Upcoming Metal Releases 7/9/2017-7/15/2017

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I’m back, y’all.

Here are the new metal releases for the week of June 25, 2017 – July 1, 2017. 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.

As a little bit of a challenge, include your own opinion about anything you want to add. Make me want to listen to it!

Please note: this is a review column and is not speculative. Any announced albums without preview material will not be covered. Additionally, any surprise releases which are uploaded or released after this column is published will be excluded.

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ANTICIPATED RELEASES

Jute Gyte – Oviri | Jeshimoth Entertainment | Avant-Garde Black Metal |
United States

From my premiere of the full album:

“Now with his own tables turned, new album Oviri takes the Jute Gyte school of black metal and transcribes it through a complicated array of proto-industrial soundscapes. Through the menagerie of drill sounds, treated kalimba, and typewriter sounds buried beneath muscular beats and distorted “beehive” microtonality, Kalmbach’s oeuvre remains challenging, difficult, and memorable. Or, at least, memorable in the way you might slightly remember a night terror. Listening to Jute Gyte’s homages to the oft-ignored scholarly music of the last 10century – the sound manipulations of Stockhausen, Oliveros, and Éloy – is difficult, and Oviri‘s own seventy-five minute journey will be pockmarked with your own pit stops and dedications to silence. However, Kalmbach’s vision remains as true as ever, and in so this difficulty becomes rewarding. This challenge to metal’s norm – a postmodern take on black metal – should be celebrated and used as fuel to move the genre forward. Romantic-era worship be damned.”

Akatharsia – No Generation Without Corruption | Psychic Violence Records | Black Metal/Punk | United States
Classic USBM – think a punky Judas Iscariot but with infinitely more crunch and Nick Blinko-influenced sleaze. Akatharsia’s blistering harshness is everything we need to counteract the atmosphere worship generally associated with the Pacific Northwest. However, nothing will prepare you for the contemplative, droning “Adoration of the Void”.

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OF NOTE

Boris – Dear | Sargent House | Various | Japan
Boris’s streak of musical perfection following Präparat continues. They might have spent a little too long doing the whole “random” thing (see: the Various tag), but the whole “deep, beautiful, shoegazing drone/doom” is definitely Boris’s niche.

Expulsion – Nightmare Future | Relapse Records | Grindcore | United States
From Joseph’s premiere “Comatose”:

“This year, [Matt] Olivo returns with a new band, Expulsion comprised of former and current exhumed members Matt Harvey and Danny Walker (each hold too many projects under their belts to list) and Menno Verbaten, the completely insane bassist from Lightning Swords of Death who can play Van Halen’s “Eruption” on a four-string. On their debut EP, Nightmare Future, the band sound a whole lot like Motorhead writing a grindcore LP. The bass is thick, the riffs come first, and each brief piece of the record seems catchy as well as mosh-inducing.”

Livid – Beneath This Shroud, The Earth Erodes | Prosthetic Records | Stoner/Doom Metal | United States
From JJ Anselmi’s premiere of “The Fire”:

“Livid sounds like Sunn O))) if the drone troupe hired Swamp Thing as its drummer. As with the rest of Beneath this Shroud, the Earth Erodes, “The Fire” moves with the cruel indifference of a natural disaster, invoking a harsh state of hypnosis with its repetitive churn.”

Totengott – Doppelgänger | Xtreem Music | Doom/Black/Thrash Metal | Spain
From Joseph’s premiere of the album in full:

“Enter Spain’s Totengott who, let’s be very honest, sound a hell of a lot like Celtic Frost-slash-Triptykon. I’m going to go ahead and say this is a good thing. Many bands sound sort-of like Celtic Frost (Goatwhore) or have covered Celtic Frost (Opeth). Very few bands actually make one sit up and say “Oh man, they even got Tom G. Warrior’s guitar tone right”. Totengott nail the guitar tone, the vocals, even the pacing of their debut album (It’s three songs long – as monolithic and Kubrickian as Triptykon’s “The Prolonging”).

Is this kind of worship necessary? Yes. For as influential as this titanic death-doom sound is, there’s actually not that much of it. Totengott do it so damn well that their precise ability to embody that feeling is in and of itself an artistic triumph. Orson Welles would be proud.

