Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/post-human-survival-horror/1535067172
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0e1WaSNDZnoPixaxDNdWo4
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3Pp4IGPebg&list=PLxA687tYuMWjFSs5uzLYbGrdHRm0srHQ0

Metalcore Bring Me the Horizon is back, baby. Awoouu (wolf Howl)

Back in 2013, Bring Me the Horizon was arguably the biggest band in metalcore. Their release that year, Sempiternal, propelled them to international stardom and mainstream success. After this, guitarist Jona Weinhofen left the band and instead of adding another guitarist, the group added a keyboardist instead. The change up in sound was very noticeable, while the band found incredible commercial success and curried the favor of some pop critics, many rock and roll fans felt a little left out in the cold by a typical change in sound by a heavy band following commercial success.

After a pair of albums and an EP in their more electronic, pop centered sound, Bring Me the Horizon have returned to that signature Sempiternal sound with POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR. The crushing guitars come roaring back on this release and Oli Sykes, one of the best unclean vocalists in the game, finally returns to his growls and guttural pit calls. While there's still a lot of electronica in here, this seems to augment the sound, like in Sempiternal, rather than guide it. The only problem with this release is that it's too short. But luckily, SURVIVAL HORROR is just the first of a planned four EP set, with the other three coming over the course of 2021.

The EP also features a lot of great, well, features. Standouts include BABYMETAL on Kingslayer bringing a late era Poppy vibe to the disk and Amy Lee's haunting appearance on the album closer.

For fans of Bad Omens, Architects and Crossfaith.

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/wrong-generation/1535816008
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0ENzm2HTf7mfFjWZ7CaB5u
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Nm3JIPr3w&list=OLAK5uy_knEEYCSEk8ai9vRtXwRnbrJ_bSVR_5JA8

The hardcore meets hip-hop trio FEVER 333 are back to their roots with a new EP called WRONG GENERATION. While their last release, STRENGTH IN NUMB333RS, tended to lose their punk influence in exchange for more nu-metal influences, WRONG GENERATION ditches that side-step and continues from where they first started when the broke on to the scene in 2018 with Made an America. In my opinion, this is a welcome return to form. These guys seem most comfortable when they are making rebellious music that may not appeal to everyone, rather than their attempt at mainstream acceptance by employing more accessible song structure and instruments.

Drummer Aric Improta has never sounded better so far. While he's always been able to dial into a groove a bit, he feels more like the mover you'd like the drummer to be in a hip-hop band, rather than just playing keep up with the melody section. This does mean guitarist Stephen Harrison isn't quite as prominent in the tracks, but that doesn't mean he's not doing great work. Harrison takes more of a cue from Tom Morello in this album, following the rhythm section and getting in the groove. Vocalist Jason Aalon Butler sounds best when he's doing his high pitched screams and spoken word-type rap rather than his cleans (which sound a bit too much like a bad Chester Bennington impression), and he mostly stays away from cleans on this album.

Butler's lyrics still feel a lot more than STRENGTH IN NUMB333RS and are probably the one thing where you can see a through line from the beginning of FEVER 333 to now. His focus on LA culture, black liberation, police violence and more gets shaper with every release.

For fans of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and Stray From the Path.

What I mean by this: information that is not self-contained in the song/album enhances or changes our interpretations of it. It can be something the artist said/did, the historical or cultural context surrounding the music, the inspiration for the song or its writing/recording process, or anything else that makes the target music more meaningful.

Arguably any music can benefit from knowing its "outside story", so I'm looking for particularly noteworthy examples -- ones where this information is especially significant. This is of course subjective, so really anything goes! If you think it's important, well, then that's good enough to share!

The final results would look something like this.

Ours here wouldn't be tailored to obscure music like that though, just the best albums of the year with no other qualifications. There hasn't been one on reddit since 2017, you can find the 2011-2017 sets in the archive. The first one was just me putting up 15 albums. I believe the highest number we ever hit was 287 albums. It's heartening when the artists show up to thank you for shining a light on their little corner of the music world, too. A good list is good press for Tildes, it'll make the rounds.

Frankly, the people who were instrumental in those roundups are here on Tildes now, so hitting past 300 isn't outside the realm of possibility, not that we need to get that extreme (it's just fun). There are several new type two listeners here too, so potentially we've already got more music lovers and more help here than we've had doing the previous set. General input from tens of thousands of people like you see on reddit isn't as important to this process as the hardcore music lovers, we'd get like 3 solid recs out of 1000 comments, and small/forgotten /r/letstalkmusic always kicked everyone else's ass when it came to album picks.

These things can be rather a lot of work, which is why they are hard to do. It's not the playlists that eat up the time, though - it's collecting all of the albums and getting enough ears on them to give them the stamp of approval for the final list. The way to make that easier is to get started on it early and spread the work out over several months. That way come November you're looking for late releases and overlooked gems rather than panicking and trying to do it all in a single week. Been there, that's the worst.

The way we'd do it before, we'd run roundup threads on reddit periodically (in several different subs) then sift the comments for album recommendations, listen to them to see if they passed muster. That's hardly necessary on Tildes, especially with the long-lived threads here that bump with activity and never truly lock. We also used a google docs spreadsheet so we could tally everyone's votes up, but that was a major pain in the ass I'd like to skip. Tildes' own votes should be more than enough, and exemplary tags can highlight the must-listen set that goes at the top.

