Melechesh – The Epigenesis

Power metal band Melechesh make a riff heavy, fast and technical metal that sounds like Helstar and The Haunted colliding in midair. Middle eastern influences are subtly done, reminiscent of Nile in the way they are worked around the heavy metal aggregate of styles. Energetic and introspective.

Graveland – Cold Winter Blades

Continuing an attempt to join black metal, Dead Can Dance and epic movie soundtracks, Graveland throw more of the metal back into their music with several remixed tracks and one new that presents perhaps the most “metal” and aggressive voice for the epic yet conceived. Another way to view this: if power metal were black metal, this would be topping the charts.

Divine Eve – Vengeful and Obstinate

Stygian onrushing doom-death with a Swedish guitar sound, Divine Eve follow up on 1993’s As the Angels Weep with a new EP of mid-1990s songs reworked and restructured that make good on the promise of that early work. Although these songs are doomy, they are mid-paced and run the gamut of death and doom styles artfully.

Herpes – Doomsday 2010 Demo

Old school death metal in the Autopsy style, with more punkish/grind influences like Cianide, Herpes keeps the “partially formed” feeling of early death metal while churning out riffs that fit together like chain links swinging toward the skull of a deserving victim.

Avzhia – In My Domains

If you can imagine Graveland and Summoning combined and rendered in a style like that of early Rotting Christ, with inspiration from Emperor, you can envision this sweeping, melodic and unabashedly sentimental album that evokes the spirit of early black metal. A sense of life being full of wonderful things, mostly evil, emerges from this dark musical epic.

Decrepitaph – Beyond the Cursed Tombs

Building on the death metal of two decades ago, Decrepitaph paste together Swedish riffs with the intensity of American mid-paced death metal bands like later Master and Malevolent Creation. The resulting primal battering encourages the old school death metal form to breathe again.

Malevolent Creation – Unreleased 1987 CD

Before they joined the legions of percussive death metal bashers, Malevolent Creation were a speed metal band sounding a lot like early Forbidden, Exodus, Artillery and Assassin thrown into a blender. Expect grandiose topics, ripping riffs and purely satisfying metal from these three tracks resurrected from the vault.

Krieg – The Isolationist

Chaos black metal band Krieg combine their early neo-improv punk-influenced black metal with post-rock, creating a simple but effective organization that uses post-rock technique to make music in the bolder, braver, less self-pitying style of black metal.

Salem – Playing God and Other Short Stories

After years as a Hellhammer-influenced black metal band, Salem have joined the modern metal bandwagon and in doing so, found a voice that fits their style much better. In fact, this is one of the few modern metal releases that makes sense from start to finish, with jaunty syncopated riffs dropping into sync with vocals like later Samael.

Cruciamentum – Convocation of Crawling Chaos

Attempting to make music in that seminal intersection between old Incantation and Profanatica, Cruciamentum render a dark churning through this short demo that conveys the old school death metal spirit and its contemplative alienation.

Into Oblivion – Creation of a Monolith

Most of the progressive or experimental metal out there simply repeats experiments in other genres, which are “new” to metal but only aesthetically; Into Oblivion attempt an instrumental metal approach working through layers of motif-based riff clusters. Reminiscent of Black Flag’s “The Process of Weeding Out” if executed by Profanatica and Averse Sefira on shore leave.

Prosanctus Inferi – Pandemonic Ululations of Vesperic Palpitation

This album could well be a tribute to Fallen Christ, Dark Angel and other blistering speed bands who throw in dozens of riffs and stitch them together somehow into a single entity. High speed riffs that often use similar progressions clump together and form a super-high energy death/black metal hybrid with enthralling percussion.

Truppensturm – Salute to the Iron Emperors

Someone had to inherit the throne of Angelcorpse, and this low-tech phalanx of gnarled high-shock riffs fulfills the role and picks up in the process some of the murk of occult bands like Beherit and Blasphemy. The result is less martial organization than an exploding of raw Id, overrunning the social conditioning by which we normally live.

Celestia – Archaenae Perfectii

This flowing black metal suffers from “Kreator syndrome”: with at least two powerhouse riffs per song, it stands out during those riffs but the rest of each song is disorganized supporting material which adulterates the impact. Yet some of the more interesting black metal this year.

Overkill – Ironbound

Many metal fans out there if waterboarded would admit that they just want 1980s speed metal to return. Never fear, as Overkill brings us a collection of carefully-polished songs in the middle-period Metallica style, with small elements of Slayer and Exodus worked in. Nothing old but nothing particularly new, just a more experienced ear for songwriting re-approaching these concepts and making a modern version in the older styles.

Tags: Avzhia, best of, Black Metal, celestia, Cruciamentum, death metal, decrepitaph, divine eve, graveland, herpes, Into Oblivion, krieg, Malevolent Creation, melechesh, overkill, prosanctus inferi, salem, truppensturm