• SHRT REVWS • This condensed version of short(er) reviews focuses on releases arriving in the first three weeks of October (4th-18th) covering death metal, traditional heavy metal, speed/thrash metal, black/death metal, avant-garde noir jazz, and sludge permutations. Among this weeks new releases I rejected over twenty submissions because of AI generated album artwork. The default score for any album using AI generated album artwork is ZERO, it holds absolutely no value in terms of money and/or culture. // In an attempt to be more conversational these are more easygoing and casual than longform reviews, so relax and think for yourself. — If you find something you dig go tell the band on social media and support them with a purchase! If you’d like your music reviewed, read the FAQ and send promos to: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

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Rochester, New York-based death metal quintet UNDEATH have been a kind of a switcheroo since breaking out with a notable tech-death demo or two in 2019 before signing to Prosthetic and delivering a very different product beyond that point, fleshing out the band with two additional members and de-stressing their rhythm guitar compositions down to easily approached death metal grooves. Their evolution beyond that point bypasses most of the 90’s death paradigm and continues to hunt for points of inspiration and distinction, anything heavy that sounds like a good time in the realm of death metal. The big deal with this record, and their previous album for that matter, is the notable boost to production values which better defines their rhythm section and stretches out beyond the usual chug-and-twisted out riffing they’d been working up prior.

‘More Insane‘ continues to refine those choices, now emphasizing the bass guitar’s clanking and rumbling position in the fray while giving a ton of space to the drums and rhythm guitars in concert. Tech-death scrapers, melodeath-esque bops, thrashing prog-death uptick, mosh metal chunking, and a surprising amount of kinda shredding guitar work all contribute to a growing oeuvre for the band. Though I’m not sure this ever translates to and engaging signature, or, memorable songcraft it does a fine enough job of working up ear-catching grooves and plenty of energy in each case; If you squint your ears hard enough you can still hear some small hints of Demilichian bounding constancy in the guitar work on Side B but to me this album felt like that preliminary step many early 90’s death metal bands made towards groove metal mid-decade, the stuff that eventually lead the mainstream ear toward Lamb of God and The Black Dahlia Murder to some degree. Otherwise there is an almost (later) Psycroptic level of melodic death-thrash n’ shred feeling applied here and this’d felt new and done well enough. I’d gone in expecting a certain level of catchiness and exuberance but the end result is pretty straight forward, the energy is there and it is a fine rip through but none of it fully stuck beyond a few of the opening numbers.

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Denver, Colorado-based progressive rock/death metal band BLOOD INCANTATION set their original ambitions as an entrenched attempt at early 90’s ‘old school’ death metal authenticity to start, taking complete leaps away from the Agalloch-adjacent scenery they’d been participating in prior and by 2015 they’d impressed everyone interested in the collision of Morbid Angel, Immolation, Suffocation and Gorguts type outlets, often viewed as in the same lane as obscure groups such as Timeghoul. This is where their hype rested until a second album (‘Hidden History of the Human Race‘, 2019) was a critical success in each sense of the word, having gotten outsized interest from mainstream media sources looking for a reason to acknowledge the absolute boon of ‘old school’ derived death metal interest (re: sales) ramping up to its hottest point pre-2020. As such they’ve since become an example of the crest of the wave alongside Tomb Mold and Horrendous, who are cronies and collaborators in some cases.

This makes good sense as Blood Incantation‘s sound on that second LP amounted to dark/space ambient fusion with longform medleys that’d featured swathes of riffs pulled from the four aforementioned leaders in death metal during the short-lived rise to commercial viability in the early 90’s. The palette was clearly exciting for listeners who’d wanted a condensed vision of all that was great about ‘old school’ death metal riffcraft without the individualized songcraft or repetitious values, and helped along by quasi progressive buffet-style strings of riff and post-metallic spectacle. I was still on board for what they were doing at that point but I’d felt some resistance to the idea that ‘Hidden History of the Human Race‘ was original simply because of its mélange of elements, permutations of these forms had existed for many years prior and the signature of the band wasn’t profound enough to identify.

