The Good, The Bad and The Brutal

Each week we dive headfirst into the chaos of the release calendar so you don’t have to, sorting the skull-crushers from the snooze-fests, the molten riffs from the meaningless noise. This week spans everything from pit-starting thrash to fluffy Disney soundtracks, and we’ll tell you what’s worth blasting at full volume and what deserves to be dumped in the bargain bin.

The Good: When it comes to crossover thrash, few bands hit as hard as Cruel Bomb. This four-piece unleashes a ferocious, high-octane assault that distills the genre’s finest elements: the raw aggression of Power Trip, the neck-snapping stomp of Municipal Waste, and the razor-sharp precision of Warbringer. 

On some tracks, Cruel Bomb unleash bone-crushing breakdowns built to spark pure chaos in the pit, pure Hatebreed-style punishment aimed straight at the jugular. Elsewhere, they shift into a mid-tempo, stomp-driven menace ripped straight from Slayer’s darkest playbook. The result? A lethal crossover cocktail, nasty, unrelenting, and as unstoppable as the genre gets.

The bad: A couple of years ago, if I picked up a CD at a store with the Nuclear Blast stamp on it, I knew I was in for some sharp, quality metal. But Auri? That’s another story. Aside from Tuomas Holopainen of Nightwish fame being involved in this project along with his singer wife, this has little to do with metal at all. 

Instead, what you get feels more like Kate Bush wandering into a fairy-tale world of kings, queens, castles, and enchanted forests. Sure, it’s atmospheric, but far from heavy. Honestly, it sounds more like the soundtrack to a fluffy Disney animated movie than something you’d expect from Nuclear Blast. 

The Brutal: New York’s death metal quartet Castrator are back with their crushing second full-length, Coronation of the Grotesque, an album that sharpens their long-honed balance of old-school grit and mosh-ready brutality. It’s heavy, it’s memorable, and it avoids falling into the tired clichés. That doesn’t mean, they’re here to reinvent death metal’s wheel, that’s not the mission. Instead, Coronation of the Grotesque spotlights everything that makes the genre great: razor-sharp riffs, brutal vocals, and relentless headbanging power. A well-executed, bone-breaking death metal experience so what more could you ask for?