“Two years ago, Athenar released perhaps his best album in Let There Be Witchery. And it’s one that I continually return to again and again. But this year’s Hellish Expectations strips everything back, delivering ten new songs in the shortest runtime of Midnight’s career.” LESS IS MOOOOOOAAAARRRRRR!
“On a day when a NASCAR-themed album hits the mean streets, why shouldn’t we cover a kinda-sorta Mortal Kombat-themed throwback metal opus by members of Slough Feg, Spirit Adrift, and Angel Witch. Hands of Goro is a project playing a style that the members refer to as the “Third Wave of British Heavy Metal.” That’s a fancy-pantsy name for what is essentially the classic NWoBHM sound being unearthed anew in 2024, and that basic NWoBHM template composes the core of what the band delivers on Hands of Goro.” Test your might!
![King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/KingGizzardtheLizardWizard-PetroDragonicApocalypse01.jpg)
“It wouldn’t be Things You Might Have Missed season without some controversy. Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, prolific, chameleon-like alchemists King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have garnered a powerful cult following since forming in 2010. Incredibly during that time, they released a scarcely believable 25 LPs. My own experience with the band is limited in comparison to their exhausting, hyperactive output. Sure, I’ve heard songs here and there and enjoyed the odd isolated jam, however, perhaps due to the overwhelming body of work, and skepticism over the quantity vs quality ratio, I have never given a full LP of theirs a good shake. That changed with their 24th LP.” Lizard Kings can do…anything.
![Theophonos – Nightmare Visions [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/a4256426977_0-768x768.jpeg)
“Nightmare Visions is a blackened grindcore debut from Michigan’s Theophonos, the brainchild of Jimmy Hamzey (Serpent Column). If that genre label sounds unappetizing, don’t let that deter you. Theophonos took every hard rock and metal song released since 1967, crammed them all into a woodchipper, and assembled the mangled output into a blackened 30-minute hydra. Miraculously, it works.” NightmareER!!
“On Heaven into Dust, Knife have done what many bands refuse to do: grow. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still heaps of Motörhead and Venom worship; plenty of gang chants and blackened vocals; oodles of speed metal chugging, heavy metal galloping, and thrash riffing; almost everything endearing about their debut still applies here and the changes are relatively minor, but they’re impactful.” Stab or prod?
“For all the hype, Nervosa has never blown me away. With each release, I hope for that breakout record that’ll drop me to my knees, but instead, they’ve established a catalog of solid releases with a handful of stellar pieces. For a minute, I was intrigued by the release of 2021’s Perpetual Chaos because the band picked up a new vocalist. In doing so, I hoped that it would be that great album, but it never panned out. This time around, founding guitarist Prika Amaral takes to the stage and lends her growls and barks to Jailbreak.” Jailbait.
“Nearly ten years to the day Intöxicated blearily burst forth with their debut, the Germans stumble back up to the bar with a new singer in tow for follow-up Sadistic Nightmares. Intöxicated have tried buying Pedialyte in bulk; they’ve tried the greasiest pizza your town has to offer; they’ve tried cocooning themselves on the floor of a windowless bathroom. But the only way to cure this decade-long hangover is with another ultra-tight package of metal, murder, and mayhem.” Hammered and hammering.
“Montreal moshers Lüger have certainly taken their time crafting their follow-up to their 2018 debut, Hellraisers of the Waste. Such a long gestation between first and second albums often brings dark portents—with the infrequent exceptionally brilliant album. What such a gap most rarely brings is mediocrity. Revelations of the Sacred Skull squarely takes aim at Crispy’s heart with its blend of punk, trad, and doom, wrapped together in a delightfully sordid smut package.” Dead shot or major misfire?
“In a crowded market of goat suppliers in the metal scene, Scotland’s Hellripper stands above the mob. Their infectious blend of speed/thrash/black metal offered me a lifeline back into a thrash scene that was boring me in the 2010s. 2020’s The Affair of the Poisons was a typically rambunctious affair and very comfortably hit my year-end list. But I have most recently been experiencing the company of Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags which reaches even further north towards Orkney, an archipelago north of the Scottish mainland.” Put a goat in your moat.
“You don’t know shit until you read this. It’s not opinion; it’s science.”
