Nuclear Blast

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    Amaranthe - The Catalyst (2024)

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    Always keeping things catchy and intense, Amaranthe returns with another bombastic release with “The Catalyst”. Featuring their signature brand of pop/alternative Metal, Elize Ryd and Olof Mörck keep the band’s legacy by delivering thirteen tracks and around 40 minutes of engaging songs filled with explosive chorus sections, crafty guitar leads and an overall high-octane vibe.

    The release immediately blasts off with the excellent album title track and its extreme catchiness. The band’s mixture of distorted guitars, electronic elements, and the diverse vocal styles create a very dynamic and explosive mix that Amaranthe has been refining over the years. New harsh vocalist, Mikael Sehlin, does a pretty solid job in adding to the contrast between the singing styles of Elize and Nils Molin, as heard on pieces like “Insatiable” and “Liberated”.

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    Lucifer - Lucifer V (2024)

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    Keeping the Psychedelic/Occult Rock/Metal revival going, today we have Lucifer and their fifth full-length release. Featuring a very accomplished line-up of members like Nicke Andersson (Entombed, The Hellacopters) and Johanna Claudia Sadonis (ex-The Oath), this release delivers nine tracks and nearly 40 minutes of catchy retro doomy heavy music.

    Opening with the high-octane “Fallen Angel”, we get a nice dose of traditional Heavy Metal riffs with engaging vocals and a catchy chorus section. The band’s music is designed to be crafty, and guitar driven, making for some very interesting and memorable pieces like “At The Mortuary”, “Slow Dance in a Crypt”, and “Riding Reaper”. The mixture of Doom, Heavy Metal with Psychedelic/Occult rock elements is quite well crafted and makes for some very entertaining songs.

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    Cryptopsy - As Gomorrah Burns (2023)

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    Fully righting their musical ship, today we have Canadian legends Cryptopsy and their first full length release in over 10 years: “As Gomorrah Burns”. Returning to that vicious Brutal Death Metal sound from their earlier years, the band delivers eight tracks and 33 minutes of crushing brutality. While the band showed their mettle with a new lineup during “The Book of Suffering - Tome I and II”, this release perfectly blends their old style with newer and fresher Technical DM elements that nicely polish their sound.

    The band quickly makes a statement with the pummeling “Lascivious Undivine”, and follows it with the even more blistering “In Abeyance”. The best part of this opening pair of tracks is that you can hear the old-school Death Metal from the band perfectly blended with a fresher and more modern edge of current Technical Death Metal/Deathcore productions. Blasting the listener away, one of our favorite tracks has to be “Godless Deceiver” and its intense drumming, perfectly flanked by chuggy riffs and hellish vocals.

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    Enslaved - Heimdal (2023)

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    Always surprising their listeners, Enslaved returns with yet another brilliant exercise in crafty Progressive Black/Viking Metal with “Heimdal”. Skillfully refining their sound over time, this release unleashes seven tracks and nearly 50 minutes of complex and yet digestible music that perfectly carries the band’s signature style with a few new surprises. Any fan of the band of the genre will be satisfied with this highly dynamic and engaging release.

    Opening with “Behind The Mirror”, the band sets an atmospheric tone with the first minute before unleashing some superbly catchy riffs that slowly transform into sweeping melodic guitars to adorn the band’s signature clean vocal arrangements. The band’s sound is quite cinematic and crafty, with excellent layered guitars and a good dose of aggressive sections and growls, as we can hear in “Congelia”,”Forest Dweller” and the proggy/psychedelic catchiness of “Kingdom”.

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    In Flames - Foregone (2023)

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    Dramatic openings of songs like “Your Stories I’ll Remember” and “Paradise” perfectly showcase the band’s versatility and cinematic nature, making their sound one of the best in the scene. While many bands in the genre have opted to add more Pop-ish elements into their music, Xandria keeps things strictly Symphonic Metal with a good dose of intensity and additional instrumentation, as “The Maiden and the Child” and “Astèria” showcase.

    After an acoustic opener, “State of Slow Decay” quickly delivers some chuggy guitars that suddenly transform into your quintessential Swedish old-school Melodic Death Metal riffs. This immediately caught us by surprise as the song continues to be quite effective, and even impressive with the killer twin guitar leads. Before quickly agreeing that the hype is real, there are still some of the more modern Core-ish elements that will scare purists away as one notices on “Meet Your Maker” and “Bleeding Out”.

