Seims – Four

Seims‘s long-awaited new album finally draws near! The aptly titled Four comes out on October 22. As a follow-up to the dazing 3 and its expansion pack 3.1, 4 has a lot of unspoken promises to fill. And, indeed, it does fill them all! Ⅳ is all that made Seims’s previous works work, but better: expansive progressions, top-notch musicianship, memorable melodies, and an ever-present sense of songwriting are all competing for your attention, with the almost daunting presence of a wide array of instruments, which sometimes make it feel like the band is backed by a small ensemble! Be sure to catch this album when it lands!

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Issolei – Devouring Current (Terratur Possessions)

Incredibly, and mysteriously, the Norwegian black metal project released two albums’ worth of material in Devouring Current, further split into two, and Cilicium. The focus of this post, however, is the former, which was first recorded in 2014, reworked in 2020, and never released until now. At over an hour long, Devouring Current is my favourite of Issolei‘s releases so far, as it seems more varied and experimental, dealing quite a bit into the progressive, dissonant black metal paradigm, but with a few twists of their own. Definitively a killer black metal album to get!

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Rototypical – Volume Ⅰ: The Tactician

How come nobody talks about this album? Did Colors Ⅱ suck all the air out of the room? Is Native Construct still dead? Or are all eyes set towards Other by No One‘s sophomore album? I don’t know, but Rototypical‘s debut album certainly deserves a set at the table. The Tactician is the paragon of modern progressive metal, and I’ll try to make you listen to it in a few sentences. The brains of the project, Pat Savage, writes in a very linear fashion, which I personally prefer over the more common cyclic song structure. That means the album reads like a novel, and musical parts rarely come back, safe for a few leitmotifs. What’s more, if you’re not paying close attention, you won’t notice when the track number increments, thanks to clever transitions and a side-effect of linear songwriting. You deserve something good for yourselves in 2021, start with Rototypical.

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Jü – Ⅲ (Rare Noise)

The end of this month will see the release of another great album! Jü is a hard to describe trio from Hungary, but if I had to pick one descriptor, it would be jazzcore. Indeed, it encapsulates the energy of the band’s composition, its eclecticism, its deviation from what is commonly referred to as jazz yet how it belongs in jazz. On Ⅲ, Jü is showing off its modern character and indelible compositions in a most remarkable way! Be sure to watch this release on the 24th!