Trepalium – Voodoo Moonshine
The French metal scene has undergone a spectacular transformation over the past decade or so, and it’s bands like Trepalium – inventive, perverse and seemingly immune to passing trends – that have made all the difference. While still tethered to the angular, polyrhythmic grooves that underpinned their earlier records, new EP Voodoo Moonshine throws a full brass section into the mix, resulting in a dizzying squall of bug-eyed jazz and syncopated grind that aims as much for the feet as it does the head and heart. Totally bonkers, of course, but in the most appealing way imaginable.
Torche – Annihilation Affair
Resolutely positioned in the centre of a diverse Venn diagram of subgenres, Torche are tricky to pin down, and all the more thrilling as a result. Masters of enormous, fuzz-drenched riffs and bittersweet dreampop melodies, the US quartet have come closer than most to uniting fans of pummelling stoner doom and the fickle hipster contingent, and new album Restarter looks certain to continue that laudable tradition, despite being considerably darker and heavier than 2012’s Harmonicraft and bristling with renewed intent and newly bolstered rumble.
Melechesh – Multiple Truths
The startling success of Behemoth’s 2014 album The Satanist suggests that the mainstream metal world is more than able to embrace a more extreme approach: it just needs some emotional depth to balance out the flagrant viciousness. Originally from Jerusalem but now based in Holland, Melechesh have been sending critics into raptures for years, and forthcoming album Enki is already generating gallons of journalistic froth, largely due to its inspirational blend of otherworldly grandiloquence and balls-out metal fury. The band’s refined Sumerian shtick is merely an added bonus, albeit one that threatens to wrench open ancient tombs and unleash malevolent spectres.
Spires – Ethereal Organisms
If the phrase “progressive metal” conjures horrifying images of endless guitar solos and hyper-technical showboating, Spires’ cerebral but endlessly soulful explorations may act as a sonic hankie with which to dab the fevered brow. The Manchester mob’s third full-length album The Whisperer is an extraordinarily assured and involving work, full of sublime twists and turns and with a steadfast dedication to dynamics and melodic incisiveness. Ethereal Organisms last for 14 minutes but sweeps majestically by in what seems like half that time, cramming everything from epic death metal bombast to dreamy acoustic elegance into its swirling cauldron.
Fathoms – Deathwish
Erupting from the not particularly mean streets of Brighton, Fathoms shrewdly straddle both the oh-so-contemporary UK hardcore scene and the gnarlier textures of extreme metal, leading to a sound that brims with scabby-knuckled aggression and gleaming hooks. One of their most violent moments, Deathwish sounds tailor-made for chaotic moshpits and a young audience that eschews affinity with metal culture in favour of fashionable transience, and yet it slams hard enough to draw the metal diehards in too. Or at least it should.
