Dec 122022
 

As I explained in yesterday’s round-up, we’re now beginning a week when (by design) we don’t have the normal volume of premieres on the calendar. This gives me more time to stare at the wall (I swear there’s a face in that wood plank), pick lint from my navel, twiddle my thumbs, and try to pull together more round-ups of new songs and videos.

The timing is fortuitous, because despite the fact that only a couple of weeks remain in the year, new songs keep pumping out of the heavy metal firehose, and my list of them continues to metastasize. In trying to figure out which ones to recommend here, I decided to leave out some of the bigger names, such as the new songs from Memoriam and Ne Obliviscaris, and to end with a compilation that I’m making no effort to “review”. Continue reading »

May 032020
 


Ascendency

 

We’ve now entered the second full month of a government-ordered shutdown here in Washington State, with only minimal re-openings permitted before June, and maybe not even then. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country communities are being encouraged to become human petri dishes by venturing out to movie theaters, gyms, restaurants, beaches, etc. Good luck to them. I’ll be interested to see what grows within their cells, or doesn’t.

Meanwhile I’ll try to suppress my own depression and anxiety over the prospect of another month within these walls, and continue to sift through the great mass of new metal in an effort to make my life, and perhaps yours, a little more harrowing and wretched. To that end, below you will find six individual tracks and one album to stream. I also have a collection of other complete releases I would like to recommend. Maybe tomorrow…. Continue reading »