“April is the cruellest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot in a poem that no one quoting it has ever finished reading. And while Eliot was quite metal in his exquisite, existential despair about WWI or whatever, he never understood true existential dread. I speak, of course, of the dread of being force-fed twenty-five promising albums, half of which are drenched in so much reverb that you feel like you’re swimming, only to realize that you didn’t even review the Record o’ the Month yourself
The April Filters are now fully de-scuzzified. You can approach and examine the scuzz flotsam.
“Metal has a long history of writing songs inspired by science fiction and fantasy, probably because we’re all a bunch of great big nerds. Outer Wilds is a singular piece of storytelling, a work that couldn’t be told in any medium other than a video game: a story and a series of revelations pieced together from found fragments, with no enforced order or progression beyond what the player finds and assembles. Imagine my excitement when I saw the obviously Outer Wilds-inspired Ash Twin Project appear in the promo queue. Imagine how quickly I mashed the “assign to self” button before any of the other fans on the staff could pinch it.” Winds and ash.
“Relative newcomers Supreme Void began their journey as Depravity in 2016, releasing a couple of EPs over a five-year period, culminating with 2021’s End of Games. The EP delivered a familiar slab of Polish death metal, packed with the aggression, technicality, and power that flagbearers like Behemoth and Hate have long championed. Presumably realizing the existence of numerous other bands named Depravity, the trio changed their name to Supreme Void in 2023, coinciding with their signing to French label Dolorem Records, who then re-released End of Games under the new moniker. Now, Supreme Void’s debut full-length, Towards Oblivion, aims to fuse the brutal, fast and specialized Polish sound with the dissonant and stylish tendencies of the likes of Ulcerate and Gorguts.” Void of depravity.
“Vampires and castles and axes, oh my! In addition to a love for the video game Castlevania, these are some of the favorite things for Guadalajara, Mexico’s Phantom, reflected in the cool Meagan Lemay cover art. I had a fair amount of fun with Phantom’s 2023 debut album, Handed to Execution. It’s a tasty little slab of thrashy speed metal that took me back to the halcyon days of Kill ‘Em All Metallica and Show No Mercy Slayer. When I saw Phantom’s follow-up, Tyrants of Wrath, floating around in the sump pit, I waded into Castle de AMG’s mucky moat, battling tentacled meanies and dodging Grier’s skid mark-ruined speedos to retrieve it.” Sticky nostalgia.
“I’m this site’s resident “vomit” guy. I didn’t choose this life, it chose me. Nonetheless, I take my duties seriously, and when I see a band in the promo bin with “vomit” in the name, I know I have to review it (even if I’m a fucking week late in doing so). So it was with Vomitrot, so it was with the bands before them, and so it is with Vomitizer.” Womit season.
“Italy’s Ancient Bards was one of my formative bands as a budding metalhead. Their original trilogy (The Alliance of the Kings, Soulless Child, A New Dawn Ending) received tons of playtime as I dove headfirst through my twin gateways of symphonic and power metal years ago. Then, one fateful day amidst my excitement for a brand new album, I happened upon Eldritch Elitist’s review of Origine by way of a Google search, the first I ever read on Angry Metal Guy. Its brutal and unflinching honesty initially shocked my naïve, uninitiated mind but though I would have rated Origine a touch higher, I had to agree that it was the weakest Ancient Bards record thus far. And now that fifth album, Artifex, is here.” Bard times.
““Exterminatus” is a Warhammer 40k term that describes a global mass extinction event authorized by the emperor when the Imperium deems the cost of holding or retaking a planet too high. While I’m naïve about such things, Canadian fivesome Exterminatus certainly isn’t. And these Canucks are here to incinerate your eardrums with a heavy dose of sci-fi inspired tech-death. Originally demoed in 2012, Echoes From a Distant Star Part I was to be the follow-up to Xenocide’s debut album, Galactic Oppression. However, the group disbanded before they completed the album, and its members—including most of the original lineup—subsequently formed Exterminatus.” Exterminate to evolve.
“I’ve heard people say that today’s music has nothing new to offer, but I actually think it has the opposite problem. To me, there are too many fucking bands out there playing technical blackened dissodeath with a tuba or some shit and not enough who simply take a tried-and-true style and execute it well. Such was what initially drew me to Sijjin. Right around the time their infamous doom-death band Necros Christos dissolved in 2021, bassist/vocalist Malte Gericke and drummer Iván Hernández joined forces with guitarist Ekaitz Garmendia (Legen Beltza) to pay homage to the earliest years of death metal with Sijjin’s full-length debut, Sumerian Promises.” Weird for weirdness.
“It’s sexy when things you love collide with things you hate. My lust for mathcore is well-established – I go hard for that mind-numbing dyscalculic tinnitus any day – but if you put a slab of prog metal in front of me, I’m gonna go as flaccid as a gummy worm in a hot car faster than you can say “Wilderun.” That’s Benthos. The Italian collective slides a platter of progressive rock’s lush, ambivalent, and emotive movements alongside mathcore’s jagged edges and feral energy, and you’re guaranteed to find something you’ll love and hate – and get hot and bothered by.” The fresh maker.
