Crowbar
Symmetry in Black
eOne
Been three years since a new Crowbar album, and you know, they’ve always been “ok” to me, mostly I’m not a fan of sludgey noisy stuff with shouty growls and whatever. Well, I’m older now, and well, it seems like Crowbar is too. Right out of the gate, catchy riffs, solid groove and melodic stuff. Actually reminds me of Down. So, Kirk did leave Down, mostly so he could concentrate on this band and it shows. So now we have three albums from the Down family out… the Down EP, this Crowbar and Eyehategod… and they’re all pretty good!

King 810
Proem EP
Roadrunner
Kinds of reminds me of a stonery Slipknot. Big meaty sound, appropriately pissed off sounding. Seems dark and heavy like, almost building up to something super heavy and brutal and death metal-like, but actually it stays a bit down tempo and that’s actually ok. Works out being pretty heavy and not all super fast and technical.

Timo Tolkki’s Avalon
Angels of the Apocalypse
Frontiers
Epic Metal Opera featuring mostly Fabio Lione on vocals with Zak Stevens on a track, Floor Jansen and Simone Simons and others. This is your sort of typical euro-epic power metal with big epic vocals.

Metsatoll
Karjajuht
Spinefarm
Folk metal from Estona! This is like, true folk metal with a flute and bagpipes and that stuff… but still all catchy metal!

Judas Priest
Marched Of The Damned “Single”
Epic Records
A new Priest song! Well, it’s no Painkiller, and actually starts off a little weak, but then some of the riffs come in and it seems like a decent hard rock type track.

Sabaton
Heroes
Nuclear Blast USA
Melodic folky power metal. A little like Blind Guardian, a little Iced Earth and a bit more of, oh, pick a folky metal band. There’s a bit of an epic feel with the keyboard stuff and singalong stuff. With the folky and epic powermetalness of it all, there’s still great shredding and enough thrashy stuff to get you all headbanging.

Dead Superstar
Searching For The Sun “Single”
BFX Records
Straightforward melodic hard rock type stuff. It’s pretty catchy with a pinch of a stoner metal vibe.

SERPENTINE PATH
Emanations (NA Promo)
Relapse Records
A sludgey down tempo death metal with a bit of a groove.

Blood Red Fog
On Death’s Wings
Saturnal Records
Some old school sounding black metal, cold sounding guitars, creepy screamed and yelled vocals. A bit scary actually… but decent solid black metal.

Hellspirit
Dawn Under Curse
Saturnal Records
A more traditional black metal album, evil and dark, yet melodic and full on metal with a pinch of thrash.

Eyes Of Mara
Akkadia
Imminence Records
A thrashy metalcore leaning more on the brutal-core side of things. Heavy, aggressive, in your face, maybe a bit like Black Dahlia Murder… technical chops, heavy riffs, catchy riffs and maybe a bassdrop/breakdown or two.

Serpent Ov Old
Antiquity Ov Old
Horror Pain Gore Death
Seems like any band that spells of “ov” just gets extra evil points right away. This is some pretty cool traditional sounding black metal. Harsh vocals, thos “cold” guitars, some decent melody, frenetic drumming… and some shreddy guitar too.

WE ARE THE DAMNED
Doomvirate
Lifeforce
Fast, heavy blackened death metal.

Killgasm
A Stab in the Heart of Christ
Moribund
Dark black evil black metal. Screaming, growling blast beats, cold droning riffs

HOLLOW
Mordrake
Self-Release (Asher Media)
Kind of an epic black metal type thing. Lots of quick guitar work, but probably more of a melodic black metal than old school stuff. A lot of prog elements as well. So yeah, cool proggy symphonic epic black metal.