Sanity's Dawn

Super heavy, if somewhat less than completely "serious" goregrind/ death metal from Germany circa 2001... If you dig shit like Regurgitate, Gronibard, early Exhumed, and Utopie you probably already know of Sanity's Dawn, but if not, they should be right up your alley.

Legion of Andromeda

Basically the sound of Corrupted teaming with Big Black's trusty drum machine to jam out a completely borg-assimilated version of the final track on Eisenvater's "III" backed by the sound of a planet sized steam hammer. Endless. Mindless. Soulless. Inhuman. Fucking. Pounding.

Fermento

Chunky "brutal" DM with probably the craziest sounding vocals this side of Sanity's Dawn. This stuff is pretty fucking braindead so I'm not gonna waste a whole lot of words on the write up, but I always kinda liked this album.

Exsanguination

New thing from one of the guitar players of my favorite local band back when I was in high school... Sounds pretty much exactly how you'd want/ expect ie: A total riff-fest, equal parts Dismember, Seance, Nihilist, etc. With killer raspy vocals and melodies ala Sacrilege (SWE).

Eternal Suffering

Grinding crushing DM brutality from south-suburban MA with what have to be some of the lowest tuned guitars I've ever fucking heard. YMMV but I absolutely love this album and I've always felt like Eternal Suffering were kinda MA's answer to bands like (early) Afterbirth, Pyrexia, and Dehumanized.

Aeon

Extremely dark and menacing DM from Sweden that manages to come across super solid and riffy without sacrificing anything in the way of speed and intensity... I've been a massive Aeon fan since the early 00's so this record wound up being kind of the sleeper hit of 2021 for me.

If you like mid-era Vader, Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, Pessimist, and that absolutely savage Golgothan disc that came out a couple months ago you'll probably really dig this.

Conjureth

Man, Wayne Sarantopoulos has gotta be gunning for some kind of death metal lifetime achievement award. Seriously, take a look how many bands the dude has been in, both under his own name and his Elektrokutioner alias... There's gotta be close to thirty or forty at this point. It's absolutely fucking insane.

Craziest part? They all rule. This newest Conjureth album being no exception.

Intonate

Ok, real quick blurb 'cos it's 3am and I'm really just waiting for this stupid lightning storm to be over so I can hop a shower and go the fuck to sleep, but in a lot of ways I feel like what Anata was to melodeath Intonate are to dissonant Immolation/ Incantation worshipping caveman DM, and that's saying a lot because I really, really, fucking loved Anata.

With Intonate you get the same swirling vortex of inter-dimensional terror that a lot of these dissonant bands fuck with, but laced with killer doomy riffs and enough soaring, spiraling, melody to make the whole thing really memorable (hell, even "catchy" if you're the sort of person who hums whacked out DM riffs to yourself while you do the dishes).

Powerful stuff.

Xythlia

Insane sci-fi album title, album cover that looks like it was painted by a death metal Bill Sienkiewicz, and music that sounds like a four way ladder-match between Gigan, Gorguts, Cryptopsy, and Premonitions of War... Christ, how the fuck did I miss this? Oh yeah, it came out in 2020, the world was ending.

Hath

Imagine a significantly faster, slightly more melodic take on Withered or Immolation garnished with a sprig of Slugdge and a few drops of the swirling dissonant terror that Ulcerate brought to the table on "Stare Into Death and Be Still" and you've got a pretty good general idea of what Hath are doing... This is hands down my favorite DM release of the past couple months.

Ivory Primarch

Godflesh meets Bolt Thrower down at 90's Peaceville HQ for a spirited Warhammer 40k campaign... This was one of my absolute favorite albums of 2021.