Metal 286 Items

Up the hammers, down the nails! Originally released in 2008, this classic doom metal debut album of Lord Vicar features powerful and mournful songs about survival, regret, love, and sacrificial duty. The unmistakable melancholy of this band is underlined by the acoustic passages of ’The Funeral Pyre’ that enhance the groovy and crushing riffs that otherwise alternate throughout the album. This music must have been uplifted from some kind of personal hell, but there is much pleasure in the way it was delivered. As a bonus for this re-release, you have the partly remixed and fully remastered first EP of the band, originally released as a 7” in 2008 by I Hate Records. The Demon of Freedom took its subject matter from the novel The Wolf’s Bride, by Finnish author Aino Kallas.

In the kitchen of the Byron Bay home of Winston McCall stands a refrigerator, adorned on one side by a quote from Tom Waits: “I want beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.” This, the Parkway Drive vocalist says, is a pretty good summation of himself. It holds true, too, as one of the guiding principles behind Darker Still, the seventh full-length album to be born of this picturesque and serene corner of north-eastern NSW, Australia, and the defining musical statement to date from one of modern metal’s most revered bands. Darker Still, McCall says, is the vision he and his bandmates – guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick, bassist Jia O’Connor and drummer Ben Gordon – have held in their mind’s eye since a misfit group of friends first convened in their parents’ basements and backyards in 2003. The journey to reach this moment has seen Parkway evolve from metal underdogs to festival-headlining behemoth, off the back of close to 20 gruelling years, six critically and commercially acclaimed studio albums (all of which achieving Gold status in their home nation), three documentaries, one live album, and many, many thousands of shows. While Darker Still remains irrefutably Parkway Drive, it finds the band sonically standing shoulder to shoulder with rock and metal’s greats – Metallica, Pantera, Machine Head, Guns N’ Roses – as much as it does their metalcore contemporaries. “I wanted a classic guitar tone for this record,” explains Ling, who credits much of his inspiration to the connection his riffs have with a crowd in a live setting Emerging from the darkness of the past few years, this is the true face of Parkway Drive: redefined and resolute, focused in mind and defiant in spirit. Tracks 1.

There’s a sick irony to how a country that extols rhetoric of individual freedom, in the same gasp, has no problem commodifying human life as if it were meat to feed the insatiable hunger of capitalism. If this is American nihilism taken to its absolute zenith, then God’s Country, the first full length record from Oklahoma City noise rock quartet Chat Pile is the aural embodiment of such a concept.

Having lived alongside the heaps of toxic refuse that the band derives its name from, the fatalism of daily life in the American Midwest permeates throughout the works of Chat Pile, and especially so on its debut album. Exasperated by the pandemic, the hopelessness of climate change, the cattle shoot of global capitalism, and fueled by “...lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of THC,” God’s Country is as much of an acknowledgement of the Earth’s most assured demise as it is a snarling violent act of defiance against it. Within its over forty minute runtime, the album displays both Chat Pile’s most aggressively unhinged and contemplatively nuanced moments to date, drawing from its preceding two EPs and its score for the 2021 film, Tenkiller. In the band’s own words, the album is, at its heart, “Oklahoma’s specific brand of misery.” A misery intent on taking all down with it and its cacophonous chaos on its own terms as opposed to idly accepting its otherwise assured fall. This is what the end of the world sounds like.

American blackened electro-industrial Act 6TH Circle is back with new LP The Idle Construct, another masterful forty-minute crucible of insurgent post-industrial darkness laced with haunting atmospheres and seismic, disorienting beats. Officially licensed from Sonic Groove Records, The Idle Construct is 6th Circle's most tenebrous and atmospheric release to date, seeing its first ever proper release on a physical format worldwide via Sentient Ruin as a limited edition black vinyl pressing, after its initial and so far digital-only release in 2021. The Idle Construct sees 6th Circle further evolve and deconstruct its dark sonic canvas, pushing its foreboding atmospheres and anachronistic grooves deeper into lightless realms, and taking the listener further into a dark future dystopia of bitter disillusionment and grim alienation. The dark flame of defining acts like Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and :Wumpscut:, burns more vigorously than ever within these ten caustic tracks of industrial insurrection, but what defines 6th Circle's unrivaled approach to the craft is not so much its masterful evocation of an unrivaled past glory, rather the fearless exploration of its still unaccomplished and uncharted possibilities in the

Swiss firebrand alchemists Zeal & Ardor are excited to announce forthcoming, self-titled new album!

Hissing and seeping justifiable rage from every pore - yet not an unrelenting musical battering - the 14-track opus was recorded by Marc Obrist and Manuel Gagneux at Hutch Sounds and mixed and mastered by Will Putney at Graphic Nature Audio. All songs were written by the softly spoken, multilingual frontman Gagneux, with some German lyrics intermixed with the English. Gagneux declares, “With the self-titled record, we have arrived at where I imagined this project should sound like. It’s the longest we’ve worked on a single record and I believe it shows. The most important thing for an album of ours to do, is transport you instantly into our mood, our world. Even though this might not be the one you might expect from us, this record certainly delivers on that front. We had time to hone in to what we think makes us interesting and what sounds we would like to explore through this we have found our home. Home is burning. Welcome home.”

