6 Best New Songs Right Now: 1/21/22 | Revolver

6 Best New Songs Right Now: 1/21/22

Ghost, Ho99o9, Undeath and more
Undeath press 2022 , Errick Easterday
Undeath
photograph by Errick Easterday

Here at Revolver, we're always on the hunt for new songs to bang our heads to — indeed, it's a big part of our jobs. With that in mind, here are the tracks released this week in occult-rock, death metal, metalcore and more that have been on heavy rotation at Revolver HQ. For your listening pleasure, we've also compiled the songs in an ever-evolving Spotify playlist.

Ghost - "Call Me Little Sunshine"
Leave it to Ghost to announce an album with quite possibly their most metal cover art yet, reveal that it'll explore "themes of isolation and demigod worship" and then hit unsuspecting suckers slobbering for blast-beats with one of the catchiest songs in their repertoire. Of course, "Call Me Little Sunshine" is etched with satanic allegory, but Papa Emeritus IV delivers his devilish messages with a golden belt that could go head-to-head with your parent's Abba records. 

Ibaraki - "Tamashii No Houkai"
His music in Trivium has gotten increasingly melodic over the years, but Matt Heafy certainly hasn't gone soft. The singer-guitarist finally unveiled his long-awaited black-metal project with none other than Emperor main man Insahn, and our first taste of Ibaraki is a searing cascade of galloping rhythms, chomping riffs and pained roars from Heafy that don't draw any immediate comparisons to his main band. 

Ho99o9 - "Battery Not Included"
Ho99o9's music was hard to make sense of when they started, and they're still not making it any easier for listeners to pigeonhole them with a few meaningless genre tags. "Battery Not Included" is three minutes of break-neck bass wobbles, head-spinning drum patterns, dingey hardcore chugs and glitched-out vocals that smack atop all the ruckus with the force of bone hitting pavement. Don't bother trying to classify it, just start breaking shit. 

Zeal & Ardor - "Church Burns"
"Church Burns" is blasphemy with a giant toothy grin. Zeal & Ardor mastermind Manuel Gagneux opens the song with a bluesy, hand-clapping refrain that knowingly calls back to traditional Gospel music, and then offers up a detailed play-by-play of torching a house of worship and reducing it to smoldering ash. "There ain't nothing left where it used to stand/Crawled in the window and cut my hand/Set fire to the pews and I bask in the light/Step outside in the middle of the night." Amen. 

Undeath - "Rise From the Grave" 
Undeath's blood-spitting 2020 debut, Lesions of a Different Kind, was a morgue-stuffing dose of old-school death-metal that made the Rochester, NY, band one of the most esteemed young acts in the genre, and now they're back with one very simple message: "It's time to rise from the grave." The lead single from their forthcoming sophomore LP not only boasts their best riff yet and a kick-ass solo, but noticeably higher production fidelity that fully captures the band's axe-swinging power. 

SETYØURSAILS - "Nightfall" 
SETYØURSAILS are a relatively young German metalcore band with a ton of promise. Frontwoman Jules Mitch has a robust clean delivery that falls somewhere between Paramore's Hayley Williams and Evanescence's Amy Lee, and bellowing screams akin to the low-register uncleans of Devil Wears Prada frontman Mike Hranica. Together, they make for a forceful dichotomy on "Nightfall," personifying the song's lyrics that explore "the contradiction of being trapped in the darkness and being scared, but at the same time, worshipping the darkness."