Dipping back into the dungeon vaults for another Metal Monday tonight. As usual, these are some of the metal albums that I've been listening to lately and that I felt like I had something to say about. I'm starting off with two more progressive and experimental albums and rounding off with two mayhem-wielding records for those who prefer a more old-school style. Regardless of what you're into, I hope you find something you like here.
Threes is not Sweet Cobra's third album. The Chicago band has been around for close to twenty years, and have kept a dependable release schedule over these many, many years. The most conclusive answer I can offer as to the record's name is that it's a reference to the stable trifecta that forms the group's line up; vocalist and bassist Timothy Remis, guitarist Robert Arthur Lanham Jr., and drummer Jason Gagovski. Birthed into the underground as a hardcore band in 2004, they've consistently been challenging their own habits and evolving their punk sensibilities ever since. While it appeared as if they had all but embraced a well-earned metal pedigree by the mid-'10s, they've once again sidestepped the shadow of their own legacy with Threes. The album has as its base, the sludgy post-hardcore of their 2015 album Earth, but tracts towards more eclectic territory with the supple psychedelic folk-grunge of "Least Worst," earnest and dust-laden confessions and covenants such as "Alive On Arrival" and dreamy, twisted noise-hymnals in the vein of "Fable." And while it may not be very metal, it is impressive to see Sweet Cobra try their hand at some Mid-Western garage thunder and power-pop when it comes to the live-wire hook-peel of "Escaped Goat." Luck may come in threes, but an album like this is one of a kind.
City & i.o - Chaos is God Neighbour (Éditions Appærent)
I don't know that the primarily ambient and brutal electronica experiment City & i.o would consider themselves a metal project, but their music tends to fill a similar nitch for me in terms of what I look for in a metal album; intensity, transgression, and brazenly dark forays into the imagination. Also, their album Chaos is God Neighbour features blast beats and shrieking black metal vocals, so I would say that the facts are in favor of including them on this list. Chaos is God Neighbour was written in blitz during 2020, giving it a frenzied and claustrophobic feel, and accomplishes the task of taking the listener on a truly harrowing journey. As a bold move, they begin the album with the longest track (6 minutes 38 seconds) and proceed with tracks of ever-shortening length on through to the finale which clocks in at a trim minute thirty. You can think of it like climbing a mountain that has been inverted. The base is wider, the incline is gradual, and its features are more accommodating. But as you continue your downward ascent, the area you have to grasp becomes more narrow, the surfaces steep and treacherous, and its elements harsher and more unforgiving. As you progress, the mists and clouds around become a sheet of hail, and you are battered with increasing intensity until you reach the summit and find sanctuary. By the end, you feel like you've been through some kind of ritual. A purification of the darkest order which you may be the only living soul to have seen through to the end.
Dødskvad - Krønike II (Caligari Records)
Roadwarrior speed metal from the land of Razor and Slaughter. Chainbreaker formed in 2013 but didn't unleash their battle-hardened debut Lethal Desire until 2019. Why rush perfection? That's a rhetorical question. Because you can't! This very fast, very mean, and unapologetically virile heavy metal that was made to soundtrack the ransacking and raising to the ground of your hometown. Swift and precisely deadly, it continues the tradition of legendary Canadian speed without feeling derivative or out of touch. But, you know, with riffs this badass and chopper-grooves this fierce, I'd be afraid to imply anything else. The way these guys handle their instruments, it feels like any one of them could benchpress me one-handed. I mean, they'd have to be a bunch of sons of bitches to make an album like this! Lethal Desire is a rarefied masterwork of sheer power!
Dødskvad - Krønike II (Caligari Records)
Krønike II continues the Norwegian death metal band Dødskvad's exploration of their country's bloody and heathen past. A sequel to, what else, Krønike I, the album punctures the assumed procession of time, causing it to shrivel and recoil with filthy blood and glory grooves, slicing steely riffs, percussion that sounds like the footsteps of a battalion of lost souls, and phantasmal synth interventions that thicken the mix with an imposing sense of foreboding awe. The heavy atmosphere of the album makes it all the more dramatic when a solo cuts through the formidable aura, producing a supernatural hue and showering sparks, like a bolt of lightning striking a sword that had been plowed into the dirt to mark the grave of a fallen soldier. Krønike II is a place where the skeletal hand of vanquished warriors still has a grip on the present, for the dead become restless and eager when Dødskvad takes up the reigns.
Chainbreaker - Lethal Desire (Hells Headbangers)
