Necrot are capable of sheer destruction but there’s a thoughtfulness to their songwriting, an intention beyond disgust and putridity. Lifeless Birth, their third album, is rooted in reality, an old school death metal record with a focus on modern times. Void of the cosmic, supernatural, and demonic, they explore the terrors of this world.
No one song on the record sounds much like the others, and as her role in the ensemble shifts from song to song, Rosali's voice and vantage point shifts, too. Rather than being an inconsistency, this is a unique, characteristic strength of Rosali's artistry. With Bite Down, she becomes multitudinous.
While her previous releases showcased her arresting voice and undeniable spirit, they feel reserved in comparison to the new record. LATE SLAP is teeming with life, in all its joy, heaviness, and whimsy. It’s teeming with music: beautiful, uncanny layers of voice, a menagerie of synth tones, guitar jangles, tasteful strings and enthralling melodies.
Characteristically, The Collective is full of distortion albeit in a manner different from Gordon’s solo debut. The album is fully alive to our present moment. The hip-hop elements – the trap percussion, the heavy bass lines, the thick production quality – establish this fixation, proving once more that Gordon remains as forward thinking as ever.
The Los Angeles based quartet are making death metal records the way they love them, raw, mountainous, and classic. Fragments of the Ageless, the band’s fifth album is a colossal homage to riffs… big fucking nasty riffs, riffs that shred, riffs with hooks, brilliant razor sharp riffs, riffs that decimate everything else to rubble.
The Foreign Department is Rhys Edwards’ (of Ulrika Spacek) follow up to 2022’s impressive Flickering I, released under the name Astrel K. Under this moniker, Edwards’ pop sensibility is more transparently laid bare. There’s equal parts hooks, sweet melancholy, and beautiful song arrangements throughout the album.
Timony epitomizes the rock-and-roll lifer, a journey-person musician who has integrated different genres through a steady output. This new solo album feels different, however. Though she has never been absent, Untame the Tiger sounds like both a culmination of these prolific decades and a re-introduction.
Over the span of a decade there’s been some refinement and what was once masked in acid-fried tape hiss and awash in caterwauling guitars has become distilled into something cleaner, yet every bit as strong. David Nance & Mowed Sound is the next chapter of an already essential story, an evolution of his penchant for country subversion.
There have been more than enough high highs and low lows to go around since Rick Rude’s last album, and yet, Laverne feels like a celebration. It’s a record that revels in the glow of family and friends, remembering the best of times, the moments of pure joy, but it’s also mindful that we all need support to maintain stable footing.
Hot Air Balloon continues Pile’s mastery of intricate post-hardcore, animating a skeleton of sludge with the weeping flesh of psychedelic folk. Off the heels of their latest album All Fiction, the EP is composed of songs left off the final cut. Far from scraps, each song on Hot Air Balloon is striking enough to stand alone.
Toronto’s PACKS return with Melt the Honey, their third full length and their second within a span of a year, continuing to cover new ground as they go. Fronted by Madeline Link, their sound plays from a controlled burn of garage rock, anti-folk and the barebones of pop-eccentricism, redefining the mundane with gasps of fixation and sincerity.
Olympia’s Physique have returned with Overcome By Pain, a blistering six track EP on Seattle’s Iron Lung Records, giving a form to the noise of the body – the body reacting to the deep silence keeping this rotten imperialist foundation in place. Fresh off February’s Again, Physique continue their d-beat bombardment.
Darling aka Charlotte Kouklia is a member of Rose Mercie, and has already released two solo singles, various CD-R releases, and one widely distributed full-length of her own. It took her a few years or so to share another solo effort, but judging by the nine tracks (and a voice recording) on La Porte, it was quite worth the wait.
The Chicago quartet play hardcore at the speed of light, their fury only matched by their willingness to distort their assault with subtle psychedelic shifts. Harsh Reality, released via Three One G Records is aware of police brutality, corporate greed, and ever present inequality, and Stress Positions are none too happy about any of it.
Blacklisters strike the perfect level of sardonic humor and cultural disgust, so interwoven it’s hard to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Sludge and bludgeoning density are paired with acidic noise and a stumbling resolve that feels like a reprieve from polite society or a scourge on meatheads worldwide.
The Giant’s Lawn is something spectacular, a record with a natural feeling of awe, like the sun shinning from deep within in the forest woods. Their third album is ambitious, but it never feels like they set out with ambitious intentions, the songs are following a path, treading space and time with a steady atmosphere of wondrous permanence.
