The Best Metal Albums of August: The Not-So-Calm Before the Storm
Ordinarily, around this time every month, I find a common thread that ties together all of the best new metal albums that have caught my attention. But this month, it feels more like a moment of relative calm (the slate of releases, not the music itself) before what’s going to be a bonker season of new metal. And I’m mentally preparing myself for the tidal wave of riffs. But before we get there, this month presents a set of great new releases that are a little more under the radar (well, some of them anyway) but no less amazing. Here are the month’s best new metal albums.
Defacement – Duality
My introduction to Defacement was through their self-titled album, which very literally featured a painting of a person with their face, um, violently removed. Delivers as advertised! But with its follow-up, the Dutch death metal group ramp up the dissonant roar, crafting a set of songs even more intricate and ambitious, and rife with dazzling standout moments and layered headphone candy alike. But look, there’s one song that wins the sweepstakes here, and it’s the 16-minute title track, a monolith of technical prowess and human endurance. One of the most inspiring pieces of dissonance I’ve heard all year.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Iress – Sleep Now, In Reverse
Los Angeles doomgazers Iress have been at it for a while, building up a following the old fashioned way, though a hectic routine of live shows and writing great, epic dirges that echo the gothic atmosphere of Chelsea Wolfe while infusing them with the intricate post-metal roar of Isis. Sleep Now, In Reverse is a new personal best for the group, an album of nuanced devastation and graceful destruction, balancing moments of quiet vulnerability with impenetrable walls of guitar. It’s worth noting that these aren’t merely their best songs, but likewise their prettiest, leaning into the knack for melody that’s set them apart from the get-go and bolstering it with an awe-inspiring physical force.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Julie Christmas – Ridiculous and Full of Blood
Julie Christmas is an underground metal icon, having released cult-favorite records with the likes of Made Out of Babies and Battle of Mice, and in 2016, delivering a career-best collaboration with Cult of Luna. With Ridiculous and Full of Blood, her first new album in eight years, the vocalist and songwriter returns with a set of songs that delivers on the uniquely powerful hybrid of atmospheric sludge metal and post-hardcore that she’s delivered through her various projects, with an emphasis on soaring hooks and a melodic sensibility that immediately sets her apart. Which is to say: This sounds like a Julie Christmas album, and that’s something only she can deliver, rife with emotionally gripping highs and gut-wrenching lows, simultaneously gorgeous and abrasive. An ass-kicking exorcism like this is worth the wait.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Krallice – Inorganic Rites
You can practically set your watch to Krallice’s release schedule. Almost. The New York progressive black metal group doesn’t necessarily deliver new music on a regular schedule, but pretty much every year, there’s at least one new set of sprawling black metal excursions, and Inorganic Rites arrives right on schedule. Carrying on the frostbitten eeriness of recent releases like Crystalline Extinction, the group embraces a haunting, electronics-heavy blackened prog sound that suits them spectacularly. There’s a cinematic sensibility to horror-gaze standouts such as “Flatlines Encircled Residue,” while “Here Forever” leans closer to King Crimsonian feats of rhythmic entanglement. It’s a thing of wonder to hear a band so well established and celebrated continue to embrace the weirdest aspects of their sound and aesthetic, and it’s for this reason that I continue to love the hell out of Krallice.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Scarcity – The Promise of Rain
Scarcity began as the duo of Brendon Randall-Myers and Doug Moore, pairing black metal’s menacing gallop and intense emotional purge with a more avant garde approach, which is fitting given Randall-Myers’ background, including performing with no wave icon Glenn Branca. The Promise of Rain sees Scarcity expand into a proper group, and while it doesn’t quite feel right to call this more raw—this ain’t garage rock!—there’s a muscularity and physicality to it that makes it feel as much corporeal as cerebral. All the while, the group’s embrace of microtonal tunings and a more dissonant sonic palette remains, and the ways in which Scarcity bridge their artful idiosyncrasies and surging power on The Promise of Rain is nothing less than masterful.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
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