Greetings, Decibel readers!
It’s at this point in the year that I feel an extra sense of obligation to deliver this column to you, as the albums put out in the last few months of the year tend to get overlooked in a lot of end-of-the-year coverage. And that’s unfortunate. Legendary bands like The Crown and super-rad newcomers like Aberrator definitely deserve your time, as I describe below.
Check it out, don’t sleep on these records!
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Aberrator – Beckoning Tribulation
This is the kind of stuff you hope for when you go to Dark Descent Records. A joint venture between members on New Zealand and Canada, Aberrator seek to create death metal art that’s devastating, ferocious and sorrowful in equal measure. In a field that’s crowded by bands mining from the same old classics, it’s refreshing to hear a band plumb the depths of aural chaos to craft a wicked blend of Immolation, Angelcorpse, and a mix of dissonant death and black metal flavors. And the band is just getting started, this being their debut album.
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Cemetery Skyline – Nordic Gothic
This is the kind of stuff you hope to hear when it’s October. Cemetery Skyline sees a group of Finnish veterans from bands like Insomnium, Amorphis, and Sentenced come together to create a modern gothic/death rock album steeped in the traditions from the 80s to the present day. In this sense, the band recalls several vintage sounds while being thoroughly modern and of their own time. And the choruses are really catchy. That part is pretty important.
Stream: Apple Music
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The Crown – Crown of Thorns
I know what you’re thinking: “Hey, Crown of Thorns used to be The Crown‘s name! Is this album a return their early style?” Alas, that is not the case here. However, that doesn’t really matter, because the album still totally rules. This is the crushing, ripping death metal that The Crown has reliably made for decades, written with the idea to be “something really fast, melodic, heavy, epic, punky” in the band’s words.
Stream: Apple Music
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Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja
Has it already been four years since these guys put out Mestarin kynsi? Damn. Well, anyway the band is in especially trippy form here on their sixth album, exploring mental landscapes both fascinating and terrifying. This goes beyond “psychedelic black metal” and throws together as many noise genres as it does metallic, guitar-driven ones.
Stream: Apple Music
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Vomit Forth – Terrified Of God
There’s a lot of cool things about Vomit Forth: they’re really heavy, have a cool mix of standard death metal vocals and Crowbar-esque cleans, show a capacity for both blasting and crushing grooves, and are just great at channeling utter hopelessness. And they’re from Connecticut! I only realized that just now. Hell yea! The easiest way I could sum them up is to take Despised Icon and dial back the ‘core elements just a tad and up the slam just a bit.
Stream: Apple Music