New Releases From AMORPHIS, MR. BIG & More Out This Week 7/12

This week’s new heavy metal releases include Nine Inch Nails covers, a soundtrack to a Western movie that doesn’t exist, shredders telling you what number album their on with their fingers, and more! To the metals…

Amorphis – Tales From The Thousand Lakes (Live At Tavastia)

Genre: Progressive/melodic death metal
Origin: Helsinki, Finland
Label: Reigning Phoenix

Buy now on Amazon

Pretty straight ahead release that is one for big Amorphis fans. This is a full performance of the band’s second album performed in Helsinki, Finland’s Tavastia club. You’re also getting “My Kantele” and their cover of Abhorrence‘s “Vulgar Necrolatry.”

Black Lava – The Savage Winds To Wisdom

Genre: Blackened death metal
Origin: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Label: Season of Mist

Buy now on Bandcamp

On their second record Black Lava are once again going for the throat. Their sound is harder to nail down than last time with drastic mood and rhythmic shifts throughout, but that is to be expect from a band of tech guys. They’re joined by new bassist (but old friend) Nick Rackham, and his presence makes Black Lava‘s line-up now seventy-fire percent of A Million Dead Birds Laughing. Jeff has a full review here.

Allie Goertz – Peeled Back

Genre: Indie covers of Nine Inch Nails
Origin: Los Angeles, California
Label: Self-released

Buy now on Bandcamp

A few years back Nine Inch Nails infested the mind of singer-songwriter/comedy writer Allie Goertz and she set out to make this album. As the album’s title suggests she peels back much of the heaviness and rage, and what remains are familiar haunting melodies and wildly different takes of classics. There are renditions of “Closer,” “The Hand That Feeds,” and jarringly pleasant of “Big Man with a Gun” and lots more.

Lord Buffalo – Holus Bolus

Genre: Folk/desert rock
Origin: Austin, Texas
Label: Blues Funeral

Buy now on Bandcamp

I’ll be honest, when I decided to write about this band after reading the name I fully thought they were a different band. Maybe King Buffalo? Anyway, I am stoked to find something new (to me) though. This sounds like the soundtrack to a modern Western epic. Lil twang, lots of atmosphere, and the right about of grit.

Mothman and the Thunderbirds – Portal Hopper

Genre: Progressive metel
Origin: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Label: Self-released

Buy now on Bandcamp

Are you a fan of the last handful Devin Townsend records? Get on this then. This is pure prog weirdness and fun that will get stuck in your head. The record is full of shifts that kept me guessing too. There’s also a guest spot from fellow one-man-band madman Egor Lappo on a track.

Mr. Big – Ten

Genre: Hard rock
Origin: Los Angeles, California
Label: Frontiers

Buy now on Amazon

Save for a gap in the 2000’s, these guys have been hitting listeners with arena-sized shredding for thirty-six years. This is another record of Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan going off. And this is their first with new drummer Nick D’Virgilio (Spock’s Beard, Big Big Train) who is no slouch either

Scarcity – The Promise Of Rain

Genre: Atmospheric/experimental black metal
Origin: New York, New York
Label: The Flenser

Buy now on Bandcamp

I feel the dark, heavy, metal types pulling away. This one is for you. The sophomore record from these New Yorkers sounds like an abyss crashing in on itself. It’s an unsettling record in terms the production and the arrangement. This is both evil and odd.

Windwalker – Hyperviolence

Genre: Metalcore/alternative
Origin: Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia
Label: Blues Funeral

Buy now on Bandcamp

Taking this home with something that’s usually off my radar but something about the track below caught my attention. This band a prime example of the modern metal sound working really well. Hyperviolence is a combination of classic metalcore and nu metal heaviness with pop/EDM production. I don’t see you readers that stopped listening to Metallica when they cut their hair jumping on this, but it’s cool example of what the youth are digging.

Also dropping this week…

• Amerakin Overdose – Artificial Infection (Self-released) – Nu metal
• Ananda Mida – Live At Duna Jam (Heavy Psych Sounds) – Psychedelic
• Black Capricorn – Sacrifice Darkness…and Fire (Majestic Mountain) – Psychedelic/doom
• Blasfeme – Black Legion (Wulfhere Productions) – Black metal
• Boozewa – Bon Vivant (DeepRest Records) – Sludge/punk
• Budderside – White Flame (Self-released) – Hard rock
• Dark Mile – Dark Mile (Pride & Joy Music) – Melodic rock
• Disloyal – Divine Miasmata (Black Lion Records) – Death metal
• Forgotten Tomb – Nightfloating (Agonia) – Black/gothic metal
• Gorgonchrist – And Justice For Balls (Road To Masochist) – Black metal/crust
• Graphic Nature – Who Are You When No One Is Watching? (Rude Records) – Nu metal/metalcore
• In Hearts Wake – Incarnation (UNFD) – Metalcore/nu metal
• Kommandant – Exhibition Of Conquest (ATMF) – Death/black metal
• The Last King – Culling From Gods (Self-released) – Technical death metal
• Tim Montana – Savage (BMG) – Hard rock
• Northbound – Juniper (Smartpunk) – Pop punk
• Occult Witches – Sorrow’s Pyre (Black Throne Productions) – Hard/occult rock
• Obscene – Agony & Wounds (Nameless Grave Records) – Death metal
• Plutocracy Planet – Plutocracy Planet (Self-released) – Post-hardcore/electronic
• Skelethal – Within Corrosive Continuums (Hells Headbangers) – Death metal
• Speed – Only One Mode (Flatspot Records) – Hardcore
• Spiral Grave – Ill Repute (Argonauta Records) – Doom
• Terminal Sleep – Spineless/Shadows (Self-released) – Metalcore
• Thirteen Goats – Capricorn Rising (Exitus Stratagem Records) – Death metal/thrash
• Totengott – Beyond The Veil (Hammerheart) – Black metal/doom
• Turbo – Broke & Ugly (Self-released) – Thrash
• Turin – The Unforgiving Reality In Nothing (MNRK Heavy) – Blackened death metal
• Vanhelgd – Atropos Doctrina (Dark Descent Records) – Death metal
• Vower – Apricity (Self-released) – Progressive rock
• Vuur & Zijde – Boezem (Prophecy Productions) – Atmospheric black metal