Five years, a Berlin-School inspired electronic ambient EP, and a frankly uninteresting standalone single (‘Luminescent Bridge‘, 2023) later Blood Incantation arrive to essentially cook themselves in all of the hype built over time, having built ‘Absolute Elsewhere‘ into a crossover between progressive rock muse and unchanging taste in death metal permutations in equal measure. As a fan of all of these things it might be natural to find the face value reads from a general public completely ignorant of both 90’s death metal and the incredible breadth of 70’s progressive music. I’d suggest this is a distraction of marketing and these folks have produced an effective prog-death metal record which is far more cohesive and inspired than the last. So, if the fan mentions of Pink Floyd and Yes nearby Morbid Angel are giving you mental diarrhea consider this album still largely marked by a death metal hand nonetheless. Side A‘s longform stretch as “The Stargate” alternates between roughly four major movements, making sure you’ve gotten the 70’s synthesizer rock memo within a couple of minutes as the song otherwise delivers upon surprisingly concise execution otherwise. The pacing of this first half is much improved, far more detailed in its composition than anything on ‘Hidden History of the Human Race‘.

“The Message”, or, the whole of Side B is more vexing in its introduction as a nondescript weave through some semi-melodic ideas and (eventually) some more compellingly jagged harmonic-guided lunges. This is both testament to what Blood Incantation have always been good at as well as how little bravery they’d previously exercised in crushing apart the actual impact and machination of classic death metal forms into not-so heavy rock forms. They’re still great at drawing crooked bylines between the speed-metallic abstraction of Trey Azagthoth and the hyper eruptive bellow-and-strike of Bob Vigna though this begins to fracture in hideous merger as we step into the second part of “The Message” where they’ve finally taken some deeper steps into that Opeth-ian (or, Akercocke even) territory you knew -had- to follow the combination of classicist death and prog rock. It kind of begins to work as “The Message [Tablet II]” chips away at its eerie step out of line yet the bad bedroom metal wallop into part three is, for my own taste, one of the worst transitions they’ve managed to date and what follows is another Rosetta stone of Florida death metal idea dump (ah via Death) to start.

The merger is partially complete and to be frank these folks are, like Opeth, probably better built for the emotionally rich nuance of folken 70’s progressive rock than death metal overall but the end result is not repugnant… only a bit incomplete in its transformation. After a long wait this might not be the transcendental reshaping of their gig that some may expect but I did find it curious as an exploration of the possibilities available to progressive death metal. I would argue that bands like Usurpress and Chapel of Disease (among others) have found interesting throughways in this direction over the years which feel far more intentionally fleshed out and less exposition focused, but that doesn’t stop this from being an entertaining listen. I’ve some gripes with the production values, the terribly crushed drum sound, and the weirdly compressed mix but those observations can be reserved when/if I end up getting a physical copy. Not sure that I’d support any claims that this is a new paradigm for death metal just yet but the potential they’ve unlocked here is interesting enough.

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San Jose, California-based death metal quartet RIPPED TO SHREDS have carried on with their Swedish HM-2 bossin’ death-grinding style in quick cyclic succession, now presenting a fourth full-length album which still pays admirable dues to the late 80’s/early 90’s Swedish death scene while infusing their own interest in deathgrind and the early traditions of melodic death metal. The main appeal of Andrew Lee‘s compositions for my own taste is the natural flow created from element to element, riff to riff while still managing to craft a song with some ‘old school’ authenticity. The whole Terrorizer meets Dismember thing still kinda holds up here and I’m surprised that it does, the previous album was just fine but kinda all over the place and here it feels like ‘Sanshi‘ carves out a largely sensical path through its kicking roar while keeping it varietal throughout, a tough thing to do at ripping speed. Tempering the impact of the snare, letting the double-bass kicks roll and ramping up the attack on songs like “Feast of the Deceased” make for an exciting sensation built upon a well-defined sense of space. The addition of guitarist/co-vocalist Michael Chavez (Hemotoxin) seems to have rallied-up this release into more inspired form compared to the last and as such we not only get more leads strewn about (“Horrendous Corpse Resurrection”) these songs but those shared roles allow for further development of melodic death threads as well as provides dual vocal performances which add to the 80’s deathgrind effect when called for. Overall a solid death metal record with plenty of entertaining variety and a general boost beyond the last.