We each have our own idea of what it means to live through a period filled with perpetual dread, a slowly burning world, and overwhelming darkness. In the case of Portrayal of Guilt, their tortuous afterlife comes with grief, loss, masochism, suffering, and pain. On Christfucker, their second full-length of 2021, Portrayal of Guilt plunges headfirst into unfathomable depths, creating a work of art that's powerfully unsettling. "We think of it partially in the sense of scoring a horror movie," guitarist/vocalist Matt King says. "We wanted to create an atmosphere of anxiety and fear." The entirety of Christfucker is set to unrelenting, nihilistic, howling soundscapes, created by King, drummer James Beveridge, and bassist, Alex Stanfield. Each track tells a story set in the darkest of settings for the listener to interpret and explore. *Beginning with the ominous "The Sixth Circle," which features King shrieking over hypnotic guitar patterns and a thudding rhythm, the band eventually roars to life with a tyrannical blast, delving you further into its oppressive heaviness. On "Bed of Ash," the band plumb new depths while exploring the mechanistic gnashings of industrial drum and bass. On "_where the suffering never ends," churning, gruesome instrumentals provide the backdrop to a tale of brutal demise. Recorded at Strange Weather and Circular Ruin studios in Brooklyn with Ben Greenberg, Christfucker features guest vocals from Jenna Rose of New York darkwave outfit Anatomy (on "Sadist") and Touché Amoré vocalist Jeremy Bolm (on "Fall From Grace"). Started in 2017, Portrayal of Guilt have released two full-length albums, two EPs, four splits & a digital single. They've toured the world relentlessly since their inception, playing with bands such as Deafheaven, Pg.99, Touché Amoré, Soft Kill and many more...

Two decades into their journey as ritualistic black metal conjurers, Wolves IN THE Throne Room have emerged from the forest with Primordial Arcana, their most majestic album to date, and their first release via Relapse Records.

Primordial Arcana is the band’s first completely self-contained work: In addition to composition and performance, brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver alongside guitarist Kody Keyworth handled all aspects of recording, producing and mixing at their own Owl Lodge Studios in the woods of Washington state.

The album’s title is a reference to the band’s ongoing reach back to the most ancient, archetypal energies.

Leadoff track “Mountain Magick” sets the august tone with alpine guitar melodies cresting skyward in triumph. “Spirit of Lightning” returns briefly to the earthly plane as a tribute to the human connections forged in music. Meanwhile, “Primal Chasm (Gift of Fire)” is an explosion of cosmic grandeur, a symphonic rendering of the hermetic maxim As above, so below as envisioned by Keyworth. In fact, Primordial Arcana is the first Wolves IN THE Throne Room record in which Kody was a part of the writing process from the start, so it benefits from his background in cosmic funeral doom.

Always uncompromising, Primordial Arcana sees Wolves IN THE Throne Room stay true to their unique vision. An album born out of the DIY ethos, Primordial Arcana proves to be the band’s most genuine and focused. One of the year’s most ambitious recordings, Primordial Arcana cements Wolves IN THE Throne Room’s legacy as one of US Black Metal’s most daring, unique, and quintessential bands.

Reissue On Neon Yellow Vinyl. Limited. When Unknown Virtuoso Guitarist Tosin Abasi Released His Debut Solo Album Under The Moniker Animals As Leaders In 2009, Few Would Have Predicted The Band's Meteoric Rise Over The Next Two Years. Although Abasi Earned Acclaim As The Lead Guitarist In The Washington, D.C.-Based Metalcore Act Reflux, It Was Still A Long-Shot That An Instrumental Album Of Progressive Metal With Jazz, Electronic And Ambient Flourishes Would Develop Anything More Than A Cult Following. Now, On The Eve Of The Release Of "Weightless," The Group's Sophomore Effort, Animals As Leaders Is Revered Worldwide As A Trailblazing Pioneer Of Modern Heavy Music. The Group's Genre-Defying Compositions Have Earned Extensive Praise -- Steve Vai Called The Band "The Future Of Creative, Heavy Virtuoso Guitar Playing," And Metalsucks Recently Ranked Abasi #2 On Their List Of Modern Metal's Top Guitarists -- And The Diversity Of Their Music Has Enabled Them To Tour With A Wide Variety Of Acts, Including Deftones, Underoath, Circa Survive, Btbam (With Whom The Band Will Tour For The Third Time This Fall), The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Faceless, Thursday, Dredg And, On The 2010 Summer Slaughter Tour, Even Decapitated. Whereas The Group's Self-Titled Debut Was A Collaboration Between Abasi And Periphery's Misha Mansoor, "Weightless" Features The Recording Debut Of Animals As Leaders, The True Band -- That Is, Abasi (Guitars), Javier Reyes (Guitars) And Navene Koperweis (Drums). After Nearly Two Years Of Touring Together, The Trio Wrote And Recorded "Weightless" Together In Mid-2011, With Koperweis Producing And Reyes Mixing. The Group Debuted A New Track, "Isolated Incidents," During Their Inaugural Headlining Tour This Summer, Which Included Sellout Shows From Coast-To-Coast -- A Sign That As Quickly As Animals As Leaders Have Risen, The Best Is Yet To Come.

