(Andy Synn somehow manages to pick just four albums from an overloaded August to talk about)
I feel like August was even more jam-packed with new releases than any other month this year so far… right?
And I don’t just mean all the “big” names – of which there were several – I’m talking about all the cool, more underground records and releases which came out during the last 31 days.
There was the intricate, immersive Prog-Death of Moonloop and the intense, in-your-face Deathcore of To The Grave… the disgustingly dark and devastating double-team of Teeth and Pneuma Hagion… as well as rites, both Vile and Modern in the form of Senescence and Endless.
And then there was the unquantifiable, uncompromising new album from Uniform – which I hope, one day, to get round to reviewing (just as soon as I’ve got my head around it properly) – plus several more which I might just end up covering separately at some point.
Until then, however, please enjoy this genre-crossing look back at the last month!
EXTINCTION A.D. – TO THE DETESTED
There was a time when the word “Metalcore” – in contrast to the way it’s generally applied now – was primarily used to refer to what were, essentially, Hardcore/Thrash hybrids (often with some Death Metal thrown in) whose music, seemingly, was designed to be as in-your-face and antagonistic as possible.
We’re talking about bands like Integrity, Earth Crisis, and Merauder… bands as likely to cite Suicidal Tendencies as Slayer as primary influences… whose legacy still lives on in the music of Metal/Hardcore hybrids like Extinction A.D., who have set out to kick up yet another firestorm of their own on their formidable fourth album, To The Detested.
It’s an album that doesn’t waste any time getting right to the meat of the matter, the chunky chuggery and galloping intensity of “Desperate Grasp” quickly showcasing why the group have fans from across both the Metal and Hardcore scenes, with the more melodic thrashiness and punky hookiness of “Escape From New York” and the more Death Metal influenced grooves of “Epidemic of Mutation” also demonstrating that, for all its relative simplicity, the band’s sound can be twisted in some subtly different directions when needed.
There’s a touch of …Trendkill-era Pantera to the stomping “Apocalypse Rising” as well, and while lead-single “Impervious” (which features the latest in a long line of largely superfluous guest appearances by Trivium‘s Matt Heafy) is actually – in my opinion, at least – one of the album’s lesser tracks, things thankfully pick right back up again with the blisteringly heavy, brilliantly hooky “Fill the Void” and Sepultura-esque stunner “Burnt Sienna” (which are two of the album’s biggest and best tracks).
From then on it’s basically just a victory lap with songs like catchy Thrash-core classic “Shepherding Swine”, riff-tastic mosh-anthem “Behind the Veil of Sanctity” (get ready for some serious headbanging and two-steppin’ when this one is played live) and climactic neck-wrecker “The Cure or the Cause” marking the band out for some major potential crossover success – not just between Metal and Hardcore but also between the underground and the mainstream!
PHENOCRYST – CREMATION PYRE
Just when I thought I was getting burned out on a certain type of Death Metal along comes Phenocryst and their abominably awesome new album to drag me back into the grave with a smile on my face.
Make no mistake about it, this is easily one of my top-rated debuts of the year, not just because of how monstrously heavy it is – opener “Pinnacle of Death” quickly establishes Phenocryst as a band with some serious sonic weight behind them, not just in their churning, charnel-house riffs but also in their thick, meaty bass tone (which might just be one of my favourites of the year) – but due to the way the group weave in some subtle (and, occasionally, not-so-subtle) threads of weird, warped melody into their sound without ever compromising their bone-grinding heaviness.
This combination of titanic riffage and twisted melodic nuance, coupled with an inherent gift for dynamic flow (witness, if you will, the menacing crawl and maddening intensity of the aptly-named “Astonishing Devastation”, for example) and an already impressive grasp of songwriting subtleties (such as the way they insert a number of different rhythmic, melodic, and atmospheric hooks into “Pyres of the Altar”) reminds me a lot of the equally excellent Outer Heaven and their blend of psychotic Death Metal and psychoactive melody, albeit with less bitter Hardcore influences and more brooding Doom elements.
