Top Picks
Wretched Death – Democide (blackened death thrash)
I was in a shitty band once. We were alright. Our singer sucked and I didn’t really know how to play, but we had fun. We used to joke that we were cool and played “blackened death thrash” when we really played some pretty rudimentary groove-metal/core. Point is, I wish we sounded more like Wretched Death.
One-man black-thrash bands are a dime a dozen these days but, for whatever reason, Wretched Death are doing it for me, while recently lauded releases from the likes of Midnight and Hellripper have left me pretty cold. Is that reason the extra bottom-end that pushed the recent Rage album over the line as well? Probably. While many similar acts take from the more, Motörhead-esque, speed-metal-leaning end of the genre, lone member Levie Ramsey has concocted something in Democide that sounds like Hell Awaits-era Slayer mixed with early Venom, with the bolstered production value of later Venom Inc. I love the way this album sounds, which is wholly raw, but also incredibly well balanced for what essentially appears to be a bedroom act (with three whole monthly listeners on spotify) and also reminds me a lot of In Malice’s Wake‘s more recent death-tinged efforts.
At only twenty-three-minutes, Democide is a hell of a ride and I look forward to seeing what else Ramsey can come up with in future. In the meantime, please enjoy an excerpt of the lyrics from the song “Nazi Crusher”, off of last-years far less well-produced grindcore demo Moribund (2023):
I’m so sick of your Nazi bullshit
It’s time to get my revenge
I’m gonna rip out your eyes
…
You fucking deserve this
You racist cunt
Rip off your dick
And I’ll make you suck it
Then I’ll throw you off a cliff
And feed your cock to my dogDie!
Die!
Die!
You fascist bastard
Now that’s poetry.
Alpha Wolf – Half Living Things (nu deathcore)
I’ve always had a soft spot for Alpha Wolf. Maybe it’s my Melbourne bias showing through, but that affection has only grown since watching them absolutely blow US hardcore heavy weights (and apparent scene leaders) Knocked Loose off the stage at a festival last year, and off the back of Half Living Things* I’m more than ready to elevate them to the upper echelons of the hyper-aggressive, mosh-forward nu deathcore rankings.
Half Living Things answers the question, what if Emmure were good actually? Or, perhaps more accurately, what if Knocked loose wrote more memorable songs that were actually fun to listen to? Indeed, there seem to be a few cheeky digs thrown the way of their Kentucky counterparts’ way across the album (“Thin the herd, trim the fat, It’s the big bad, where my dogs at? Woof!“), although they seem to be throwing down the gauntlet to anyone and everyone with lyrics like “Where did everybody go? I don’t see a lot of movement, Hear a lot of talk and not enough of the music” which opens the utterly devastating deathcore diss-track “Sucks 2 Suck” and, with sloganeering that sharp, anyone foolish to pick it up will be picking their teeth up first (as the song well warns).
Not everything on the album works as well as it might. The overwrought sincerity of quasi-ballad “Whenever You’re Ready” sticks out like a sore thumb amid all the bludgeoning braggadocio, and, for all it’s glory, Ice-T‘s rambling, nonsensical appearance on “Sucks 2 Suck” is perhaps the most ill-fitting and awkwardly inserted guest spot since Billy Corgan teamed up on Corgan Code Orange. Then again, it all adds to the album’s pig-headed charm. They might have started off more readily aping Korn, but Alpha Wolf are now in their Limp Bizkit-era it fits them as snugly as a backwards-facing NLB cap, while tracks like “Mangekyō” and “A Terrible Day For Rain” prove they still know how to bring the brutality when necessary.
Let it be known: there’s a new top-dog in town.
*Shouldn’t that be Half-Living Things? Speaking of which, shouldn’t it be “Release-Day Roundup”? I don’t know, I’ve been overdoing it on the hyphenation lately and I fear I’ve lost all perspective.
Release Roundup
Acid Mammoth – Supersonic Megafauna Collision (stoner doom)
Alber Jupiter – Puis Vient La Nuit (post rock)
Alchemist – Equilibrium (prog metal)
Amblare – Amblare (alt rock)
Apollyon Rising – Prepare for War (death thrash)
Aristarchos – Martyr Of Star And Fire (post/disso-black)
Attic – Return of the Witchfinder (spooky speed metal)
Austere – Beneath The Threshold (blackened mellowdeath, dsbm)
Bayside – There Are Worse Things than Being Alive (post-hardcore, alt rock)
Belore – Eastern Tales (mellowblack)
The Black Keys – Ohio Players (who even listens to this?)