Heavy music’s evolution has always been a murky swamp of sub-genres. So, combining Thin Lizzy’s glistening twin guitar harmonies with Melvins-grade sludge and a hearty dose of proto-metal psych probably shouldn’t sound so revolutionary as it does in the hands of L.A. quartet Deathchant. But theirs is a special, transcendent sound. Waste, the band’s sophomore album and first for Riding Easy Records, is anything but. The thirty three-minute, seven-song blast flows seamlessly from song to song, aided by droning segues, while simultaneously slithering between genres and moods. Rumbling noise, chiming guitar melodies, bluesy boogie, Nwobhm thrash, COC grunge and punk fury all rear their head at times, sometimes all at once. Though one wouldn’t be able to tell by the concise structures and well-crafted songs, a lot of Deathchant’s music is improvised, both in the studio and live. That’s not to suggest their songs are jammy— they’re very tightly organized compositions. But the four musicians have that special musical telepathy that allows them to keep the song structures open-ended. “Improv is a huge things for us and always has been,” singer / guitarist T.J. Lemieux says. “The musical freedom to look at the other dudes in the band and be able to take things wherever we want to go is magical. I like the feel of flying off the hinges.” Likewise, the band itself is similarly amorphous in its membership. “We run the band with an open door. No lineup is definitive,” Lemieux explains. On Waste, the lineup is: Lemieux, George Camacho on bass, Colin Fahrner on drums, and John Belino on second guitar. Waste was recorded live in a rented cabin in the mountains of Big Bear, CA. “We packed a big-ass van and set up in the living room and kitchen,” Lemieux says. “Tracked it live, with overdubs after.” The whole album was recorded over two separate weekends, engineered by Steve Schroeder, who also recorded the band’s 2019 self-titled debut album. “I’d say it has sort of a DIY LA punk aesthetic,” he adds. “Very ironically going hand in hand with a classic metal vibe: Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, classic Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and other melodic heavy rock bands.”

Further infections to feed your disease – an official reissue of Pentagram’s 2004 cult album! On Show Em How the doom metal legend Bobby Liebling is joined by members of the Maryland doom metal cult Internal Void for a spellbinding selection of of new songs and renditions of old classics such as “Starlady” and “If The Winds Would Change”. With exclusive artwork by the Italian masters Malleus, this is the definitive edition of this cult metal classic.

Obfuscating And Abysmal Ambient Dark Death Metal From Members Of Void Rot, Suffering Hour, Tvaer, And Nothingness. Fifteen Minutes Of Oppressive And Abhorrent Death Metal Chaos Spiraling Down Into Aphotic Hell. Debut Ep - For Fans Of Altarage, Immolation, Impetuous Ritual, Abyssal Etc..

Cover with bumped corner

Limited to 500 grey-black inkspot vinyls in a lush gatefold.

An Autumn For Crippled Children create compositions within the post-black metal genrethat are incredibly fascinating, if not groundbreaking going to such extremes in fusing blackmetal with bright New Wave and shoegaze melodies.

Over the course of two decades The Body, Lee Buford and Chip King, have consistently challenged assumptions and defied categorization, redefining what it means to be a heavy band. On I've Seen All I Need To See, they test the boundaries of the studio to explore the extremes and microtonality of distortion to find its maximal impact. Their most incisively bleak, a towering monolith of noise, album to date Buford's booming, resolute drums paired with King's obliterated guitar and howl. Course, bristling distortion contorts every instrument, with samples of spoken word, cymbals, toms and King's already noxious tone emerging from layers of feedback. The recording studio remains indelible to The Body's creative process. Together with engineer Seth Manchester of Machines With Magnets, they capture the complexities of distorted sound in stunning detail. The clarity and the cacophony exceed anything they've created before, morphing desolate, festering soundscapes into an exhilarating sonic universe. Buford often lays the framework for songs from the drums up, mirroring hip hop production. I've Seen All I Need To See trades out 808s and The Body's self- sampling for live instruments with a focus on expanding mutations of sound from more limited sources. The results are remarkably rich textural bombardments. Throughout, The Body deliver oppressive noise with potent lucidity, replicating the overwhelming sound of their live performances in revelatory detail. I've Seen All I Need To See demonstrates not only The Body's fearless spirit and vicious edge, but their intellectual musical heft through its explorations of distorted sound and the power of distorted sounds' interplay. Composer Roger Johnson said "Noise is power, but is generally represented as negative, chaotic, dangerous, violent, when it comes... from those marginalized from power. Noise is also an expression of freedom, a 'liberation of sound.'" The Body are sound liberators capable of mining and extracting remarkable details from the most manipulated and distorted sound sources. I've Seen All I Need To See is a groundbreaking work and an ecstatic listen, whether seen as a testament to catharsis in oblivion, an opus of inexorable dread or a wholly liberating adventure.

Limited to 1000 copies. Blind Guardian deliver with »Imaginations From The Other Side 25th Anniversary Edition« a extraordinary Double Picture Vinyl in gatefold cover.