Metal En Route

It's been a quiet sort of a January. I've not really had a great deal of time for finding the new and the terribly exciting. Fortunately it appears that there are some amazing albums in store for 2012. Death metal from Bloodbath Barren Earth (oops) , Before The Dawn, Mithras and Paradise Lost. Symphonic metal from Epica, Delain and Pythia. In fact, I could just post a single up-coming album a day and it'd probably carry me through to the end of the year. 2012 is going to rock.

And to get it all started, I have 3 new musical morsels winging their way to my doormat so I can savour them properly. In no particular order, except the order in which they were ordered, here's what I have to look forward to this week.

Alcest - Les Voyages De L'Âme

Starting off with a bit of French shoegazery, Alcest recently popped up on my radar via Terrorizer magazine. With a mix of prog rock, black metal and post-metal thrown in, it's a little bit of everything but somehow just sounds like itself. I'm a sucker for mid-tempo atmospheric rock that overwhelms you with layers upon layers of sound that work their way into your mind and provide a perfect chill out. Alcest fits the bill nicely.

Swallow The Sun - Emerald Forest And The Blackbird

They're a death/doom band. They're from Finland. The have an enigmatically titled new album. This is going to be soul-crushingly bleak. But it's also going to be awesome. I've had a sneaky preview of a few tracks, including Cathedral Walls, which has guest vocals from Nightwish's Anette Olzon. It's a gentle number, to be sure, and even the growled bits are somewhat disquieting. An interesting diversion from their usual style, which is still present on other tracks like Hate, Lead The Way.

Illuminatus - Glasnost

A fairly recent discovery (as recent as yesterday), Illuminatus have been described as being a sort of cross between Alternative4 era Anathema and Devin Townsend's more recent works. While I can't really see it, it was enough to pique my interest. What I actually heard was a sort of beautifully complex progressive rock album with a good amount of metal riffage and a healthy dollop of guitar noodling to boot. And as you will see on the video, they're a pretty well turned out bunch, too.