Bilwis – Hameln (post-meloblack)
Bob Vylan – Hameln (rap/dub rock)
Brutalism – Solace In Absurdity (slamming brutal death metal)
Burn Down Eden – Dismal (tech-melodeath)
Celtian – Secretos de amor y muerte (Ren Faire-core)
Cistvaen – At Light’s Demise (posty black metal)
Cleansing – Throne of Misery (death metalcore)
Cock Sparrer – Hand on Heart (melopunk)
Concrete Age – Motherland (folk metal, melodeath)
Destroyer Of Light – Degradation Years (doomy alt-rock)
Diabolic Oath – Oracular Hexations (brutal death metal)
Dialith – Alter (folky alt-metal)
Disbelief – Killing Karma (melodeath)
Disrotter – Restless Death (deathgrind)
Dreamcar – Dream (Bowie-core)
The Dredge – Torches (alty post-rock)
Drungi – Hamfarir Hugans (folk metal)
Erra – Cure (overrated metalcore)
Eternal Breath – Road to Insanity (heavy metal)
Eveth – Sellando el destino (folky power metal)
Evolucija – The World Is Full of Wrath (production value)
Feeder – Black/Red (alt rock)
Feverous – Before the Fall (melodeath-doom)
Filth – Southern Hostility (nu deathcore)
Folkrim – Embers (folk metal)
Friends Of Hell – God Damned You To Hell (shitty black/doom metal)
Funeral Leech – The Illusion Of Time (funeral death-doom)
The Good the Bad and the Zugly – Decade of Regression (punk, garage rock)
Gorgasm – Sadichist (brutal death metal)
Gravkväde – Prolog (black doom)
Greyhawk – Thunderheart (powerish metal)
Hardraw – Abyss Of Mankind (heavy/power metal)
Hawkwind – Stories From Time And Space (space rock, stoner prog)
Hero In Error – Hero In Error (metalcore)
Heroes of the Gauntlet – Tales from the Maze (symphonic power metal)
Herxheim – Contrapasso (who?)
Hornado – Vicious Vengeance (heavy/trad metal)
Horndal – Head Hammer Man (stoner sludge)
Hour Of Penance – Devotion (death metal)
Ildganger – For hver tanke mister sjælen atter farve (black doom)
Ingested – The Tide Of Death And Fractured Dreams (deathgrind)
Iron Monkey – Spleen And Goad (sludge metal)
Ischemic – Condemned To The Breaking Wheel (blackened death-doom)
Ischemic – Condemned to the Breaking Wheel (death-doom0 Izzy And The Black Trees – Go On, Test The System (alt/noise rock)
Jet Engine Dragons – Ronin (death metal, melodeath)
Just One Fix – Submit Or Death (industrialish death metal)
Korpiklaani – Rankarumpu (why tho?)
Kosuke Hashida – Justifiable Homicide (death metal/grind)
Kvadrat – The Horrible Dissonance Of Oblivion (blackened dissodeath-doom)
Lesath – Under the Moon (post-rock, blackgaze)
The Lifted Veil – Genocidal Bliss of Heaven (blackened death metal)
Locrian – End Terrain (progressive post metal, black gaze)
Lost in Grey – Odyssey into the Grey (symphonic power metal)
Lost Zone – Ordinary Misery (bad metal/core)
Lurcher – Breathe (posty rock/grunge)
Manasseh – Tunneling To Paradiso (who even listens to this?)
Meat Spreader – Mental Disease Transmitted by Radioactive Fear (deathgrind)
Nihternnes – Namuh (good black metal)
Nihternnes – Drone Penannular (bad black metal)
Nihternnes – Ars Goetia I (not black metal)
Nitritono – Cecita (doom)
Noel Husser – Beyond (symphonic folk/melodeath)
Once Upon The End – Archive 200 (proggish melodeath)
Ondfødt – Oldfodt (thrashy black metal)
Opposite Day – Colossal Nests of Metal and Glass (progressive alt-rock)Orecus – Dreadnought (not that Dreadnought)
Parlandra – The Body Electric (hard rock)
Paula Teles – Desencanto (symphonic goth-doom)
Pectora – Twilight Knights (pectoral power metal)
Peter Wilson – Freedom’s Door (proggish alt rock)
Prehistoric War Cult – Barbaric Metal (black/death metal)
Protosequence – Bestiary (progressive death metal)
Pyriphlegethon – The Devil’s Trance (doomy black/blackened doom)
Rageful/Ruttenskalle – Misery/Disgorged Exsanguination (death metal)
Red Sun – From Sunset To Dawn (post-stoner rock)
Rogga Johansson – Otherworld (death metal, melodeath)
The Rottening – Seeds Of Death (death metal, melodeath)
Shred Rogers – The Circle (wacky punk)
Sinthetik Sentienz – Aeon of the Machine (progressive melodeath with power metal parts)
Sleepmakeswaves – It’s Here, But I Have No Names For It (chill post metal)
Snakebite – Cobra Crew (hairy speed/power metal)
Spider Kickers – Necrosupper (death-thrash)
Strung Out – Dead Rebellion (trad metal? BFMV-core)
Suicide Season – Life, But In Reverse… (death doom, not BMTH-core)
Symakya – Project 11 (heavy/prog metal)
Temple Of The Fuzz Witch – Apotheosis (stoner death)
Towers Of Jupiter – Echus Chasma (prog-gaze)
Venomous Echoes – Split Formations And Infinite Mania (weird blackened death metal)
Vnder a Crvmbling Moon – II: Aging & Formless (post-metal)
Warbell – Ruin (death doom)
Witch Vomit – Funeral Sanctum (death metal)
Wrektomb – Bovine Mockeries Of Human Posturing (sludgey death-doom)