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 war-torn melodeath, fiery EBM, muscly nu-metal 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 Haunted – “Warhead”
Following an eight-year drought, it’s an absolute damned delight to hear Swedish death-metal greats the Haunted get back on the attack with some new music.
The preemptive first strike from the Gothenburg group’s forthcoming Songs of Last Resort LP is no-nonsense Haunted at their finest. Adrian Erlandsson serves up panicked, time-bomb-ticking thrash beats aplenty. The riffs are stacked with rhythmic menace, while lead shredder Ola Englund carpet-bombs the cut with a violent vibrato waggle. And vocalist Marco Aro weighs in on wartime unease with a ruthless rasp.
Truly, their “Warhead” is just as explosive as the song title suggests.
Malevolence – “If It’s All the Same to You”
Sometimes it’s the little things that hit you the hardest.
Sure, UK beatdown veterans Malevolence’s new “If It’s All the Same to You” is full of gargantuanly chug-forward groove riffs and deftly wah-wah-quaked lead-guitar embellishments, but there’s something particularly thrilling about the near-spritely ride cymbal tings drummer Charlie Thorpe taps into the intro that really juiced us up ahead of the impending onslaught. It’s kind of Pavlovian in that regard.
Between this all-out bash and the song’s entertaining, Snatch-influenced music video, we’re salivating at the prospect of what’s to come from Malevolence’s Where Only the Truth Is Spoken album.
Spiritworld – “Waiting on the Reaper”
While Spiritworld’s new Helldorado concludes the band’s gothic-horror-themed album trilogy with some of the most tumbleweed-tumblin’ country sounds of their career thus far, the Las Vegas, Nevada, genre-hoppers are still metal and hardcore kids at heart. Take “Waiting on the Reaper,” a pugnaciously pungent two-stepper as potent as the “puddle of piss and jaguar blood” frontman Stu Folsom’s taking a hearty whiff of in-song.
The track claws its way out of hell through a mix of Slayer-esque squeals, pig-piling hardcore gang vocals and all kinds of brimstone-chewing bad-assery — but the gnarliest thing about “Waiting on the Reaper” may well be the sight of a disgraced and dangerous man-of-the-cloth offing a kid in final moments of its ultra-gory music video. Intense, to say the least.
Bloodywood – “Dhadak”
“Dhadak” is one of the brawnier outings on Indian metal group Bloodywood’s just-released Nu Delhi album. That makes sense — the song is in fact all about how the band have been making serious gains in the gym.
Rapper Raoul Kerr muscles-up throughout his verses about turning “pain into power” above 10,000 pounds of nu-styled grooviness. While Jayant Bhadula unfolds a mellifluous round of melodies in the pre-chorus, he also shows off his bone-crushing diaphragm power through the chorus’ round of heavy growls.
All told, it seems like Bloodywood haven’t been skipping leg day, as “Dhadak” lifts Nu Delhi to another level of heaviness.
Youth Code – “No Consequence”
As you might expect by now, Youth Code’s new “No Consequence” conjures classic, Wax Trax!-styled electronic heaviness, and likewise what it might feel like to get hit pummeled in the middle of a crosswalk by a runaway Mack truck.
Each knob-twisted, sinewave-splintering synth tone and mechano-snare spears the psyche with unrelenting fury, while vocalist Sara Taylor sneers, screams and death-growls her way through a set of lines about moving past a broken bond.
Keeping calm? Not exactly, though the California EBM duo are carrying on the only way they know how: violently and as pissed off as ever
Calva Louise – “Aimless”
“Aimless” is a curious title for Calva Louise’s latest single for a couple of reasons.
For one, the tune’s music video is a direct and natural continuation of last month’s possession-styled “W.T.F.” video, with vocalist-guitarist Jess Allanic once again surrounded by the fires of hell as she wrangles her way through the band’s latest, and naturally boundary-less, metal song. She also morphs into some kind of crow-demon, too, which looks pretty cool on camera.
Sonically, while the track dramatically pivots from chromatically cave-dwelling metal riffs to Rachmaninoff-refined piano rolls — Allanic likewise flipping from lilting melodies towards an Exorcist-like screech — the band’s adventurous approach is laser-focused.
Once again, Calva Louise have put on a hell of a show.