AT THE GATES
At War With Reality
Century Media
They’re Back!  And while this isn’t Slaughter of the Soul part 2, it is a great follow up. Probably what makes it not an OMG WOW album is that so many other bands had come along and have made great Melodic Death albums.  When they made their last album it was one of the first ever.  Still great stuff and glad to have them back!

Obituary
Inked In Blood
Relapse
One thing about Obituary, they’re consistent and have their sound.  this album is definitely Obituary!  To think I used to hate this band… now I’m a big fan.

DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT
Ziltoid 2
(Century Media)
Proggy catchy kinda poppy hard rockin’ metal like only Devin Townsend can do.   This is the double album follow up to Ziltoid.  Signature Hevy Devy wall of sound.  This will need a bit more time to digest, but fans of Dev will like this.

IRON MAIDEN
The Complete Albums Collection Sampler
(BMG)
A sampler of some of the tracks from the new vinyl reissues of classic Maiden albums.  While it’s not any new material, it’s always a good excuse to play some Maiden!

Astral Doors
Notes From The Shadows
Metalville Records
Power metal from Sweden, there’s a bit of a 90’s Dio feeling going on.  Catchy beats, some nice clean (sometimes over the top) power metal vocals.

No Mercy (Fet. Mike Muir From Suicidal Tendencies)
Widespread Bloodshed (Love Runs Red)
Suicidal Records
Basically a side project of Mike Clark from ST, this must be a re-issue of their one and only album from 1987.  It sounds like a more thrashy metal version of ST and yeah it’s pretty cool.

ESCAPETOR
FEAR
CRIME RECORDS
Some standard metal with thrashy and prog metal tendencies.  A little bit of a Nevermore feel, but not quite as technical.  There’s a bit of a catchy groove going on.

Unearth
Watchers Of The Rule
eOne Entertainment
It’s been a little while since their last album, and well, these guys are not fucking around with this release, brutal, catchy and 100% metal with yeah, a little bit of their metalcore roots, but really it’s more like some melodic death than anything.  This one really blew me away… great stuff.

Sanctuary
The Year The Sun Died
Century Media
First album in 24 years and it’s pretty good stuff.  Unmistakedly Sanctuary, or more or less Nevermore-Lite.

Anaal Nathrakh
Desideratum
Metal Blade Records
Their last few albums I liked to call “kitchen sink” metal, as it was heavy as hell and it sounded like they threw in everything but the kitchen sink.  This new one starts off a bit more melodic with the intro track but doesn’t take long to get into their blackened epic brutal melodic metal.  So yeah, it’s still kitchen sink metal!

Vesania
Deus Ex Machina
Metal Blade Records
Melodic raw-ish black metal. There’s a bit of an epic thing going on too.

ATRIARCH
An Unending Pathway
Relapse Records
Doomy ambient stuff, with the occasional skip to something a bit more melodic black metal sounding. So I guess they are “blackened doom metal” then, right?

ABYSMAL DAWN
Obsolescence
Relapse Records
We’ve always been fans of this band… they’re just always so dark and pissed off.  This album is brutal, dark and heavy and has some catchy stuff too.  Just a wall of brutal fucking metal in your face.

ORDER OF THE DEAD
A BLACK CURSE COMES E.P.
New Ocean Media
I guess I’d throw this in the technical death category.  Catchy riffs (a bit like Slayer), brutal drumming and harsh vocals… did I just describe most metal albums?  Sure… This isn’t breaking any ground, but it’s quality tech death.

2 Wolves
Shelter
Inverse
Proggy melodic metal, leaning towards power metal

If I Were You
The Sleepless
Manifest Records
Wall of sound post-hardcore.  With those singy choruses, you know where you can see kids with backpacks doing twostep moves in the “pit”  While yeah it’s heavy and cool in parts with brutal breakdowns, that melodic emo singy drum machine part comes on and it’s just a dealbreaker.

Nero Di Marte
Derivae
Prosthetic Records
Proggy metal with leanings towards melodic death metal.

Solefald
Norrønasongen. Kosmopolis Nord
Indie Recordings
They call these guys Avant garde/black metal.  I guess that means a bit gothy melodic or some “post” black metal.  I hear a bunch of noisy stuff that reminds me of the fucking around parts on the early Type O Negative albums.  meh.

Einherjer
Av Oss, For Oss
Indie Recordings
Release date: Monday, October 27th 2014

Oraculum (Chile)
Sorcery of the Damned
Invictus Productions
Heavy death/Black metal

TANTAL
Expectancy
Bakerteam Records
Starts off as some heavy catchy proggy metal, then fe-metal vocals come in, but wait, then we go to screamy guy vocals!  So it sounds like we have some Epica-like metal here without all the orchestral stuff. So thrashy proggy metal with clean female vox and screamy melodic death guy vox.  Cool stuff (from Russia!)

Latitude Egress
To Take Up the Cross
Art of Propaganda
Doomy post-metal with a little bit of a post-black metal thing going on. (yawn for me)

SELVA
Life Habitual
Argonauta Records
To take the little description from the download link….Post Black Metal – Screamo – Post Rock  and yeah, that’s about it.  But most “post” whatever seems to be pretty lame to me, this has some good black metal moments, but over all, this is pretty slow.

Eyes Of Mara
Eyes Of Mara
Imminence Records
Brutal metalcore/hardcore I guess.  Just overall catchy and heavy stuff, great production

All Hell
The Devil’s Work
Horror Pain Gore Death
Raw blackened death.  Production is raw, it’s almost a bit punked up thrashy metal. Songs are short and quick.

Hornwood Fell
Hornwood Fell
AVANTGARDE MUSIC
Fast heavy black metal.  Blast beats, cold sounding guitars, haunting vocals, melodic guitars too.

NUNSLAUGHTER / WITCHTRAP
Split 7″
Hells Headbangers
Nunslaughter is catchy super fast thrashy death metal stuff. Witchtrap is old school raw thrash.

The Howling Void
Runa
AVANTGARDE MUSIC
Post black metal doomy stuff, down tempo