My appreciation for music has its own peculiar cycles, some weeks I am obsessed with it, and others I find myself abjuring it in favour of other media like podcasts or background video essays. Sometimes though, I don’t really get to make that choice, as there is a deluge of excellent music releases back to back to back which is so thrilling and so fun that I feel like I’m 16, listening to Impaled Vibration by Pissgrave for the first time. During those halcyon days, if halcyon means wearing the same 4 shirts and 2 pants every day, I was probably the most voracious in my consumption of metal, death metal in particular, when I would be upset with myself for only listening to 4 new (to me) albums in a day. Every so often I am struck by a beam of that excitement, and this week was absolutely one of such cases.
Admittedly, this interval of time isn’t as neat as a month, it actually works out to about 33 days, but in that time, 6 spectacular albums were released that feel like they really reminded me of why I like death metal so much, for all of the right reasons. I’ll take you on a brief tour of the highlights, from oldest to newest.
Civerous – Maze Envy
One of the drawbacks of being, in my estimation, the premier label for death metal is that sometimes it is easy for remarkable albums to go unnoticed. I have to confess my guilt here, I wasn’t terribly familiar with Civerous or their game prior to the release of their very pink sophomore album Maze Envy. Maybe it was that powerful rose glare, or that Seagrave-esque art (done by Juanjo Castellano), but I sort of avoided it, until eventually giving it a spin, probably while playing Helldivers 2 (Bolt Thrower sounds great when playing that game). Telling you I was impressed is a bit redundant considering its placement on this list, but it was impressive nonetheless. There are a lot of bands that call themselves death-doom, and then are pretty boring, hell there are a lot of bands that call themselves death metal and then are pretty boring. Civerous is not one of them, the weight and depth of their guitars fills your ears like soil on a grave, the drumming is nicely punchy (check out 5:38 on Shrouded In Crystals for their own take on a Defeated Sanity mid-song drum solo), and the songs have a sense of proceeding ever lower. The album really shines on songs like Geryon (The Plummet), which have the patience and space for string arrangements evoking other genre masters like the eternally underrated Weeping Sores. I played them on the show and a friend texted in to remark that they sounded very regal, which I thought was a great way to put their style. Regal, crushing death-doom to soundtrack a crumbling edifice. More on that later.
Check out the aforementioned Geryon (The Plummet) to hear Civerous at their best.
Apparition – Disgraced Emanations from a Tranquil State
Undoubtedly an improvement both in music and name from their 2021 debut Feel, Apparition have staked themselves as an excellent presence in the world of death metal. If Civerous are on the Disembowelment or Hooded Menace side of death doom, then Apparition are firmly on the Incantation side of the spectrum. What impresses me the most about this band is their depth, they weave together a lot of different extreme metal ideas in a very satisfying fashion, they can throw you a black metal tremolo part, a classic death metal pinch-fest, or even some eerie noise adjacent stuff. It doesn’t dip into the same instrumental well as Civerous, but its certainly able to evince its own eerie atmosphere, occasionally reminiscent of Blood Incantation. There is a lot to love here, not least of all the wonderful cover art by Vama Marga.
Check out one of my favourite songs, and absolutely my favourite title off this album, Imminent Expanse of Silence and Not (Or Not).
Heresiarch – Edifice
I told you there would be more on the subject of edifices (edifi?) and here it is. War metal can be a difficult genre for me, I respect what it sets out to do, but I do find myself wanting for more breathing room and exploration than the format affords. Riffs sometimes don’t get the chance to breathe, and songs don’t often blossom into anything, confined as they are by the chaos of constant hammer blasts, divebombs and howled vocals. Suffice to say I like to take my war metal with a shot of death metal in there, as in the case of the wonderful Ascended Dead. Hailing from the birthplace of war metal Heresiarch also got that memo, and boiled up this seething concoction of hammer-blasty aggression that really scratches that itch. Not since Diocletian‘s wonderful 2014 record Gesundrian have I heard a war metal record riff this hard. Just listen to the opening of Gloryless Execution and you’ll get what I mean. The songs have just enough space to be punishing rather than just chaotic, the violence of their sound has enough time to really set in and sting. I have to pay my respects to the production choices here, the drums sound great, and the guitar tone has the right balance of weight and sharpness. Deft songwriting is really the cherry on top, songs like Militate Pyrrhic Collapse flex the black metal character of war metal, and give it just enough of a mournful tone to backdrop all that sweet sweet violence.
