This month’s best metal on Bandcamp this month includes a breakthrough for a onetime goth-metal band, a prog metal vocal showcase, neck-snapping death-thrash, and much more.
Unto Others
Never, Neverland
Vinyl LP
On “Butterfly,” the opening track from Unto Others’s superb third album, Never, Neverland, frontman Gabriel Franco sings, “I could win your heart with a melody.” He spends the next 45 minutes doing just that. The Portland act that could once credibly be described as “The Sisters of Mercy meets Iron Maiden” has broadened its canvas and sharpened its tools, presenting a big-tent vision of heavy metal that we seldom hear in the 21st century. The goth-rock and NWOBHM reference points that once served as the foundation of the Unto Others sound are still here, but the album that Never, Neverland most frequently calls to mind is Empire, the mainstream breakthrough by their fellow PNW natives in Queensrÿche. Empire honored Queensrÿche’s metal roots, but it was resolutely unafraid of big pop hooks, openhearted melodies, and crystalline production techniques. On Never, Neverland, Unto Others take the same step, writing songs that tend to emphasize Franco’s acute melodic ear. (Franco does the heavy lifting as a songwriter, but it helps that guitarist Sebastian “Spyder” Silva’s playing feels inspired by the tasteful, lyrical lead work of ex-Rÿcher Chris DeGarmo.) “Angel of the Night” is a gorgeous power ballad, while “Hoops” is a cowbell-driven pseudo-instrumental. “Momma Likes the Door Closed” and “Suicide Today” are playful alt-rockers, while the major-key “Sunshine” easily could have made rotation on terrestrial radio in the early 2000s—on pop stations, not just in the hard-rock format. Unto Others can still go heavy, as they do on the doomsday ripper “Flatline,” but they’ve assumed an imposing new form by embracing accessibility. At a time when even the best heavy metal bands seem content to rule the underground, Unto Others are reaching out for the arena stage.
Oceans of Slumber
Where Gods Fear to Speak
2 x Vinyl LP, T-Shirt/Shirt, Compact Disc (CD)
Oceans of Slumber drummer and songwriter Dobber Beverly has an endearing habit of calling his wife, Oceans frontwoman Cammie Beverly, the best singer in America. He might be a little biased, but he is onto something. Cammie’s voice unlocks avenues for Oceans of Slumber that simply aren’t available to most metal bands. On Where Gods Fear to Speak, the Houston act’s sixth album, she gives the performance of her life. The rich, soulful midrange that she’s made her name on is as impressive as ever, but she sounds just as confident navigating “Queen of the Night”-style runs in a convincing operatic soprano or dropping into a spine-chilling death metal growl. (Harsh vocals by other singers have appeared on Oceans albums before, but Cammie says it felt important for her to perform those parts herself on Where Gods Fear to Speak.) Knowing Cammie will get the songs across the finish line means Dobber can go wherever he wants with the compositions. Gnarled black/death metal; twisting, melodic prog rock; cinematic, piano-led balladry—all have a place on Where Gods Fear to Speak. By the end of the band’s stunning cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”—the album’s “closing credits,” per Dobber—it feels like there’s nothing Oceans of Slumber couldn’t do if they tried.
Pyrrhon
Exhaust
2 x Vinyl LP, Cassette, Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), T-Shirt/Shirt, Sweater/Hoodie
It isn’t easy for a band known for their doggedly uncategorizable music to do something truly surprising. Yet that’s what Pyrrhon manages on Exhaust, their frequently bewildering fifth LP. Genre has never been of much concern to the NYC band, but they typically lived in the same sonic universe as dissonant, experimental death metal bands like Gorguts and Demilich. Songs trended long and convoluted, and additional layers of the onion were inevitably revealed on a second (or 20th) listen. That’s why Exhaust hits like a truck—a used Toyota with 200,000 miles on it, in keeping with the album’s lyrical fixation on burnout. Even in its strangest moments, it boasts an immediacy that feels new for Pyrrhon. Some of that comes from a subtle but crucial pivot the band seems to have undergone, from being inspired primarily by death metal to more fully embracing noise rock. There’s always been a squelching, grimy film of Unsane and Oxbow influence on Pyrrhon’s music, but it rises to the fore on Exhaust. (Guitarist Dylan DiLella joined Couch Slut since the last Pyrrhon record came out, which may be a contributing factor.) The only song on Exhaust that breaches the five-minute mark is also its most radical—the clattering, rhythm section-led “Out of Gas,” which sees vocalist Doug Moore expounding on the album’s themes in unhinged spoken word. There is still death metal here—try not to get your clock cleaned by the punishing “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce”—but in refocusing their long-running project, Pyrrhon have, incredibly, found a new way to keep us guessing.
