That's Not Metal

Nails tear through the UK, Trivium unveil their Eastern darkness-inspired new album, and Aerosmith plot their own Back to the Beginning style party.

Releases:
Slope - Same Kids. Just Louder.
Greta van Fleet - Palace for the People
unpeople - we are unpeople
Wage War - Landfall
Left to Suffer - Unwelcome Guest
Twin Temple - Doomed Lovers
Graveyard - Fever
Meryl Streek - Stories They Don’t Teach You At School
Wolfbrigade - Howl From Underground
RAM - Against
Smoulder - Witch Wife in an Alien World
Avrak - Avrak
Werewolves - You’re Weak and You Know You’re Weak
Goblin Cock - Traumanaut
Nowhere2Run - Bloodrave II

We've arrived at our annual Damnation Festival preview Album Club pack as we pull out Cult of Luna's 21st century post-metal benchmark Somewhere Along the Highway, Walls of Jericho's 00s metallic hardcore smackdown The American Dream, the 2010s sludgy powerviolence of Weekend Nachos' Worthless (featuring "Pat Patterson" and "Troe Johman"), and The Berzerker's Aussie gabber death metal Dissimulate.

It's real highs and lows in the news for rock music this week, with incredibly exciting reveals from Disfear and Repugnant, the 2027 line-up announcements from Slam Dunk and ArcTanGent, but also the news of Enter Shikari's incoming hiatus and the mountain-moving loss of Venom's Cronos, the forefather of extreme metal without whom our world is unthinkable.

Releases:
Amon Amarth - The Allfather Awakens
Twin Atlantic - Separation from the Animals
Imminence - Axis Mundi
Escape the Fate - The Last Goodbye
Miss May I - No Place for Me
To the Grave - LIBERATION FRONT
Haywire 617 - I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye
Cyadine - Violence In Measure
Bobbie Dazzle - Star Power
Haunt - Setting Course
Asomvel - Set Your World On Fire
Hippotraktor - Annihilist
Dissimulator - Artifice Dissolves
Deconsekrated - The Inexorable Transcendence of Death
Spirit Possession - Cathedral Speech
Xasthur - Open to Misinterpretation
From First to Last - We Were Bleeding Anyway
The Crawling - What We Leave Behind
Swans - Newly Sentient Being

There are surprising pivots towards our world from the pop sphere this time from Miley Cyrus and Chvrches alongside new singles from Bullet for My Valentine & several others, live trips to see Electric Wizard & more, there's a mindblowing milestone for Judas Priest's Ian Hill, a bizarre multi-pronged bust-up with Frankie Palmeri at the centre, and sadly another passing of a punk and hardcore legend with the loss of New Found Glory's Chad Gilbert.

Releases:
Holding Absence - Modern Life is Lonely
Emma Ruth Rundle - These Killing Times
Boy Harsher - Get Mean
The Eternal - Obscured Horizons
Remote Viewing - State Violence
Early Moods - Ready for the Grave
Krallice - Scour Order
Runemagick - After Chaos: Nocturnal Vigil
CH’AHOM - Anthropic Rites of Sublimation
Combust / Blow Your Brains Out / Imposter - United Nations
Tom Morello - Everyone Gets Everything They Want
Coldrain - OPTIMIZE = OPTDEMIZE
Europe - Come This Madness
Keo - Put a Smile On For Me
Pain of Truth - Pain of Truth
Split Dogs - Nice N’ Rough
Burner - No One is Coming to Save Us
Cloven Hoof - Never a Prophet in Your Own Land
Bloodstain - Bloodstain
God Mother - Köttvärld
Crown of Magnetar - The Hollowing of Godflesh
Godflesh - Decay
Protomartyr - Hotel Usona
Brat - Manslayer
The Ocean - Solaris
Ethereal Tomb - Living to Dream Again
Noctule - Extinguish Thy Flame
Iskald - Curse of the Mind
Aborym - Metachaos
Krolok - Hričov  – Súľov – Lietava
Massteron - Second in the Spheres
Profanation - Ultra-Noise Warfare
Scorpion Milk - Flesh Mask for Skulls

September gets us all sludgy as reviews pore over new Mastodon, Green Lung, Anthrax, Chat Pile, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, Sleep, Devil Master, & Wrong Man, Evanescence playing the UK's biggest arena, and Tony Iommi being the boss yet again.

Mastodon 38:10
Green Lung 1:22:40
Anthrax 1:48:34
Chat Pile 2:07:25
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats 2:26:18
Sleep 2:42:26
Devil Master 2:52:30
Wrong Man 3:10:13