Category: Upcoming Music

Upcoming New Releases – November and Beyond

On By bigbadburchIn Upcoming Music1 Comment

It’s time to preview some promo singles from albums coming out in the near future. I’m still trying to get the timing right on these and December is generally a dead month for album releases so I’m still feeling this thing out.

Also, I will feature a few second singles from upcoming albums I talked about in the last (and first) version of this. I won’t normally do that because I’d like to cover more ground but it helps in the early going to again highlight a few releases I’m really looking forward to.

One more note – this one is almost exclusively metal, with one (two, if you’re elitist) exception. I haven’t run across a lot more from other scenes that’s releasing soon. I’ll try to do more to mix things up in the future, it will help when we get into next year.

Cradle Of Filth – Crawling King Chaos

I’m leading off with one I meant to have on the first round of previews. The main issue is that CoF’s new album Existence Is Futile comes out this Friday. I though it wasn’t until November, silly me.

I mean, it’s Cradle Of Filth. I am a fan, have been since the later ’90’s. I haven’t really been disappointed with anything I’ve heard from them and while this has a slightly different sound probably due to new band members and the passage of time, it’s still signature Cradle. I doubt I’ll have any issue with this new album.

Shadow Of Intent – From Ruin … We Rise

This cut is from the upcoming album Elegy, which hits early next year. Shadow Of Intent are one of deathcore’s more interesting prospects, fully embracing symphonic and prog-like elements instead of the often-sterile technical showcase many of the -core bands get into.

From Ruin… We Rise offers a new showcase of this use of melody and symphony to create a heavy yet smooth listening experience. This isn’t about wowing with crazy vocal ranges or BPM (not that I mind that…) but using the medium to present a well-arranged and executed song. It makes for a nice preview for the upcoming album.

Ghost – Hunter’s Moon

This one is a little different – it’s not a preview for an upcoming album. Rather it’s a soundtrack release for the now-in-theaters Halloween Kills. I personally haven’t seen the film and probably won’t anytime soon, I’m not a huge movie buff.

I’ll admit this too – I’m not a huge Ghost buff either. I think they have some decent stuff, I do like their song Year Zero quite a bit. I did also see them open for Iron Maiden in 2017 and I thought they put on a really good show.

But I don’t own their albums or seek them out much at all. And this song doesn’t really hold my attention much. I don’t know if this is the territory they’ve moved into after their more mellow and slower stuff from their early days but I can’t really hang with this. I don’t think it’s badly executed, I just can’t get into it.

Hypocrisy – Dead World

This is one that I’m “cheating” on. I covered Worship’s lead single Chemical Whore in my last romp through preview tracks, yet right then Hypocrisy offered this second song. The song gets into how screwed up the world is. I agree. The song is another sign that the new album is going to be a great release after a long period of inactivity.

The real highlight here is the video – it’s a woman fighting her way through a zombie apocalypse. It is pretty brutal and honestly would lead me to ask questions about who is allowed to post what on YouTube, but I won’t do that because I don’t want Hypocrisy getting their video yanked. (Not that I have that kind of stroke, but there’s a conversation to be had about YouTube content). Anyway, it’s a stunning video and I’m looking forward to the new album dropping next month.

Mastodon – Teardrinker

Here with another band I don’t really keep up with – I liked their first few albums but I drifted off after that. This song is just ahead of a new album, Hushed And Grim, which releases the Friday before Halloween on October 29.

This song is pretty cool. It’s not what I think of when I think Mastodon but like I said, I haven’t been in touch with them in a long time. I won’t be in line to buy this on release day but it’s an album I’ll give a spin to and see if there’s more there I can get into. I like the more melodic approach but it takes some getting used to when I haven’t heard them since their heavy early days.

Be’lakor – Foothold

This is melodic death metal from Australia (not Sweden! Shocking, I know) that comes from the album Coherence that releases Halloween weekend, or October 29 for those that don’t know when Halloween is. It has been a five-year gap between releases for the band.

This is some really good stuff, with arrangement and movements that sets it apart from the more savage extreme metal out. Of course there is more like this these days but this group does it quite a bit better than the “look we can put every kind of metal subgenre into one song” thing that kind of permeates metal in our current climate. It’s well-structured and offers some hooks that hold attention. I’ll definitely be keeping an ear out for this on its release.

Emma Ruth Rundle – Blooms Of Oblivion

I’ll close the same way I did the first time around – with a new single from Emma’s upcoming album Engines Of Hell. This is one of my most anticipated releases of the year and it will finally see the light of day on November 5.

While lead single Return felt very deliberate and orchestrated, this song flows more with a gentle acoustic guitar and piano accompaniment. Both the lyrics and video are sparse yet, I don’t know, kind of spooky, as if Emma got David Lynch involved. It’s a very simple video and has a almost ingenious yet profound ending.

Emma has stated that this album is sparse, fragile and a departure from the more noisy effort On Dark Horses that captured a lot of attention in 2018. And she wasn’t kidding – both songs so far are even more stripped down than her 2016 effort Marked For Death. That album’s closing track Real Big Sky was a quiet yet soul-eviscerating affair and so far it sounds like Engines Of Hell is operating in similar, yet not exact circles. I am absolutely looking forward to it, but I’m honestly also kind of scared. This level of raw emotion might be kind of fucked up to listen to for an entire album.

That covers it for this round of previews. We’ll see if we get much to go with as far as stuff coming out in December, since most acts like to get their stuff released in time for album of the year considerations. Perhaps some more bands will preview material that’s going to hit next year as early Christmas gifts, we will see.

