Ethereal Shroud's doom-metal-inspired brand of atmospheric black metal is in top form here. Whereas TBtFA felt like a raw, emotional scream of pain, Trisagion feels more composed and deliberate, meticulously constructed from beginning to end. What hasn't changed is Ethereal Shroud's gift for imbuing his songs with melody without leaving the realm of atmospheric black metal. In a word: a triumph.

Evocative funeral doom sandwiches glorious atmospheric black metal on this incredible debut full-length. Rather than melding the two styles, Рожь demonstrates his aptitude with both, while finds a common emotional core between them: the somber tone.

There's music that blurs the line between parody and sincerity, and there's music that rides the line so effortlessly that you stop caring which it is. Neph's bars take me back to the earlier days of meme rap, where rappers became memetic through being absurd and over-the-top, not just loud. This album is so packed with quotables and memorable lines it's ridiculous, and keeps me coming back to hear more that I missed.

Damn Ashanti, please do hurt 'em! Backxwash takes her industrial horrorcore sound and turns everything up to 11. It's more harrowing, more uncompromising, and bangs like you wouldn't believe. Whereas the last album saw Backxwash bringing you into her world and trying to survive with her, this album sees her as the goddess of chaos of that world, and it's a sight to behold.

Thy Light return with an expansion on the melancholy of No Morrow Shall Dawn. It's still DSBM, and the compositions and vocals are classic Thy Light. But the sound of the album has been expanded to include influence from atmospheric black metal and even some post-metal. I've lost count of how many times I've listened to it before buying it; it's very easy to come back to.

It's like Black Dresses meets BROCKHAMPTON. The noisy and industrial stylings of Black Dresses, with an eclectic approach to sound that plays fast and loose with genres. The vulnerable yet still braggadocios lyrics of BROCKHAMPTON, with a similar variety of vocal styles to boot. It's experimental hip hop for people who actually do "listen to everything".

Mechina leans heavily on their symphonic side to make an album of soaring industrial ragers. Clean vocals take up the majority of the runtime, and they stack well with the strings and other symphonic touches. The chugging tech-death-y core instrumentals provide a rock-solid foundation for those symphonic parts. It all goes down so easily that it feels a good deal shorter than its hour-long runtime.

This album found me at the beginning of 2020, and has been a respite for me this whole year. The instrumental folk here is nearly ambient in its unobtrusiveness, and yet it is a quiet, cozy comfort. At my times when I have so little energy to give to the music I listen to, this album welcomes me into its arms with a blanket and warm mug of hot cocoa.

clipping. pushes their brand of industrial horrorcore into even more experimental directions, giving us a welcome companion album to the previous album. The production shines here, with several beats no rapper except Daveed could find a pocket in, while Daveed's storytelling and technical flow is great as ever.

Never would have expected the band behind The Cumback 2006 to cum back with a legitimately great death metal album. Though no longer strictly pornogrind, Gut's old style still peppers the albums, between the lyrics, the sampled audio, occasional gutteral vocals, and of course, the song titles. The mostly mid-paced death metal melodies help the album go down easy and the songs to stay distinct.

The combination of screamo and blackgaze on this album is incredibly complimentary, with both genre influences bringing out the best in each other. The soaring melodies are powerful enough that they made me cry before I even paid attention to the lyrics. Once I did, the writing about struggling with emotional pain, mental illness, and misogyny made the album even more devastating. And yet, there's catharsis in it. This is what I needed after a year like this.

Ethereal Shroud takes his sound out of the darkness of his last album and into the brightness of post-black metal. Though the sound has changed, his gift for writing is as strong as ever, infusing these atmospheric passages with soaring melodies. What a wonderful extra.

The blend of genres on display here, with melodic black metal and symphonic black metal laced seamlessly with doom metal, is a feat on its own. The sound is grand yet catchy, with the best of each genre on display. That the album remains so consistent from beginning to end is even more impressive.

This album reminds me of Algiers' first album: dark atmosphere; frenetic, jittery energy; electronic and industrial flourishes on a punk sound; and charged lyrics delivered with righteous fervor. But The Passion Of doubles down on the industrial side, resulting in tons of driving beats that make these songs relentlessly catchy as well as cacophonous.

It's like Adora Vivos never left, delivering their distinctive melodic death doom sound as masterfully as ever. Amiensus rounds out the tracklist with song that's doomier than their usual sound, but just as eclectic. Great little collection of songs.

Haunting and dark hip hop that sonicly captures the pain and anger of what I can only imagine Backxwash's lived experiences to be. Like clipping.'s last album, this album's style of horrorcore finds horror in the lived experiences of marginalized people, and in a time like this, what's more horrifying than that? In spite of the album's length, the attention to detail and progression matches that of a longer project. Short but special.

Take atmospheric black metal, play it on acoustic instruments, and add the local flair of Brazilian folk music, and you get something truly special. The clarity of the folk presentation makes these compositions shine all the brighter. The Panopticon comparison is an obvious one, but it also reminds me of how Agalloch combined subtle beauty and loud power in their music, and blended them seamlessly. Bom trabalho!

I'm a sucker for folk-influenced melodic black metal, but this is some top-tier stuff. The melodies are soaring and easy to get lost in. The folk embellishments are tasteful, yet have a commanding presence. The word "epic" tends to get overused in describing many things, but this album earns the descriptor.

Relentlessly catchy emo / pop punk that maintains a high standard of quality as it stays faithful to the core of it's style. Dylan Slocum's warbly delivery is perfect for delivering the cutting lyrics about the Millennial experience, capturing generational angst poetically and memorably. It's a devastating album, and I'll be coming back for that devastation over and over again.

Take the lyrical bite of early Kacey Musgraves and the lush instrumentation of later Kacey Musgraves, bump up the atmospherics and add some amazing performances from the backing band, and make it somehow even catchier, and you have Desert Dove. Michaela Anne is carving a wonderful sound for herself in country, easy to get lost in and yet substantive and satisfying.