Orange Goblin
A Eulogy for the Damned
Candlelight Records

If you’ve got a beard, own a bong, or ride a bike, chances are this year’s most anticipated release for you is Orange Goblin’s A Eulogy for the Damned. And why not? The band released its first six albums in ten years, and its now been damn near five years since 2007′s Healing Through Fire, so chances are you’ve got one hell of an itch to take to the starry highway to hit up OG’s cosmic dope show once again. But where the UK quartet was once raw and bloozy it is now cooked and mean, and the smoky caravan kitsch it once proudly boasted in its space-brewed riffs has given way to a prouder, louder form. In fact, aside from vocalist Ben Ward’s chain-link preaching, the Southern boogie doom of “Save Me From Myself” or the bold groove of “Return to Mars,” there’s very little left in the way of OG’s former scuzzy self, and what stands before you today is a tyrant fifteen stories tall, an angry world-eater with a heavy metal law to lay the fuck down. And this is a metal album in many ways thanks to songs like “Red Tide Rising,” “Acid Trial,” “The Fog,” “Death of Aquarius,” and “Bishop’s Wolf,” which is not something you could have really said about any past OG album. It is also very much a statement album, the aforementioned songs leaving the deepest cut, but even OG’s familiar stoner rock fare, like the melodic “Stand For Something” and “The Filthy and the Few” contain a demented edge to ‘em, and the acoustic-psych intro on closer “A Eulogy To The Damned” points to OG’s dark, force-fueled approach to making this record. If you’ve ever hoped that Orange Goblin would one day step up and make a power move, that they’d drop all that whiskey-soaked astro-noodling and put some steel and muscle into their tunes, A Eulogy for the Damned is your hope come true.

Listen to “Red Tide Rising” from A Eulogy for the Damned!

Maylene and the Sons of Disaster
IV
Ferret Music

I’ve never been able to keep track of Maylene’s line-up from album to album, and, in fact, it looks like there’s a few new beards this time around as well, but what I have been able to keep track of is the Alabama band’s Southern-roasted biker rock, which has always tasted as consistently good as a pig on a spit. The band’s appeal as white trash jug guzzlers has always carried certain weight with me, the inbred rage of album’s I through III irrevocably bad-ass, a lethal mix of metalcore and steel-eyed country power fused by shack burnin’ riffs and shit-drunk hooks. However, it seems as though someone filtered the swamp water Maylene’s been sippin’ for inspiration because with the exception of opening track “In Dead We Dream,” which is as close as the band comes to retaining any ounce of their previous nastiness, IV is — to put it in terms familiar to the band — a disaster. The frothy energy has fizzled out, the dirty heaviness has been cleaned up, and vocalist Dallas Taylor’s maniacal, backwoods barking has been carried away on some cruel prairie wind. In fact, a good deal of IV‘s songs sound like goth-treated modern day Bon Jovi ballads, produced exclusively for radio mediocrity. It ends, as all their albums do, with a back porch sun-downer courtesy of “Drought of ’85″ (that is if you completely disregarding whatever the hell “Off to the Laughing Place” is supposed to be, and I suggest you do), but its predictable reprieve comes much too late. It’s not the biggest disappointment of the year (no one’s going to take that honour away from Black Tide), but instead of tearing my shirt off and wrapping my mouth around an exhaust pipe I’m snacking on an apple and moseying on down the road.

Listen to “In Dead We Dream” from IV!

Omega Massif
Karpatia
Denovali Records

The moment you begin listening to an Omega Massif album, there’s not a heavier, darker moment occurring anywhere else in the world; it was true of their 2006 debut EP Kalt, it was true of their 2007 debut full-length Geisterstadt, and now the same can be said for their latest album, Karpatia. Knowing the kind of power Omega Massif is capable of harnessing, I feared putting the headphones anywhere near their desired mark lest my skull succumb to the inevitable decibel rape and cave in upon first riff impact. To say the German instrumental band is crushing is an understatement. Many will label ‘em drone sludge, post-metal, or atmospheric doom, but each of those are just rusty links in the thick chain tied to the ten ton anchor that is their sound, which rests in the deepest part of the ocean’s black crevices, a place still and breathless, a place untouched by humanity. Whether drenched in feedback, antagonizing you with its gentler, swelling passages, or unleashing a resounding and brutal assault of monolithic proportions, Karpatia is stone cold terror. You might want to think about finding a happy place with strong walls before you drop the needle on this one, man.

Listen to “Wölfe” from Karpatia!