Sepulcher don’t let on to their experimentation or psychedelic indulgences right away, but by the time you’ve detected them, their tentacles have already latched on.įor those who don’t read Japanese, this band’s name translates to Sleepwalker, and the album title is read as “Ichi-go ichi-e,” which translates to “for this time only,” or “never again”-a fascinatingly strange message that ends up being all too appropriate. The band treads a realm somewhere between the psychedelic death-art of Morbus Chron and the heavy metal gloom of In Solitude, all the while powering forward with an intensity that never relents. They’re loud and fast and reckless, but it only takes a few minutes before something weirder, darker and more complicated begins to surface. In the thrashy gallop of “Corporeal Vessels,” the leadoff track on the Norwegian band’s sophomore album Panoptic Horror, Sepulcher’s immediate concern is in laying waste to the path ahead of them.
The growing renaissance of old-school-leaning acts in thrash and death metal has produced countless amazing albums in the past few years, though it takes a band like Sepulcher to lead one to question just how old-school this really is. But this is also a band that sound like they’re having more fun than most, right down to the ooky-spooky Halloween effects that open and close the record. Make no mistake: This is a band whose bona fides aren’t to be fucked with.
HEAVY METAL ALBUMS 2018 FULL
With a narrative written from the perspective of being inside of a coffin and eight tracks full of old-school American death metal riffs, Coffin Birth is more about reckless, rowdy fun and sounding badass than pulling off superhuman feats of musicianship. That’s not what’s important about the Bay Area rippers, whose personnel includes current and former members of Cretin and Agalloch. It can be artful and progressive, and even after 30 years, still redefining what it means to be “extreme.” Extremity flex pretty hard on that front by actually calling themselves Extremity, though there are certainly bands more extreme than they are. Here are the best metal albums of 2018.ĭeath metal can be technical. It was a good year for metal, whether or not it was a good year for anything else. I hope everyone who reads this gets a chance to discover something new that they end up loving-if that’s all anyone takes from this, then I succeeded 100 percent. And while I’m sure we all love the spirit of competition, that’s not what this is about. Some of it, technically, might arguably not be metal, but everything here is heavy, immense and devastating. Cutting out albums was more difficult than usual, as one of the bright spots of 2018 was discovering so much new stuff that was amazing and innovative and artful and gnarly. Like I said, I listened to a lot of metal. So this year, it’s up to a top 25-and my honorable mentions list could go on even longer. So much that I had to expand my list of favorites this year, after adding another 10 last year. And yes, of course it’s dark, sometimes ugly and menacing, but it’s all wrapped together in one furious package. It’s cathartic, yes, but it’s also fun, joyous, escapist, therapeutic, even spiritual. And I don’t know how everyone else does it, but for me metal is the thing that gives me the extra jolt of energy and motivation that I need.
But these are frustrating, infuriating times we’re living in, and every day I feel just a little bit more exhausted-we all know the feeling of letting out an exasperated sigh when we open up Twitter. This isn’t me opening up about any personal struggles or anything, and I don’t really have a “metal saved my life” story. These days I wonder what I’d do without metal.
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