Upcoming Metal Releases 12/4/2016 - 12/10/2016

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I’ve already managed to wrap all my Christmas gifts. This is a new record. This week is a little shorter on the release end of things, which is fine with me. Stay warm.

Here are the new metal releases for the week of December 4, 2016 – December 10, 2016. Release dates are formatted according to proposed North American scheduling, if available. Expect to see the bulk of these records on shelves or distros on Friday unless otherwise noted or if labels and artists get impatient. Blurbs and designations are based on whether or not I have a lot to say about it.

See something we missed? Goofs? Let us know in the comments. Plus, as always, feel free to post your own shopping lists. Happy digging.

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ANTICIPATED RELEASES

Gnaw Their Tongues – Hymns for the Broken, Swollen and Silent | ConSouling Sounds/Tartarus Records | Experimental Black/Doom Metal/Noise | Netherlands
The word “impenetrable” adequately applies to the majority of Maurice “Mories” de Jong’s output. Even with drastic style shifts (see: every album before Abyss of Longing Throats and the album itself), Mories crafts these dense walls of horrific, nightmarish sound. This “electric Xenakis” sound is singular, and it is definitive. Why change a good thing? Clarity was the name of the game with his preceding full-length work under the Gnaw Their Tongues banner, and with new material comes new ground. The thick, disgusting, IDM-infused brack of Gnaw Their Tongues’s new album marks a new level of horror and density in Mories’s body of work, with the man single-handedly building walls which evoke the over-the-top nature of Aphex Twin’s drukqs in a blender. It took a few listens for this one to really sink in, but “impenetrable” is the only way to truly describe Gnaw Their Tongues’s latest in its entirety.

Crimson Moon – Oneironaut | Dark Adversary Productions/World Terror Committee | Black Metal | Germany

From Joseph’s premiere of “Urilian Worm”:

Dynamic and playful, it would not be a stretch to call Crimson Moon “progressive”, and not just on this tune. Folk string instruments and hand percussion accent almost every song, and put Crimson Moon in a troupe of like-minded neoprogressive black metal acts like Cult of Fire.

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OF NOTE

Sacrificio – Guerra Eterna | Iron Bonehead Productions | Black Metal | Spain
People keep asking where Proclamation went – look no further. Where Proclamation lacked – I feel they never really escaped the “goat goat goat war metal” sound – Sacrificio is complex and atmospheric. The album’s title track, for instance, might open with a desperate, funereal crawl before exploding into Hellhammer-influenced black/thrash madness. Expect the filthiest music possible here.

Venefixion – Armorican Deathrites | Iron Bonehead Productions | Death Metal | France
More hyper-traditional, “hindsight is 20/20” extreme metal from the Iron Bonehead camp. Venefixion does not believe in progression – “Death metal was perfected in the late 80s/early 90s.” For something so cookie cutter and backwards-standard, Venefixion sure does know how to riff.

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FOR THE ADVENTUROUS

Ulver – Riverhead | House of Mythology | Experimental Krautrock/Drone | Norway
Riverhead is a soundtrack, and certainly not Ulver’s first soundtrack rodeo (remember Svidd Neger?). The Norwegian wolves have always known how to craft atmospheres, so it’s no wonder the minimal, transfixing “Riverhead” soundtrack is an enthralling work, especially in the wake of Ulver’s more trying ventures into krautrock psychedelia.

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FROM THE GRAVE

Isengard – Traditional Doom Cult | Peaceville Records | Folk/Black Metal | Norway
Does Isengard even need an introduction?

Shape of Despair – Alone in the Mist | Season of Mist | Funeral Doom Metal | Finland
Shape of Despair’s early work stands up there with some of my favorite music of all time (tell me the way “…in the Mist” opens up Shades Of… isn’t absolute perfection). There aren’t many glimpses into Shape of Despair’s original works as Raven, which actually featured Thy Serpent vocalist Azhemin on vocals, so this “unreleased demo reissue” will be a treat for new and old fans alike.

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OTHER RELEASES

Gorevent – Human Garlic Baking | Abnormal Exaggeration | Brutal Death Metal | Japan
Brutals. Oodles and oodles of brutals.

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