0% Hate – At the Mercy of Your Own

From Las Vegas comes surprising progressive technical death metal band 0% Hate. Surprising, most of all, because I’m not in the habit of listening to tech-death songs with a ten-minute runtime. Yet, on At the Mercy of Your Own, this is not unusual, as two tracks out of four hang close to this mark or go beyond it. That makes for intricate song structures filled with an insane number of riffs, many with independent voices between the guitar and the bass, which is highly appreciated. A brilliant debut!

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Soul Flesh – Road to Nara: A Cow Calves at Spring’s Last Day

German band Soul Flesh aims to reimagine black metal in new ways. You can see how their vision plays out on their debut album, Road to Nara: A Cow Calves at Spring’s Last Day. After about fifty minutes, you can probably tell it’s a black metal album of sorts, yes, but clearly not a typical one. I’d add the “progressive” adjective before, and it also has a lot of influence from death metal and from newer subgenres of black. Road to Nara is a solid album that’s sure to grab your attention throughout.

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Dai Kaht – Ⅱ

I liked the first Dai Kaht album a lot, when it came out in 2017. So, it was with high hopes that I started listening to their second offering, when it was released out of nowhere this month. I’m glad to say that Ⅱ remains at least as progressive and psychedelic and zeuhl as its predecessor. Just for the record, the Finnish band seems to be fonder of the wilder Japanese school of zeuhl than of the French marching band one. That’s a good thing, if you ask me!

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Patrick Shiroishi – Descension (Thin Wrist)

Harrowing. Saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi‘s latest release conveys strong emotions, so be prepared when you hit play. On Descension, Patrick accompanies himself on the saxophone with electronics, like on “Grandchildren of the Camps”, and voice, as on “Above the Black Heavens Is Endless”. We can once again bask in the instrumental mastery of Patrick and his profound grasp of music, with this meditative and compelling release.

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Zan – Behold the Key (Black House)

Progressive death metal, mathcore, deathgrind? In the right proportions, this makes for an extremely interesting time. Zan‘s Behold the Key is just that, a solid banger of a record that will make your neck sore after half an hour of relentless headbanging. There’s an incredible drive behind the band’s compositions! A solid release from early 2020!

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Artús – Cerc (Pagans)

How to approach this… French band Artús is a seven-headed hydra plying European folk instruments—the hurdy-gurdy, psalterium, violin, and various percussion—among modern rock ones—drums, guitar, bass, and synthesizer—merging the two in an indescribable blend that sounds as much like metal as it does jazz and folk music. The metal sound is mostly achieved through low bass and drum odd-time riffs on top of a constant \(\frac{4}{4}\) hypermeasure—the basis of djent, some might say—while the jazz sound comes from the rich harmonies found through the album, and the folk, obviously, from the instrument timbres and voice, which sings mostly in Catalan. A truly splendid album, unique and memorable!