Looking At New Music – October/November

On By bigbadburchIn Upcoming Music1 Comment

I want to shift gears a bit on the blog and go through a handful of preview songs for upcoming albums. Some of these works have set release dates and a few others aren’t even named yet, but the acts have released singles to build hype for their new efforts. I’ll start doing this on a semi-regular basis, as I find myself with more songs than time or space presently allows. These will genre-hop through just whatever is on my radar at any given time.

Guns N Roses – Hard Skool

This is the second track from an apparent upcoming EP and the first new GnR music to feature Slash and Duff since the early 1990’s. I wasn’t in love with Absurd, the first song we got and probably a leftover from the maligned Chinese Democracy era. This song is a lot better though I won’t fall all over myself for it either. The verses drag a bit but it gets to some classic GnR in the chorus. I don’t know if this song was also one of many Axl has laying around from his protracted recording sessions or if there was more collaboration between the reunited band members.

This new EP will be more of a curiosity for me than anything but it’ll be interesting to hear what Guns N Roses has to offer the world decades after their prime.

Limp Bizkit – Dad Vibes

I wrote earlier this year about Limp Bizkit and some shifting attitudes toward them, perhaps a retro appreciation for their era and at least some calming of the hatred they’ve endured over the years. Now they’re bringing new music for the first time in a decade, perhaps the truest test of how long their 2021 renaissance will last.

I never was a real fan of the band and even if I can look back on my past hatred for them as a bit blind, I probably won’t be beating down the door of my local record store to pick this up on release day. But this song is pretty cool. It’s short, chill and still Limp Bizkit. I can appreciate it. If nothing else, it reminds me that Fred Durst and I are both getting older, and that’s ok.

Swallow The Sun – Woven Into Sorrow

I ran across this on social media last week when the song was released. Woven Into Sorrow is the lead single from the band’s new effort Moonflowers, which comes out November 19 on Century Media Records.

I’ll be honest – Swallow The Sun is one of the many bands I have heard of, but not heard. I just haven’t got to them in all my years of metalheading. Well, I’m happy to say that I’m on board now.

Woven Into Sorrow is some excellent gothic doom, or symphonic doom or whatever subset of doom a person might call this. This song is about as sad as it gets and moves into a harsh vocal passage toward the end that blends well with the song’s tone. I will absolutely be checking out the new album when it hits.

Marissa Nadler – If I Could Breath Underwater

Marissa is not an artist I’d even heard of until last month when she announced her new album The Path Of The Clouds. As it turns out she has been around a long time and has a back catalog absolutely worth checking out, a very dreamy pop-folk style, if that’s a real thing.

This song, the album’s second single, is an absolute dreamscape, gently floating into itself or perhaps everything. I’d say that this isn’t a style of music I’d normally gravitate toward, but perhaps it’s more fair to say it’s a style that I’ve just now found space to appreciate. This is another release I’ll be checking out when it hits, which in this case is October 29th.

Converge – Blood Moon

Huh, it’s new Converge. I haven’t listened to them a lot over the years but I’ll give them another spin, they’re historically very noisy and I like noise and …

… oh, hello Chelsea Wolfe, wasn’t expecting to see you here.

So this new Converge album Bloodmoon I is a collaborative effort between the band and indie queen Chelsea Wolfe. Various configurations of this lineup has performed as Blood Moon in the past and now a full album of work under the Converge banner will be realized November 19th.

I’ve only had one listen to the song so far and I’ll be playing it again, that’s for sure. This is creepy, haunting and fantastic. I guess this collaboration isn’t as unlikely as it seems, given their past live performances. But it wasn’t something I was really aware of and this song came totally out of nowhere for me. I guess that’s why we do this.

Slow Crush – Hush

2021 will go down as the year I got into shoegaze. It wasn’t a sound I’d ever really messed with besides the stuff Alcest or Deafheaven have been doing over the years. But I went full in this year after the right circumstances came together to allow me to enjoy this kind of stuff.

Slow Crush are newer to the scene, having come on in 2018 with the excellent Aurora. This song is the first single from the album Hush, out October 22nd.

This track has been out for a few months now and I’ve been jamming to it pretty regularly. It’s a beautifully done atmospheric song that absolutely nails the shoegaze pattern of leaving the music, including vocals, together to be found in layers or enjoyed as its whole. I won’t be missing this release later in October.

Hypocrisy – Chemical Whore

This is the lead single from the death metal veterans’ new album Worship, available on November 26th, appropriately Black Friday in the United States. This marks their first release in nearly 9 years as leadman Peter Tagtgren has been exploring other creative avenues through the past decade.

This excellent mid-tempo monster highlights the horrors of drug overuse, more the pharmaceutical kind than the street kind. It comes with a great video and the album should be another win for a band that have been racking up great albums since 2004. Hypocrisy is always an auto-buy for me.

Emma Ruth Rundle – Return

It’s time for the main event as far as I’m concerned. The artist I just talked about earlier this week is releasing her much-anticipated new album Engines Of Hell on November 5th. Emma has stated that this record is a sparse affair, informed by major transformations in her personal life over the past few years.

Return absolutely fits the description and is a movement away from contrast in noise and melody that marked ERR’s prior effort. This song is haunting, minimal and seems very deliberate in its delivery. It’s almost scary what the rest of the album might be like – without the use of her extensive collection of effects pedals to mask the more harrowing moments, Engines Of Hell might rip the listener’s soul right out. I’d say I’m ready but I might very well not be.

That’ll do it for this first round of upcoming releases. I’m sure I’ve forgotten more than one thing, and in the future I’ll try to tidy these up a bit and focus on the next month’s upcoming records. I left a few out that I’ll have time to get into a bit down the line. While many fans turn their attention to considering the ever-important question “What is the album of the year?” it’s worth remembering that there are other contenders to come.