The second a band chooses to use a Lewandowski painting for their cover, they set a certain expectation. Ever since his association with Bell Witch’s seminal funeral doom album, Mirror Reaper, this decision implies a certain confidence in quality. Detroit’s own Pillar of Light should know this. With the quiet-loud formula brought to bear on their debut album, Caldera, they make the case that they earn this monolithic cover through sheer emotional heft. It just might blow your top off.
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This Week In Metal, 2024 Week 45
Another week, another round of metal reviews in the bag. Words are tough, so we assembled the highlights. And if you want to read the latest reviews for the new offerings from The Black Dahlia Murder, Iotunn, Swallow the Sun, Ephialtes, and Morticide, you can do that too! Melodeath for all!
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Swallow the Sun – Shining Review
The deathly doom metal of Swallow the Sun used to be offset with moments of cold beauty and increasingly pop oriented vocal lines, that still managed to feel like a fresh breath visible in the chill air. This has been turned on its head on Shining, a move that in hindsight was well telegraphed over the last two albums the band put out.
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Octoploid – Beyond the Aeons Review
Somewhere deep in a Finish archipelago on a breezy and mild summer’s day a smorgasbord is taking place. At a wooden table surrounded by many Finns sits a metal loving bat. Looking more closely he has a huge grin on his face as 70s aesthetic sauce is dripping all over his chicken parm sandwich. Will you join him? Is this the sauce of the summer?
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Hamferð – Men Guðs hond er sterk Review
Several of us at The Goat Review are fans of Hamferð and had Támsins Likam up high on our yearly list back in 2018, before the blog existed. Big changes to a band’s sound are naturally risky, as hearing it as a fan, what you liked about a band might simply be gone, washed away in the ever-shifting tides of the modern metal scene. Maybe the real lister is the friends we’ve made along the way.
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Crypts of the Unknown: Lorn – Arrayed Claws
