When Eyehategod returned in 2014 with a self-titled album -- their first new LP in 14 years -- it wasn't just a good comeback; it was some of the most fired-up music in their discography. Eyehategod's Southern-fried take on sludge metal helped define the genre in the 1990s, and it seems like the more people consider them pioneers, the more they like to remind us where they came from. As most sludge fans know, the genre came from punk, and if you ask EHG frontman Mike IX Williams what he's listening to or what he's influenced by, he's more likely to start naming off punk bands than metal ones. Eyehategod's self-titled album was more overtly punk than just about anything the band released in the '90s, and the new A History of Nomadic Behavior picks up right where the last album left off. It's still got plenty of fuzzed-out, Southern, bluesy vibes, but it recalls the proto-sludge of Black Flag's My War more directly than it recalls the '90s sludge metal that EHG themselves helped create. Not many legendary bands feel even more punk 30 years into their career than they did on day one, but not many bands are Eyehategod.

Enforced's 2019 debut LP At The Walls quickly positioned Enforced as one of the most promising new bands of the crossover thrash revival, and with their sophomore LP (and Century Media debut) Kill Grid, they sound better, bolder, and heavier than ever before. Like their debut, the new album was mixed/mastered by Power Trip collaborator Arthur Rizk, and Kill Grid fits in with the modern-day crossover trash of bands like Power Trip, Red Death, and Iron Reagan as much as it fits in with the current wave of death metal-infused hardcore bands like Frozen Soul, Gatecreeper, Creeping Death, etc. Like all of those bands, the '80s influences are undeniable (some definite Slayer influence on these riffs and whammy bar solos), but Kill Grid really sounds like a modern record. It's in the same spirit as '80s classics from crossover bands like D.R.I., Corrosion of Conformity, Cro-Mags, etc -- bands who riffed as hard as thrash bands but favored a hardcore bark and kept the guitar solos brief -- but it never sounds as vintage as those bands do now. It feels fresh and exciting and Knox Colby has the kind of guttural scream that didn't really come into fashion until after the original crossover era. Kill Grid doesn't pull ideas out of thin air, but it looks at old ideas through a modern lens and it connects dots that weren't always connected 35 years ago. It also rips so hard that, once you click play, you really won't be worrying who else it might sound like.

You can also pick up Kill Grid on black vinyl in our shop.

Dallas' Frozen Soul quickly emerged as one of the brightest new voices in the Texas hardcore/metal scene with their killer 2019 demo/EP Encased In Case, and that led to them signing to Century Media who are now issuing the band's debut album, Crypt of Ice. It includes re-recordings of all three original songs from the demo plus seven new songs, and all of them offer up no-bullshit, ass-kicking death metal. Frozen Soul cite influences like Obituary, Mortician and Bolt Thrower, and they owe as much to those bands' thrashy death riffs and beastly growls as they do to the simplicity of hardcore, which makes sense given vocalist Chad Green previously did time in the hardcore-turned-death metal band End Times (whose guitarist Daniel Schmuck produced/mixed Crypt of Ice and has also worked with Power Trip, Creeping Death, and others). Frozen Soul don't shy away from the fact that their core influences are 25-30 years old, but they aren't retro or gimmicky about it either. They just stay true to who they are and what they love, and they write adrenaline-rush-inducing songs in the process.

Pick it up on limited edition baby blue vinyl in the BrooklynVegan store.

Not that I would usually advise arguing about a band's genre, but when it comes to Portrayal of Guilt, don't even bother trying. From the start, they've been just as much a screamo/hardcore band as a black/death metal band (and even those are too limiting), and as they continue to evolve, the lines just get even blurrier. Their sophomore LP We Are Always Alone follows their already-killer discography of one album, two EPs, and other miscellaneous releases, and it manages to stand out as the best thing they've done yet. Their approach on this album reminds me of the way Deafheaven broke down barriers between screamo and metal on Sunbather, or the way Inter Arma fused together as many styles of heavy music as they could on that same year's Sky Burial. But while those records were sprawling, lengthy offerings, Portrayal of Guilt get it all done in like 25 minutes. Like their debut LP, We Are Always Alone often squeezes three or four drastically different ideas into songs that clock in at around two minutes, and they've gotten even better at it in the two years since that first LP. They've pushed all aspects of their sound even further to the extreme -- the melodic parts are catchier, the heavy parts are more callous -- and yet, they blend everything together even more seamlessly. Like on the debut, Majority Rule vocalist Matt Michel lends his voice to We Are Always Alone, and this one features another legendary screamer as well: pg.99's Chris Taylor (who also designed the artwork for both PoG full-lengths). It makes sense that these are the kinds of artists who want to collaborate with Portrayal of Guilt; they both pushed heavy music to new limits two decades ago, and now Portrayal of Guilt is doing the same.

Urgent times call for urgent music, and Gatecreeper have given us just that with their new record An Unexpected Reality.

