Sixteen years into their career, Curse The Son have unleashed a devastating work in ‘Delirium’. By taking many cues from classic stoner and doom bands and then adding their own brand of extra sludge, this fifth album from the New Haven heavyweights certainly doesn’t sell itself short in terms of riffs. The record’s general heaviness will be enough to win over a huge section of the metal community, but some already intense workouts take on new levels of darkness when the arrangements are peppered with some very bleak lyrical concerns.
Tag Archives: metal
UNEARTH – Bask In The Blood Of Our Demons EP
Unearth’s eighth release ‘The Wretched; The Ruinous’ presented fans with an uncompromising thirty six minutes worth of pure metal. The US metalcore band pulled out all the stops to deliver a truly heavy set which pulled together the strongest elements of their crossover sound. The album’s highlights really showed how broadly the band could apply their heaviness for mixed results: ‘Eradicator’ drew from the groove metal of Pantera’s ‘Far Beyond Driven’; the brilliant ‘Broken Arrow’ slowed down just enough to show off more of a timeless hardcore approach; ‘Dawn of The Militant’ applied angular rhythms against a slow and sludgy groove before dropping into some superb thrash passages, effectively showing off the full range of the band’s talents, and ‘Mother Betrayal’ even found time to drop melodic arpeggios and goth influenced vocal passages into something derived from classic Lamb of God. ‘TW;TR’ was one of 2023’s strongest metal discs – one of those records that offered fans of extreme sounds something great, no matter where they chose to drop in.
HOLLOWKIN – Confessions & Failures EP
A new arrival on the metal scene in 2023, Bath based HollowKin have a sound that doesn’t pull any punches. They’re an impressively heavy unit, but unlike some of their would-be peers, they’re not just content with exploring a perfect metalcore sound, or driving forth with a world of thrash riffs which pay homage to their heroes and influences. The five tracks which make up their 2024 debut draw from a broad array of metallic fare, taking in intensive prog metal, groove metal and a pinch of doom and hardcore, along with a whole world of metalcore, creating something that’s sometimes familiar, but always without compromise.
Watch: Skye unveil new video for ‘Last Memory’
In 2022, British metal act Skye released their ‘Foundations’ EP, which shared three contemporary sounding tracks, blending a pleasingly heavy tone with a melodic core that advertised them as the kind of band who’d have a crossover appeal.
SLOWER – Rage And Ruin
Formed as a vehicle for playing Slayer classics at a doom metal tempo, Slower had the potential to be the greatest “novelty” band ever. They were smart, though: once you’d got past the amusement of hearing some of your favourite speed-oriented metal bangers played as funereal dirges, their debut album held up on its own merits. Fu Manchu man Bob Balch and members of Kylesa, Monolord and Year of The Cobra each bought their own unique talents to the project, and each of the tracks played out like the ultimate in classic doom and sludge fare. The result certainly wasn’t what Tom Araya had envisaged, but it was fantastic to hear a new twist on the classics.