Upcoming Metal Releases: 7/23/2023-7/29/2023
Here are the new (and recent) metal releases for July 23rd through July 29th. 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.
Upcoming Releases
Mutoid Man — Mutants | Sargent House | Heavy Metal | United States (New York)
As one would expect with a Mutoid Man record, this one is a lot of fun. Each heavy, punky, desert rock-influenced track is powerful and catchy, and you’ll have the tracks ringing in your head for hours after listening. Also, the ’80’s inspired cover imagery is a lot of fun.
–Addison Herron-Wheeler
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Girlschool — WTFortyfive? | Silver Lining Music | Heavy Metal | United Kingdom
The classic femme rock and metalers, who rose to fame alongside their pals in Motorhead, are back with a record that celebrates, and even embraces, the fact that they aren’t young rock stars anymore. It definitely has a little of that memory-lane cheesiness, but like all Girlschool records, they still keep it heavy and entertaining. I wouldn’t recommend this as a starting point for the band; I would definitely start with more classic records, but for the legacy fans, this is a strong offering.
–Addison Herron-Wheeler
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The Sun’s Journey Through the Night — Worldless | Church Road Records | Black Metal | United Kingdom
After 2021’s ambient odyssey Veiled Beneath The Shroud of Grief and Mastery, The Sun’s Journey Through the Night has returned to their black metal roots with their fourth full-length album. Worldless sheds the hazy aural shroud of its predecessors in favor of a punchier, more aggressive sound that burns with supernovan intensity. Haunting, contemplative ambience explodes into searing screams, thunderous percussion, and roiling storms of guitar, plunging the band deeper into the inky black heart of the cosmos.
–Alex Chan
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Thra — Forged in Chaotic Spew | Translation Loss | Sludge Metal + Black Metal | United States (Arizona)
Thra combine the textures from sludge and death metal into a filthy concoction. Forged in Chaotic Spew is dusty, moldy, brittle, and impenetrable, but it’s also coherent, which is a huge positive.
–Colin Dempsey
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Atonement — Sadistic Invaders | Dying Victims Productions | Black + Trash Metal | Sweden
Hyperspeed blackened thrash trio of Swedish teenagers make one helluva racket—complete with snotty snarls and wailing solos—with edgelord lyricism to match: “Kill the virgin and drink their blood / Master of torment and fear / Rape them as they scream and cry / Blasphemer is here.” Meanwhile, the raw, demo-quality production affords the record some necessary street cred. This is 37 minutes of lizard brain satisfaction. Don’t overthink it.
–Steve Lampiris
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Machinations of Fate — Celestial Prophecies | Redefining Darkness Records | Melodic Death + Thrash Metal | United States
From Ted Nubel’s track premiere of “Cosmic Womb”:
Weaving together aggression and undeniable charisma, Machination of Fate‘s upcoming album Celestial Prophecies is extreme metal at its most straightforwardly captivating: a riff-driven onslaught steeped in melody. The Kentucky group’s self-titled album released in 2020 highlighted their love of classic melodic death, thrash, and black metal, but Celestial Prophecies zooms in even closer, showing listeners an ironclad vision of what melodic metal was–and could still be.
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Organ Dealer — The Weight of Being | Everlasting Spew Records | Grindcore | United States
From Tom Campagna’s track premiere of “Daily Existence” and “Misdirected Suffering”:
New Jersey grind institution Organ Dealer have amassed a 21-track beast […] The band worked together with producer Kevin Bernstein (Misery Index, Full Of Hell, Noisem) to bring about furious riffs and blast beats for days.
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Nuclear Power Trio — Wet Ass Plutonium | Metal Blade Records | Instrumental Metal | United States (Denver, CO)
Yeah, OK: an instrumental metal trio consisting of guitarist Donald Trump, bassist Vladimir Putin, and drummer Kim Jong Un is an absurdist joke. Same goes for their song titles from their excellent 2020 EP, A Clear and Present Rager: “Mutually Assured Seduction,” “Grab ’Em By the Pyongyang,” and (the prophetic) “Ukraine in the Membrane.” Once you got past the absurdity, though, what became clear was that the EP was soaring and proggy and catchy. Now, Nuclear Power Trio have returned—the actual band members are guitarist Greg Burgess (Allegaeon), bassist Nick Schendzielos (Havok, Job for a Cowboy, Cephalic Carnage), and drummer Pete Webber (Havok, Fear Factory)—with a debut album, Wet Ass Plutonium, that confirms that A Clear and Present Rager wasn’t a fluke. The compositions are more ambitious—including the addition of some Latin and funk flavors—and the playing is superb throughout: these three play for the song, not for themselves. This record is as silly as it is satisfying, right down to the surrealist and hella-’80s album cover. If only our world leaders could work as well together in real life as they do here…
–Steve Lampiris
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Porta Nigra — Weltende | Soulseller Records | Avant-garde Black Metal | Germany
Germany’s Porta Nigra are deeply focused on looking backward to look forward. After drilling down into the turbulent fin de siècle era and the failings of the Kaiser’s empire on past releases, their latest, Weltende (“World’s End”), deploys ominous samples and blackened textures to explore World War I and its myriad implications for Germany and the world more broadly. Dedicated to the despair-shortened lives of Expressionist writers like Georg Trakl and Georg Heym, Weltende marks another fiery salvo in the metal world’s ongoing retrospective of the Great War and the ways it continues to ripple through art and society in this age of mechanized violence.
