“If you’ve never heard of Celeste, the name and the aesthetic can be misleading. Gorgeous and contemplative black and white photographs of artistic poses and strange characters greet the eyes with a moniker that points to the heavens. If you were to guess the style, you might say post-black or prog, maybe an indie acoustic troubadour, or a bedroom jazz project. However, you’d be hard-pressed to find another act as suffocating and pissed off as Celeste. A visceral fusion of black metal, hardcore, and the filthiest outskirts of extreme subgenres, these Frenchmen are the epitome of scathing consistency, releasing album after album of hypnotic tunes.” Assassin’s breed.
Dear Hollow
Trenches – Reckoner Review
“Trenches is a band formed by Jimmy Ryan, former vocalist of Christian metalcore heavyweights Haste the Day. Releasing one album through Solid State Records, Jesus’ vacation home of all things -core, 2008 debut The Tide Will Swallow Us Whole instead opted for a Neurosis’ Given to the Rising-esque sludgy ‘n slow take rather than the second coming of When Everything Falls.” Jesus wept.
Wolfbastard – Hammer the Bastards Review
“Are you a bastard? Have you ever wandered outside your house and, I don’t know, be grabbing a Monster Pipeline Punch and a corn dog or some shit and all the sudden it dawns on you: “I’m a bastard”? We get abused regularly over here at AMG HQ, with phrases such as “overrating bastards,” “everyone shut up,” and “no, Doom_et_Al, Deafheaven still sucks” being hurled this way and that like swarms of angry bees armed with mini-javelins: doesn’t kill or seriously injure, just hurts a little more each day. As such, Wolfbastard is the soundtrack of our workplace, because us overrating bastards are getting hammered regularly – both in the good and in the bad.” Hammer time.
Nihility – Beyond Human Concepts Review
“Nihility may sound familiar for a death metal band, but that’s because there’s a lot of them. This particular Nihility is a blackened death metal quartet from Portugal.” New year, old nihilism.
Whitechapel – Kin [Things You Might Have Missed 2021]
“Kin, as its name perhaps suggests, is a distillation of the themes expressed in The Valley: family. Bozeman laments his family’s disintegration and his own loss of innocence throughout, represented through a breed of deathcore even more mature than its predecessor. The heavy hits heavier, the bleeding heart hemorrhages thicker, and the songwriting accomplishes a storytelling flow to relate it all.” Deathcore in the family.
Black Sheep Wall – Songs for the Enamel Queen [Things You Might Have Missed 2021]
“I remember when Black Sheep Wall “qualified” for an Encyclopedia Metallum profile with sophomore effort No Matter Where It Ends. Kind of pedantic and nitpicky, but then again, their blend of sludge metal, post-metal, doom, and post-hardcore is bound to be divisive. The California quintet offers their fourth full-length Songs for the Enamel Queen, an expertly written and superbly executed mass of concrete-thick sludge metal injected with tumorous melodies and shifty rhythms.” Of Sheep and sludge.
So Hideous – None But a Pure Heart Can Sing Review
“You can imagine why New York City’s So Hideous changed its name. Its former moniker, So Hideous, My Love, reflects the sort of melodrama pervades its first offering To Clasp a Fallen Wish with Broken Fingers. It ended up being post-rock/screamo Envy worship – if Envy were more emo. Thereafter, the masterminds behind the project, the Cruz brothers, dropped the second half of the name and amped up the ugly.” Ugly, pretty, hideous.
Krvna – Sempinfernus Review
“Ah, black metal, my old friend. While I’ve been spending much of 2021 either trying to get my baby daughter to smile or try to steal as much weird death metal from Kronos as possible, I can’t deny the blackened shred that settles comfortably into the crevices of my soul. I’ve long anticipated a comfortably atmospheric, aptly scathing breed of second-wave shenanigans to sink my teeth into, and there’s no time like the present.” Semper lo-fi.
Vertebra Atlantis – Lustral Purge in Cerulean Bliss
“Mastermind behind such acts like Summit, The Clearing Path, Cosmic Putrefaction, and Turris Eburnea, G.G. or Gabriele Gramaglia’s resume is vast and varied, and sets a pretense for new project Vertebra Atlantis. Working with drummer/vocalist R.R. from Homselvareg and Vrangr from Spells of Misery, debut Lustral Purge in Cerulean Bliss offers a fusion of dissonant death metal and atmospheric black metal, not unlike labelmates Prometheus’ debut.” Dissonance dissidents.
The Temple – The Temple Review
“I’d be willing to put down money that The Temple is or contains a piece of Ulcerate. This New Zealand duo consists of P.K. on guitar, bass, and vocals (Paul Kelland? Sure sounds like him) and J.W. on drums (former Ulcerate vocalist James Wallace?), and to make matters worse, the self-titled debut was mixed and produced by J. Saint Merat. But this feeling of limbo, that maybe it is or maybe it isn’t, is what The Temple dwells in.” Crouching temples, hidden tech-death.