“Just as the painting focuses on a spectrum of blacks, earth tones, and distortion, so Ǥứŕū does with their fusion of black metal and doom metal. Expect the typical unholy blackened trinity of shrieks, tremolo, and blastbeats, alongside the dramatic and full-bodied baritone and thicker tone of doom.” Painting with tar.
“Sunbeam Overdrive as a name conjures the gaudy—a would-be leisure suit-wearing hotshot cruising down the coastal highway, top-down, sunglasses on, radio cranked. But the 90’s California kid in me hears this modern style of progressive metal that borrows more from aged successful radio-friendly acts like A Perfect Circle and Sevendust than anyone who plays in the more expected noodling and tricky rhythm definitions of the genre.” Sun’s out, prog’s out.
“AMG.com has had mixed feelings about the musical work of ‘Hazard,’ the enigmatic songwriter behind Les Chants du Hasard. Claiming fatigue from this project following its most recent album, Hazard returns in 2023 with something that’s just as experimental but much heavier. Hasard principally extracts the black metal and secondarily extracts the orchestrations from its progenitor’s sound, carefully examining what remains in uncomfortable detail and manipulating it into deformed shapes.” At all Hasards.
“Gorod’s assignment with The Orb is to figure out how to follow up 2018’s magnificent Æthra. This album’s predecessor, which followed on a string of excellent releases, is among the best albums that I have ever underrated. But Æthra brought change and continuing on this trajectory, The Orb is the band’s first fully independent release. And that raises the hackneyed, obvious question: is all this change good, actually?” Won’t somebody think of the riffs!?
“My introduction to France’s Sortilège was their announcement for the 2020 70000 Tons of Metal. I’ll give any band announced a fair shake as I look for acts to follow around The Boat. I was pleasantly surprised by a trve 80s outfit channeling the likes of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest in their ability to knock out charmingly old-school heavy metal. 1983’s self-titled EP and 1984’s Métamorphose remain in my regular rotation and will undoubtedly please the old farts looking for throwback releases.” Olde dogs, new tricks?
“Over their wanderings through the desert, an ethereal soundscape of psychedelic rock ebbs and flows like the undulating dunes of sand. In a style that sways between chilled-out stoner and prog rock, Pelegrin paint a hazy desert vibe with a broad brush.” Desert planes.
“Why do we find ourselves in the midst of a nu renaissance where bands like The Offering throw down like it’s ’03 and genres like slam can shamelessly quote groove under the guise of gore? Well, it seems that some also grew up to incorporate their first loves into their art. Elyose, an act of that breed, urges you to embrace your inner jumpdafuckup with a French language tour-de-force of alt-rock meets gothy vibes with nu and industrial accouterments on Déviante.” What’s olde is nu.
“The middle of the Venn diagram of melodic and atmospheric is where I find my favorite kind of black metal. Sizzling with the energy and catchiness of epic tremolo refrains and blastbeating tempos, and shimmering with veils of synth. If it’s a good example at least. Hence, I rushed to pick up Inherits the Void’s sophomore record The Impending Fall of the Stars as soon as I saw the magic adjectives melodic and atmospheric applied to their black metal style.” Void estate planning.
“I completely forgot about French tech-death upstarts Catalyst. That seems to be happening to me more often lately, and it’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, I get the privilege of experiencing sudden bursts of excitement whenever announcements for a band I haven’t heard from in a while catch me by surprise. On the other hand, it feels like a betrayal by my own mind when a band I was interested in slips out of memory. Nonetheless, Catalyst’s debut The Great Purpose of the Lords was a cool slab of epic tech death, as recent revisits these past couple of weeks confirmed. Let’s see what the follow-up, A Different Painting for a New World, has in store.” Forget me not? Knot?
“Have you ever heard the story of Ahasver, a forsaken quasi-biblical figure who ignored Jesus somewhere along the line? Now, he gets to wander around undying until the big guy comes back. That’s just a bit petty if you ask me, but if you ask Ahasver, the story functions as a much more brutal parable—a man must walk the earth in the face of all the terrors he has witnessed and ever that will unfold. But worry not, this isn’t a 90 minute rock opera nor a 60 bpm post metal languishing. This pedigree of furious Frenchman (including Julien Deyres of Gorod and Zubrowska fame) prefers to pontificate with chunky grooves, textured vocal aggression, and… a Carl Sagan reading?” Grooves and Stars.
