Post-Millennial's Guide To Metal (And Some Other Stuff)

What Sam Has Been Listening To Grimes - Miss Anthropocene (2020) Maybe it’s because she silently became a critical darling over the course of the 2010s, but for some reason, I’m a Grimes fan. Her most recent release conveys the giddy anxiety of a budding romantic relationship in an increasingly gruesome postmodern society but is nowhere near as overall solid as her 2014 album, Art Angels . There are some certifiable bangers here that land alongside annoying filler cuts. Xenobiotic - Mordrake (2020) This album is phenomenal. A great deal of tech death (especially of the progressive variety) comes across as needlessly wanky and not nearly as songwriting-focused but Xenobiotic easily surmounts these fears and goes above and beyond on their sophomore album. A delectable blend of Opeth ian melody, Gorguts ian brutality and Slice The Cake ian cinematic grandeur. Sightless Pit - Grave of a Dog (2020) I think this album is a little stronger than Adam’s review(link...

Full of Hell  x Lingua Ignota  x The Body ? It would be gluttonous to ask for anything like this group. All three of these artists put out albums last year with their respective projects, and they show no sign of stopping. Comprised of Dylan Walker ( Full of Hell ), Kristen Hayder (aka  Lingua Ignota ), and Lee Buford ( The Body ), Sightless Pit  is a collective of some of the most ambitious musicians in mainstream noise today. Metal and noise are without a doubt the most incestuous genres of music, but something with these 'big' names behind it is bound to be an album of epic proportions. With each of their own projects being extremely influential in each one of their respective subgenres and frequent inhabitors of my listening rotations, I went into this record with extremely high hopes. But Grave of a Dog  is not an album to fulfill expectations.  Sounding like the lovechild of Deathpile and Health , Sightless Pit  brings the techno-inspi...

What Sam Has Been Listening To Kvelertak - Splid (2020) Much has been said about the evolution (or lack thereof) of contemporary rock. Artists either change too much and resemble something totally foreign or change too little and become a played-out cliche. This record manages to strike a perfect balance between the two with ludicrously fun hard rock riffs and boisterous blackened melodies. Certainly an early AOTY contender for me. Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything (2020) Adam went on about this record last week and I must say I disagree with his healthy praise. Something about squeaky clean progressive metalcore feels a little too close to the style’s late 2000s boogymen for me to really enjoy it. That being said, the clean sections are very well done and seem more similar to Deftones and later-era The Contortionist than Architects or Bring Me The Horizon , which is definitely a good thing. Turia - Degen van Licht (2020) Speaking of fellow wr...