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I haven’t been all that excited about a new record from Trollhättan, Sweden-based melodic death-thrash metal troupe THE CROWN since the ‘Crowned Unholy‘ re-recordings back in 2004, eh if that says anything about how old I am and where they’d fallen off for my taste. Though I gave their 2018 record ‘Cobra Speed Venom‘ a fair shake the direction they’d taken in the 2010’s never clicked with me though I’d spent my late teens having enjoyed most all of their first four records under this name and especially loved the two pure death metal albums that’d preceded those under the name Crown of Thorns. In fact I’d enjoyed the 2002 reissues of ‘The Burning‘ (1995) and ‘Eternal Death‘ (1997) so much that I’d fallen off of the melodeath-thrash deal (Dew-Scented, The Haunted, etc.) entirely having gone down the rabbit hole from there and appreciated bands like Merciless much more. Anyhow, from my point of view naming this album ‘Crown of Thorns‘ feels like it is aimed at catching the attention of longtime fans, signaling a harder-assed record with faster songs and… well, that is what we get here.

The return of original co-guitarist Martin Sunesson (Cyhra) on leads as well as a restaffed rhythm section finds The Crown revitalized, blazing through three ripping and melodious pieces at a determined clip to start. In the process of delivering upon the face value implication that some old fire is resuscitated here ‘Crown of Thorns’ is actually a solid record which manages to avoid sounding dryly dated while presenting riff-focused songs with hooks that escape the terrible Swedish melodic metal tropes of today. Loud and hard-pressed production values allow for volatility and nuance here which serves their battle-forth well, at least ’til we reach the kinda pop metal dirge of “Gone to Hell”, a momentum killer but not a deal-breaker in any sense. Otherwise I’d felt like this record had more than a few melodic death metal inspired pieces (“God-King”, “Martyrian”, etc.) that’d managed to hit harder than expected and this time around the leads make a big difference in rounding those songs out. All-in-all there are as many missable or just ok songs here as there are points of notable interest and that comes by nature of a number of shorter, less focused songs that begin to clutter the back half of the album. I’d found nothing truly offensive or out of place here beyond the overflow of bonus tracks that adds an extra ten minutes to the experience, I’d skip those and just let the album proper rip on its own.

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Southeastern Spanish epic heavy/speed metal band WAR DOGS return energized and still fully obsessed with 80’s traditional heavy metal on this second full-length album. ‘Only the Stars are Left’ takes a patient hand to tuneful songcraft, a steady mid-paced and clearly sung ride through ~5-6 minute pieces each of which sidesteps spastic personae for the sake of delivering the song without flair or panache. When I’d given brief review of their first album, likening certain moments to Omen at their least haunted, I’d felt that record was kinda soft in terms of that strange AOR component to throwback NWOTHM today and thankfully this record sticks to a melodic directive but cranks the speed somewhat more often on this follow-up. Fans of everything from Visigoth to Grand Magus should appreciate the straightforward and modestly tuneful approach of this album.

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I dunno, from the moment I set eyes upon this latest OBNOXIOUS YOUTH album’s artwork it kept nagging me that it might done by an AI artist, and if it wasn’t [it probably wasn’t] then I don’t get the vagina insignia crammed into the forehead next to the MS Paint inverted cross scribbled below it. A crossing of Swedish and Finnish maligned and mutated folks making hardcore punk incensed heavy/speed metal since the mid-2000’s this band’ve been off their shit for about seven years in terms of full-lengths but we’d gotten a pretty stellar EP from them via the dread-year MMXX and that’d more-or-less set the expectations for this one. This time around we get a full ~40 minute blazon from Obnoxious Youth and they’ve kept it raw, tuneful, erratic and upheld that ripping speed applied to UK82 influenced metal that’d always helped them stand out and sure, most of that being attributed to rowdy-ass guitar work.

