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 metal, gloomgaze, nu-slam 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.
Mastodon x Lamb of God – “Floods of Triton”
Though Mastodon and Lamb of God’s joint “Ashes of Leviathan” tour is now but a fading memory, the two iconic metal forces have at least left us with a headbanging memento of their summer together.
Since the song initially bursts into a sludgy wave of Mastodonic phosphoresce, it’s kind of disorienting to hear LOG vocalist Randy Blythe’s iconic screech surging through the mix of that first verse. Likewise, the back-to-back solos highlight the differences between Mark Morton’s sly and stately shred and the quixotically hickory-smoked pull-offs of Mastodon’s Brent Hinds.
Their collaborative “Floods of Triton” still sticks the landing, and it comes full of legacy-reverential easter eggs (“The sea beast laid to rest”).
OBEYER – “Radiant”
Long-running U.K. djent contortionists OBEYER announced they’d signed to Periphery’s 3DOT Recordings this week, and celebrated that fact by dropping a pair of singles. The connection seems quite natural, with OBEYER using these two tracks to lean into progressively-pivoted, percussively jud-quaked rhythms with reckless abandon.
“Radiant” shines extra-bright. Lyrically, vocalist Carl Brown gutturally howls us through an ever-contorting, perception-shifting dreamscape, which fits the rest of the band’s M.O. of quizzically ear-catching rhythm shakeups and nocturnally melancholic melody-making quite nicely.
Zetra – “Holy Malice (Anabel)”
Even amid the gorgeous, guitar-crunched, synth-gauzy world-building of U.K. duo Zetra’s just-released self-titled debut album, “Holy Malice (Anabel)” is a breathtaking standout. The song is a perfect marriage of 4AD-style dreampop sounds, à la Cocteau Twins, and a distorted backbone of Type O gloom-grooving, above which vocalist Jordan delivers a goth-romantic torch song of thawing hearts and eternal pledges.
The video also gives off crazy, Clive Barker body-horror vibes, with a fantastical, multi-eyed bride walking through a rose-petal-flinging, chain-swinging ceremony that looks like it’s taking place in a Cenobite torture chamber. Oddly beautiful, nevertheless.
Tribal Gaze – “Twitching on the Cross”
Tribal Gaze just announced a new split EP with California brutalizers Deadbody, and fittingly enough, the stuff we’ve heard so far absolutely kills. With Tribal Gaze in particular, the Texan bombsquad are latching onto an even more menacingly grooved-out approach than what we’d last heard on 2022’s The Ninth Trumpet.
Their “Twitching on the Cross” doles out a number of expertly flesh-rending but also primally head-bobbing riff trills. It also peppers in some seriously ass-beating death-thrash — that cantankerous back-and-forth ultimately forging a rank and radical addition to the Dallas unit’s OSDM-marked canon.
Black Label Society – “The Gallows”
Zakk Wylde and his band of Black Label buddies took us straight to “The Gallows” this week, and damned if it didn’t make us swing.
Though Wylde’s most generally been busy these days ripping classic Dimebag licks as part of the current incarnation of Pantera, this latest BLS track — a supremely sick and Sabbathian, Southern-sludgy stomp-out —is a strong reminder that the legendary metal guitarist is still a master riff-crafter in his own right. Though Wylde yowls mid-song that he’s running from his fate, it might be high time to hang with the Society full-time.
Street Soldier – “Walk With Tha Talk”
York City, U.K., beatdown militia Steet Soldier take a wild swing with their new single “Walk With tha Talk.” Up front, the aesthetics of the gauzily-filtered, empty-oil-drum-cracking beat come across like a long lost Bizkit B-side, and sure enough, the track does roll with a vintage rap-metal kind of braggadocio once the full band kicks in to a mean-mugged verse.
But then Scotty Hall brings on the death growls as the pace gets progressively slammier, just as the band unleash a “riff… so lethal it should be illegal.” It’s a masterfully weird crossover track that also includes a hardcore Hawk Tuah moment, and climaxes with a grotesquely dissonant, vocally ribbited-out backend.