The most interesting releases of the week!
Just as Venom stopped being good when they learned to play their instruments, Fleshgod Apocalypse lost something when they learned that metal albums don’t have to have terrible production. Opera is Fleshgod Apocalypse‘s sixth album, released on Nuclear Blast. And while this band may have lost part of what made their early albums special, they’ve gained so much that Opera will be at home in any metal fan’s collection.
After the least surprising operatic vocals in metal history on the intro track, Fleshgod Apocalypse open the album proper with “I Can Never Die.” This is the catchiest song of the year. This level of absurd excess, virtuosity, and ear-worm choruses haven’t been combined this well since the last Luca Turilli album. Sure, the symphonic elements on Opera aren’t what they could have been. And that makes the album name disappointingly misleading. But wow Fleshgod Apocalypse sound like a dark fusion of Septicflesh and Rhapsody Of Fire here. Any death metal fan should have already checked this out, but if you don’t usually like the genre Fleshgod Apocalypse might surprise you. Best album of the week.
For a dollar store version of Sabaton, All For Metal pull their weight. They subtitled their album Year Of The Dragon, actually released it during the year of the dragon per Chinese zodiac, included a giant fire-breathing dragon on the gaudiest and worst cover I’ve had to upload to this site in quite a while, and then they start the album talking about Valhalla in a spoken word intro that leads to a spoken word beginning to the second track. The first of two main vocalists is clearly trying to rasp like Joakim Broden. The whole thing is so gimmicky, so full of dishonest slop, and so cynical that it’s a miracle anyone even bothered to listen to this album at all. Gods Of Metal (Year Of The Dragon) was released on Reigning Phoenix Music.
Somehow, all of this albums vices come together to form something enjoyable and memorable. It helps that All For Metal can write catchy, simple hooks and lean on them until they collapse. But the band also manages to base their sound in love of the genre. They copy Sabaton out of enthusiasm rather than laziness. And while has some issues with the vocals and songwriting, and the themes don’t go further than being a Halloween costume, listening to All For Metal was an enjoyable experience and I’d gladly listen to this album again any time.
Hopium, released on Season Of Mist, joins a long list of excellent metal albums that will get less attention than they should due to having a terrible name. On Kingcrow‘s eighth full-length release, they give us a long, brooding progressive metal release that barely lets the light shine through. Even though the album starts out with something that sounds closer to an energetic dance beat than a dark prog opener, the song warps this beat into a frayed and aggravated energy. While the beat never stops, Kingcrow do manage to layer different sounds on top and make this repetition sound fresh and interesting throughout the track’s runtime.
That’s the name of the game for the full album. While Kingcrow can write a good melody, that’s not what makes their music tick. Instead, they’re excellent at adding or removing small elements to of their track and re-contextualizing the rest of the song. When the drums drop out of “Glitch,” you feel tense. Sometimes this leads to a long, somber passage that gives the song depth, sometimes the song instead bursts into a high point. Hopium sounds intricate and expansive. Kingcrow have written in a manner that demands many listens to fully appreciate what they’re going for.
Bandcamp says that this record is released on the 30th, but the promotional material said that it was released last week. It deserves to be talked about somewhere, so here we go. 死 & 4 死 Death is brought to us by Sentient Ruin Records. This is a re-release of two Struggling Harsh Immortals (S.H.I.) albums, one of which was already a compilation of the band’s previous EPs and was released in 2015. The promotional material calls this project a “hardcore/metal/industrial supergroup,” and I guess there’s not a better way to describe them. S.H.I. play music that sounds like it’s on the edge of seven different genres at once, without fully wanting to be a part of any of them. There’s thrash metal influence, but punk dominates the landscape. The whole thing sounds fried and like it shouldn’t exist in the best way.
On these albums, you get a lot of reverb, flashy guitars, and simple drumbeats surrounded by sharp fills. While the band never does anything structurally startling with their music, S.H.I. combine their style of riffs and their tone in a unique way. This music feels danceable and skittery. I thoroughly enjoyed these releases, and am a bit sad that the band didn’t have more to offer. Hopefully this re-releases gets them some more recognition.
