Sunday Sesh: Which Albums Have We Missed?
Help us keep up with all this damn music by sharing some of your favourite albums we’ve missed thus far in 2018.
How many times have you heard one of your choleric cohort utter something along the lines of “there’s just too much metal being released to keep up with“? A few? Heaps? TOO MANY TO KEEP UP WITH?!? Yeah, it’s not an actual problem. But it does suck missing out on some stuff only to discover it two years later.
Back in the early days of the Toilet, it was possible for me to keep up with almost everything that I felt I needed to, both here and on the couple of other sites I used to visit reasonably regularly. Namely, No Clean Singing and…well, that’s about it.
Sometimes I’d scan dodgy download sites for interesting album covers and bookmark the names for future reference upon official release. Gradually taking up a more substantial role behind the scenes here has seen that free time to peruse other portals dwindle to nil. Which does suck, because even though I’m still inundated with amazing music from everyone in our community, some other awesome records inevitably slip through the net. And while I’ve managed to cover a bunch of my favourites of the year so far, there are also a few excellent albums which unfortunately haven’t been given the coverage they deserve on the site. Here are a few such records:
Ghastly – Death Velour
20 Buck Spin | April 20th, 2018
Top quality Finnish death metal with a huge sound and progressive-flair. The track I’ve chosen is the final cut from Death Velour and gives a fairly comprehensive indication of what the album holds for you. Cryptic clean-passages evoking the hallucinatory haze which Execration cast on their acclaimed masterpiece Morbid Dimensions are abutted by monolithic palm-muted monstrosities. Hypnotic leads sublimate the album’s 37 minute run-time into a transitory trip beyond the tangible.
Mournful Congregation – The Incubus Of Karma
Osmose Productions | March 23rd, 2018
In what has surely been the most massive comeback of the year thus far, Australian legends Mournful Congregation brought their majestic brand of funeral doom back from the dead. Melancholic lament is conveyed within every drawn-out note, every bending harmony, every single moment of this 80 minute opus. Engrossing and epic in the true sense of the word.
FFO: Thergothon, Bell Witch, Profetus.
Void Eater – II
Independent | March 16th, 2018
Back only 3 months after his first release under the moniker Void Eater, RKV (Kristian) of Obliteration notoriety, ventured deeper on his wild excursion into the realm of dissonant blackened-death. While his riffing on the first record was perfectly fine for the style, this time he’s definitely bumped it up a notch or two. When combined with an even more aggressive performance on the drums (his primary instrument), II eclipses the debut both in terms of intensity and replayability. The addition of some dark ambient interludes helps break up the maelstrom and give you time to catch your breath between the caustic surges of suffocating murk.
Thangorodrim – Akallabêth [EP]
Independent | January 5th, 2018
Look, if you are a fan of dungeon synth, you already know Thangorodrim rules the two towers (Dorkthanc and Barad-nûrd). If you’re just getting into the genre, then look no further. Taur-nu-Fuin was one of my top 10 albums of 2016, and last year’s Gil-Estel unquestionably solidified Thangorodrim as the most widely heralded project in the reinvigorated and somehow burgeoning genre. In that, Akallabêth constitutes a victory of sorts; a well-deserved reverie in Rivendell.
Yith – Immemorial
Independent | April 27th, 2018
Having only had a couple of weeks to spend with this record, I’m still digging into it, but from first play it was obvious Immemorial was going to be a stayer. Yith is a cohesive blend of forlorn doom and a kind of pastoral-toned black metal. Organic and evocative, Immemorial will please those seeking something solemn yet spirited. Given time, I can see this record popping up quite a bit around year’s end.
Czarface/MF DOOM – Czarface Meets Metal Face
Get On Down | March 30th, 2018
After being extremely on-fucking-board around this time 5 years ago for the debut venture between the Wu-Tang Clan‘s most versatile verbalist Inspectah Deck, and a couple of my longtime faves in 7L & Esoteric, I’ve followed the comic-book themed collaboration with a keen interest. When the follow-up was announced (including a bunch of guest-star appearances), and it seemed the project was destined to become a Regular Thing™, I wondered who we would see appear on future joints. Well, as it says on the bloody packet, the latest (Czarface‘s 4th) features none other than MF DOOM, dropping in for not just a track or two but the whole album. As promising a prospect as that sounds (and is), what really takes Czarface Meets Metal Face to the next level is 7L’s diverse production. That, and the fact that having DOOM on board seems to have somehow kicked Deck’s already formidable style up a gear, allowing him to easily steal every track with his fire.
So there are a few of my faves we haven’t previously covered on the site, what are some of your recommendations we haven’t talked about here so far in 2018?
Drop them in the comments and tell us what we’ve been missing!
