Upcoming metal releases: July 2010

A few months ago, I wondered if the rich resources of metal-archives.com could yield an automated release calendar, so that I could stop investing long hours into manually compiling one.

Reader Glenn M set about this task and came up with Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Discordance. It’s an amazing set of tools for analyzing metal-archives.com’s database; I encourage playing around with it. It’s also sort of like killing an ant with a nuclear missile. It has so many parameters and display options that it’s impossible to generate what most people would want in a release calendar: a simple list.

Part of the problem is how often releases are coming out. If the current rate of releases is like last year’s – and most likely it’s higher – one metal full-length comes out every two hours. This is reflected in the Discordance. In North America, records usually come out on Tuesdays; in Europe, they often come out on Fridays. But smaller labels worldwide, who often aren’t slave to Amazon/record store schedules, release records all week. So in the Discordance, you can see what records come out today or tomorrow, but you can’t see what the month of July holds – the reason why you are reading this post.

The release calendar I compile is of course less comprehensive than The Discordance. (However, metal-archives.com is also subject to human error and its idiosyncratic rules about what counts as metal.) And my calendar has its own interface problems. But I employ a number of rules (not interesting enough to relate here) to stuff releases into the nearest Tuesday for the sake of readability. So if you want the complete picture in eye-bleeding detail, consult the Discordance. If you want a rough picture that’s fairly readable, consult my calendar. As always, use the Agenda view in the upper right, and click on entries to expand and collapse them.

Blood Revolt – “Year Zero”
[audio: BLOODREVOLT_YEARZERO.mp3]

All that to-do – for an unexciting month for new releases. A few do pique my interest: Wolvhammer (pre-order here), Blood Revolt (featuring Alan Averill of Primordial, stream song above), Grand Magus (I’m not sure if it will get a proper US release, or if it will only be available at import prices), Winterfylleth (why haven’t I heard anything about this???), and the Endless Blockade/Unearthly Trance split (I’m not sure when it came out exactly, but it’s order-able here.) Those who like metal shiny and proggy will dig the new Decrepit Birth and Proghma-C.

What excites me more is a bunch of cool reissues – Primordial’s Spirit the Earth Aflame (two discs, order here), Cro-Mags’ Alpha Omega (order here), and Grief’s Come to Grief (pre-order here). Out on vinyl are Autopsy demos on Nuclear War Now! (pictured above, details here), and, at last, YOB’s The Great Cessation (out on Southern Lord). Coolest of all is a three-disc set of two Helstar albums and a DVD (order here).

There’s so much good music that I missed the first time around, or that came before me.  It’s as new to me as any music today.  “Keeping up” with it is as worthwhile as keeping up with new music.