Record(s) o’ the Month – August 2023

Hot on the heels of our disgustingly tardy July Record(s) o’ the Month comes the newly minted August edition! We need to churn these things out with urgency as 2023 wanes and the dreaded Listurnalia® looms ever larger on the horizon like some Wicker Man-esque pagan sacrifice to the seasonal spirits of olde. And so without further eloquence, here are the altered beasts of August! Sorry again for the relative lateness. It was 100% Doc Grier‘s fault.

When two members of My Dying Bride conspired to form their own doom project, it certainly seemed like good things could come of it. And Godthrymm’s 2020 debut Reflections was an absolute doom bomb full of huge riffs and dark, dreary expressions. It was an opening salvo that set a dauntingly high bar for the band to reach for a follow-up. And yet on sophomore opus Distortions, Hamish Glencross and Shaun Taylor-Steels managed to take their sound and style one step further. Vintage Pallbearer-isms are referenced in the killer guitar harmonies and Hamish’s vocals are better than last time. Distortions references every classic Peaceville doom act with its collection of ace riffs and harmonies and the mood is kept dire, dark, and despondent. As a fanboying Grymm gushed, “Distortions is not only a fantastic follow-up to Reflections, but a solid beast of an album that’s going to sit in many a doom aficionado’s collection.”

Runner(s) Up:

Horrendous // Ontological Mysterium – Straight out of the City of Brotherly Shove comes Horrendous and their ever-evolving progressive death metal insanity. After a 5-year layoff, the band’s signature sound remains intact and as quirky as ever, and the album’s short runtime means tightly edited, highly interesting compositions await. Despite the truncated runtime, this is their most progressive outing yet, but Horrendous maintains enough grit and edge to keep things heavy and dangerous. As a well-impressed Saunders summed up, “Ontological Mysterium is unmistakably Horrendous in sound and vision, yet it bravely pushes boundaries and tinkers with the parameters of their formula, while remaining cohesive and memorable.”

Crypta // Shades of Sorrow – Death thrashing is a lifestyle choice and the ladies composing Crypta made their career decisions clear. Shades of Sorrow takes everything that worked on their last album and dials them all up to 666. Thrashing, abrasive yet catchy songs are the order of the day and the Devil is in the details making good songs great. Ferocious, headbanging goodness is delivered again and again until your neck is wrecked. As a semi-paralyzed Kenstrosity painstakingly scribbled, “If you have even just one metallic bone in your body, you owe it to yourself to spin—and then buy—Shades of Sorrow.”