Keratoconus is a British one-man mathcore project, and 浜田EP (The Hamada EP) was released in late December. It’s a rather short release, at only thirteen minutes long, but every second here is well spent. The tracks are abrasive, intellectual, technical, and quite experimental too! Don’t be offended by the autism-core tag, it’s merely because S. A. Mudd, the mastermind of the project, suffers from autism himself, and it seems to be an extraordinary outlet from which we can all benefit by listening and appreciating the music!

Asunder is Montréal progressive technical melodic death metal project Samskaras‘ upcoming EP. Out on the twentieth of the month, the album features some high grade music and production, but fails to shake things enough to make it very interesting. If you can’t get enough of that kind of music, perhaps this EP will be for you, but as someone who is always looking for something new, never-before-heard, I find Asunder quite run-of-the-mill.
Released in the middle of last year, Liquid Graveyard‘s By Nature So Perverse is a traditional death metal album with only slight hints of progressive death metal influences. It feels a bit unwelcome, by the end of its fifty minutes runtime, but still features nice, heavy riffs and some good passages.
Theory in Practice is a technical death metal from Sweden, and they just released Crescendo Dezign, a twenty-minute EP. It’s an impressive and technically proficient release that will please musicians and melophiles alike. It’s not overly complex as to be a challenging listening experience, but enough to make you regret every moment you spend not practising your instrument.
A mix of post and math rock filled with electronics and a strong jazzy feel? Yeah, I can get behind that, and that’s what Mouse on the Keys‘ latest, Out of Body, is all about. At just under twenty minutes, it’s disappointingly short, but that’s only shows how great the music therein is. The EP comes out on January twenty-fifth, and I recommend you keep a wide-open eye on it!
Dodecaedro, Mexican band Glass Mind‘s latest, is an amazing album intertwining progressive rock and metal with math rock and jazz compositional cues. That release drips with the fun the musicians seem to be having on it, which is refreshing and catchy. They will probably infect you with their energy, and that’s more than a good thing. Go and grab Dodecaedro right now!
Skagos‘ Anarchic was featured on Matt’s best of 2016 list, as a comparison, and one of his most appreciated albums of all time. I had no choice but to investigate, and, unsurprisingly, the 2013 full-length and single song is as awesome as expected. The sixty-six-minute, three-part eponymous track is an unabashed display of atmospheric black metal mastery. The long and patient ambient passages take their time to drench you completely with the emotions they want to evoke in you before throwing you off the hook, tumbling down in complete darkness as the tremolo-picked riffs and blast beats come in unannounced. It’s simply a majestic release, and I can’t help but hope for a new one this year.
Post-hardcore Pennsylvanians The Drowned God just released Moonbearer, their sophomore album. It’s a beautiful, emotional album that’s pissed and aggressive, but also rested and contemplative in its agony. Briefly, it’s one of the best post-hardcore releases of recent memory.