New Music Out Today: 8/7/2020

Andreas Lawen, Fotandi, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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It’s Friday, which means two things: giving this week the finger, and new music! Tune in every Friday for The Pit’s round-up of new releases, from singalong hard rock to pus-drenched underground death metal. Keep those ears bleeding!

Avatar, Hunter Gatherer (eOne)

For fans of: Sabaton, Children of Bodom, Arch Enemy

Highlight track: “Colossus” 

Man, Avatar always go big, but it feels like they went especially huge and punchy with their new album Hunter Gatherer. The elaborate circus elements some fans are used to aren’t as present, replaced instead by a real hair-down headbanging vibe. Make no mistake, the band never sound simple or boring — no two tracks are exactly the same — but they’re definitely flexing some swole muscles on this one. The King is not amused.

Jaye Jayle, Prisyn (Sargent House)

For fans of: Nick Cave, Me And That Man, Cold Cave, Those Poor Bastards

Highlight track: “From Louisville”

The latest release from the brooding, eerie brainchild of Young Widows’ Evan Patterson, Prisyn is the soundtrack to the human experience at its most disenfranchised. Full of both depression and vitality, the songs have a powerful cinematic quality to them. According to Evan in our recent interview with him, “When you’re going through life and walking into a Starbucks or a gas station for months out of your life, and that’s your interaction with human beings for months of the year, those are the things you have to do to survive to be on tour, and you’re hearing corporate music and all this happy bullshit…it’s something that I’ve always wanted to present in my music. And in that same perspective, it brings me an immense amount of joy to represent those feelings.

Temple Nightside, Pillars of Damnation (Iron Bonehead)

For fans of: Blood Incantation, Portal, Immolation

Highlight track: “Death Eucharist”

Are Gatecreeper and Blood Incantation just a little too polished for you? Then you gotta check out the latest release by Australia’s Temple Nightside, the putrid Pillars of Damnation. Like a Lovecraftian horror trying to chase you down after a big lunch, the record takes things slow and gross, adding an extra layer of lo-fi black metal atmosphere to the burgeoning genre of cavernous death metal. Definitely not something you put on at a party, but an awesome record for the clammier moments in your life.

Krallice, Mass Cathexis (self-released)

For fans of: Imperial Triumphant, Liturgy, Cynic

Highlight track: “Aspherance”

Woah! Out of nowhere, Brooklyn progressive black metallers Krallice just dropped their first album in three years, the acrobatic and punishing Mass Cathexis. Like a frostbitten forest of elbows, the album is as wonky as it is scathing, with its ample progression ably tempered by its dedication to misanthropic darkness. It’s good to know that while many of the proggy black metal bands of the late 2000s have fallen off or gone clunky, these guys are still willing to hand us a Rubix cube.

Other crushers:

  • Onslaught, Generation Antichrist (AFM Records)
  • In Flames, Clayman 2020 (Nuclear Blast)
  • Vassafor, To The Death (Iron Bonehead)
  • Deep Purple, Whoosh! (Edel Germany)
  • Black Crown Initiate, Violent Portraits of a Doomed Escape (Century Media)
  • Terminal Nation, Holocene Extinction (20 Buck Spin)
  • Selbst, Relatos de Angustia (Debemur Morti Productions)

And for more updates on new tunes, awesome upcoming bands, and albums you should check out, make sure to subscribe to our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts!

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Words by Chris Krovatin