6 New Songs You Need to Hear This Week: 3/2/18 | Page 3 | Revolver

6 New Songs You Need to Hear This Week: 3/2/18

At the Gates, Wolvhammer, Hell to Pay and More
at the gates 2018 PRESS, Century Media Records
courtesy of Century Media Records

Here at Revolver, we're always on the hunt for great new music — indeed, it's a big part of our jobs. With that in mind, here are the tracks released this week in metal, hard rock and hardcore that have been on heavy rotation at Revolver HQ. For your listening pleasure, we've also compiled the songs in a Spotify playlist, which will grow each week.

At the Gates - "To Drink From the Night Itself"
When Swedish melodic death-metal stalwarts At the Gates revealed that they'd split with co-founding guitarist Anders Björler last year and would be recording a new album without him, fans were justifiably trepidatious. Well, put any fears behind you because the lead single and title track off that record fucking rips. Yes, "To Drink From the Night Itself" calls back to the classic ATG sound of yore, but without coming across as retro or nostalgic in the process; to the contrary, the song sounds as singer Tomas Lindberg describes it — "raw, hungry and desperate."

Wolvhammer - "Eternal Rotting Misery"
"Eternal Rotting Misery" — the first single from Wolvhammer's forthcoming fourth album, The Monuments of Ash & Bone — is a determined, dire march into the dark: focused, unfussy mid-tempo black metal that finds the trio furthering the blackened-sludge vision it set forth on 2011's Clawing Into Black Sun, with possessed gang vocals, swarming, nausea-inducing riffs and audible disdain for, well, everything.

Hell to Pay - "Thrive"
Featured in last month's "Artists You Need to Know" column, Hell to Pay are a Philadelphia band who peddle tough-as-nails hardcore designed for melting faces and forcing action, in the pit as well as the community. "Thrive," the second track off the group's upcoming Bliss LP, represents an explosive shot across the bow at powerful institutions "ripe with the stench of greed" and reeking of "iron and rot." As the group's urgency and anger rushes out in a torrent of larynx-shredding screams, mucky bass strums and frenzied guitars, so does their message, comprised of one single, razor-shop word: Rise.

Ilsa - "Old Maid"
Today marks the arrival of Washington, D.C., doom-death crew Ilsa's latest full-length dirty bomb, Corpse Fortress. Standout cut "Old Maid" begins in a haze of distorted guitars before opening up like a series of gushing knife wounds as the five-piece unleashes sludgy circle-pit riffs, vicious call-and-response vocals and crusty-as-fuck breakdowns.

American Nightmare - "Clang Bang Clang"
Fresh off last month's excellent self-titled album, New England hardcore mainstays American Nightmare take an unexpected detour into off-kilter speed-pop with this thick, twitchy reinterpretation of the Lemonheads' 1988 song "Clang Bang Clang," which itself features lyrics by the late, not-so-great Charles Manson. As expected, American Nightmare's version (pressed to a forthcoming New Noise Magazine flexi) resembles a louder, nastier chip off the old block, its simmering hooks carefully left intact. Don't worry, Evan Dando: Your deep cut's in good hands.

Will Haven - "Winds of Change"
No, the Sacramento noise-metal veterans haven't dropped a Scorpions cover — these are plural winds, and the topic is "the stress you might feel when you are about to die," according to Will Haven guitarist Jeff Irwin, not the end of the Cold War. As such, this gut-wrenching latest cut off the band's forthcoming Muerte album surges and soars, part aggro resistance clawing for more life, part blissful surrender to the eternal sleep.