Normally this kind of abrupt and direct comparison could be seen as derogatory, not the kind of thing someone should do when trying to praise a band. Totengott, though, sort-of invite it. They even titled their record Doppelgänger.”

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FOR THE ADVENTUROUS

Integrity – Howling, For The Nightmare Shall Consume | Relapse Records | Metalcore | United States
At this point you should know what to expect from Integrity – the quintessence of muscular, angry, metallic hardcore, fronted with one of the genre’s most intimidating (and controversial) vocalists. In this new age, Integrity concentrates on more atmospheric acrobatics, almost verging on Cave In psychedelia, but, at the same time, resembling the classic era of Trapped Under Ice’s “tough guy” hardcore. Listening to this album in a sleeved shirt should be deemed illegal.

Omahara – Omahara | Art As Catharsis | Post-Rock | Australia
“Stalker”, Andrei Tarkovsky’s seminal sci-fi film from 1979, begins with a wordless sequence in which a man wakes up, quietly gets out of bed, puts on some pants, and leaves his family’s bed room. It takes four minutes. A more expedient director could probably knock this scene out in about 30 seconds, but Tarkovsky’s choice is a deliberate one. By spending so much time and care on such a simple set of actions, Tarkovsky is acclimating you to the pace of the film, readjusting your sense of time to match his. The scene also has a side effect of acting as a warning to anyone not on “Stalker”’s wavelength. Don’t bother if you aren’t patient.

Omahara issue a similar warning at the start of their new record. The Tasmanian trio take their sweet time letting you know that they’re even present on the recording by letting a long slow drone do the talking for the much of the album’s 25 minute opener. Once they kick in with full force near the song’s end, it’s off to the races. A race between three tortoises on katrom, mind you, but a thrilling one nonetheless. Omahara aren’t big on variation, the four instrumental tracks on this record loop back over themselves countless times before moving on, each repetition one inch closer to revealing their music’s haunting core. The path to the center of the zone is a long one, but I couldn’t ask for a better guide.

-Ian Cory

Other Houses – Fortune Selector | Iron Pier | Powerpop | United States
Other Houses sure has changed a lot since the first cassette of his I picked up…four years ago? Five? It’s been a long time, however long. Now more closely resembling unplugged renditions of Nebraska-era Springsteen, Fortune Selector‘s catchy powerpop still nods toward Morgan Enos’s slowcore roots, but in a much more self-referential sort of way. This is the kind of summery pickup I needed,

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FROM THE GRAVE

Planning for Burial – Matawan – Collected Works 2010-2014 | Flenser Records | Slowcore/Post-Rock/Doom Metal | United States
The trail blazed between Thom Wasluck’s three albums as Planning for Burial are bountiful and broad. Collecting a small library’s worth of tapes, 7″s, CDrs, and a floppy disk (yes, that was a strange happening), the Matawan compilation connects the dots between the immensely differing Leaving and Desideratum and paints Wasluck in a much more creative, varied light.

Sanguine Eagle – Individuation | Psychic Violence Records | Atmospheric Black Metal | United States
All the fun of BlazeBirth Hall but with none of the sketch (I’m going to catch so much flak for that). A professional pressing of the long-since-sold-out House of First Light pressing, Sanguine Eagle’s long-form, majestic black metal is both stately and obscure. If you aren’t sold, maybe the Yellow Eyes, Ustalost, Imperial Trumpet, Vorde, and Hand of Glory ties will change your mind. I’m totally ordering this today.

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OTHER RELEASES

God Root – Salt and Rot | Horror Pain Gore Death | Sludge/Doom/Post-Metal | United States
It’s heavy, it’s atmospheric, and it’s imposing, but it isn’t very memorable. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with it, I just guess the “post-metal” ship has sailed.

Vesicant – Shadows of Cleansing Iron | Iron Bonehead Productions | Black/Death Metal | New Zealand
A band who wants to be Teitanblood so bad that they even copied their logo. This is shameless.

Wren – Auburn Rule | Holy Roar Records | Stoner/Sludge Metal
Everything you love about post-metal, but this time horrifically dark and terrifying.

Execration – Return to the Void | Metal Blade Records | Death Metal | Norway
I love Nocturnus, but it’s cool to hear what is essentially Nocturnus with good production. Execration has always been a cool band, but this is definitely the best material from them yet. Dissonant, but not overwhelmingly so, and atmospheric, but still mildly direct in execution. Can deal.

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