Off to a Good Start
What we have for you this time around are three debut full-length albums that, at the very least, show a lot of potential from another wave of bands across a variety of styles. Are any of them mind-blowing levels of awesome? Well, the answer is the reason for this here podcast…
Leeched – You Took the Sun When You Left (Prosthetic)
Haunt – Burst Into Flame (Shadow Kingdom)
Aethereus – Absentia (Artisan Era)
Oregon
Idle Hands
Leeched – You Took the Sun When You Left
Haunt – Burst Into Flame
Aethereus – Absentia
BANDS ACROSS AMERICA:
Idle Hands
The Sideshow Podcast 
You have 2 albums this week that came across my radar as potential buys but I haven’t done so yet. Those would be Haunt and Aethereus.
I’m sort of into the genre of Iron Maiden/Judas Priest throwback metal at the moment. I’m listening to Visigoth’s release from earlier this year and Audrey Horne’s self titled album from 2010. I’m a little surprised you guys reviewed Haunt because I didn’t think it was your thing, but there has been a dearth of decent releases the past few weeks.
Regarding Aethereous, I think that “peak tech death” might be an accurate description of where we are in the genre right now. But I’m not quite sure you can ever describe tech death as “playing it safe” as Nick did. As for doing something different within tech death, I’d nominate the atmospherics of Fallujah and Rivers of Nihil. But I do hear you about the state of tech death, with the recent release from Obscura being an example for me of something that I really gave a lot of listens to and still think it is only ok. For comparison, I recently listened to last year’s release from Cytotoxin and that album holds up really well. Having said all that, I’m now giving a tech death album by Exocrine a try. So far, Exocrine is pretty much more of the same tech death.
Yeah, “playing it safe” may not have been quite the right working. I probably should have clarified it as being safe for the genre it was within. In the world of metal, tech death is still an extreme, but within the sub-genre a lot of current releases do feel pretty safe to me. I went back to spun Archspire when we were done with recording. Holds up 100%!
Haunt was a bit of stretch for our normal picks, but we both liked what we sampled and needed another album for the week. Knowing my general proclivities would you recommend Visigoth as something to give a listen?
Visigoth is probably the closest band I’ve ever heard to Judas Priest. Only about half of the songs on Visigoth’s 2018 album Conqueror’s Oath are good. I can’t help but to compare it to Judas Priest’s 2018 album Firepower. Judas Priest’s Firepower is the better album.
Brian: I gave Exocrine a listen, and I liked it. It’s very Unique Leader and kinda “much more the same”, as you said, but I liked that it played to the heaviness and the groove. Not sure if it is something I need to buy but I’ll give it another listen soon. Or maybe we’ll even review it if we need the content.