Check out the black metal tinged fury of the quick 40 second ditty that is Mystic and Chaos
Replicant – Infinite Mortality
Before I get started, I have a bone to pick with this record. The snare sucks. That is just one criticism, but I’m starting to get really fed up with lame snares bringing down good extreme metal. There is simply no excuse for a band with this cool of an approach to death metal to be playing something this flat and boring. It’s even more of a shame because they’ve had better drum tones on previous albums like 2018’s Negative Life, where their snare was much more agile and fit better with their sound. Its almost a testament to the quality of this band that they are able to produce such compelling and interesting death metal despite such an obvious deficiency. Replicant are all about the riffs, weaving together heaving chugs with piercing atonal leads, or stinging pinch harmonics, they really know how to make a riff that makes you frown. This album also features some almost sludgey parts, where they really slow it down and bash your head in with some of these riffs, and its in these moments where the riffs, songwriting and production all fit together nicely. Reciprocal Abandonment is a high point on the album, where they come back for an unbelievable breakdown at the end, which immediately sold me on the entire record, bad snare or not. But just imagine that breakdown with the snare from the first few Mutilatred albums is all I’m saying.
Check out the jaw-dropping slammery of Reciprocal Abandonment
Antichrist Siege Machine – Vengeance of Eternal Fire
Completing our war metal double header is what feels like the most popular band in war metal right now, Antichrist Siege Machine (best name so far?). If I waxed lyrical about all of the nuance, cleverness and space that Heresiarch showed off in their latest record, and why it made war metal so appealing to me, Antichrist Siege Machine is the opposite. Sometimes, all pretenses of subtlety and taste that goes into my opinions on art can be totally swept away by sheer force. ASM don’t have any of the flourishes or songwriting that I praised so highly in Heresiarch, and that is just fine. They are utterly rabid, chaotic and overwhelming in a wonderful fashion, I can’t help but be swept away by the unforgiving aggression of their style. This is the blast beat put on an altar as the ultimate expression, enshrined by swarming guitars and abyssal howls. I can’t help but smile, my brain has been permanently warped to like things that go fast, and these boys turn that dial up to 11. When they deign to toss you the occasional midtempo part, it is not wasted, like at the end of Lysergic War Psychosis where they crack your skull with about 10 seconds of the heaviest chugs I’ve heard all year. I have to tip my hat to the absurdly good drum production at work here, the snare punches through everything else, and it almost sounds like you’re in the same room as the cymbals. Don’t go into this album looking for big moments, just let yourself get washed away in the wake of its destruction.
Honestly you could choose any track for this part, but Sisera is as good a place to start as any.
Atrae Bilis – Aumicide
In a way this album is what inspired this whole list. I’d had a great day of music listening, and this thing just slapped me in the face, I thought I’d seen it all, and this thing totally blew away my expectations. Atrae Bilis style themselves as “spiritually dissonant”, and I think that is very fitting for this band, beyond simply how they play their guitars. They take a very interesting approach to the genre of death metal generally, they have a very “clean” and shiny production, have some moments that wouldn’t be out of place on a modern deathcore record, or even the aforementioned Replicant. There are some black metal parts, like the excellent A Kingdom of Cortisol, which is somehow reminiscent of the latest Our Place of Worship is Silence. Heavily downtuned chugs, weird vocal effects, and a whole lot of weird guitar harmonics are a very tasty combination, all twisted together under this “spiritually dissonant style”. I remember being impressed by their 2020 debut, and they have continued to impress as their own death metal cyborg, I’m looking forward to what the future holds for this band.
Check out the thoroughly excellent To Snuff the Spirit Guides