Y’know, I have this thing with music where I want to hear something fresh and adventurous. Not like the new Suicide Silence where they just aped another band’s sound and an aesthetic from twenty years ago, but where bands evolve their sound in a mindful and interesting way that abide by no rules but their own. Poland’s Disperse do exactly that and have only the boundaries they set themselves. With their third studio album, Foreword, Disperse are experiencing musical freedom to the fullest.
Well crafted blackened thrash metal may not be hard to come by, but a band that’s engaging and writes plenty of diverse material is a rarity. As with most of these bands, you’re obviously going to get the Skeletonwitch or Toxic Holocaust comparison, but oftentimes a band will craft their identity to differ themselves from the larger bands in their respective styles. Of course, it doesn’t help that black metal and thrash metal have mountains and mountains of these cookie-cutter bands, so what’s stopping blackened thrash bands from doing this same exact thing and falling into line?
Now streaming “A Corpse At Every Funeral,” an instrumental track hailing from Dendritic, the collaborative album between New York solo outfits GRIDFAILURE & MEGALOPHOBE. The new single features trumpet by Mac Gollehon, who has performed on records by David Bowie, Miles Davis, Blondie, Onyx, Duran Duran, Madonna, and countless others.
Bands once considered djent are now morphing from the groundwork that they displayed in establishing the scene’s basics. The likes of Periphery and TesseracT have gone in their own, more progressive directions, with some acts pushing forward with new directions, such as America’s own Veil of Maya. Australia’s Northlane, however, has always been something of an interesting act. Since their second album, Singularity, the band seemed to form their own sound and mixed signature djent qualities with more focused songwriting and a larger sense of scale to their music. Following 2015’s Node, the band decided to drop their new album, Mesmer, out of the blue with little-to-no warning. Beyoncé style.
Nearly three and a half years after initially being announced, Marvel and Netflix have finally brought together their Defenders team. While not a functioning unit just yet, the groundwork has been laid out and we’re finally up to Iron Fist, the proclaimed “Final Defender.” The controversy and press around this series has been, to say the least, polarizing, but what does a casual Iron Fist fan such as myself have to think?
Every so often, a band comes along that turns the heads of everyone in the extreme metal underground. Perhaps it be for a revolutionary sound or just general greatness, bands can do this with a single song. Persefone is one of those, and as such have been getting their recognition since the release of 2013’s Spiritual Migration. Now with Aathma, the band are aiming higher than before, yet still playing it safe enough to appease their growing fanbase.
