I prefer to review albums the year they are released in order not to appear dated, but sometimes albums find their way to me the following calendar year. I respect the effort (and, in some cases, money) bands put into sending me their music for review, so the least I can do is give them some blog time. Here’s a quick run through some music that was released in 2011, because it’s never too late…

Nordic Nomadic
Worldwide Skyline
Tee Pee

When Chad Ross of Toronto psychedelic rockers Quest for Fire decides to go solo, he does so as Nordic Nomadic, and his output (2007′s self-titled album and this one), while softly bathed in psychedelic waters, is not drenched in the kind of fuzz that soaks Quest for Fire’s body of work. Instead, Ross reverts, like a mystic on a mountaintop, to the natural order of things, his dreamy folk dictated by delicate finger picking that dances over haunting drone, distant distortion, and deep bass, his voice a spiritual messenger sent to soothe your soul.

Listen to “Growin’ Horns” from Worldwide Skyline!

Chest
MMXI EP
Self-Released

Roman numerals? Check. Skull wearing a crown? Check. Band name so good I can’t believe it’s never been taken? Check again. Yeah, I did all sorts of book cover judging with this four-song EP, making a barrel full o’ assumptions that the substance was going to match the style, and sure enough, it does. Chest’s MMXI EP is some bad-ass, bottomed out business, a feast of Finnish doom served at a rotting roundtable where the ghosts of Galahad and Gawain are scrounging up the sludgy scraps. It’s a thing of beauty when the eyes and ears work together, isn’t it?

Listen to “Seed of Chaos” from MMXI!

Palo Verde
Zero Hour
Phratry Records

Lauren K. Newman (drums) and Terrica Kleinknecht (guitar) originally began life as Stickitin, an experimental double drum duo (!), but must’ve decided that they could make a lot more sludgy noise if one of ‘em picked up a guitar, and thus Palo Verde was born. These Portland, Oregon (there it is again!) DIY females are as back-to-basic as they come, recording and self-releasing their own albums over the years out of their home studio, and have gigged in a million and one bands you and I have never heard of, a devotion no doubt laced with small traces of insanity. Which is why we get something like the unrehearsed four-song, 45 minute Zero Hour, completely unlikable in the best way possible, an unbearably raw, amplified beat down powered by corrosive, dying batteries. Apparently Palo Verde are best experienced live, but this album is certainly making an impression.

Listen to Zero Hour here!

Bring the Knife
Bring the Knife
Thrashachusetts Records

Bring the Knife is a Boston metal band whose self-titled debut 7″ fuses Anthrax thrash with C.O.C. crossover, tosses in a whole bunch of Wylde-esque squealing harmonics (courtesy of ex Glamorous Stuntcock axe wielder Pattie the Gimp), and delivers a barroom mosh madness that ought to have people betting on hardcore elbow thrusts like basketball games. Released on singer Duncan Wilder Johnson’s own Thrashachusetts Records label, Bring the Knife contains all kinds of treacherous bite, specifically Johnson’s socially conscious verbal attacks on “At the End of Days” and “I Walk Through Flames Every Hour to Feel Free” and the B-movie brain punch of “Werewolf Fuckdown” and “Viking Skull Thrust”.

Listen to “Werewolf Fuckdown” from Bring the Knife!

Black Breath
Sentenced to Life
Southern Lord

With their two previous releases, the 2009 EP Razor to Oblivion and the 2010 full-length Heavy Breathing, Seattle’s Black Breath asserted themselves, quite demonstratively, as heavy metal brutalitarians. Choose your violent adjective: crushing, demolishing, relentless. They always applied to Black Breath’s death n’ roll slaughter, and still do, but you can go ahead and put ‘em in italics now because their newest album, Sentenced to Life, is just over thirty minutes of sledgehammer emphasis. Opener “Feast of the Damned” kicks off a run of 10 songs in rotten urgency, propelled by a rush of stadium dynamics as if the whole thing were recorded in front of a swelling crowd of ten thousand undead. That overwhelming feeling persists, and as the attack that is Sentenced to Life gains momentum, the band’s speed, tone, and tempo grow ever deeper and darker, until it becomes a rich and powerful entity all its own. Black Breath even manages to toss some traditional metal flourishes and tasty solos into the mix, and the rolling thunder riffs of “Home of the Grave” and “The Flame,” and the eerie intro to “Endless Corpse,” push Sentenced to Life beyond the wall of vile thrash and into the open, blood-stained field of decrepit glory. These guys are quickly emerging as one of the best, no doubt about it.

Listen to “Mother Abyss” from Sentenced to Life!

Corrosion of Conformity
Corrosion of Conformity
Candlelight Records

Corrosion of Conformity’s 1985 Animosity line-up of Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman, and Reed Mullin made big news when they reunited in 2010 for a two-song EP, Your Tomorrow (Parts 1 and 2), mainly because Animosity‘s punk/thrash crossover made such a monumental contribution to heavy music and because it brought an end to C.O.C.’s five year hiatus after the release of In the Arms of God in 2005.* Of course, it’s the former point that garnered the most excitement, the belief that with Pepper Keenan still toiling away in Down, C.O.C. would lay aside its Southern metal sound and return to its influential, raucous, politico-skate metal roots. Well, gray hairs and lost years be damned because the new full-length, Corrosion of Conformity, finds the Raleigh, North Carolina trio in a fresh, aggressive, and loud way, chucking around thrashy riffs like empty beer cans. I’m sure it was never the band’s intent to recreate Animosity, which they don’t do by a long shot, but what they do do is spread their innate abrasiveness over several well-executed styles of metal to create a rush of dynamic anarchy. From the traditional blast of “Psychic Vampire,” “River of Stone,” and “Your Tomorrow,” to the motor-punk of “Leeches,” “The Moneychangers,” and “Rat City,” to the sludgy doom of “The Doom” and “Newness,” Corrosion of Conformity is utter mosh pit fodder, and Dean’s vocals are perfectly vile for such destructive enthusiasm. You know, it would have been totally reasonable to expect these bastard pioneers to be a bit out of step, but this is so on point that it’s worth your biggest broken-toothed grin…and a hell of a lot of spins.

*Even though it was the last recorded C.O.C. album, Mullin actually wasn’t part of the In the Arms of God line-up. In fact, that last time this trio appeared on an album together was 2000′s America’s Volume Dealer. However, Mullin and Dean do have another band called Righteous Fool.

Listen to “The Doom” from Corrosion of Conformity!