Here at Revolver, we’re always on the hunt for new songs to bang our heads to — indeed, it’s a big part of our jobs. With that in mind, here are the tracks released this week in grizzled deathcore, seafaring Viking metal, fantastical doom and more that have been on heavy rotation at Revolver HQ.
For your listening pleasure, we’ve also compiled the songs in an ever-evolving Spotify playlist.
The Acacia Strain – “A CALL BEYOND”
“I lost control.”
Apt words from Acacia Strain vocalist Vincent Bennett on his band’s latest single, a veritable rage blackout from their impending You Are Safe From God Here. The band glom onto beef-knuckled chord mashouts and raucous, grooved-and-blasted rhythms. Bennett delivers deep and throaty consternations about being severely beaten and bruised by life.
The video flips that feel on its head through a grotesquely gonzo game show scenario that has contestants drinking acid and dumping hot sauce in their eyeballs.
Amon Amarth – “We Rule the Waves”
Amon Amarth confidently ride a Viking-metal swing through their first song since 2022, with “We Rule the Waves” kicking ass and taking names through big-bombast guitar chording and battle-driven bellowing from vocalist Johan Hegg.
The period-piece music video finds the fur-garbed Swedish veterans packing up their sharpened axes as they prepare to leave their village to conquer the world. That’s actually a pretty decent metaphor for an act currently ruling stages while out on the road for Pantera’s “Heaviest Tour of the Summer.”
Castle Rat – “WOLF I”
Castle Rat bring an intensely hypnotic pack mentality to their second The Bestiary single, “WOLF I.”
Much of the dark-spiraling psych-metal bangout finds the New York City fantasy troupe anchoring themselves into a gnarly unison riff, but when the Count (a.k.a. lead guitarist Franco Vittore) eventually strays from his bandmates in the double-time bridge, he delivers a whimsically shredding guitar solo with plenty of bite.
Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway – “Done Me Wrong”
Daron Malakian is celebrating his 50th birthday, and we’re celebrating the System Of A Down icon by cranking up his Scars on Broadway project’s fully ripping, politically-powered and oftentimes uproariously fun new album, Addicted to the Violence.
“Done Me Wrong,” in particular, hits all three of those beats, with the waltz-chugged, revolution-and-revenge-stirring album cut sounding something like SOAD’s “Toxicity” time-warping itself into the backseat of Deep Purple’s “Highway Star.”
Malakian’s feverish guitar work and passionate vocals are on-point, but the secret sauce is Orbel Babayan’s interstellar, rabiz-style synth-noodling — something Scars’ bandleader told us reminded him of attending Armenian weddings.
Nine Inch Nails – “As Alive as You Need Me to Be”
Nine Inch Nails only just offered up this first taste of their hotly anticipated TRON:Ares soundtrack, but we’ve got to say, this industrialized dark-pop masterpiece has already got a major hold on us.
Between the seasick synth-bass squelching, Daft Punk-ish vocoding (a passing of the torch between NIN and the last Tron scoring team), and the exquisitely sinister sensualism Trent Reznor sweats into every horny line in here, “As Alive as You Need Me to Be” is prime, retro-futuristic pop music.
Now beam us into the mainframe so we can hear the rest of the soundtrack!
Slaughter to Prevail – “Banditos”
Slaughter to Prevail are in a curiously playful phase of their career where they’ve started to spike their savage-as-fuck deathcore beatdowns with surprisingly ultra-cute samples. This happens a handful of times on the band’s new GRIZZLY album, including its Slipknot-ian opening salvo, “Banditos,” which otherwise blasts out of the gates like a deathcore “(sic).”
While the song drills into an expected heaviness up front, eventually Alex Terrible shows his love for late Seventies Russian animated series Adventures of Captain Vrungel by chopping-and-screwing a jaunty little tune about being a pistol-packin’ gangster into the mix — which only makes the ungodly breakdown that follows hit harder.