(Our Denver-based writer Gonzo had an eventful summer, and reported on some of those events in our pages, but he now returns to reviewing and recommending albums — six of them released earlier this year.)
Well, fuck.
To say the past three months have been busy would be my own personal understatement of the year. Said months included, in no particular order: My wedding, three festivals, one World Cup road trip, one trip to North Carolina to see Acid Bath at a brand-new venue in Asheville, and other random adventures I’m somehow blanking on. June now seems like a blurry haze, July was like a metalhead’s paradise, and August was mostly spent recovering.
As a result, life forced me to break routines and generally fall behind on business as usual this summer. Among the normal routines I broke: Posting my usual monthly roundup here. And like any routine, once it’s broken, it’s hard to get back on the horse and continue riding. As it turns out, my will to write prevails.
But now that we’re about 75% of the way through 2026, it’s been quite the year for heavy music—much of which we’ve already covered here. The following five albums are some of the best I’ve heard during that stretch that still slipped through the cracks.
CHAT PILE, WHO LOVES THE SUN
Oklahoma City noise rockers Chat Pile are seeing the unlikeliest of meteoric rises. Their music is almost unapologetically not designed for the masses: Lumbering riffs, odd song structures, Ray B.’s spoken-word/scream duality, and a sound that straddles lines between metal, punk, industrial, and folk. On paper, they’re an anomaly. On stage, they fucking destroy.
Who Loves the Sun picks up right where 2024’s Cool World left off. The band’s sonic Molotov cocktail is on full display here, lurching and recoiling and divebombing in places that shouldn’t work, but somehow do. “Deep Blue” trots around like it owns the place, with Ray B.’s odd swagger delivering lyrics just cryptic enough to be intriguing yet memorable. They dial up the chaos to 11 with “PEN I S MALL,” a song title I took one look at and tried to pronounce four different ways. It’s one of the few Chat Pile tracks I can think of in which Ray uses exclusively shouted vocals, and looking at the blue-collar rage conveyed in the lyrics, it’s understandable. Similar to so many other moments on this release, the song becomes more infectious with each successive spin.
Who Loves the Sun sounds like a band taking their gritty aural fabric and sewing on another few battle patches for the working man. It’s heavy as hell, urgent, timely, and demands to be heard.
https://chatpile.bandcamp.com/album/who-loves-the-sun
COMA CONTROL, SHED THE SLEEP
It’s one thing when a group of talented musicians releases a record as complex and forward-thinking as Shed the Sleep, but it’s another thing altogether when said group consists of just one member.
Coma Control is the brainchild of Finnish multi-instrumentalist Tapio Honka. His project stretches the prog-metal spectrum, from the hardcore-tinged core of Between the Buried and Me to the lush intricacy of Opeth, right back to the avant-garde esotericism of King Crimson. It’s remarkable that the arrangements, let alone the skillful playing, came from the mind of one man.
Personally, I was hooked from the halfway point of “Seething Hunger,” a track that plunges listeners through an epic journey of blast beats, vintage keyboards, and unexpected twists and turns. “Inherently Unmet” channels the best of all these elements, featuring an intro that vacillates between eras before coalescing into an infectious groove. “Well of Absence” dials up the psychedelia and offers respite from the brutality before “Post-Aware” smashes us back into an instrumental showcase of violent arpeggios and neck-snapping time changes.
One-man projects are often a mixed bag of inconsistency, but that’s far from the identity of what Coma Control has created with album number two. The real trick Honka pulls off in this release is making a record that’s immensely complex yet still accessible, catchy, and goddamn fun to listen to.
https://comacontrol.bandcamp.com/album/shed-the-sleep
RAUNCHY, PRISONER
16 years ago, Denmark’s Raunchy put out A Discord Electric, an album that I still think is criminally underrated. It deftly weaved melodeath with industrial, metalcore, and alt-rock into a glorious smattering of genre-bending, but in the long run, that bending of genres may have resulted in a lack of a true identity for the band.
Four years later, they released Vices.Virtues.Visions., and it didn’t have the staying power of its predecessor—at least, not for me. And after that point, the six Danes just seemed to quietly fade into the same graveyard shared by other defunct melodeath acts.
Prisoner, then, was the surprise of the year for me. I didn’t expect to get a new Raunchy record anytime soon, so my hopes were understandably high. And throughout its 10 tracks, there are moments I really like throughout Prisoner. Leadoff single “Frostbite” features a Soilwork-like keyboard riff and stampeding tempos, with vocalists Mike Semesky and Jeppe Christensen trading barbs and clean-sung harmonies. It’s a solid track that lays the groundwork for the album’s return to form. “Stranded” continues to put pieces of Raunchy’s sound together in a more cohesive way than they’ve done in a decade, with scathing vocals and a polished, attentive approach to its songwriting. “Frameworker” imitates a bit of Dark Tranquillity in the most flattering sense with soaring choruses and razor-sharp riffage.
