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.

Void Meditation Cult: "Utter the Tongue of the Dead"

Musical necromancy at its finest

Let the dead be ressurrected and once again walk the Earth so that they may behold the rotten fruit of a 5 year long wait. Half a decade would pass before we would finally hear another release from Ohio's Void Meditation Cult. And the wait has been worth it.

The previous 8 tracks - 4 from Sperm of Antichrist, the band's previous incarnation, and 4 from Void Meditation Cult proper - have barely been enough to keep the black metal withdrawal symptoms at bay. With Utter the Tongue of the Dead, the time has finally come to once again hear their noxious sermons.

Hobbs' Angel of Death: "Heaven Bled"

Hobbs' Angel of Death makes a return, but not so much a return to form

What year is it!? The Stranger Things series inspired by classic Spielberg and the like is a huge hit, while synthwave artists are spreading their neon glow all over the world, and Hobbs' Angel of Death - Australia's prodigal thrash metal son - has returned with the first album in over 20 years!

Denial of God: "Death and the Beyond"

Striking compositions, outside-the-box thinking metal

Superficially the black metal genre has long been affiliated with anti-christian, anti-religious, satanic and blasphemic themes, concepts and iconography. While undoubtedly symbolic of the artists' disgust with society, it's an element that has had a tight grip on the scene for many years, and pentagrams and inverted crosses continue to embellish album covers to this day. Other than their name and blasphemic logo, Denial of God from Denmark have successfully distanced themselves from this trend, dealing instead with subjects like the spirituality in death.

Gouge: "Beyond Death"

Dirty, roughed up death metal by the numbers and then some

Kolbotn, Norway, is perhaps best known for fathering Darkthrone. With Gouge, there's really no semblance to those legends, turning more towards an American style of thrashing, grinding, old schooling death metal in the dirtiest style imaginable.