In 2016, at the internationally lauded Dutch Roadburn festival, a collaboration between Converge and Chelsea Wolfe took place for the very first time under the Blood Moon moniker. After seeing the responses to the performance and how it felt to work together, they ended up deciding to take it to a next stage by working on new material to record and release as ‘Bloodmoon: I’. It promises a piece of art like no other, capturing the deeply emotional and intense atmosphere that you already can expect from these artists on their own, but elevating each other’s artistry into new heights. AOTY material for sure!

If there is one band that regularly ends up on our editorial top albums lists, it is Swallow The Sun. Every release they manage to do something special, capture something exceptional and make themselves stand out among the rest. And with ‘Moonflowers‘ that’s yet again what has happened. Songwriter Juha Raivio got really deep with his feelings and memories while living solitary during the pandemic and even created the cover art himself with some dried flowers and his own blood. The music itself is traditional STS doom & gloom, but has some interesting different sounds and amazing guests like Cammie from Oceans of Slumber. And if that wasn’t enough yet, Juha worked together with a symphony to make classical music versions of every song on ‘Moonflowers‘!

This record can’t get here soon enough. I’ve been waiting for a follow-up to Der Weg einer Freiheit‘s 2017 masterpiece ‘Finisterre‘ for a while now, and four years later my patience is finally rewarded. I’m curious to see if these German atmospheric black metal masters will succeed in topping their previous record, because frankly they haven’t made it easy for themselves. Since I adore everything these guys put out, it’s been really tough to keep my expectations in check for ‘Noktvrn‘. Although their recent single ‘Monument‘ meets them for now, we’ll have to wait for the complete experience to cast any doubts aside.

If you would’ve told us 5 years ago that Nergal, the enigmatic frontman of Behemoth, would have a dark folk/country/acoustic project, we might have reacted with disbelief. But in the mean time, after already 2 releases, Me and that Man has become a well-respected and much beloved project from the man. Just like the last release, ‘New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 2’, comprises of songs written for, or with, an impressive array of guests. Just look at this list and tell me that it’s not promising: Gary Holt (Slayer, Exodus), Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), Randy Blythe (Lamb Of God), Myrkur, Devin Townsend, David Vincent, Doug Blair (W.A.S.P), Hank von Hell (Turbonegro) and Olve Abbath Eikemo (Immortal, Abbath). How could we not look forward to a release like this?!

It doesn’t always have to be complicated. Sometimes brutal death metal is all you need. If you’re in the mood for nasty riffs, slamming breakdowns, and animalistic gutturals, fret not because Pathology are soon releasing their eleventh record, aptly titled ‘The Everlasting Plague‘. Though the band has undergone some drastic line-up changes with their last record back in 2019, with drummer Dave Astor being the only original member left, they managed to remain true enough to the band’s original sound. Looks like we’ll be able to say the same for their upcoming record, if the single below is any indication. I can’t wait to listen to some good old-fashioned hammer-smashing brutality.

Bestial Satanic black metal act Archgoat will bring their latest offering “Worship The Eternal Darkness” on November 26th, via Debemur Morti Productions. Since their inception in 2006 the Finnish trio took influences from the early wave of extreme metal like Celtic Frost, Beherit and Blasphemy. The outburst of the demonic and the primitive aggression of war metal still works perfectly for the band. In its most demonic and filthy fashion Archgoat‘s fifth full-length album proves that these maniacs have stayed true to their roots with the newest outing Archgoat give a precise definition to war metal.

8 years! That’s how long the fans of Hypocrisy have been pleading to Peter Tägtgren for new music. And now finally it’s here… First single ‘Chemical Whore‘ kicked in hard and revealed that this release is going to be everything we’ve wanted and hoped for: heavy, relentless and just the right amount of melody. ‘Worship‘ will solidify Hypocrisy again as one of the original masters of Swedish death metal and will get quite a couple of spins through our speakers.

In Mourning is one of those Swedish bands that manages to mix a level of Gothic aesthetics, proggy musicianship and hard-hitting melodeath into something that can blow you away and forget the world around you for a while. After having caught them live as support for Omnium Gatherum in 2019, we knew we had found something special and kept a close eye on these guys. So when it popped up on our radar that they’re about to release a new full-length with ‘The Bleeding Veil’, our level of excitement quickly increased.

Last year, the Finnish monsters of Lordi impressed us with the fictional compilation album ‘Killection‘, of which we thought it to be one of the most ambitious projects we had seen. Little did we know that they were about to blow us away even more with what Mr. Lordi had next up his sleeves… While having some extra free time on his hands due to the pandemic, he started thinking that the fictional compilation was cool and all, but that maybe he should back it up with a back catalogue as if the band actually had been around since the 70s. And that resulted into a massive release under the form of ‘Lordiversity’: a 7 album box set release with a full-length for every period/sound the band supposedly had. ‘Skelectric Dinosaur’ (70s rock), ‘Superflytrap’ (late 70s disco), ‘The Masterbeast From The Moon’ (early 80s concept/prog rock), ‘Abusement Park’ ( 80s hard/glam/stadium rock), ‘Humanimals’ (late 80s AOR), ‘Abracadaver’ (early 90s heavy/thrash metal) and ‘Spooky Sextravaganza Spectacular’ (90s industrial), how’s that for covering your bases?

Nothing like a good supergroup from time to time to remind you that your favourite artists have more than one ace up their sleeve. Once in a while legendary grind powerhouse Lock Up will come together whenever its members feel like they’re about to grow bored with their respective “main” acts. What’s Shane Embury up to when he’s not slacking off in Napalm Death? What’s Tomas Lindberg doing when he’s not boring himself to death singing in At the Gates? What does Adam Jarvis do when he’s sick of touring with Misery Index? Exactly! They get together and grind it up a notch, only to spew out the occasional record. And that’s precisely what they’ve done this year. ‘The Dregs of Hades‘ is their latest brain-child which will drop towards the end of this month. Think Haemorrhage or Exhumed with a bit more schwung.