“My summer quest for scrumptious retro metal is almost at an end. It has taken me far and wide, usually with poor, and at best middling, results. It has been a quest of dissatisfaction, to the point where I will soon be turning my nose at any retro promo that is pushed under my prison door at AMG Headquarters. My last kick at the cat will be the latest from this group of miscreants who call themselves Dead Lord.” The mind is a terrible thing to taste.
“Team-ups are all the rage nowadays, ditching the confines of comic book crossovers for screens both small and large. Vallenfyre struck while the crossover iron was hot. Since 2010, they’ve smashed members of My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, and At the Gates into a throwback Swedeath outfit as gloomy as it is doomy.” Super groups to fear.
“Whenever a new Dark Tranquillity album drops, it causes me to reflect on the state of the Gothenburg sound. Despite lesser albums like We Are the Void and Construct, it’s abundantly clear Dark Tranquillity reaped the most benefit from the stylistic tontine they established with In Flames and At the Gates back in 1992. Their particular take on melo-death has aged like a fine vintage while others have become little more than hobo wine. That great gulf is even more stark when Dark Tranquillity crafts a masterful release like Atoma.” Enter the Atoma Age.
“When the band’s highly anticipated Deathhammer came out in 2012 it became and remains one of my favorite metal records of the 2010’s. Now Incoming Death is upon us, and these death-doom peddling Dutchmen are back to slay ultra-loud once more.” Back to the rack!
“Coming from the refreshingly short blasts of concise metal by High Spirits and Sumerlands and having to tackle a 40-minute melo-death song seemed like a particularly arduous shift of gears for yours truly. Winter’s Gate is Insomnium’s seventh release, and apparently they wanted to pay homage to Edge of Sanity’s legendary Crimson opus by crafting a massive composition filled with similarly diverse moods and complexions.” Winter is coming (and staying).
“It’s time once again to turn loose the Swanös! Well, the Swanö named Dan anyway. That’s because the mega-man is back with his Witherscape project, and as before he’s brought along his mustachioed compadre, Ragner Widerberg to provide multi-instrumental support. Those who heard the massive debut, The Inheritance know what to expect – rich, melodic, somewhat progressive death metal with a cosmic ass-ton of hooks, mood and memorability.” The Danimal is back for the attack.
“1996 was a weird time for metal. That year many bands decided to abruptly switch logos on us, and whenever that happens, usually the music gets a lot more “creative” (i.e. tame) and a whole lot less metal. I remember seeing an ad for Samael’s Passage in an issue of Metal Maniacs and immediately got worried. Gone was the pentagram-infused logo and the Eric Vuille painting of Jesus with his crown of nails coming out of his head, and in their place was a logo that was fresh off of Microsoft Word and a picture of what appears to be the moon.” A bad moon was arising.
Moonsorrow is an enigmatic band whose fame and status in metal defy expectations. A band whose songs tend toward the 15-minute mark, who sings in Finnish, and who obeys no label’s release schedule is not a band that I would expect to be releasing one of the most anticipated albums of 2016. The first album in 5 years—follow-up to Varjoina kuljemme kuolleiden maasa (henceforth Vkkm because lol), which was my Record o’ the Year in 2011—Jumalten aika is a 5 track, 67 minute journey down the path cut by Moonsorrow in the years since their first releases. And it’s a simultaneously difficult and comfortable release from one of Finland’s premiere acts.
Oceans of Slumber is walking a very unique path. A combination of melodic death, doom and black metal influenced by the Century Black roster from about 1998, Winter blends that with a sadboy metal and alternative rock base. The album is beautiful, mysterious, and oddly chaotic. It’s also really good.
“Entombed A.D. suggests a great return to glory for the Swe-death greats: Entombed is dead, long live Entombed A.D.! When it came out two years ago, Back to the Front was more like Back to the Middle, a good if not workmanlike record that wasn’t offensive but wasn’t the grand comeback the band and record name seemed to imply. Now L.G. Petrov and his A.D. crew are back with Dead Dawn, and only the most naïve of optimists could have possibly expected Left Hand Path II: HM-2 Boogaloo.” Why can’t we just have our little dreams?