The album moves, cuts quick as it swings through speeders “Tornado of Blades”, “Ethereal Termination” and the noose-stretched neck of “Torrents of Black Blood” and vocalist Coffin must be busting forehead veins singing this stuff at full tooth-spitting furor, making stuff like Kvelertak sound like absolute wimpus in the process. While I love the butchered-at hyper metal finesse keeping me on my toes here some of my favorite songs here (“Ultra Death”, “Bitchkrieg”, “Imminent Evil”) especially on the back half stuck with me for their disheveled hardcore punk vaunt as that energy only seems to ramp up as those songs hit. Great album, pure sleaze up front but pretty damn class metalpunk overall.

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Around since the mid-90’s (originally as a black metal duo named Aphasia) Victoria, Australia-based black/death metal band DESTRUKTOR would officially form as a duo centering around the vision of founding member Glenn Destruktor as a contemporary of the black/thrash and blackened death out of the country at the time which was noted as an elite and raw force that’d originally featured Nocturnal Graves maestro J.R. aka Hellspawn ’til the mid-2000’s or so. All three of their albums, this one included, focus on fastidiously composed riffcraft which is smartly executed at a murderous pace, ‘Indomitable‘ is probably the best they’ve ever sounded and the least they’ve ever obstructed the guitar tones to the point that we get an up close, full HD stab to the face every time these folks cut a riff all of which are militaristic in their aggression but thoughtful in their overall effect. While most of the album is direct to throat, un-fucked with in terms of its classic death metal exaggerated accost there are a few songs where the grooves applied offer a bout of unexpected elasticity with “Beyond the Bleakness” being a fine example. Brilliant blackened death metal record, short and brutal as shit but all-killer throughout.

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London, England-based avant-garde/post-blackened doom-jazz quartet FIVE THE HIEROPHANT have once again sent me into a days-long trance via their hypnotic instrumental musing upon the dark and infinite, a procession of snaking and doomed riffs conveyed via a directive saxophone (via Jon Roffey) and the vision of Polish artist Kali (Witchmaster, ex-Profanum). The big change here comes with the addition of new bassist Gavin Thomas (Bast) and one less percussionist as far as I can tell. This doesn’t leave the band’s sound sparse in any sense though ‘Apeiron‘ does feel focused, singularly set in its vision as these psychedelic trips occur in slow-slinking steps. To replace a bassist on an album which requires such a solid connection with the bass guitar was certainly a big ask but Thomas does a fantastic job on ‘Apeiron‘, especially when truly called for on songs like “Uroboros”. If you are a fan of the beat-magicked body movement of Oranssi Pazuzu and the black energetic adventure of Aluk Todolo you will more than likely feel this band’s work intensely. I’d personally love to see them live but for now they’re touring Europe for most of this month (October).

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Denver, Colorado-based sludge/doom metal trio ORYX have won me over on sight once more via their choice of cover art, a unique painting from English painter John Harris where the suspended city and the pollution rich air are backdrop to a desert-like landscape. Rasping and lumbering into view steadily ‘Primordial Sky‘ and its title track/opener provides haze and harassment as it appears, a melting mirage out of reach for its first several minutes. I’d appreciated this approach, a slow re-entry into their orbit not only for its ease of introduction but the shimmering and humming values that it’d brought once within firing range. It is a beautiful piece that’d easily won me over via its psychedelic, introspective presence and extremely strong production values, all of which felt a bit more personally attuned than ‘Lamenting a Dead World‘ (2021) though each record makes a brilliant argument for their craft. If you’re in it for the dirt, the plow and howl of extreme sludge you’re still getting that side of the band on this four song, ~40 minute record but moreso within the ‘shorter’ seven minute songs which feature as the innards here. I particularly enjoyed the almost Ufomammut type stoner-psych doom roll of “Myopic” as it’d developed, highlighting the unique interplay between the various freaked-out guitar tones and the foundation of the rhythm section. Things go slightly Godflesh grooved at times but the closer does well to refocus the full listen and thankfully matches the enormous energy of the opener in kind. Fantastic atmospheric sludge metal record, truly expansive and patient in its showcase yet made massive by an abundance of riff and wreckage throughout. If you were big on the latest Fórn and Inter Arma records and enjoy that sort of death metal adjacent vocal roar this’ll be an essential record for the month.

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