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 death-metal, industrial, hardcore 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.
Crowbar - "Chemical Godz"
Although they hail from the swampy bogs of New Orleans, Crowbar often make music that's coarse and frigid. "Chemical Godz," the lead single from their first album in six years, is fever-stricken sludge-metal. One minute, its red-hot blues riff is throbbing at a toasty 103 degrees Fahrenheit, and the next, it's fighting off an achy shiver while Kirk Windstein groans, "Frozen so cold," over funereal open chords. It hits the band's sweet-spot, and the best Crowbar isn't comfy.
Arch Enemy - "House of Mirrors"
"House of Mirrors" begins like a tutorial on how to make melodic death-metal. After a suspenseful intro of spiraling guitar licks, vocalist Alissa White-Gluz lets rip a Dio-ian power-metal belt and then seamlessly drops into the next measure with a growl that rumbles the underworld. Just when the bright arpeggios and NWOBHM rhythmic trots start to feel a little too saccharine for Arch Enemy, in come the blast beats, breakdowns and Glutz's serpentine snarl. Melodeath: an introduction.
Author & Punisher - "Drone Carrying Dread"
"Drone Carrying Dread" sounds more like a descriptive tagline than a thematically relevant title. The eight-minute creeper by the Tool-approved industrial tinkerer, Author & Punisher, packages the anxieties of the post-autonomous age — endless warfare carried out by dystopian computers that've doomed us all to die — into plodding drum machines crashes, yearning synths and vocals that are warped and smothered by the titular dread. Emotional machine music.
SPITE - "Made to Please"
You could call SPITE's music hardcore, deathcore or anything in between and you'd always be correct. The California band make mosh-core for a generation who grew up on pig squeals before they acquired a taste for Hatebreed, so songs like "Made to Please" defy metal chronology by making deathcore's hulking form the trunk and hardcore's intimate spirit one of the branches. It sounds like if Knocked Loose were fronted by Whitechapel's Phil Bozeman. Look-the-fuck-out-core.
Moon Tooth - "The Conduit"
While Moon Tooth's 2019 album, Crux, earned comparisons to live-wire technicians like Dillinger Escape Plan, Mastodon and Tool, "The Conduit" aims to pull you closer rather than blow your mind from a safe distance. The most awe-inducing aspect isn't the tight-as-hell performance, but a curious sound — the squelchy, spritzy tone used for the whipping lead lick — and vocalist John Carbone's soulful, full-bodied croon, which sounds like Glassjaw's Daryl Palumbo if he wasn't so busy freaking the fuck out. Prog-metal rarely sounds this warm-blooded.
Pillars of Ivory - "M.O.P."
Pillars of Ivory make hardcore that's best consumed with a bottle in one hand and a blunt in the other. The duo of Mindforce's Jay Peta and Death Threat's Aaron Butkus — two of the best metallic hardcore vocalists of the last 20 years — just dropped a split with emo-rap spellcaster Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, and on "M.O.P.," they chop a decades-old bar from New York rap vet AZ ("even our dreams are drug-related"), paste it over menacing chugs and make it into a gnarly mosh call. Where hardcore punk and hardcore hip-hop collide.
Bad Omens - "Artificial Suicide"
Bad Omens started out as a sleek metalcore act with a tendency toward giant melodies and glossy breakdowns, but now they're trying something different. On "Artificial Suicide," the L.A. band add a synthetic crunch to their guitars, give the drums an industrial stiffness, toss breakbeats in between Noah Sebastian's disaffected cleans, and drape it all in a spine-tingling synth effect that sounds like a command center alarm going haywire during an enemy infiltration.
Napalm Death - "Narcissus"
Despite the generations of imitators who've followed the blueprint they created, there's still no one who hits quite like Napalm Death. "Narcissus" isn't feral grind the whole way through — although there's plenty of blast among these beats — but it's mean mean and jagged in a way that's hostile toward its subject, but not its listeners. It's not trying to shock you into leaving, but shock you into staying. Like when they craft a perfectly groovy death-metal riff during its final quarter, make it just a little faster than most bands would, and step back to watch you marvel at the magic.
