Another month down, another fresh set of horrors, another bunch of killer metal and metal-adjacent albums to help keep us sane. We’ve rounded up the February releases we think are most worthy of the spotlight, and we’re here to share them with you. We reviewed the new Slaughterday album in full here, so it’s not eligible for this list, but we recommend that one too!
Converge – Love is Not Enough
Metallic hardcore from the US
Friends, a confession: as someone who has called Converge his favourite band for a good five or six years now, I felt a tiny hint of doubt when details of Love is Not Enough were announced. Ten tracks? Half an hour? For all that the metallic hardcore genre of which they are vaunted as progenitors so often benefits from brevity, Converge have long been capable of far moreโof striking dynamics and bold experimentation and sweeping ten-minute epics. But friends, another confession: I am an idiot. Of course they can do it in half an hour. The savagery, the atmosphere, the emotional weightโall are present here and delivered in perfect sequence, from the paint-stripping opening run, through a moody interlude, into some more vintage Converge (โForce Meets Presenceโ is as raging a rager as anything the band have ever raged through), before concluding with a dynamic final trifecta that accounts for almost half the runtime. Ten or eleven albums in, depending on how you count 2021โs Bloodmoon: I, no-one does it like them.
– Ellis
The Recreant – The Code is V… Outlive the Code
Crossover thrash from the US
Following in a long line of bangers from Alicia Cordisco comes the debut from this new project, a pissed off and ultra-aggressive Molotov cocktail of crusty crossover thrash. We’ve covered Transgressive and Justicar here before, and I’m personally a huge fan of Unseen & Unfound, the titanic funeral doom album from Wraithstorm, but this will likely go down as my favorite Cordisco project once it’s sat with me for a few more weeks. The riffs are brash and crunchy, driving with burning vitriol for an unjust world the incisive lyrics, which are nothing short of scathing, delivered in arresting fashion in via the powerful lungs of Ruby Rockatansky. And the fucking bass licks! This is the good shit, folks.
– Kep
De l’Abรฎme Naรฎt l’Aube – Rituel : Initiation
Atmospheric post-black metal from Switzerland
For the love of God, please donโt make me try to pronounce this bandโs name, because I swear to you I will butcher it. But it should come as no surprise to anyone that we have another outstanding black metal record from one of the best record labels out there, Hypnotic Dirge. Just absolutely S-tier atmospheric black metal with a healthy dose of post-metal, these 11- and 12-minute songs are so exquisitely composed and performed that you will be absolutely sucked into each one, existing somewhere outside of both time and space. Yeah, thereโs a four-minute song thrown in there for good measure, but I swear you wonโt even notice how much shorter it is than the rest of the album. Seriously, itโs just downright unfair to launch such a killer record so early in the year. What was Hypnotic Dirge thinking?!
– Kirk
Speglas – Endarkenment, Being & Death
Blackened progressive death metal from Sweden
Look, if you’ve been around the site for a few years then you know how I feel about Speglas (and Morbus Chron, and Sweven, both of whom are closely related to this project). Isak Koskinen Rosemarin and his bandmates write death-adjacent metal that carries so much pain and love and life and melancholy, so many colors and shapes and ideas. It’s thoughtful, beautifully-produced music, written with intelligence both musical and emotional. This, their first full-length, delivers entirely on the notions introduced by their two EPs: it’s the definition of polished melancholy, with flashes of fire and stretches of searing longing, both heartwrenching and cerebral, with impeccable mixing to boot. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
– Kep
Lead Injector – Witching Attack
Blackened thrash from Germany
I know what youโre thinking. โIs that a witch shooting a skeleton point blank in the face on the album cover?โ Yes, it is. And you know what? Thatโs a pretty apt portrayal of what this record is going to do to your expectations. For a band entering its fourth year, this trio of newcomers packs more punch into their riffs than some veterans have in their entire careers. Not a second of this entire record is wastedโnot one single momentโand if youโre not moshing along by the time you get to โEvil Executionerโ, check your pulse because Iโm pretty sure youโre dead.
– Kirk
Final Gasp – New Day Symptoms
Deathrock/hardcore from the US
Whipping up a triumphant concoction of hardcore, deathrock, and good old fashioned horns up heavy metal, Bostonโs Final Gasp are one of those rare and special bands with a sound that feels unique but not just for the sake of being uniqueโi.e. not at the expense of actual track. The most obvious FFO that comes to mind for me is something like Twitching Tongues, but itโs definitely not just thatโthink more mood, less mosh, and a bit more drive and urgency that carries it through a highly replayable half-hour runtime. Something for the stage-divers, the battle jacket-wearers, and the goth baddies all at once. Sorry for saying goth baddies.
