This was always going to be a comedown album. After their career-defining moment, 2010’s Meridional, the smart money was that the follow-up would be pared-down.
Distant, echoey vocal roar (punctuated by Gandalfian spoken bits), but there’re no real vocal dynamics like the latest Finntroll and Korpiklaani releases.
Thrash metal, pure and simple. Battlecross wastes no time ripping your face off with polka beats and riffs in thirds (Slayer, Dark Angel, everyone since).
I liked the glammified sounds used to spice up 2005’s Are You Dead Yet?, but most fans felt the opposite, so the next two COB albums dialed up the brutality.
The classiest melodic death metal band: So crisp and perfectly arranged – with a hint of artful restraint. I imagine them headbanging in tuxes with tails.
Your pulse will race with blackened beats, your mighty death roar jones fixed, then fueled, and your secret lust for orchestrated, dark keyboards satiated.
Amon Amarth churn out solid album after solid album because they can replicate their style and excellent writing every time without sounding stale or tired.
Shai Hulud (named after the sandworms in Dune) have been cranking out their awesome metal/hardcore hybrid for nearly 20 years, and they do their name proud.
Mediterranean metallers Nightfall continue to push their brand of accessible black metal. One would be hard pressed to consider them strict black metal nowadays.
Fresh outta high school, Chicago’s Starkill use fantasy artwork on the cover of their debut CD and title their songs things like “Sword, Spear, Blood, Fire.”
Seeing as Antarctica is a vast, harsh, desolate, ice cold expanse of misery, it’s amazing that it’s taken this long for it to get its due from the metal world.