Written by Kep
Metal and Halloween go together like blood and guts. In fact, there’s usually a flood of metal releases on 10/31 even when it falls on a non-standard release day, just because so many bands want to stay on brand. This year Halloween falls neatly onto a Friday, which means the date is packed to the bleeding edges with albums to check out. It’s a lot to get through, so I rounded up six that I highly recommend making the time for.
Pedestal for Leviathan – Enter: Vampyric Manifestation
Blackened symphonic melodic brutal death metal
Brutal purple castle metal from the US
Kendrick Lemke has been a busy man in the ten months or so since I named Pedestal for Leviathan’s debut Festering Apparition the best EP of 2024. The blackened skramz five-piece athousandangelsandseven in which he plays guitar dropped their first EP back in January, powerviolence quartet Fatalist put out an EP of their own in March, and his solo slam project Disgustingest debuted in June. Somewhere in there he found the time to cook up a Pedestal for Leviathan full-length: 23 tight minutes of symphonic blackened brutal death, dripping blood in shades of red in the shadow of a darkened castle. This is the good shit, folks. Imagine if Dimmu Borgir went harder and also slammed sometimes. There are passages of keyboard-centric atmosphere and absolute cascades of blast beats, throat-grinding vocals from the pits of hell and thick raw bands of ultra-active fretwork decorated by symphonic stabs. Plus it’s fucking fun: who could possible not love a song about werewolf Jesus with ass-whipping tremolos and ghoulish organ? Pedestal for Leviathan is the only band out there doing this, and it absolutely slays.
Heteropsy – Embalming
Death/doom from Japan
Man, this satisfied a craving I didn’t even know I had. Mean old school death/doom out of Japan, emphasis on the old school: this shit sounds like it could be a lost recording from 1992. Featuring a monolithic helping of truly bonecrushing riffs played with maxed out HM-2 tone that can charitably be described as painfully harsh, in tandem with a kit that’s got those jangly cymbals and a hollow popping snare, Embalming is 44 minutes of agonizingly raw slow death that worships a certain era with lethal effectiveness. Strangled dissonance meshes with tortured guttural howls and gargantuan chugs, brutal and mournful all at once. With a lineup that includes two members of Frostvore—a band that you should absolutely check out it you haven’t—the songwriting is unsurprisingly strong, and the record steers firmly away from the common death/doom pitfall of becoming a slog where every song sounds the same. They kneel at the OSDM altar, but they’ve got some moody tricks up their sleeve; centerpiece “Memento Mori”, for example, with its extended opening stretch of beautifully sad picking and whispered growls.
Orm – Guld
Melodic black metal from Denmark
It’s been three years since Orm delivered their enormous masterpiece Intet • Altet, which I reviewed here and adored. While that 90-minute behemoth was a true concept album, here on Guld they take a more traditional approach with five extremely riffy tracks that span 44 minutes. This is a much more relentless experience, less atmospheric and more focused on carrying you off in an overwhelming wave of pounding rhythms; to that end, ferocious middle track “Rigdom” is a prime example of Orm’s prodigious abilities. They haven’t left melancholy and aching emotion behind entirely though, and so “Udskammet” is the real stunner here: walls of sound, melodies interwoven, giving way to the bittersweet calm of acoustic ruminance that ripples like a field of flowers in the breeze, before we’re jolted back to reality and swept away in an ever-shifting flood of intermingled anger, pain, and longing. It’s tremendous stuff, and Guld is another A+ entry in Orm’s catalogue.
Barren Path – Grieving
Grindcore from Japan/US
If you know grindcore, you probably already know about Barren Path. This is the jawdropping new project from the non-John Chang members of the most recent edition of Gridlink—Takafumi Matsubara, Bryan Fajardo, Mauro Cordoba, and Rory Korbinza—plus Cordoba’s Shock Withdrawal bandmate Mitchell Luna on vocals. Unsurprisingly it’s pretty fucking great: relentless, chaotic, ultra-violent, and packed to the gills with the sort of breakneck wizardry we’ve come to expect from Matsubara, Fajardo, and company. It’s wild shit, an unrelenting barrage of razor wire and auto-firing nail guns in a tornado, calculated and executed for maximum deadliness. There’s an almost overwhelming amount of pandemonium packed into these 14 minutes, but Barren Path never feel out of control; this is designed, exacting destruction, maniacally precise and remarkably intricate. I’ve found myself latching onto new rhythms and licks with every listen, head spinning as I try to make sense of the tumultuous brilliance. Grieving is right up there with the best recent examples of grindcore, if you ask me.
Burned in Effigy – Tyrannus Aeternum
Melodic death metal from the US
I’ve been waiting for this damn record since pretty much the moment I published my review of Rex Mortem back in 2022. Despite a complete turnover of the guitar section—Brad Dose and Vito Bellino out, Steve Bacakos and Mike Hisson in—the Burned in Effigy boys are still doling out some damn fine melodic death, sparkling with technical flair and wicked speed. It’s crisp, polished, and full of wicked energy, and even though the “neo-classical” tag that was reasonably applied to their debut isn’t so applicable here, they still manage to weave in some pretty delightful nods to classical chord progressions and patterns (see my favorite track “Wage of Exile” for a particularly overt example). Tyrannus Aeternum is an evolution of their sound but not a departure, and the strong songwriting abilities and hummable riffs that marked them out as an act to watch three years ago are still their best feature. No sophomore slump here.
Stillbirth – Survival Protocol
Brutal death metal/deathcore from Germany
German brutal deathcorers Stillbirth are nine albums deep now and the brand is still strong: it’s silly, it’s heavy, and even though it never takes itself too seriously, it’s 100% worth banging your head senseless too. That’s not to say it’s stupid, though; these guys write actual quality riffs that showcase plenty of technical ability. An album like Survival Protocol is really the best of both worlds: sure, you’ve got goofball cowbell chug grooves, acoustic beach jams interrupted by manic machine-like blasting, and dumb pig squeal slams, but you’ve also got ultra-precise drumming, songs that never drag, and the sort of fretwork from guitarists Leonard Willi and Szymon Skiba that’s as catchy as it is heavy and acrobatic. If you’ve got 36 minutes to spare and want to go to mosh city, give this a spin; but if you’ve only got a few minutes to check them out, for my money “Throne of Bones” is one of the best tracks they’ve ever written.