Best Albums Releasing This Week (09/22/2023)
Kerrigan - Bloodmoon
bc / a.l
Possibly my favorite of the week. The vocal harmonies really put this one over the top for me. Traditional, old-school sung-vocal heavy metal. Great guitar leads. Plenty of classic influence but it doesn't sound dated. Great modern take on heavy metal.
Vengeance - Sewer Surge
bc / a.l
Old-school speed/heavy metal, DVP's bread and butter. Raw, reverbed mix on this one, sounds like it's straight out of the heavier side of the 80s.
Sorcerer's Sword - Mighty Pact of Evil
bc
Satanic black/thrash/heavy with a relatively low-pitch growl for the genre, and the vocals have some occasional King Diamond singing/wailing that just adds some nice spice to the record. A nice mix of metal genres happening here.
Abominated - Traumatic Putrefaction
bc / a.l
Big time "old school death metal" sound. Not exactly HM-2 buzzsaws but close. It just instantly has that old death metal feel and surprised me a bit. Some albums like this all blend together and become a bit bland and overdone, but so far this one is working well for me.
Kings Rot - At the Gates of Adversarial Darkness
bc / a.l
Symphonic/atmospheric black metal with traces of castle/medieval inspiration in the melodies.
Cannibal Corpse - Chaos Horrific
bc / a.l
One of the biggest classic gory death metal artists in the genre. People that don't like metal often have still heard of this band. Their catalog has had some ups and downs in quality and production but this latest release is sounding well-mixed and well-written to me. It's still "yep, this is Cannibal Corpse", but I think the Rutan-isms and just overall feel of the new tracks is very tight and the mix gives it all room to shine. I feel like it's a step up from some previous CC works but others may not see a difference.