The Heaviest One: 2018

Dedicated to the 5th dimension – Timeless and Infinite, “Thermogravimetry Warp Continuum” really heavy AF. It is chaotic, distorted, confusing, nightmarish. Terrifying actually. With deep abyssal vocals, echoing into the dark time of space and carrying so many questions about the unknown. The unknown that scares us, that terrifies us, that suffocates us. Until complete losing ourselves in all the blasts, distortion, chaos and darkness. And never forget all the signals coming from the most isolated cold and outer space. The 5th dimension is full of horror.

Read my full review here, but most of all do listen to “Thermogravimetry Warp Continuum”.

Count Vlad

DAUGHTERS’ first album after almost a decade, “You Won’t Get What You Want” is intense to say the least. Bringing in elements from a plethora of genres, from more classic to Art-Punk, Industrial to Noise Rock. The band combines this to create what in my opinion is the most intensely terrifying album of 2018. It is not the punchy heaviness one might know of Metal, but it is emotional heaviness, extremely oppressive and uncomfortable! From the cover-artwork alone you already feel a sense of the uncanny, something inherently uneasy. Tracks like the opener “City Song” are slower but bring in noisy elements, tense percussion and an eerie, crazed vocal performance from Alexis Marshall. Other tracks are outright insanity, like the disjointed “The Flammable Man”. My favorite track has to be the album closer “Guest House” though, I won’t go into detail why here, you can check out the track below and you will surely understand what I mean when calling it insanely intense! LET ME IIIN!

This is my pick for the heaviest one of 2018!

the trve Medvson

I have said it before and I’ll say it again; the Finns got it, it’s in their blood to make good metal and they rarely every stray from that path. What I loved from the beginning of the first track “The Bee” to the last track “Pyres on the Coast” was AMORPHIS ability to indulge the listener in heavy riffs and growls without ever forgetting the pleasant melodies and folksy jolliness. More and more bands seem to be swaying that way, and let me tell you, it’s not terrible!

Glorious chanting with Tomi Joutsen´s unbeatable vocals braid perfectly together with each member´s playstyle as they magically produce the glorious melodies throughout the hour long album which goes nowhere wrong. I’m sure most of you out there have given this album a go so you know exactly what I’m talking about, however, I can´t recommend it enough to give it yet another go, you know, just to freshen up.

Julia

From start to finish “Serpent’s Curse” is brutality captured, condensed and channeled onto record. Brutal Death Metal of the heaviest kind, the riffs are all nasty, gory, bludgeoning or wild, knife-wielding artery slicing. Take that, add a monstrous ogre bellowing in your ears and an atmosphere heavily influenced by classic, gory horror movies and you have one relentless juggernaut of a record.

Track names like “Post Mortem Suffering” and “Of Wrath and Vengeance” should let you know exactly what you’re letting yourself in for here. It’s nasty stuff. No light, no oxygen, to relief, just gruelling, battering heaviness from start to finish. A 10/10 for me when I first reviewed in on this site (my only one to date) and I stand by my score. Not a world I want to visit every day, but whenever I want to relieve that violent, flaming descent off the mountain-top I know “Serpent’s Curse” lays here, coiled up with cold, death eyes waiting for me.

Tom

The songs are Heavy as… (No, I can’t write the word). The voice was/is sick, tormented, powerful. The “noise” around the music creating an atmosphere that I didn’t found into many bands till today. The cadence on the drums. And… The guitars that sound sometimes dissonant but at the same time so beautiful and is played in the correct way. It is hard to explain in words this album. You must listen to and feel it.

The Key Keeper

Note: No Youtube available for “Heralds of Nightmare Descending”

I had to dig out my AOTY 2018 list to see if I had a “heaviest” album there. I mean, all of the 30 albums I listed can be called heavy in some way or another, but how can I pick one. Is it the genre by which I must choose? Is it the riffs? Is it the lyrics? The overall atmosphere of the album or band? Maybe I could go with a mix of all that.

NECROPANTHER’s “Eyes of Blue Light” has it all. And it deserves the attention it had last year, but it deserves to be praised today also as my pick for the heaviest album of 2018.

Speed, heaviness, darkness and a sense of danger that is ever present throughout the album cause this ain’t no ordinary group of songs. This is a concept album, a heavy metal take on the greatest Sci-Fi book ever written. This ain’t Star Wars children, this is DUNE! This is grown-up stuff and heavy stuff it is, be it on words, images and also music thanks to the guys from Denver. 12 songs in 37 minutes. You can get the picture right there. Songs and riffs hit you with no remorse. Just listen to “Fedaykin”, a song in praise of the elite Fremen warriors who are ready and willing to give their water for their messiah, Paul Muad´Dib. (If you haven’t, you should really get a copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune ASAP) “We are Fedaykin, thirsty for war” there is no romanticizing war here. The desert planet is harsh and the free men are harsher. No prisoners will be taken in the fight for the Spice and NECROPANTHER will not give you quarter throughout the run of the whole album. Both theme and music are “HEAVY” as one could expect. As a token of my appreciation for this album, I spit on the floor 😉

Hail the metal Mentats.

Perrö

Tomb Mold, Scorched, Mammoth Grinder, Gorod, Irreversible Mechanism, and Sulphur Aeon were all devastating affairs, but none registered the same brutal mental aftershock than Spanish based black metal AGATHOS achieved. Released in the spring of 2018, “Nihil Est” is heavy as all hell in all the right ways. It is completely swarming in all-consuming traditional black metal riffs that completely obliterate your eardrums and the bloody soul attached to them. They hold nothing back and you can tell. Start this one at the beginning and listen through for full effect. Prepare to be absolutely crushed by AGATHOS, the heaviest of 2018!

Metal Yeti

I’ll never be able to put it in words just how much I appreciate this album. “Anti Life” will skin you alive, grind you to a thin paste, mix you with cocaine and snort you up like it’s any other Tuesday. It’s all a violent ride, intoxicated with hallucinogenics and alcohol fumes. The lyrics are as primal as you would expect them to be. Here’s an excerpt from my favorite song off the record, “NI”:

“Every night, full of drugs and liquor, I see, floating above my bed, the Devil.
This woman in white dress, Satan Herself.
She’s beautiful. She’s there for me. Translucent.
I’m in love with her.

Rise from the depths.
Hold me.
We are one now.
We make love on charnel houses.
On the corpses of this world.
Reigning and killing.
Together forever.
We’ll be all, eternal.
Fucking and slaying.”

The slow, dirge-like sound fits perfectly. The guitars are down tuned to bloody hell, the vocalist conjures demons for 53 minutes, the drummer hits those snares and crash cymbals like there’s no tomorrow, and the bass pretty much sounds like getting repeated blows to the head. While everything I said doesn’t make CULT OF OCCULT unique, there is hard to find quality present here: naturality. This is not a band that sat down and said: “Let’s shock people with how heavy we can be”. They play what they play because they want to do so, without batting an eye to what the listener might think. So live by the last verse of the album and hit play. “And this little voice saying DO IT! You don’t deserve anything but violent death so, DO IT!”

Metal Gentleman