Cheeres, I been digging these too
Top of February for me (a week late, oops)
The best thing I’ve heard so far this year is definitely Astronoid’s self titled, Astronoid (“Dream Thrash”)
The rest of my top picks for the month:
Soen - Lotus (Progressive Metal)
Within Temptation - Resist (Symphonic Metal/Rock)
Saor - Forgotten Paths (Atmospheric Folk Black Metal)
Front Line Assembly - Wake Up the Coma (Electro-Industrial)
HEALTH - Vol. 4: Slaves of Fear (Industrial Pop)
Avantasia - Moonglow (Symphonic Power Metal)
Diabolical - Eclipse (Lightly Blackened Death Metal)
Rotting Christ - The Heretic (Melodic Death Metal)
Skraeckoedlan - Eorþe (Psychedelic Stoner)
Candlemass - The Door to Doom (DOOOOOOOM)
King Apathy - Wounds (Melodic Black Metal)
Other albums that I enjoyed, albeit perhaps not quite as much (my 4’s this month)
| Artist | Album | Genre |
|---|---|---|
| Morglbl | The Story of Scott Rotti | Progressive Instrumental |
| Windswept | The Onlooker | Black Metal |
| Der Rote Milan | Moritat | Black Metal |
| Unendlich | Thanatophobia | Black Metal |
| Beast in Black | From Hell with Love | Power Metal |
| Downfall of Gaia | Ethic of Radical Finitude | Atmospheric Black Metal |
| Yerusalem | The Sublime | Industrial/Post-Punk |
| Cyclone Static | From Scratch | Melodic Punk |
| InVisions | Between You & Me | Metalcore |
| Seer | Vol. 6 | Doom/Sludge |
| Violet Cold | Kosmik | Atmospheric Black Metal |
| Hexvessel | All Tree | Psychedelic Folk |
| Gorm | Gorm | Psychedelic Rock |
| Herod | Sombre Dessein | Progressive Sludge |
| Aenimus | Dreamcatcher | Progressive Death Metal |
| Dream Theater | Distance Over Time | Progressive Metal |
| Overkill | The Wings of War | Thrash |
| Rhapsody of Fire | The Eight Mountain | Symphonic/Power Metal |
| Ghost Iris | Apple of Discord | Progressive Metalcore |
| The Moth Gatherer | Esoteric Oppression | Post Metal |
| Walls of Blood | Imperium | Power Metal |
| Vanum | Ageless Fire | Black Metal |
| Darkwater | Human | Progressive Metal |
I’ll also call this out specifically as my favorite band/album name combo of the month. And it’s fucking excellent besides.
Also, dammit guys, now I got more shit to try out
So sometimes you pick something as your album of the month and then see a decent chunk of it performed live like two days later…
hey @ArmandoPenblade, thanks for your postings man! I don’t love all of the tracks, but there’s some things in there that I really dug. Keep doing these please :D Curated internet metal ftw.
Oh, I absolutely will be. My daily stream of metal and qt3 at work is the only thing keeping me sane right now :-D
I keep hearing great things about Soen, except I can’t get into their sound.
I like this quite a bit though, I’ll have to listen to more. The weakest part for me thus far are the vocals, but I like their sound and will check out more. I also don’t understand how you can like this and not Devin Townsend’s track, Genesis (except that Genesis is book-ended by long stretches of not music), but whatever.
Also surprised to see Front Line Assembly on the list… if only because I haven’t heard anything from them since 1996. Time to go see what they’ve been up to.
And Myrath competes their music video trilogy
“Genesis” does pingpong around a little too much for me, and it’s hard for my head to wrap around the parts I really groove on.
I’ll admit upfront I’m a weird Devin Townsend fan. I more or less only really love his most recent 3 (4, if you rightly count Z2 as two) albums, but I really fucking love those records. His bombastic choral excess wall of sound howling crescendo thing just works for my brain in a way that almost no one else on Earth does.
“Genesis” has some of that. And also some bits that remind me of the earlier DTP albums I just can’t ever pay attention to. And some of the SYL albums that are fine but not totally my cup of tea. And then a lot of other Weirdness that is common to DT, but never what I’m there for.
Astronoid distills down a portion of what I like in DTP, to be true, but it’s lacking a lot of the parts I like. . . and also almost all of the parts I don’t? If that makes any sense at all, sorry.
Meanwhile if I were to drill down to the heart of why I love Devin, it’s be these two
In other words, gimme dat weird shit!
Well, duh.
Oh man, the new Brymir hit last week and it is most excellent!
yup, punk rock such as (early) dropkick murphies makes me much more fighty than metal usually does.
That Brymir sound is nice. Like the singer. Not so sure about the keyboards.
This holds true in my overall experience. I’m way more afraid of getting my shit rocked by a whirling roundhouse kick to the face at a hardcore or punk rock show than I’ve ever been at any kind of metal gig.
New new Devin. I actually dug this a lot more. It still bops around stylistically and tonally, but within the subset of DevinThingsILike. Definitely looking forward to checking out the full new album.
Also, the video is adorable! Paging @CraigM
<.deep grunt> arrrrriiiise!
The Deftones are just really good
Cellar Darlings “The Spell” came out last week and I can’t help feel they’ve fallen into the 2nd album being too experimental/arty trap. Nothing much of note in it. Perhaps it will grow on me.
Yeah, it just goes on and on and on… I got enormously bored of it every time I try to finish it off.
Since @ArmandoPenblade posted the last one, this one is my turn.
Happy poppy Devin?
It’s like Epicloud, but happier. I don’t even know what to think.
It’s straight up my favorite song on the new album!
I haven’t purchased the new Devin Townsend album yet because I no longer have a CD pkayer/burner that can rip the songs, and Amazon isn’t offering the free MP3’s with a physical purchase like they normally do with most of their music. So I’m kinda stuck in limbo since I want both the physical and digital copy of the album without having to buy it twice (or buy a burner).
But I’ve spoiled myself on a couple bits and pieces of it on Youtube and it sounds great.