– Ellis
Weedpecker – V
Heavy psych from Poland
I will absolutely talk ad nauseum about my love of stoner rock. In fact, Iโm pretty sure Iโve done it here more than once. But I will also absolutely admit that there is a lot of stale-ass, boring stoner rock out there. LikeโฆA LOT. Itโs really, really hard to come up with weed references that havenโt been re-โhashed,โ but there are also plenty of bands keeping the genre not only alive but thriving. In spite of their very silly name (cโmon, admit it; itโs pretty silly), Weedpecker expertly walk the tightrope betwixt stoner rock, psychedelic rock, and space rock, blending cosmic synths that soothe the mind with incendiary stoner riffs that will transport you to worlds unseen. And while their album titling game likely leaves much to desire (at least Weezer uses a color scheme), it doesnโt take long to realize that naming their records is a mere afterthought as the contents therein are blissfully transcendent. So sit back, relax, and crank it to 11 as you close your eyes for what is sure to be one helluva trip, man.
– Kirk
Ennui – Qroba
Funeral doom from Georgia
This Georgian quintet are on album number five here but haven’t appeared on my radar until the last few months. If Qroba is any indication, I’ve got some catching up to do, because it’s a stellar record. Following in the footsteps of the funeral doom greats like Skepticism, it’s pretty straightforward in terms of structure and style, but that’s a good thing. The songs on Qroba are stately, deliberate affairs, enormous in scale and sound, and the production is top-notch. The moment where opener “Antinatalism” transitioned from its opening passage to its first vocals, as a new guitar line emerged from the thick chords and bell-like tones and frontman David Unsaved‘s stygian growls rumbled forth, I knew this was an album I was going to fall in love with. If funeral doom is your bag, know this is as high-quality an effort as I’ve heard in the last few years.
– Kep
Giallo – Tenebrarum
Hardcore from the US
Convulse Records have definitely become one of those labels thatโs worth checking out everything they releaseโespecially because they donโt absolutely bombard you like some others doโand theyโre on a fair hot streak already this year what with this and the Head Crack EP before it and World I Hate waiting in the wings for next week. This one from Giallo is an absolute ripperโbasically a load of sub-two-minute ragers played fast and mean and gnarly with a couple of creepy ambient bits courtesy of Terror Cell Unit casting a haunting atmosphere over the whole thing in a way that fittingly evokes some sort of killer stalking an unsuspecting victim before they go full slasher on them. They slow things down for the closer too, all dark and doomy and stompy with maniacal sax and vocals that sound like they might literally be someone hacking up phlegm. Sick, in both senses of the word.
– Ellis
Serpent Gates – The Veil of Darkness
Heavy metal from Finland
I’m far from an expert in good ol’ heavy metal, as my listening tastes generally skew heavier and harsher. That being said, I know a good thing when I hear it, period, and a good thing this album is. It’s got riffs for days, hooks on hooks, the production rocks, and vocalist Antony Parviainen puts on an absolute show. Lively start to finish with little resembling a ballad, lyrics that feel just the right amount of evil and just the right amount of fun; this is a perfectly delightful package of nine songs and an interlude across 41 minutes. The Veil of Darkness caught me by complete surprise and is likely to be an album I listen to a lot this year.
– Kep
Killing Pace – HCPM
Metallic hardcore from the US
If the neanderthal skull on the cover of the debut full-length from Killing Pace gives you a fair clue as to the bludgeoning contained within, the fact that said skull also has spikes and fangs explains the rest. HCPMโshorthand for โHardcore Punk Metalโ, which in turn is essentially kinda longhand for metallic hardcoreโis that real psycho shit: a gnarly fusion of hardcore and death metal and grind and powerviolence a la NAILS or END or SCARAB (whose vocalist Tyler Mullen fittingly shows up for a guest spot on closer โResist/Desensitizeโ). The whole thing tears by in less than 18 minutes, with the atmospheric and vaguely industrial instrumental โPredationโ proving as close as it gets to respite while still being the sorta thing you could imagine people throwing a few limbs about to. Sorry to do the whole โcalling it here nowโ thing but if Iโm not writing about this one in December then weโre probably all dead, which I donโt think Killing Pace would mind tbh.
– Ellis
Hermano – Clisson, France
Stoner rock from the US
I always find it kinda funny the way so many metalheads either write off or ignore stoner rock. Like, yeah, sure, itโs not as heavy as doom, death, or black metal, and itโs certainly not as โextremeโ as most of its many cousins, but the scene is incredibly rich with both history and fans. One such example is Hermano, one of the many groups that was born in the wake of Kyussโs demise, spearheaded by Kyussโs own John Garcia. As prolific as his former bandmates Josh Homme and Brant Bjork though not as oft-mentioned, what we have here is the second release from Garciaโs long-running band on my favorite stoner and doom label, Ripple Music, capturing the bandโs performance at Hellfest back in 2016. I got my hands on the reissue of Hermanoโs debut, which was a solid piece of desert rock, but this live set is absolutely incendiary. I donโt care if you like stoner rock, you need to listen to this album at least once. Itโs REALLY fucking good.
– Kirk