Weekly Digest February 14 — 20
New (heavy) collaboration of The Body, death metal from the masters of their craft – Immolation, new project of Matt Pike (Sleep, High On Fire) and also hip-hop, blackened death metal and much of death for any possible taste in our Weekly Digest.
The Body & OAA — Enemy of Love
I always look forward to checking out anything new from The Body, this is the band that can record a folk album or crushing metal album, and spacy music, whatever they want to, really. The Body worked with Portland producer AJ Wilson aka OAA, with whom the experimental metal duo had already collaborated in 2019, when Wilson was remixing "Adamah" for "Remixed". The album "Enemy of Love" in contrast to last year's collaboration with Big | Brave "Leaving None but Small Birds" turned out to be really heavy. A true sonic attack, only for the strong. By the way, on the main single for the album called "Barren Of Joy" you can hear the vocals of Dylan Walker, a longtime friend of The Body from Full Of Hell.
bandcamp | spotify | apple music
Burn Down Eden — Sermonize
Blackened melodic (yet no less aggressive or extreme) death metal from Berlin. Burn Down Eden released their third full-length album less than a year ago and are already releasing new material, EP "Sermonize" which contains 4 tracks of complete and total destruction, and quite a catchy one.
bandcamp | spotify | apple music | youtube music
Curren$y & The Alchemist — Continuance
I wasn't expecting anything new from the 3rd collaborative album between Curren$y and The Alchemist because their formula doesn't need to be improved. Every time you feel like you're listening to another benchmark release, instant classics as they say. Chill bits, cool storytelling, and bright flow.
spotify | apple music | youtube music
Immolation — Acts of God
Just as one can smell a storm swelling on the horizon, the cataclysmic tremor that is Immolation approaches to unleash its latest, immense creation: "Acts of God" – so immodestly Nuclear Blast announce the release of this album. And there's nothing to be modest about – this is the 11th studio album of the death metal legends from New York. Five long years have passed since the last studio album "Atonement" and finally fans of OSDM can enjoy the band's signature shredding. Separately, I want to mention the album cover – it's a really gloomy art, which best fits the content of the album.
bandcamp | spotify | apple music | youtube music
Pike vs. the Automaton — s/t
A legend of stoner metal Matt Pike (High On Fire, Sleep) presents his new project Pike vs. the Automaton with the full-length album of the same name. The Automaton, in Greek mythology, is the big robot, the guardian of the Gods. It’s a soulless big machine named Talos. The big machine that’s working against mankind at this moment. In "Jason and the Argonauts", Jason and the Argonauts have to battle this big machine guy that protects the island. Basically, what the album title is saying, metaphorically, is "Pike against the World".
"I made a psychedelic rock record that Sleep and High on Fire fans would like", – Pike says when asked for a CliffsNotes description of "Pike vs. the Automaton". "And maybe if you’re not a Sleep or High on Fire fan you might like it, too. I definitely think it’s interesting; it has D-Beat punk, two-step. It’s got everything and it still works together, it doesn’t sound odd. It’s just an off-the-wall psychedelic rock record."
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Pure Wrath — Hymn To The Woeful Hearts
Two years ago, the project of Indonesian multi-instrumentalist Januaryo Hardy was already included in the Weekly Digest with his EP "The Forlorn Soldier" which covered the Indonesian policide of the 1960s. Now Januaryo Hardy presents a full-length, which is a logical follower of the 2020 EP. In the words of Hardy: "The record serves as a dedication to a mother and survivor of the 1965 Indonesian genocide whose son was kidnapped, tortured, and brutally beheaded. For more than fifty years she had to pretend everything was normal through every second of her sorrow, living under the shadow of the still-powerful perpetrators." As in the last release, the drums were performed by Yuri Kononov (ex-White Ward).
bandcamp | spotify | apple music | youtube music
Pyrrhic Salvation — Manifestum I
Pyrrhic Salvation is a technical death metal that exists thanks to the Internet. That's right, Pyrrhic Salvation musicians have never seen each other live, they live hundreds of miles apart and have recorded this album individually in different studios (which makes drums sound "rawer" than guitar, for example). Despite the difficulties caused by such an unorthodox way of making music, Manifestum I sounds quite holistic, though not particularly groundbreaking.
Schizophrenia — Recollections of the Insane
Schizophrenia is a Belgian metal band that produces the mix of death and thrash metal that causes the legs themselves run the circle pit and the head banging back and forth at such speed that the neck crepitus is to be expected the next day. A very powerful debut. Fans of Morbid Angel, Demolition Hammer, Slayer and early Sepultura will definitely enjoy it.
bandcamp | spotify | apple music | youtube music
Sickbay — Brutal Existence
Sickbay is a hardcore / death metal band that has set itself the goal of returning "core" to New York's death metal. With a sound that owes as much to Hatebreed and Youth of Today as it does to Obituary and Suffocation, the band has been on a warpath throughout the Northeast, sharing the stage with everyone from Immolation and Cro-Mags to All Out War and Terrorizer.
bandcamp | spotify | apple music | youtube music
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