Albums of 11/1/24

The most interesting releases of the week!

Qaalm has become something special. Grave Impressions Of An Unbroken Arc, released on Hypaethral Records, continues where the band left off on Resilience & Despair. This full-length follows the band’s EP First Light of the Last Dawn, which was released earlier this year and is also worth checking out. Grave Impressions consists of a massive wall of progressive doom riffs, featuring crushing emotional purging, songwriting that evolves slowly over twelve minute behemoths, and apparently also clean vocals that actually sound great. Some of the clean moments on this album feel like that one moment at the end of the third Matrix movie where they break through the clouds and see the sky.

With Qaalm, you don’t get quicky, catchy moments. You get dense ideas that evolve over time, through quiet interludes and bursting through cacophonous climaxes that sound more like an epic doom metal band than I was expecting. I can’t say this is music for everyone all the time, but people who like music that refuses to be bite-sized will find a new favorite in Qaalm.

Demonolatry kicks off with a rather short, frantic, and jarring verse over a haphazard blast beat that leads directly to a short guitar solo less than fifteen seconds into the album. This debut album from Abhorration was released on Invictus Productions. The band shares a guitar player with Obliteration, but this doesn’t fit the label of technical death metal. While the album is jaw-dropping at times, this is less flashy and more messy. Like biting into a steak and drawing blood while the cow’s still alive and very surprised at you and also you’re at a child’s birthday party.

This album features all of the worst excesses of death metal, packaged into tight and fascinating songs. You get splintering solos that sound more like splatter paintings than something musical. You get a production job from hell to support the fiery riffs. The songwriting is simply incredible, with stutters and sudden passage changes scattered around to keep the listener disoriented and guessing around the next corner. For fans of death metal who wish for something more aggressive and in your face.

Lysistrata is an independently-released folk/black metal album from the Greek duo Eldingar. At a hefty 74 minutes, this album is a commitment, and it makes you earn the listen by starting with a 4-minute acoustic song that sounds frightfully like an intro at first contact. Thankfully, Eldingar play both the black metal and the folk sides of their sound quite well. This opener is a full experience and worth your time, as is the rest of the album. Fans of Aquilus or Moonspell will find much to love here.

The play Lysistrata was a comedy about abstinencing your way to peace, and the album Lysistrata doesn’t really find that tone at all. This is more of a brooding, frowning epic. But the peaceful sentiment is still there. This album takes its time, letting their melodies really sink in before moving on. The songwriting is excellent, fully capturing you in the world that Eldingar have created. I didn’t know what to expect from this release, but found something complex and important. This is enthralling music that earns every minute of its runtime by making all of the space it takes up meaningful.