–Colin Williams
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Nathanael Larochette — Old Growth | Independent | Ambient + Acoustic | Canada (Ottawa, ON)
On Old Growth, Musk Ox mastermind and Agalloch collaborator Nathanael Larochette has stripped most of the metallic and chamber-music elements from his compositions, leaving 14 pure and unvarnished acoustic tracks. Meticulously recorded in the woods by candlelight over three days, Old Growth is possessed of a timeless melancholy appreciators of the aforementioned bands or anyone else looking to downshift their listening may find soothing. For what could otherwise read as an album of interludes, Old Growth is organic and cohesive, a record well suited to warm summer nights and woodland retreats.
–Colin Williams
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Eave — Fervor | Bindrune Recordings | Atmospheric Black Metal | United States (Connecticut)
From Addison Herron-Wheeler’s track premiere of “Into Perdition”:
At slightly over six minutes, the track drifts back and forth through a lilting doom melody from rage and post-metal anguish to moments of clarity. It’s catchy and emotive at the same time, setting the state for both range and memorability with this album
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The Glorious Dead — Cemetery Paths | Bindrune Recordings | Death Metal | United States (Michigan)
The no-nonsense, old-school death metal on display here benefits from its clear mix which puts The Glorious Dead’s cutting vocals and tight guitar work at the center of the affair. There’s a purity to metal like this – it doesn’t seek to impress anyone and only reinforces death metal’s might.
–Colin Dempsey
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Vinsta — Freiweitn | Eisenwald | Progressive Death Metal | Austria
It takes about all of two seconds to hear the resemblance between Vinsta and Opeth, and while the former doesn’t totally escape the comparison, he does satisfy the need for progressive, emotive death metal of this ilk.
–Colin Dempsey
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Starer — Wind, Breeze, or Breath | Fiadh Prod | Symphonic Black Metal | United States (Kentucky)
Wind, Breeze, or Breath opens with the biggest bang of any Starer release since the first EP, buffeting listeners with a fiery black metal salvo, but fear not—Josh Hines’ symphonic black metal project has lost none of its triumphant flourishes on its latest LP. Each track is a rich sonic tapestry of impressive detail and emotional complexity, with lush organs and strings meeting soaring tremolo guitar riffs in glorious harmony as the rhythm section hammers out blasting uptempo surges and syncopated marches with equal deftness.
–Alex Chan
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Fleshvessel — Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed | I, Voidhanger Records | Experimental Death Metal | United States (Illinois)
Oh you thought the new Thantifaxath was easy music for children? Fleshvessel’s debut full length takes sinuous prog death to operatic new heights, and the result is both disorienting and compelling. The Chicago four piece dangle hunks of focused death metal into a stew of viola, harp, trumpet, and glockenspiel parts, and the key to making it work is in coherence: there is no feeling of a band switching between type A and B playing, the arrangements support one another, coexist, and carve out a vast musical world map that makes a fitting stage for the philosophical and social struggles behind the album’s concept.
–Luke Jackson
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Sore Dream & Hisham Akira Bharoocha — Sore Dream & Hisham Akira Bharoocha | Closed Casket Activities | Noise | United States (Maryland)
There is something playful lurking inside the tectonic violence depicted in the new album by Sore Dream and Hisham Akira Bharoocha. Partly this comes from a sense of listening to performers enjoying themselves and playing off of one another, with Sore Dream (Dylan and Spencer from Full of Hell) joined for the first time by live drummer Hisham Akira Bharoocha (Kill Alters). The result is a spontaneity and elasticity that few other noise records achieve, Bharoocha’s work providing the beam of a flashlight to navigate the acid noise fog created by the permanent band members.
–Luke Jackson
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Alghol — Night Eternal | Independent | Black Metal | United States (Maine)
Weirdly groovy black metal from one man who plays everything, produces everything and drinks everything. Fun.
–Cheryl Carter
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Decoherence — Order | Sentient Ruin | Experimental Black Metal | United Kingdom
Alien, mechanical black metal that uses noise and electronics to create a deep and palpable sense of dread. Bizarre and overwhelming.
–Cheryl Carter
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Marble Orchard — Building Monuments to Misery | Independent | Doom Metal | United States (San Antonio, TX)
Like its grave-bearing namesake, Marble Orchards emanates a grim kind of doom–but the intricate riff work produces more than enough wonder to overpower that sentiment. It doesn’t exactly feel occult, but there’s a definite sense of tragic mystery here.
–Ted Nubel
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