Tech death x 3 + psychedelic black metal turned synthwave!

Greek psychedelic black metal horde Hail Spirit Noir are truly turning all expectations of their fans upside down and present an all-out dark synthwave album with “Mannequins”. And if you think you’re gonna get something alike Carpenter Brut, you’re actually not too far off. In fact, this might be some of the purest synthwave I’ve ever heard to be honest. So if you’re into this kind of music, you might have just found your new favorite album. When trve black metal bands are expanding their horizons by experimenting with their musical style, you’ll get either some cringe-worthy crap or some ass-kicking awesomeness that can take it up with the big names of the new genre they dabble in. This is the latter. Dario

If you’re in the mood for some dark, evil, technical death metal that is flirting with black horror elements, Inferi‘s new opus “Vile Genesis” should be your top choice, no doubt. Actually, if you are a fan of any technical death metal, you couldn’t do much wrong with any music released via The Artisan Era label lately. Still, Inferi are somehow a league of their own and could appeal to black metal fans as well as curious and open minded fans of prog metal who don’t mind ‘unclean’ vocals throughout most of their neo-classically tinged tapping and fingering onslaught. While bands like their compatriots of Rivers of Nihil and the germans of Obscura are seemingly getting all the laurels in this subgenre, a rabid horde of Inferi is coming to get you, so beware! Dario

Oh and while we’re at it: extreme metal legends of Aborted are dropping their eleventh(!) full length album today as well! And even though I can’t say that I’ve been a long-time fan (simply because I wasn’t able to digest these levels of brutality before), my cravings for more and more extreme stuff seems to align with my tolerance threshold for extremeness dropping further and further… Bands like Inferi and Aborted do make it easy for me though as their extreme brutality is always balanced with classical harmonies permeating their every riff. No one cares if the vocalist is the only founding member left, Aborted are brutal, technical, hungry and at the top of their game! Dario

With it being one of the biggest weeks for tech death this year, you know I gotta step in to highlight an album. Replicant just launched their anticipated second full-length record “Malignant Reality”, and my god does it ever rip! Prog, dissonance, groove, riffs… all thrown into one nearly-fifty-minute package. There’s also a couple of sections that include violin and theremin, so this record won’t be an easy one to forget. If I were to try to identify the sound throughout, imagine Gorguts meets Wormed, but less technical and loaded with Machine Head style riffs. Trust me, you’re in for a ride the moment you put this on. Replicant did it so well, this might just be one of my favourites for 2021 so far. Don’t skip this one! Colin