Butcher ABC: "North of Hell"

The heaviest gore groove known to man

Though North of Hell technically speaking is Japanese gore meistros Butcher ABC's first real album since their humble noisecore beginnings in 1994, it's not that their career has had a shortage of releases. If bands like General Surgery, Haemorrhage and early Carcass gets you hard, you're surely going to like this one!

Malditos: "Le Réve"

Impenetrable storms of droning psychedelia

It should come as no surprise that an entity as eclectic as Malditos hails from one of musical experimentation's current strongholds, Oakland, California. Malditos is very much a mindset band. Their darkened, nocturnal desert drones are real party killers, but with the right state of mind and setting, Le Réve turns into a rich, nightmarish phantasmagoria cascading from the your mind's eye. The darkness painted by the Oakland tribe of artists is oppressively thick and impenetrable.

Botanist: "Collective: The Shape of He to Come"

Difficult to enjoy, but more than just haphazardly composed black metal

Not being familiar with the works of Botanist, you'll have to excuse me for expecting something a bit different than what Collective: The Shape of He to Come is. In a way you could easily argue that the cover for this 2017 album is indeed very fitting of the obscure, yet oddly naturalistic sounds found on the disc. Whatever it was I originally had thought this album would sound like, that notion was blown to bits and pieces.

Grift: "Arvet"

Contemplative style-defying music

Grift, the project founded and maintained by Erik Gärdefors since 2011, has always marked itself as an endeavour that wholeheartedly belongs to neither a pure metal or rock ethos. In that regard, Grift seems like a symbol of the direction of contemporary music, mixing typically oppositional elements of desperate black metal, airy post rock and sombre dark folk with just a sprinkle of shoegaze in a conglomerate that could best be described merely as 'art'.

Over the Voids...: "Over the Voids"

Consistently uninteresting with few exceptions

Over the years I've found the part of the black metal scene that consists of one-man bands to be the most hit-or-miss prone part. The Fall is a Polish musician who has been involved with quite a few bands, playing live bass for the likes of Mgla and Clandestine Blaze. Over the Voids... is the first band in which he claims the guitar (and all other roles within the band as well) as his instrument, and that does show in the final product.

Bolido: "Heavy Bombers"

Stone cold heavy metal bombardment

Chile's heavy rock meteorites Bolido pretty much sound exactly like you'd expect from an album with a harsh, angular band logo adorning a picture of war planes carpet bombing the Earth with guitar munitions from orbit. Bolido's brand of heavy and moderately fast classic metal is a strictly no-frills experience, but does it have thrills then? The band's noticably thunderous rhythm section surely brings some personality to their compositions, but with this sort of retro-styled metal it's always a matter of whether or not the band is capable of matching the massive hooks that made the bands that inspired them huge to begin with.

Triple Dungeon Synth Feature: Thangorodrim, Deorc Weg, Old Tower

Triple Grindcore Feature: Antigama, Marginal, Wojczech/Krupskaya

TONEwood's Top 10 Non-Metal Albums of 2017

They say variety is the spice of life. For years heavy metal has been my go-to music style, and to this day it remains the style that I consume the most of. But even if heavy metal has numerous very different subgenres, there always manages to sneak a bunch of very un-metal albums into my consciousness. These are the Top 10 non-metal albums from 2017 according to the Gospel of TONE.

TONEwood's Top 10 Metal Albums of 2017

Following the format from 2016, I'll be making two separate lists for the end of 2017. One specifically for metal and its subgenres, and one for all other genres - including hard rock.

Voëmmr: "Nox Maledictvs"

Harsh black metal only for the most incarnated

Voëmmr is one of those bands that subscribe to the ultra cult of mystery and obscurity. Very little is known about them officially, except their belonging to the Aldebaran Circle which also includes bands like Ordem Satânica, Trono Além Morte and Occelenbriig. Nox Maledictvs, though labeled a demo, is the group's debut album of clamouring black noise.

Acid Witch: "Evil Sound Screamers"

Long awaited return of the Detroit death rockers

Finally, a new album from psychedelic horror metal masters Acid Witch - and just in time for Halloween too! It's been a full seven years since the last full length album from the deadly quartet, though the mean time has seen a few minor releases like the ever awesome split with Nunslaughter and the 80s heavy metal cover EP Midnight Movies from 2015.

New TONEwood Tapes

New tapes from TONEwood!

We're proud to unveil the next two releases from TONEwood Tapes: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and Deathray Bam!

Ieschure: "The Shadow"

Mystic debut which forms a thorough impression of style and concept

Black metal is dangerous territory if you don't have what it takes. There's so much competition, that any band lacking in talent or concept will get snuffed from existence in the blink of an eye. Iescure is an artist that, while dabling in the black arts with some degree of artistic ability, teeters on the edge that separates the bands of tomorrow with those that are bound to be forgotten sooner rather than later.

Nebulosa: "Crepuscular Battle in a Distant Woodland Town"

Naturalistic synths and unusual folk

Nebulosa welcomes you to an abstract fantasy universe with his latest offering. In this universe he calls upon a simple and bare-bone set of instruments to conjure up an image of this world with an instrumentation that feels desolate, windy and lonesome, yet strangely ominous, brooding and imposing

Eruption: "Cloaks of Oblivion"

Giving the oldies a run for their money, one down-stroked thrash chord at a time.

Who would've thought a country like Slovenia would be home to some absolutely world class acts? Of course it isn't really a stretch of the imagination, but even so it's not often you hear from them on an international basis. In 2016, Teleport impressed with progressive thrash tunes on the Ascendance EP, but 2017 is ruled supremely by Eruption.

Com Truise: "Iteration"

The king of dream synth lets his latest album fall to a slow-burning state

When I first heard Galactic Melt, I was sold. It was unlike anything I'd heard, taking the aesthetic of 80s nerd culture and forging it into something more modern and accessible. Daft Punk and likeminded artists seem like obvious contemporaries to draw comparisons to, but Com Truise did something completely different with the same source material by making it decisively less danceable and poppy, in a way staying a little more true to the retro style.

Satyricon Rant

The artwork in question

Boo hoo, people don't like our new album cover

Satyricon recently posted a sort of passive aggressive rant on their Facebook, where Satyr and Frost are visiting the official Edvard Munch Museum. In their own words they are "proud and happy to hear how pleased the Munch Museum was with the way we have used his art on our cover," and that they (the Munch Museum) were "a little bit surprised to hear about the banal reactions of a sorry and weak minority," referring of course to the relatively large amount of people who think the cover looks lame as hell.

Argus: "From Fields of Fire"

The difficult fourth one? No chance, this is the confident next album!

Debuts are hard, the follow-up is tough and the third one perhaps even more so. So what do you do when you already have three exceptional albums in the bagage? If you do like Argus from Pennsylvania, USA, you keep on going with unabated ardor.

Seer: "Vol. III & IV: Cult of the Void"

Half great, half boring, all hard to determine

Seer is one of those bands that for all intents and purposes combines countless stylings together to form something unique. And true to this, Volumes III and IV are works that manage to sound completely new and incredibly well-known at the same time through just eight songs.