It was roughly two years ago that Saor became a landmark band in the underground scene. Blending atmospheric black metal with a heavy amount of orchestrated folk metal, Saor was the topic of discussion after releasing 2014’s Aura. The studio-only project briefly took a turn to playing live, but has since returned to its original status, allowing founder and composer Andy Marshall to focus heavily on songwriting. Thus, we are given Guardians, the project’s third album that builds off of everything that came before it, and delightfully so as it is shaping up to be a bigger album than its two predecessors.
Is it just me, or is death metal just stupidly great this year? The underground scene for death metal seems to be in full effect this year, and with it bands are bringing this extra degree of darkness to the mix, creating something really awesome atmospheres, pummeling riffs, and quality albums from start to finish. With plenty of music in the genre being released this year, let’s take note of some of the best the genre has offered in the past ten months.
Halloween is one of the more metal holidays in the year: the emphasis on horror, the dark decorations, and the self-destruction through candy consumption is where everything tends to line up between the music and the festivities. Unquestionably, if you wanna get in the mood for the holiday, or have the ultimate metal-esque horror house soundtrack, here’s some starting points to make the process easier.
20 Buck Spin and Osmose Productions present the debut LP by harrowing Portuguese death metal sect, THE OMINIOUS CIRCLE, having slated Appalling Ascension for release in January. As an early glimpse into the album’s top-level musicianship and decimating delivery, a stream of the track “From Endless Chasms” has been hosted.
It’s not very often, but some weeks there’s just too many albums to come out with and they’re so to-the-point that you need to give blunt, direct commentary on each one. Running with a snake theme, Testament, Crowbar, and the new super-group Serpentine Dominion all released albums, and depending on your flavor you might have something worth picking up! Ranging from ballistic death metal to crushing, doomified sludge metal, this past week had more than enough to appease your varied or particular taste.
AVENGED SEVENFOLD has “surprise-released” THE STAGE, becoming the first-ever rock band to drop an unannounced album in both digital and physical form. THE STAGE, available HERE, is the band’s 7th studio album and first for Capitol Records. The Southern California-based quintet (vocalist M. Shadows, guitarists Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance, bassist Johnny Christ and drummer Brooks Wackerman) revealed the news at midnight eastern, surprising the millions of fans who were watching their live-streamed performance from the rooftop of the Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood, CA. The groundbreaking event saw the band give a 3D/360-degree live-streamed virtual reality performance, enabling fans around the globe...
I have something of a love-hate relationship with Avenged Sevenfold. Arguably one of the bands that was present in my transition into more extreme metal bands, (City of Evil and their self-titled circa 2008) I did not find myself a fan of Nightmare or Hail to the King upon their release. I still don’t hold a place in my heart for either albums, but at the very least, it was great to see the band grow bigger with each and every release. When people claim there’s never going to be another Metallica or Iron Maiden, look at Avenged Sevenfold and you’ll be proven wrong. That idea, though, is what makes this surprise-release album, The Stage, so interesting.
