Here are all the new releases for June 16th through June 29th. Releases reflect proposed North American scheduling, if available. Expect to see most of these albums on shelves or distros on Fridays.
See something we missed or have any thoughts? Let us know in the comments. Plus, as always, feel free to post your own shopping lists. Happy digging.
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New Releases 6/16-6/22
Primordial Serpent — Triumphant Son of Darkness | Master of Khaos | Black Metal | Canada (Manitoba)
Previous Primordial Serpent releases were steeped in Dark Souls lore and iconography, so it’s a bit disheartening that their tenth album deals with typical Satanic themes (that is, if you’re From Software fanboy like myself). That said, the music is still strong. Triumphant Son of Darkness is punchy, second-wave black metal with heavy influences from the Finnish school. It’s in no way progressing the subgenre, but that doesn’t dampen its strengths; it’s dark, simple, and hypnotic.
–Colin Dempsey
…
Alcest — Les chants de l’aurore | Nuclear Blast | Post-Black Metal + Shoegaze | France (Paris)
Alcest return five years after Spiritual Instinct with less riffs and more airy textures. Viola da gamba, pianos, and shimmering melodies are all over Les chants de l’aurore, resulting in their lightest album since Shelter but arguably one of their strongest. We’ll have a full feature on Neige soon.
–Colin Dempsey
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Sumac — The Healer | Thrill Jockey Records | Sludge Metal | Canada (Vancouver, British Columbia)
The Healer‘s first single “Yellow Dawn” revealed SUMAC were in athletic form, springing between ripping guitar solos, fuzzy riffs, and enticing sludge metal. If the rest of the album follows suit, it’ll not only be one of 2024’s most immediately gratifying post-metal records, but one of its best releases.
–Colin Dempsey
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Inherits the Void — Scars of Yesteryears | Avantgarde Music | Atmospheric Black Metal | Clermont Ferrand (France)
That Dan Swanö mastered Scars of Yesteryear should indicate the album’s vision. It reveres 90s Swedish melodic death metal through an atmospheric black metal lens, sonically relying on the former for riff inspiration and then applying said riffs to paint the landscape, foreground, and background. It is beefy, delightfully so. You can also mark it down as a mid-year contender for this year’s Butthole Album Art Awards.
–Colin Dempsey
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Hyperdontia — Harvest of Malevolence | Dark Descent | Death Metal | Turkiye + Denmark
Harkening back to the halcyon age of extreme atonality when death metal largely disavowed the outer cosmoses for brain-eating zombies, ritual killings, and recherché flesh-mangling, this Danish-Turkish obscenity cultivates chasmic flumes of congealing riffa*ge underpinned by doom-laden intermezzos and subtle technicality, even landing an occasional Phrygian suplex in the third quarter. Putrid, savage, and gratifyingly gratuitous, Hyperdontia’s third full-length pays its gore-encrusted dues to the old-school with a disgustingly wicked bacchanalia of Children of the Corn-style crop rotation.
–Spencer Grady
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Portrait — The Host | Metal Blade Records | Heavy Metal | Sweden
Portati’s latest album is ballsy heavy metal that draws from Mercyful Fate and other slightly evil but smile-inducing acts. It’s almost too fast on certain tracks like “The Blood Covenant,” as if the riffing is challenging vocalist Per Lengstedt to a 400-meter dash. Yet, what may at first sound out-of-sync soon congeals into an intoxicating dance.
–Colin Dempsey
…
New Releases 6/23-6/29
Noxis — Violence Inherent in the System | Rotted Life Records | Death Metal | United States (Cleveland, Ohio)
This is delightfully disgusting death metal. The bass jumps down your throat and the vocals are cavernous belches. The production is paper thin. There are horn solos on “Horns Echo over Chorazim.” It is sublime, if you adore early 90s tech-adjacent death metal. You could not better capture the feeling of four dudes smashing trash cans than Noxis do here.
–Colin Dempsey
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Altar of Oblivion — In The Cesspit Of Divine Decay | From The Vaults | Heavy Metal + Doom Metal | Denmark
On their fourth album, Altar of Oblivion demonstrates that there’s an emotional side to mid-paced heavy metal about war. They’ve taken inspiration from the war diary of guitarist Martin Meyer Sparvath’s great-grandfather. This personal aspect feels more touching than other rote descriptions of trench battles.
–Colin Dempsey
…
200 Stab Wounds — Manual Maniac Procedures | Metal Blade Records | Metal Blade | United States (Cleveland, Ohio)
Over the past three years, 200 Stab Wounds have become one of the best live acts in metal. I’ve seen them a handful of times, because they’re on the road more often than they’re on the toilet, and every performance has improved over the last. That’s bled through to their recorded music, with tracks like “Hands of Eternity” being more ambitious than anything on Slave to the Scalpel without discarding their bloody edge. When you have the chance to see them, and you will have the chance, take it; it’ll hopefully be loaded with Manual Maniac Procedures‘s best cuts.
–Colin Dempsey
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Anvil — One and Only | AFM Records | Heavy Metal | Canada (Toronto, Ontario)
If the prerelease singles are anything to go off of, One and Only will be stuffed with simple tracks that swing to audience demands, a wise decision for an act as heralded for their live shows as Anvil. The easy-to-follow grooves and lyrics, along with an abundance of gang choruses, are primed for crowd singalongs.
–Colin Dempsey
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Limbonic Art — Opus Daemoniacal | Kyrck Productions | Symphonic Black Metal | Norway (Sandefjord)
The symphonic elements on Limbonic Art’s ninth full-length release are relatively minor, only appearing in the form of additional guitar layers and choir vocals on certain tracks. As such, Opus Daemoniacal is dense, not overstuffed. With its melodic traits and light symphonic touches, it comes off as the ideal tribute to Norway’s second-wave black metal acts.
–Colin Dempsey
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Solar Temple — A Gift That Should Have Been Preserved for the Great Lights | ConSouling Sounds | Atmospheric Black Metal | Netherlands
Gestating grand conspiracies concerning cosmic priests and wild galactic liturgies, this Dutch duo leave scant trace of their black metal origins with an absorbing trilogy of oscillating intergalactic drones and monstrously whirring turbines, plotting an alternate time-space continuum through the electronic hypnagogia of Eduard Artemyev’s most freakish sci-fi zones.
–Spencer Grady
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Filed under:
200 stab wounds,
alcest,
altar of oblivion,
anvil,
hyperdontia,
inherits the void,
limbonic art,
noxis,
portrait,
Primordial serpent,
solar temple,
sumac,
upcoming metal releases
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