal band using animal samples for vocals, to create an utterly unhinged split. Hope you like your black metal weird!
–Ted Nubel
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Witchpit — The Weight of Death | Heavy Psych Sounds | Stoner + Sludge Metal | United States
From Colin Dempsey’s track premiere of “The Blackened Fee”:
Witchpit are either a sludge band masquerading as a classic rock act or a 70s stoner band who smoked themselves into a coma and woke in New Orleans sometime in the 1990s.
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