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    Twilight Force - At The Heart of Wintervale (2023)

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    There are just some days when you just want to hear an album filled with over-the-top technical wizardry, lush vocal arrangements, and an overall superbly up-beat vibe. Luckily for us, Twilight Force delivers just that, and plenty more, with the epic “At The Hearth of Wintervale”. We have a soft spot for extremely bombastic Symphonic Power Metal, and this album unleashes over 64 minutes of magical music in this regard.

    Opening with the lush “Twilight Force” track, we instantly get rewarded with blistering guitar solos, crafty tempo changes, and very dramatic vocal arrangements. Vocalist Allyon, aka Alessandro Conti, shines through this release, but in particular in epic songs like “At the Heart of Wintervale”, filled with soaring vocal passages. We particularly love that epic vibe that bands like Stratovarius, Rhapsody, and similar outfits craft, but with Twilight Force, this effort is poured into every single track, particularly heavy hitters like “Dragonborn”, and the cinematic 10-minute epic “Highlands of the Elder Dragon”.

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    Therion - Leviathan II (2022)

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    Therion is one of those bands that is always consistently good and when they set on producing a trilogy of releases that consolidated the style of their most popular songs, they were not messing around. With “Leviathan II” the listener gets treated to over 53 minutes and 13 tracks of superbly catchy Symphonic/Operatic Metal they basically invented and have been refining over the years. As a quintessential release for any of the band’s fans, this release should be in your collection.

    Kicking off the release we have the lively “Aeon of Maat”, a song with a very crafty tempo and the band’s signature dueling Heavy Metal and operatic vocals courtesy of Thomas Vikström and Lori Lewis. This formula gets nicely complemented by lush choir arrangements and dramatic use of classical instrumental elements, as we can hear in “Litany of the Fallen”, “Alchemy of the Soul” and one of our personal favorites “Lunar Coloured Fields”.

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    Behemoth - Opvs Contra Natvram (2022)

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    After being catapulted to ‘wide-spread’ success in the Metal scene with “The Satanist” in 2014, Poland’s Behemoth has leveled audiences around the world with their vicious Blackened Death Metal and their commanding stage presence. Fast-forward eight years, the band unleashes “Opvs Contra Natvram” which has an even more refined sound than their previous effort “I Loved You at Your Darkest”. Staying in their comfort zone, this release continues Behemoth’s aural aggression with ten solid tracks.

    Opening with the atmospheric and ritualistic “Post-God Nirvana”, the band sets a mysterious aura around this album that explodes wide opening with the pummeling “Malaria Vvlgata”. Perfectly intertwining furious riffing and crafty tempo changes, this track shows the band’s ability to crush skulls while keeping a tense atmosphere. Featuring some awesome vocal arrangements, “The Deathless Sun” is one of those tracks that crawls under your skin delivering eerie moody passages and blistering guitar leads.

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    Fallujah - Empyrean (2022)

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    After changing vocalists on the last two albums, against all odds, Fallujah has come on top in both occasions. In “Empyrean” the band welcomes Kyle Schaefer, while continuing to dabble even more in Progressive Death Metal territories. The band’s transition over the years has been quite interesting and for over 50 minutes they unleash a very crafty combination of Progressive elements and Technical Death Metal wizardry.

    Delivering a blistering and swift opening, “The Bitter Taste of Clarity” hits the listener hard with punishing riffs, inhuman growls, and a crafty tempo changes, reminiscent of a mixture of bands like Persefone, Obscura, and Hour of Penance. The technical wizardry continues with excellent pieces like “Radiant Ascension”, the proggy and moody “Embrace Oblivion” with some dreamy clean female and male vocals thrown into the mix, and one of our favorites with the highly melodic “Into the Eventide”.

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    The Halo Effect - Days of the Lost (2022)

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    Coming to take the best Melodic Death Metal release of 2022 title, today we have The Halo Effect and their debut full-length release “Days of the Lost”. For the uninitiated, as soon as this band was announced, we knew they would release something insanely awesome. Featuring Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) on vocals, and pretty much every good musician In Flames started or had a long time with, like Jesper Strömblad and Niclas Engelin on guitars, Daniel Svensson on drums, and Peter Iwers on bass, this line-up is beyond stacked.

    Immediately making an impact with “Shadowminds”, we quickly get an old-school Dark Tranquillity whiff, but this is slowly replaced with a very interesting hybrid of both early DT and In Flames, but with a modern edge, experienced musicianship, and excellent production values. It is very cool to hear songs like the album title track, “The Needless End” and “Conditional”, and wonder if this is how things would have shaken out if these guys would have made music together since back in the day.

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