Greetings, Decibel readers!
Hope you had a happy Halloween. I hope you watched a horror movie. I hope the kids who arrived at your door had a higher proportion of scary costumes to cute or “clever” ones. I got together with my trivia group for our normal Tuesday-night outing with my makeup on from The Crow. And we won that night! Just like Eric Draven said, it can’t rain all the time!
Enjoy the albums below!
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Carnal Tomb – Embalmed in Decay
If you just want some straightforward, no nonsense death metal with a cool-looking album cover, Germany’s Carnal Tomb has you covered. This is especially true if you’re big on bands like Autopsy, Grave and Vomitory.
Stream: Apple Music
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Cult Burial – Reverie of the Malignant
From our album premiere:
From the opening snarl of “Umbra,” Cult Burial achieve a balance of blackened melodicism and cold-weather doom. When vocalist/lyricist César Moreira unleashes his chilling roar it feels like an elemental force. In this album, darkness is prevalent and prevailing. Meanwhile, Simon Langford’s compositions strike a balance between restrained fury and blitzing aggression. In “Parasite,” Felipe Grüber’s guitars add surprising sizzle to the song’s industrial churn. “Strive” unfolds as a dynamic mood-ruiner, which of course we mean in the best way possible. Later, 9+ minute closer “Oblivion” wields a vast weapon arsenal including stripped-down slams and a hauntingly heavy denouement. While versions of a few of these songs were already released, the songs have taken their deadly final form here. The result is the project’s most striking work yet.
Stream: Apple Music
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Mortuary Drape – Black Mirror
Italy’s Mortuary Drape is one of those bands you can’t easily compare to anyone else. In that way, you can only really place them with other similarly odd black metal bands like Mystifier and Master’s Hammer. It’s dark, it’s cool, and it’s also really weird. But it’s meant to be that way!
Stream: Apple Music
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Suffocation – Hymns From the Apocrypha
YO. Those vocals are no joke! Going with Disgorge‘s Ricky Myers is proving to be an extremely wise decision, hard as it is to imagine Suffocation without Frank Mullen. Otherwise, this delivers the techy-slamming excellence we’ve all come to expect from the band, framed in the tight production characteristic of this era of the band.
Stream: Apple Music
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Warcrab – The Howling Silence
I love how hard the band goes in owning its name. Look at that logo! But fear not, this is no joke-novelty band. The band goes for a BIG sound on this album, which is mastered in a way that makes the sound envelop you in its madness. Think of the latter-day output of Dark Tranquility and Soilwork and then hone it down through the filter of bands like Bolt Thrower, Vader and Krisiun.
Stream: Apple Music
