I’m glad you mentioned this only because while I saw on Youtube that Powerwolf had new songs out, I had no idea the album was also out. Thank you! I do need to make some album purchases, so I guess this is as good a time as any to finally get this album plus the early Ensiferum stuff I’d been meaning to get to from earlier in this thread.
Also, I don’t know why I like Powerwolf. But I do. I’d love to catch them live in concert, that’s for sure. But I doubt they’d ever make their way to Australia.
I find myself returning to this song again and again.
It may just be my favorite Mastodon song (although because I’m new to Mastodon, I haven’t heard anything from anything other than their most recent two albums).
I utterly agree on these picks and didn’t recognize most of the others, so I’ll be checking them out shortly. Transience was my album of the month by a pretty wide margin, but Immortal, Obscura, Skeletonwitch, and Lucifer were all awesome in their own ways. To your excellent picks, I can but add:
Hanzel Und Gretyl’s Satanik Germanik straddles the line between industrial metal and dark rock, to be sure, but there’s some more definitively metal elements at various points.
Kontinuum’s No Need to Reason has basically abandoned their post-black metal roots in favor of shoegaze/dark rock combo, but it’s still really fucking good, so, nyah!
Doomed’s 6 Anti-Odes to Life is, unsurprisingly, bleak doom metal, and it is also excellent.
Vanhelga’s * Fredagsmys also took me by surprise for the month. Actually, looking at both of the last two, they might have been late June releases, but I didn’t listen to em till July, so whatevs :P It’s also gorgeous depressive black metal.
Oops, another late June, but Gaerea’s Unsettling Whispers was really fucking good sludgey, ground-out black metal, too.
Vermillia’s Katkyt is an awesome one-woman black metal project out of Finland that utterly rocked my world recently. Jeeze, lots of black metal this summer.
Japan’s lynch. finally got out a new visual klei extreme metal opus, XIII. It is excellently overproduced nonsense and I love it.
Neckbeard Deathcamp’s White Nationalism is for Basement Dwelling Losers is probably my favorite album ever.
Finally, local North Carolina powerhouse Outliar has put out a thrashterpiece in the form of Taste the Blood. Gloriously tradtional, pounding, unrelenting bang-your-head shit. These guys kick fucking ass live.
Poked through the backlog of new releases that I’ve been meaning to listen to over the last few days, and found a couple of progressive releases that I’ve been enjoying.
Arghhhhh I just can’t get past the vocalist on the new Michael Romeo release. Really don’t care for that guy. Kinda like the new singer for Van Canto.
Which reminds me.
Van Canto’s lead male vocalist quit and the new guy they picked is. . . very different, is how I’ll charitably put it.
That Redemption release is super fucking good, though, so I’m onboard with @ineffablebob there!
August has been pretty insane so far for new releases. There’s a few July things mixed in here, but it’s gonna be real hard to pick my top release of the month. . .
. . . okay, I lied. It’s going to be Erra, and it’s not even close. Which is weird, because Dance with the Dead and Finnr’s Cane would both be best-of-the-month-level releases most other months this year.
That’s a great list, and I haven’t even heard of Erra, so checking it out right away.
The first few weeks of August have been good, but the 31st is what I’m really anticipating, with new releases from Omnium Gatherum, Beyond the Black, and Helion Prime all arriving.
To be clear, Erra appeals to the part of me that grew up in the era of screamo and pop punk; the clean vox have a tinge of Anthony Green to them. Might not be up every metal head’s alley. But having that style merged in with some funky proggy techdeath is super addictive for me…
I agree, but looks like Evergrey’s Tom Englund is taking over on Redemption. Ray teased that something new is coming while Fates is on hiatus for Arch/Matheos album. Evergrey also teased something about dealing with visas at the US consulate, so hope we get to see them soon.
I mean I like Evergrey well enough, but what?! He can put a lot of passion in his voice, and it’s a decent fit, but he doesn’t have quite the highs of Ray.
Why you got to break it to me like this!
For that I’ll post some of my favorites from both singers
Man the section from about 2:55 onward until the vocals cut back in? Chills every time man.
