Barren Plains – Adrift
Barren Plains’ debut is a four-track EP of some great post-metal. The instrumental band builds strong atmospheres upon repetition and evolution of riffs and themes on top of odd-time measures. Each of the untitled tracks is as poignant as the previous one, which results in a memorable release. Name your price on bandcamp!

Dawn Ray’d – The Unlawful Assembly
This British black metal with a folk music tinge group makes wild songs, and The Unlawful Assembly is no exception. Wilfully atmospheric and at times chaotic, it’s an aggressive and vindicative album to revolt to.

Cervidea – Cervidea
You like Primus – not the recent kind, but the old, filthy, and funky one? Enters Cervidea, a drums, bass, and vocals project from Montréal that puts the excessive slapping and tapping talents of Audrey Bérubé at the forefront of this experimental musical assault. It doesn’t fit under one umbrella term, but the music surely draws similarities to math rock, post-hardcore, grindcore, progressive metal, and, yeah, funk. Be sure to soak in the grooves!

Pingvinorkestern – Look, No Hands!
Sweden’s Penguin Orchestra released their latest entry in August: a retro as well as progressive record of more than fifty minutes. In here, there’s a lot of folk, purebred prog rock, and some more modern chamber music passages too! It’s a tricky album that’s not hard to get into.

Bird Problems – Tar
Between post-hardcore and progressive metal, Bird Problems bring us Tar in mid November. The record has good chops and nice compositions overall, and fifty minutes of running time ornamented with a handful of guest musicians, for diversity’s sake. If you’re into post-hardcore to any degree, you should dig into this album once it comes out!

Black Kirin 黒麒 – Nanking Massacre 金陵祭
The Chinese folk death metal of Black Kirin 黒麒 is pretty well known in the circles. Their upcoming album comes out on 3 November, but is available for streaming on bandcamp straight away. In the band’s purest tradition, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable blend of Chinese music and occidental death metal. Nothing slips under their guard.

Mouthbreather – Pig
Barely eight minutes long, Mouthbreather’s debut is a chaotic mess of hardcore music, just on the verge of accessing to the mathcore territory. No matter, the end result is a violent rush of heavy riffs and dissonant chords and screams and blast beats.

The Chasm – A Conscious Creation from the Isolated Domain: Phase I
Through eleven unnamed tracks fitting into four chapters of the eighth album and first phase of the tenth chapter of the story of The Chasm, a Chicago-based progressive blackened thrash metal band. If listening to about thirty seconds of this won’t sell you, none of what I can write will. The music speaks for itself, and I think it’s great!

Möbius – Above the Clouds, Night
A drone album made up of only two voices, looping and layering themselves, ought to be something special. Möbius’ debut (?) is entrancing, meditative, atmospheric, and chilling. It’s almost shamanic and ritualistic in the most improper way, and it sure makes this a unique experience.