Succumb - Succumb (2017)

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Succumb's self-titled debut is as predictable and frantic as a schizophrenic wolverine fucked up on rabies, it's musical backbone mostly comprised of whirring grind with fragments of death, black, crust, d-beat and all else unsophisticated and crude. I'm taken to the vocals, I'm not sure it's anything I've heard before, so there is that unique grab to it, mostly sounding like someone howling desperately for help from the bottom of a well.

Succumb (bandcamp)

Ricky Hamilton & The Voidboys - Hell is Real (2017)

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Ricky Hamilton & The Voidboys bring you slime punk drenched in fuzz and psych and other sonic oddities, with an acute hypnotic affectation and penchant for droning out in a state of inspired nonchalance with Ricky's vocal drippings that range from lugubrious and pasty to drowned out and poppy. Maybe if The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Joy Division melded sounds and mixed it with the psyched out nostalgia and glam passages of Crystal Stilts and played them faster and shorter you would get something quasi-similar to Hell is Real. Or not at all.

Hell is Real (bandcamp)

Unearthly Trance - Stalking The Ghost (2017)

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Stalking The Ghost is an obstinate example of doom and sludge happily married at the core of its husk, but interspersed throughout its chest breathes an amalgamation of surrounding minutia to make up its entirety, which is just a nonsensical way of saying it's layered and boasts breadth and originality, all of which are qualities I look for when choosing the right head of lettuce when I'm making a salad. 

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Besides clicking the play button and forming your own opinion, I'll say this; Unearthly Trance have hit the nail on the hammer with this one, conjuring sequoia sized riffs with a whiff of THC emanating from each note, pummelling drums suitable for both a battlefield and a funeral dirge, and a varied vocal deluge that could curl the toes on a paraplegic cadaver. Heavy in full sway of the word, my brothers and sisters.

Stalking The Ghost (bandcamp)

Knelt Rote -Trespass (2012)

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Knelt Rote have succeeded in creating a suffocatingly dismal album with the atmosphere of an ancient hulking giant, a god of the muck and mire, rife with savagery and frenzied bestial belches against a impenetrable wall of crunchy guitar layering and perfectly mixed drums. It never wanes in its ferocity and despite its troglodytic plodding and pounding it manages to be nuanced and full-bodied with an adept attention to spacing and detail. I really can't point a poisonous finger to anything missing or lacking in this monster of a death metal album, Knelt Rote have seemingly diluted the animalistic barbarity of Revenge and attention to detail as Swallowed executed with aces on Lunaterial. 

Trespass (bandcamp)

Aosoth - V: The Inside Scriptures (2017)

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When Aosoth put forth IV: An Arrow In Heart in 2013 I only found out about it mid-way into the next year, which felt like I was late to the party and probably definitely (didn't) solemnly swear to arrive at the party on time the next time the Parisian trident of death/black metal put something new out. So here I am, fashionably late and still partying along.

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V: The Inside Scriptures is one part blistering death metal with a penchant for sporadic structuring and glimpses of surgical technicality and another part feral black metal with an unrelenting dizziness in the wake of its frantic atmosphere. I'm forlorn to know it will be the last album from Aosoth as they are (probably) sick of playing well beyond the comprehensional appreciation of dummy idiots who barely have two dimes to rub together and a predilection for death metal so long as the name is Gorguts or Bolt Thrower. What a shitty and pious assumption of me, I'm sure it's actually because Chipotle stopped giving out free tacos to dudes in black shirts.

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V: The Inside Scriptures underwent something like a three year long and arduous journey that saw itself staring down a steep slope of adversity that threatened to bury this release and all the recordings along with it and send it into the void. Thankfully this didn't happen because Aosoth have come out with something that is greater than the sum of all its (three) parts. Big ups to all the behind the scene components to making this happen as I can't find one negative thing about this album, from the masterful mastering and productive production down to the album covers painting. Another one fit for all our sanctimonious year end lists we are so hellbent on making. Good end, bon voyage and don't forget to rock and roll.

V: The Inside Scriptures (bandcamp)