But, even at this early stage, Phenocryst are already more than capable of making a name for themselves, on their own terms, and you’re unlikely to find many songs with as killer a combination of viciously intense, yet virulently infectious, riffs and eerie, ear-worm melodies as good as the likes of “Embers of An Ancient Fire” and the volatile, venomous “Volcanic Winter”.
Truth be told, my only real complaint about Cremation Pyre is that it feels ever so slightly too short… and if the band had perhaps expanded the ideas presented in slightly-unfinished closer “Burial Swamps” into a colossal, doom-laden epic (as it really feels like they should have) this could easily have ended up being a top ten release (don’t get me wrong though, it’s still very much in the top tier) of 2024.
TENUE – ARCOS, BÓVEDAS, PÓRTICOS
This year, for me at least, has been full of welcome surprises and new discoveries that don’t fit neatly into any one particular box or genre – and while Tenue are not a new band (Arcos, bóvedas, pórticos is in fact their third proper release) their multi-faceted mix of Crust, Black Metal, Prog, and Post-Hardcore is definitely new to me (but has quickly become a firm favourite).
Right from the start you can tell that Tenue are onto something special here, with reverberant horns and lilting guitar melodies soon giving way to a cathartic cavalcade of angst-ridden shrieks and riff-driven intensity, all seething tremolo, pounding rhythms, and crashing chords, interspersed with passages of soul-aching atmosphere and bleak, ambient beauty (and that’s just the first song, “Inquietude”).
The spiky, spiteful “Letargo” has an almost Mathcore-ish wickedness to it, yet marries this to an undercurrent of moody, Post-Black melody and a dash of devastating Screamo desperation, as it blasts and grooves and broods its way through a series of unpredictable twists and turns designed to keep the listener constantly engaged and permanently on their proverbial toes, after which the twitchy technicality and gloomy, bass-heavy atmosphere of “Distracción” helps showcase both the more extreme and introverted sides of the band in equal measure.
And while Arcos, bóvedas, pórticos may be the sort of album which practically bleeds electrifying energy – where pretty much every song provides a vibrant shot of both adrenaline and emotion right to your brain – that doesn’t mean the band are unwilling to slow things down a little, to let things flow a little more fluidly and languidly, as the moody, immersive strains of “Enfoque” so clearly demonstrate, nor are they afraid to get a little weird, with climactic final track “Unión” showcasing some of the most vicious, most vibrant, and most vulnerable moments on the entire record, over the course of seven scintillating, genre-defying minutes.
YANOS – ELYSIUM
Themes of death and dying are nothing new in the Metal scene, but some bands love them so much they write an entire trilogy of records about them… and gargantuan German Post-Metal sextet Yanos are one such band.
Concluding their thematic trilogy of grief and loss, death and rebirth, Elysium offers up six impressively (and imposingly) substantial tracks – the shortest of which is still over seven-and-a-half minutes – of devastatingly dense riffs and claustrophobically crushing atmospherics (beginning with titanic, almost ten minute, opener “At Spectral Shores”) which frequently reach nigh-on apocalyptic proportions.
For all their humongous heaviness, however, Yanos are careful not to neglect the more nuanced and moodily ambient elements of their sound – contrast and dynamic being, after all, the key to any good Post-Metal album – with the extensive introspective mid-section of “The Roots Wither”, for example, being not just a major highlight of the song but of the album as a whole.
By the same token, the feverish blastbeats and thunderous riffs of “Exhaust the Essence” – eleven minutes of aggressively nihilistic intensity and anxious, nervous energy that just seems to build and build as the song goes on – and the doomily melodic “Ascencion” also provide a certain amount of contrast when placed together, demonstrating that Yanos are capable of being “heavy” in several different ways while also taking full advantage of the wider creative canvas granted them by such extravagant song lengths and structures.
Granted, almost an hour of punishing Post-Metal could, potentially, get a little wearing for some listeners, but the band are smart enough and sharp enough to give each song its own identity, such that – even after forty pretty unforgiving minutes – the mournful melodicism (and moments of moody minimalism) of “Illusionist” and the sombre slow-burn of melancholy, multi-layered closer “Emergence” should continue to hold the audience’s attention long after the album has drawn to a close.