“Revealing I” is an album highlight, showcasing every strength of the band in five minutes. But in the end, what ends up holding Prisoner back is the frustrating amount of restraint it shows at times. “Darkest Self” and “Designed Despair” seem to forcibly inject more melody and clean-sung choruses where they don’t always fit. If not for the Gothenburg undertones, they’re almost alt-rock radio tracks. Fortunately, though, these flaws don’t steal the plot entirely. Prisoner is still a solid record that’s worth a listen, even if it quelled my hopes of a return to the greatness of A Discord Electric.
https://raunchydk.bandcamp.com/album/prisoner
LONESHORE, NOTHING LEFT TO DECONSTRUCT
Since its June release, there are few albums I came back to this summer as often as the second album from the post-everything collective known as Loneshore.
Nothing Left to Deconstruct combines the prog-tinged emotional weight of Leprous with the dreariness of Katatonia and adds a dash of early ’90s Peaceville undertones. The resulting sound is a satisfying blend of styles that should appeal to fans of everything mentioned above. I fucking love music that makes you feel something, which is probably why I couldn’t stop listening to Tales from the Thousand Lakes as a teenager.
That feeling hit me hard again while listening to Loneshore. Part of it is nostalgia, to be sure, but a lot of bands try to capture that lightning in a bottle and come up short. The heaviness in Nothing Left to Deconstruct is downright cathartic at times, especially in “To Stride the Black Earth” and “Of Lost Waters.” Channeling rage, despair, and hope into one singular musical entity is no easy task, but there’s barely a moment that fails to do it well here. The songs might require some patience at first, as the intros can linger before the riffs start to slowly materalize. I can confidently promise you, though, that any amount of time you spend with this record is worth it in the end.
https://loneshore.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-left-to-deconstruct
VERDUN, ABYSSAL WOMB
France’s doom-sludge bog dwellers in Verdun have returned with their third album, and my first reaction after listening to most of it was “are these guys actually from New Orleans?”
The band’s sound consists of layers of Eyehategod and even Acid Bath at their heaviest, with vocals that just sound unrelentingly mean as fuck. The riffs, especially on “Silent Witness,” are so thick you might need a lantern to see through them. Even with solid production value, there’s something primal, raw, and menacing lurking in every track on Abyssal Womb. “La Lame et la Chair” is exhibit A for this, with a suffocating approach to mid-paced sludge that does everything short of reaching through the speakers, grabbing you by the face, and drowning you in contaminated swamp water.
For music this dark and intense, there’s also a bit of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness that I love. In name, “Rise of the Atomic Ghouls” could be a crossover thrash party anthem, but in the hands of these Frenchmen, it’s a looming inevitability that you should take up arms to prepare for. But with music this menacing and engaging, who needs doomsday prep anyway?
https://verdun.bandcamp.com/album/abyssal-womb-3
FIRES IN THE DISTANCE, CIRCADIAN PROMISE
I’ve followed this band scrupulously since their 2020 debut record, and it gives me great joy to recognize Circadian Promise as their finest hour yet.
Fires in the Distance boast a sound that’s broad, slow, and steeped in raw emotion. Their doom/death sensibilities aren’t too far off from Loneshore mentioned above, and by now, I’d even go so far to call them an American counterpart to early Amorphis and My Dying Bride. With Circadian Promise, the Connecticutt quartet aren’t afraid to get vulnerable with lyrical themes focused on grief, existentialism, and loss. Those aren’t necessarily new themes for the band, but the difference on record #3 is how they wield them.
The songs flow more effortlessly than they ever have on either preceding release. New vocalist/guitarist Brendan Hayter, who’s spent time with Obsidian Tongue and Obsequiae, among others, adds a new layer of depth to the music here. Beautifully executed arpeggios envelope “Of Radiance and Levitation” and “Lightless Days of a Songless Bird,” two tracks that make you feel like you’re bathed in sunlight on a black winter day. (I guess I can’t stay away from the Amorphis references this month.) Hayter’s leads intertwine gorgeously with those of Yegor Savonin, whose keyboard work has never sounded better as well.
It all seems to flow into the towering majesty of “Once the Silence Takes Your Place,” which is 100% going into this year’s “Most Infectious Songs” list. And when “Agonal Dreaming” fades out, this is a grief-stricken journey you’ll want to open yourself up to again.
https://firesinthedistance.bandcamp.com/album/circadian-promise
If you like what you’ve heard, be sure to follow my best-of-2026 playlist, updated regularly:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zWqE685GVpuB5M3qRDvog?si=b125edcda17d45cc