Music

Top 5 Metal Releases: June Edition

by Tyler Munro

Each month, tons of new music from many taste-spanning genres is released into a fast-consuming, unforgiving audience; it can be tough to get a handle on what’s new before it’s on to the next. In an attempt to highlight the standout releases, at the end of each month, AUX staff re-cap the month in Punk, Metal, Indie/Pop/Rock, Hip Hop, Pop, and Electronica/Dance with the top five releases in each. Consider it your cheat sheet for year-end lists.

Top 5 Metal Releases: June Edition

Devin Townsend Project – Deconstruction

As good as Ghost, the fourth and proposed final album of the Devin Townsend Project’s planned quadrilogy is, it’s not a metal album, but Deconstruction is, and it’s even better. This is Devin Townsend at his most sonically overpowering. No, it isn’t as unrelentingly pissed off as his work with Strapping Young Lad, but with an A-list of guest vocalists (like Mikael from Opeth, Greg from Dillinger Escape Plan and Oderus from Gwar) and an added layer of symphonics, it’s probably his heaviest. In typical Hevy Devy fashion the concept is a bit hit or miss, but try not to laugh when you realize cheeseburgers are the meaning of life in Townsend’s twisted imagination. For being as clever as it is enjoyable, Deconstruction isn’t just the best of the four Devin Townsend Project albums, but its the best metal album of the month.

Falconer – Armod

Armod was supposed to be Falconer’s foray into traditionalist Swedish music, and in many respects it is. But, for the heavy metal headset’s sake, it also really, really isn’t. As lead song “Svarta Änkan,” quickly indicates, this is a metal album through and through, and though it does its best to incorporate traditional song structures into the mix, it succeeds as another of Falconer’s uniquely melodic power metal releases. It may be sung entirely in Swedish, but with a voice like Mathias Blad’s, you’ll be hard pressed to notice. That dude can flat out sing.

Tombs – The Path of Totality

It’s probably time for the NeurIsis post metal sludgecore thing to die out, but if any band can re-inject a quickly stalling sub-genre with any life, it’s Tombs. The Path of Totality opts to take things down a noisier route, mixing the atmospherics of Neurosis’ later outputs with a healthy dose of tremolo picking and throat wrenching yells. This is an album that mixes black metal with sludge without succumbing to naturalistic bursts of “beauty”; Wolves in the Throne Room this is not. The Path of Tonality may not revolutionize the sound Steve Von Till pioneered, but at the very least it’s helped keep things interesting.

Symphony X – Iconoclast

In the four years since Paradise Lost, Symphony X has taken a page out of Lucifer’s book and taken things down a darker route. Calling Iconoclast their heaviest album yet is an understatement, and with Russell Allen’s increasingly gruff vocals managing to walk a fine line between Hetfield-ian excess and Dickinson-ian operatics, this is a sound the band can easily continue writing within. As with everything they’ve done, Iconoclast is a little (okay, a lot) on the long side, clocking in at an hour long, but unlike Paradise Lost, this one’s worth the listen from front to back. These guys are veterans of the prog-power metal scene, and Iconoclast is the album that helps them make the leap into their second decade of noodle-y relevance.

Limp Bizkit – Gold Cobra
	Just Kidding.

Surprises, disappointments and albums to watch for next month
Surprise of the month: Other than Limp Bizkit releasing their Bizkit-iest album yet, Fit for an Autopsy’s The Process Of Human Extermination is worth mentioning. Not because its ground-breaking (it isn’t, it’s super generic deathcore), but because Nate Johnson, a vocalist whose lack of range ruined Through The Eyes of a Dead, has finally figured out to scream highs.

Disappointments: After an 8 year wait, Morbid Angel’s Illud Divinum Insanus is finally out. And it sucks. It’s not that anyone expected another Altars of Madness, but there’s nothing quite as disappointing as listening to one of death metal’s most legendary bands succumbing to well, uh…whatever the hell this is supposed to be. It’s groovy, technical and worse for it. Tim Yeung’s kick drums sound like garbage cans and at this point the most interesting thing about the band might be their adorable album naming schemes. Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll skip albums J through Q and grace us with Retirement. What happens when KMFDM takes a shit on Trey Azagthoth’s gear? Illud Divinum Insanus.

Out in July: Decapitated’s Carnival Is Forever, Powerwolf’s Blood Of The Saints, Cannabis Corpse’s Beneath Grow Lights Thou Shalt Rise and Pestilence’s Doctrine