Ripped to Shreds
Sanshi
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette, T-Shirt/Shirt
2022’s Jubian was a quantum leap for Ripped to Shreds, the San Jose band led by prolific guitarist and producer Andrew Lee. It was the first RTS album that Lee made with a full lineup, and the move from bedroom solo project to honest-to-goodness death metal band paid immediate dividends. Sanshi doubles down on Jubian’s achievements, delivering a suite of hulking death metal songs that feel alive with the interplay between Lee and his fellow musicians. Musically, Sanshi can feel at times like a tour through Lee’s record collection (with extended stays in the Asphyx and Dismember sections), but the guitar work by Lee and newcomer Michael Chavez helps push the album past hero worship. Both are incredibly talented players who seem to bring out something special in one another, whether in the shredding, dueling solos of “殭屍復活 (Horrendous Corpse Resurrection)” or the pulverizing riff one-upmanship of “In the Court of Yanluowang.” Lee’s lyrics, always a highlight of the Ripped to Shreds experience, focus on rites surrounding death and the afterlife in Chinese folklore. Alongside the eerie album art by Guang Yang, they add a layer of atmosphere that renders Sanshi even more effective.
Vicious Blade
Relentless Force
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Pittsburgh’s Vicious Blade specialize in scorched-earth thrash, tinted with death metal malevolence and crust punk attitude. Relentless Blade is the band’s first full-length, and its lean 28 minutes are an all-out blitz, without much of a chance for the listener to catch their breath. Frontwoman Clarissa Badini, also of the excellent feminist death metal band Castrator, has the ideal voice for that kind of blinding assault. Her clipped staccato darts through the spaces between warp-speed riffs and squealing, Slayer-like leads. This is exhilarating, ruthlessly efficient stuff, executed to near-perfection. Fans of Guardian of the Universe, the latest album by Vicious Blade’s Redefining Darkness labelmates Oxygen Destroyer, should pair it up in a death-thrashing double feature with Relentless Force.
Eccentric Pendulum
Perspectiva Invertalis
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP, T-Shirt/Shirt, Vinyl Box Set,
Perspectiva Invertalis is the first release in seven years—and first full-length in 13—by the experimental death metal band Eccentric Pendulum. Since forming as a kind of souped-up melodeath/metalcore hybrid in Bangalore, India in 2008, the band has steadily introduced more progressive elements to their sound. On Perspectiva Invertalis, they borrow the stop-start rhythmic core of Meshuggah, the wonky time changes of Opeth, and even a little of the cosmic exploration of Blood Incantation. (There are also a few passages where it sounds like Tool playing death metal, which works better than you might think.) Death metal has been getting progged-out makeovers for three decades now, so Eccentric Pendulum’s work doesn’t carry the shock of the new. But it is satisfying, somewhat perversely, as a meat-and-potatoes take on a familiar sound.
40 Watt Sun
Little Weight
There’s significantly more electric guitar on Little Weight, Patrick Walker’s latest album with 40 Watt Sun, than there was on 2022’s (mostly) solo joint Perfect Light. That doesn’t mean the onetime Warning bandleader is fully recommitted to doom metal, but the crunching chords that back up his inimitable voice on weepies like “Pour Your Love” and “Closer to Life” are certainly a welcome surprise. Little Weight is still closer to gloomy alternative rock than genuine metal, but outside of Katatonia, there’s no one in the metal world who’s more attuned to that style’s frequencies. At minimum, Walker has added one all-timer to his sterling catalog: “Astoria,” a nostalgic lament set in the Queens neighborhood I called home for nearly a decade. Yes, I’ve cried to it, and yes, I plan to cry to it again.
Midwife
No Depression in Heaven
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette, T-Shirt/Shirt
Madeline Johnston famously calls the music she makes as Midwife “heaven metal,” which is good enough for me to include No Depression in Heaven in the Best Metal column this month. Well, that and the fact that it’s a masterpiece, Johnston’s surest synthesis of syrupy slowcore guitars, pitch-black pop hooks, and distant, aching vocals yet. (Johnston likes to use corded telephones as microphones, and there’s a haunting, familiar quality to her vocal takes that feels like an old voicemail from a departed friend you can’t bear to delete.) No Depression in Heaven is depressing on the surface, sure enough—but as is usually the case with Midwife, there’s a point of light in each of its seven dirges. As its title suggests, the album stretches toward the promise of transcendence. It dares to hope, as the Iron Maiden song says, that life down here is just a strange illusion.
