But more than that there’s just the visceral reaction I get from it, a feeling of invigoration and excitement from hearing heavy metal at its best. As I said in my review of the album: The band show great affection for a classic approach without ever getting caught up in pastiche, which is challenge enough as it is, but they build on it further by crafting great songs rich in detail and strong instrumental prowess.

Rather, what Sumerlands do so well is expand the space for exploration within an ostensibly familiar territory. On the surface it might not seem like an act of innovation, though that’s can sometimes be a dubious pursuit. It helps that’s actually really good-a classic heavy metal album with a good dose of power metal influence, rife with the haunted glow of ’80s synthesizers. (20 Buck Spin) Somebody's Closer by BleedĬonsidering it’s been six years since the last Sumerlands record, the arrival of Dreamkiller alone is reason enough for enthusiasm. If you’ve ever stared for long periods of time at the cover of Meantime, trying to figure out what that is exactly, or argued that Deftones are a shoegaze band ( guilty, come at us), then Bleed needs to be in your queue. Essentially they’re hypercharging a batch of really great rock songs, loaded with guitars that radiate as much as they crunch, occasional moments of open-string strum that feel borrowed (in the best way) from Helmet’s Betty, and an urgency that drives home just how heavy these songs are, despite the emo-leaning melodies at their core. So when I include this in a batch of new metal records I’m labeling genuinely thrilling, I’ll admit to some sentimental triggers here. Following the stellar new industrial metal record from Black Magnet, they deliver a new EP from the Dallas group Bleed, featuring members of Narrow Head, whose mix of chunky, Quicksand and Helmet-style riffs, radio-friendly hooks and dense, shoegazing guitar textures fits into what we once would have called “alternative metal.” In other words, the kinds of records I rocked as a teenager. One of our go-to labels around these parts, 20 Buck Spin are consistently putting out some of the best metal releases in the underground, and though that’s often meant much of the standard true-hesher territory of death metal, black metal, doom and the like, this year they’ve been switching up the formula in some pretty interesting ways. These six metal albums, on other words, are truly thrilling. But my enthusiasm for this month’s batch reaches a collective high for the year-I put these on and feel like sprinting and doing air kicks and saying “Fuck yeah!” as often as possible to nobody in particular. I aim to never let anyone down with my picks, and the general idea is that if one month’s batch of records isn’t for you, then there’s another-entirely different-set of recommendations just around the corner.

Some of them are bands I already liked, some of them are entirely new to me, and a couple of them are entirely new period. Where generally I’ll hear six newly released metal albums each month that compel me to return to them, that feature musical ideas I find interesting and worth returning to, and sometimes obsessing about, this is more about that visceral spark-that “holy shit!” feeling you get from hearing something for the first time and being won over in that brief moment of inspiration. I recognize that should be the baseline for every month’s picks, but this is a little different.

As a critic, I’m predisposed to seeing trends and finding connections between ostensibly separate things, but the connection this month is an entirely personal one: These are albums I find exciting. Every month when I dive into the best new metal, I try to find something that connects them-perhaps they have an experimental streak, or they remind me of some of my favorite ’80s-era albums, or they’re go-for-broke BIG albums.

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