The world continues to spiral out of control, but we continue to pummel our ears with many and varied tuneage. See below for this month’s picks from the five of us.

 

Joe – Vocals

Pig Destroyer – Mapplethorpe Grey

J.R Hayes is without a doubt one of the best lyricists in metal with his abstract poetry. Huge influence.

A Forest Of Stars – Decomposing Deity Dance Hall

Some of the best of UKBM, very unique and some of the nicest people you could hope to meet too.

Mgla – Exercises in Futility V

Without a doubt one of the most subtly brilliant black metal tracks of all time.

The Vision Bleak – The Outsider

Dramatic horror metal with tongue firmly in cheek. Grandiose and extremely good fun.

Annie Lennox – Love Song For A Vampire

One of the darkest sounding pop songs ever, a classic from my childhood.

Nick – Guitar

Vildhjarta – All These Feelings

Is there anything better in life than the sound of an extended range guitar and a finely tuned kick drum slapping together in perfect unison like 20 bungee cords panging on the side of an Eddie Stobart? Personally I don’t think anything else comes close.

Mora Prokaza – Blacker Than Black

Truly erratic vocal performance with a wonderfully abrasive production style. Won’t help with insomnia.

Hail Spirit Noir – The First Ape On New Earth

Eclectic mix of metal styles that leans on the proggy side, all filtered through a synthetic cosmos. If Carl Sagan was in Opeth via Kraftwerk maybe?

Kampfar – Skamløs!

Perfect accompaniment for throwing spanners at pesky draugr. Back in your tomb silly man.

Krallice – IIIIIIIIII (Track 4 from Years Past Matter)

I frown in the direction of the logistically problematic song titles on this album but they’re forgiven for having them sound as horribly foreboding as they do.

Luke – Drums

Sleep Token – Offering 

Only just got this album after being blown away by their TechFest headline show a few years ago. Lovely combination of groove, heavy, and loveliness.

Trivium – Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr

I swear shuffle has been repeating this song a lot recently. But the original track is forever tainted by the hilarious misheard lyrics, which just makes it quite amusing!

Periphery – Reptile

I feel like I may have put this exact song before, but it just keeps coming up as an epic 15-minute djent track with very proggy and symphonic aspects. I love it.

Tesseract – Smile

After Tesseract’s ‘live in lockdown’ show earlier this month, it’d really just be rude not put this here! And I feel we could all use some more reasons to smile at the moment.

Meshuggah – Futile Bread Machine

A lovely summery campfire take on their ‘Future Breed Machine’ track. Personally I really prefer the ‘Futile Bread Machine’ version – it’s just delightfully silly

Richard – Bass

Ocean Wisdom – Revvin’ (ft Dizzee Rascal)

I had something of a resurgence in hip-hop listening at the start of this month, including annoying the hell out of my partner by playing this track incessantly. I’ve picked a track of this album for a previous month, but honestly I can’t get enough of Wisdom’s flows, and Dizzee is on fire here too.

Car Bomb – Secrets Within

Nick finally ground me down and got me to like Car Bomb after months of banging on about them… Fair play, they are pretty great. It’s like Meshuggah playing on the back of a van going over speedbumps, and this track has some truly bizarre guitar sounds that I love.

Oranssi Pazuzu – Tyhjyyden Sakramentti

Try pronouncing that one. Bless you. The masters of psychedelic, Lovecraftian, swirly black metal have returned to school us all. No one else sounds close to this.

Måns Zelmerlöw – Heroes

Eurovision was one of the absolute saddest things to delete from my calendar during Covid, and whilst the replacement TV broadcast was kind of fun, it was also very dystopian and depressing. Therefore, we should all listen to this absolute babe who won in 2015. Flawless pop.

Octo Octa – Until the Moon Sets

Some wonderful house/IDM from an exceptionally talented trans producer/DJ my partner introduced me to a few years ago, and who we caught live as part of a Tramlines fringe event. Joyous, polished, marvellous.

Tom – Guitar