Multi-Musical Mon...Wednesday!

It's been quite a week for new music so far. Some new discoveries, some unexpected surprises, and some new artists to watch out for.

We discovered recently that Tarot, featuring Marco Hietala of Nightwish fame, were releasing a new album in April. The band's last album, Crows Fly Back, is a nice, crunchy heavy metal album and Gravity Of Light is more of the same. Chugging guitar mixed with twiddly riffs make for a well produced metal album. More on this one later.

At the same time, I picked up Isolation Songs by Ghost Brigade on the recommendation of Last.fm. I'm glad I did. A combination of melodic death, doom and prog metal with the requisite riffage, screams, growls and clean vocal and a melodic yet thudding bass. Good listening for death and prog metal fans alike, I can't fault this albums technical ability. It's not quite as catchy as Dark Tranquillity, and not as complex as Opeth, but maybe those comparisons aren't really fair. They are hard acts to be compared to. I like it, and if you like DT or Opeth, I think you'll like it too.

If that lot isn't exciting enough, the discoveries continue. An article on Invisible Oranges alerted me to a new death metal album from Martriden. Encounter The Monolith is a concept album based loosely on 2001, and uses Martriden's ludicrously fast beat to good effect. It's a 45 minute, 6 track album, and when it ends it seems like an age, yet no time at all. Once your ears get used to the onslaught of relentless drums and some superb guitar noodling, it's hard to slow down to the more pedestrian pace of normality. Bought it yesterday and managed 5 listens already. Enough said.

Another thing that caught my attention was Trent Reznor's latest project, How To Destroy Angels. A bit less industrial than NIN stuff, but not as electronicy as later freebies, this debut EP, available free, is a decent mix of post-industrial rock with female vocal. It works really well and is definitely worth keeping track of in future.

And last, but by no means least, Anathema have finally released a new album! A mere 7 years in the making, We're Here Because We're Here was finally released on May 31st. My copy is on order and should arrive on Friday, at which point I'll actually find out what it sounds like. Should be good.