That's Not Metal

We've got a reviews bag full of mavericks and outsiders making some big crazy choices and marching to their own drum with their records this month as we look at albums from Haywire, unpeople, New World Man, Wolves in the Throne Room, Noctule, Godflesh, Smoulder, & Bombstrap.

Haywire 19:15
unpeople 44:38
New World Man 1:10:50
Wolves in the Throne Room 1:26:35
Noctule 1:42:04
Godflesh 1:55:22
Smoulder 2:14:09
Bombstrap 2:33:25

There's big surprise releases from Deafheaven and Power Trip, major Nightwish and Judas Priest line-up shifts, a tremendous festival announcement from Fortress, live shows from Joyce Manor, Blaze Bayley, and Khemmis, but no one wants to talk about any of it because the world's up in arms about James Hetfield.

Releases:
Caspian - Caspian
The Number Twelve Looks Like You - Howls from the Holographic Heart
Throes - The Colorless Light of Emptiness
John Zorn - Flatlands
Eivør - Tungl
Insomnium - Netherworlds
The Keening - Devotion
Master - Among the Seeds of Death
Mother of Graves - The Light That Keeps Us
Algor Mortis - The Art of Suffering
Shores of Null - Homesick
Lugubrious Garment - In the Wide Vale of Uncreated Night

Nails tear through the UK, Trivium unveil their Eastern darkness-inspired new album, and Aerosmith plot their own Back to the Beginning style party.

Releases:
Slope - Same Kids. Just Louder.
Greta van Fleet - Palace for the People
unpeople - we are unpeople
Wage War - Landfall
Left to Suffer - Unwelcome Guest
Twin Temple - Doomed Lovers
Graveyard - Fever
Meryl Streek - Stories They Don’t Teach You At School
Wolfbrigade - Howl From Underground
RAM - Against
Smoulder - Witch Wife in an Alien World
Avrak - Avrak
Werewolves - You’re Weak and You Know You’re Weak
Goblin Cock - Traumanaut
Nowhere2Run - Bloodrave II

We've arrived at our annual Damnation Festival preview Album Club pack as we pull out Cult of Luna's 21st century post-metal benchmark Somewhere Along the Highway, Walls of Jericho's 00s metallic hardcore smackdown The American Dream, the 2010s sludgy powerviolence of Weekend Nachos' Worthless (featuring "Pat Patterson" and "Troe Johman"), and The Berzerker's Aussie gabber death metal Dissimulate.

It's real highs and lows in the news for rock music this week, with incredibly exciting reveals from Disfear and Repugnant, the 2027 line-up announcements from Slam Dunk and ArcTanGent, but also the news of Enter Shikari's incoming hiatus and the mountain-moving loss of Venom's Cronos, the forefather of extreme metal without whom our world is unthinkable.

Releases:
Amon Amarth - The Allfather Awakens
Twin Atlantic - Separation from the Animals
Imminence - Axis Mundi
Escape the Fate - The Last Goodbye
Miss May I - No Place for Me
To the Grave - LIBERATION FRONT
Haywire 617 - I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye
Cyadine - Violence In Measure
Bobbie Dazzle - Star Power
Haunt - Setting Course
Asomvel - Set Your World On Fire
Hippotraktor - Annihilist
Dissimulator - Artifice Dissolves
Deconsekrated - The Inexorable Transcendence of Death
Spirit Possession - Cathedral Speech
Xasthur - Open to Misinterpretation
From First to Last - We Were Bleeding Anyway
The Crawling - What We Leave Behind
Swans - Newly Sentient Being