It's a brief record -- longer than a typical EP but the band isn't considering it a full-length -- that was entirely written and recorded during the pandemic, and it's split into two distinct halves. Side one pushes Gatecreeper's sound in a faster direction than ever before, with seven tracks that clock in around or under a minute each and dive further into grind, punk, and hardcore than Gatecreeper ever have before. "We usually have a hard rule in Gatecreeper that we don’t have blast beats," vocalist Chase Mason says. "But for the first side of this record we lifted that rule and ran with it." Chase cites such influences as Napalm Death, Totalitär, Terrorizer and Master for side one, and that should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect, but Gatecreeper don't just regurgitate those influences. They make it their own and the result is the most fired-up, whiplash-inducing music they've ever written.

Side two pushes their sound to the opposite extreme, with one long 11-minute death-doom song that Chase says was inspired by Mournful Congregation, Paradise Lost, Evoken and Katatonia. Gatecreeper have hinted at doomier stuff before, but they've never embraced it as fully as they do here, and they prove to sound just as intense when they're ultra-slow as they do when they're ultra fast.

Chase also adds that the concept of the album was inspired by Black Flag's groundbreaking My War, which had fast hardcore songs on side one and slower songs that helped pioneer sludge metal on side two. "When I was getting really into sludge and stoner metal like the Melvins and Eyehategod, they always referenced the B-side of My War," Chase said. "Hearing bands talk about not just a record but a specific side of a record, I thought that was really cool and it always stuck with me."

Mirrors follows an increasingly good run of earlier releases (a self-titled EP and splits with Death Goals and Sense Offender), and it takes the band's sound in all kinds of new directions and is easily their best and most complete statement yet. It offers up metalcore and mathcore at its harshest, interspersed with ambient/noise interludes and flirtations with black & death metal and other heavy subgenres, and it covers a lot of ground within that realm. It's chaotic and discordant at times, bone-crushingly heavy at others, and atmospheric at others, and it remains dark and intense throughout. The lyrics take on personal experiences with abuse and depression as well as societal injustice and oppression, and -- as you may expect from a band called "Pupil Slicer" -- the album is full of vivid images of pain and violence (and spiders and cockroaches), which perfectly match the intensity of the music. There's been a lot of good metalcore lately, but Mirrors stands out from the pack and feels thrillingly unique.

You can also pick up Mirrors on awesome-looking red/black swirl vinyl in our shop.

Tribulation gradually became one of the most interesting and accessible bands in modern metal, with a sound that fused together the extremity of black and death metal with the swagger and melody of classic rock and glam. That fusion was perfected on 2015's The Children of the Night (which we named the 12th best album of the 2010s in any genre of music) and Tribulation continued to push it forward on 2018's more psych/prog-inspired Down Below. Now Tribulation are finally back once again with ten new songs cut from that same appealing cloth. Where The Gloom Becomes Sound isn't as drastic a progression as Down Below was from The Children of the Night or as that album was from 2013's more aggressive The Formulas of Death, but it still finds Tribulation operating at a high level, churning out the kinds of songs that could only have come from Tribulation. This album is also extra special (and bittersweet), as it's their last album with guitarist/primary songwriter Jonathan Hultén. (His replacement is Joseph Tholl, who used to play in Enforcer with Tribulation guitarist Adam Zaars.) Our hopes are high that Tribulation continue to do exciting stuff with their new lineup, but this album just might be the end of an era, the final entry in a trilogy of albums that found Tribulation putting a spin on extreme metal that went damn near unparalleled the entire time.

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou released one of our favorite metal albums of 2020 with May Our Chambers Be Full, and now they're releasing an expanded "diehard edition" of the album with three other original songs and a Cranberries cover, and those four new tracks have also been released on their own as this EP, The Helm of Sorrow. Like on the album tracks, Emma and Thou bring out the best in each other, with Emma pushing Thou's sludge metal in more melodic directions and Thou pushing Emma's dark songwriting in heavier directions than ever. The Cranberries cover couldn't be more perfect for them -- Thou are masters of '90s alternative rock covers and Emma has the explosive voice you need to take on Dolores O'Riordan -- and "sludge metal Cranberries cover" kind of describes the original songs too. The whole EP is every bit as good as last year's full-length, so if you dug that you should not sleep on these four new songs by one of heavy music's most exciting new collaborations.

Cult of Luna took some time off after releasing 2013's Vertikal and then did a collaboration with Julie Christmas before making a strong comeback on 2019's A Dawn To Fear, which rivaled the peaks of their classic 2000s era. They're now keeping that momentum going with the five-song The Raging River EP, which the band says "feels more like a bridge. A midpoint that needs to be crossed so we can finish what we started with 2019's A Dawn to Fear." We look forward to finding out what's on the other side of the bridge (a new full-length?), but meanwhile, these five songs are as towering as anything on A Dawn to Fear. Cult of Luna are masters at sludgy post-metal that's as heavy as it is beautiful, and these songs are no exception. The first two and the last two tracks find them doing what they've always done best, but there's a much different treat in the middle: "Inside of a Dream," a somber, atmospheric song with guest lead vocals by the legendary Mark Lanegan. Taken on its own, you'd never guess it was a Cult of Luna song, but as the centerpiece of this EP, it works perfectly within the context of their trademark intensity. Cult of Luna are a great band on their own, but as proven on that Julie Christmas LP and again with this Mark Lanegan song, they really know how to take a backseat and turn the spotlight over to someone else when the moment calls for it.