I think the best way to do it is put up a collection thread that everyone who is interested can then bookmark or ignore, and then drop albums in the comments between now and mid-November. No, not in this thread, I'll post a thread for it during the first week of October. We just let that roll and keep dumping new albums into it, listening, and leaving comments there. Come late November I can whip that into a set of playlists in a weekend, that's the easy part.

I enjoy doing this because it's been my experience that most music publications would rather argue about what numerical order the same 50 albums should be in than round up all of the best and let the listeners decide for themselves. They also have an incentive to pimp bands that are industry darlings or that they are being paid to boost in the recommendations. We don't.

So, are you folks interested in getting the ball rolling on this in October? Leave a comment if you are interested in contributing (even if it's just a single album) so we can get a sense of how many people are down for this before we get started. If there isn't enough interest we can try again next year. I'd also like to invite the folks who have done this before to share their experiences, you know who you are. ;)

Apple Music
Spotify
YouTube

Melbourne metalcore outfit Alpha Wolf dropped their second LP today, their first with vocalist Lochie Keogh. A thorough evolution of their sound, A Quiet Place to Die picks up where their previous release, the EP Fault, left off and goes bigger, harder and more bone shattering. With this release, Alpha Wolf arguably moves to the forefront of the nu-metalcore movement, combining elements of hardcore with nu-metal. The result is very down-tuned guitars chugging like crazy that occasionally make way for crushing breakdowns and on the fly harmonics. Keogh's vocals are raw and unflinching, as he barks out some dark themes and has come great pit calls. While there is mostly just non-stop chunky riffs, the band shows they can write ballads, in their own way, with tracks Bleed 4 You and Don't Ask.

For fans of Architects, Fit For a King, Stray From the Path and anyone that thought even the heaviest nu-metal bands weren't heavy enough.

This is hard to describe, but I'm looking for albums that I can kind of wallow in a bit emotionally, but that are also beautiful musically, aesthetically, or lyrically.

Because it's difficult to put into words, here's an example of a song that kind of has the vibe I'm going for: Snail Mail's "Deep Sea". It's sad but not too sad, and I find the arrangement and melody to be resonant and, well, beautiful. I want something that feels like this, but across a whole album (note that the "feel" doesn't apply to the genre of the song so much as it does my emotional response to it).

I'm open to any suggestions. Bandcamp preferred, but not required.

UPDATE: A huge thank you to the community for all your recommendations! I have a lot of wallowing to look forward to.

Link to listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/383666896955

Announcement from Vulfpeck member Jack Stratton: https://twitter.com/vulfpeck/status/1291766802817540102

This announcement came out of nowhere this morning and the eBay listing will likely continue to grow. Will be interesting to watch to see how much this spot is worth, and who ends up buying it.

Some songs from their latest album:

Radio Shack
Bach Vision Test
3 on E (feat. Antwaun Stanley)
Test Drive (Instrumental)

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/stray-bullets-feat-weerd-science-ep/1512822699
Spotify
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6befoKm69aHNkcB54S0Ufq
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTMr59Wc5Nw&list=OLAK5uy_lx1jN8DGlwOR83MvufGx5k21P_D7lJpAI

Coheed and Cambria's Claudio Sanchez is finally revisiting his acoustic and electronica side project The Prize Fighter Inferno after being away for almost a decade. No doubt fueled by the pandemic shutting down live performances and what not, the return of Prize Fighter Inferno is mostly a return of the same sound the project has been know for up to this point. Spacey, electronic beats and SFX pepper around Claudio's high tenor voice and occasional uses of an acoustic guitar will add more melody to any given track. The exception is the very first track, which features Coheed and Cambria drummer Josh Eppard rapping under his own side project name, Weerd Science.

Like past Prize Fighter Inferno tracks, it's assumed the lyrics are part of the concept that spreads across most Coheed and Cambria tracks as well. But with Coheed and Cambria entering a new continuity with their most recent album, it's possible Prize Fighter Inferno may have done the same with this release.

For fans of down beat electronica like (some) Purity Ring, Grimes and The Knife.

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/transitional-forms/1502187566
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6pHXuiWvMSPTyBb0hHe8Yv?si=gPRk-8hoRD2qoFZI91LSfg
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYQhPJrQIlgNxrODF9mS-wAC5BS6jET0c

Baltimore hardcore outfit Sharptooth is back with their sophomore effort and it's no slump. The riffs are crunchy as hell and the vocals are more brutal than ever. Remaining is Sharptooth's political edge, which is as sharp as ever. Stand out lyrics include "You're not a feminist just because you fucked one" and the album opener "This is a song about nothing/Oh no, not a single thing/'Cause in the absence of content/I hope that you'll forget/That all this shit never meant a thing."

Lauren Kashan's vocals are vastly improved. Her unclean vox are much more guttural while her cleans include more harmonies and layered work. Fellow song writer of the group Lance Donati employs a lot of inverted power chords to keep the sound aggressive and explosive.

For fans of political hardcore punk like Stray From the Path, seeyouspacecowboy, Knocked Loose and Every Time I Die.