Welcome to Pitchfork's new monthly metal column, where we’ll guide you through the genre’s new music and various happenings with an eye towards a specific theme. This month, somewhat inevitably, that theme is hopelessness. Below you’ll find one of this month’s bleakest stories and some of its best new songs—ones that illustrate metal’s ability to express our uniform sense of hopelessness, by fighting against it or simply providing a soundtrack for living through it.
The general stigma of metal is that it’s angry music. Yes, a lot of the best metal is angry, but oversimplifying the genre’s reach to just one mood is a disservice to the myriad talents playing heavy music. Metal bands can be sad, playful, romantic—or, as Slayer vocalist Tom Araya proved this month, tone-deaf, mean-spirited, and homophobic. What made Araya’s move upsetting was not just that he sympathized with our fascist head of state and poorly Photoshopped him into an otherwise badass band photo—it’s that, at its best, metal can be used to fight oppression, not benefit from it. Whether in virtuosity, extremity, or even just sheer loudness, heavy music can arm listeners with tools to fight off the kind of world Trump plans on giving us. But with the message he sent, Araya subverted that potential, further alienating those in his audience who needs Slayer’s music more than ever. “This picture did exactly what I thought it would do,” he explained, “Pissed some of you off!”
Of course, Slayer have always pissed people off. And metal’s ability to offend is precisely what draws in certain listeners. But it’s indicative of the times we’re in that members of the metal community—some of whom still wear Burzum shirts and can be found at Autopsy gigs shouting along to songs about disembowelment—have generally reacted to Araya with disgust. Trump’s disgusting brand of madness is one we do not wish to play with.
While other members of Slayer have spoken out against the post (not the first time Kerry King has covered the band’s ass, as anyone who listened to Repentless can attest), the damage is, in a lot of ways, already done. There’s a reason Slayer stands as one of the genre’s most iconic figures—why their logo is not only represented on battle jackets and T-shirts but also regularly carved into flesh: their music has acted as a symbolic force against evils of the world. Their debut, 1983’s Show No Mercy, arrived during the Reagan administration, making their righteous fury not just novel, but necessary. In one of the band’s most powerful songs, Araya depicted a coming apocalypse: “an unforeseen future buried somewhere in time.” He envisioned a hopeless world filled with chaos and distrust, run on impulse and hate. At the time, it felt safe to assume which side he’d be fighting on, but today, the battle rages on without him.
Shaarimoth // Temple of the Adversarial Fire
We were about halfway through George W.’s second term the last time Norway’s Shaarimoth released an album. It was called Current 11 and it introduced a band as unclassifiable and thrilling as early Celtic Frost: crushing in a totally unpredictable way, shifting between terrifying ambient passages and ripping death-metal powerhouses. Inasmuch as an album can be worth waiting 11 years for, Temple of the Adversarial Fire does not disappoint. Every bit as inspired as its predecessor, the LP is filled with high-drama epics that trudge eerily like an angry mob (“Elevenfolded Wrath Of Sitra Achra”) and thrash chaotically like a colony of ants fleeing under foot (“Ascension Of The Blind Dragon”). By the time it ends with the bizarro clean vocals of “Point of Egress,” you’ll feel dizzy—exhausted, even, though maybe you were already feeling that way.
Me and That Man // “My Church Is Black”
With its acoustic guitars, harmonica breakdowns, and general potential as a “True Detective” theme song, Me and That Man’s “My Church Is Black” might not immediately scan as metal. But “That Man” isn’t just anybody: it’s Nergal, the tough-as-nails Behemoth frontman, without whom most of the bands in this column would not exist (especially Shaarimoth, whose atmospheric death metal owes so much to Behemoth that their band names almost kind of rhyme). The folk-rock stomp of “My Church is Black” is a surprising turn, yes, but one that suits Nergal’s slick baritone and long-standing penchant for odes to the dark lord. With phrases like “all hope is gone” and “no kingdom come,” consider this both an anthem and an elegy, made no less effective by its ability to slide seamlessly between Leonard Cohen and Lucinda Williams on your next road-trip mix.
Planning for Burial // “Whiskey and Wine”
Drinking alone can be relaxing, but it can also be brutal as hell. Holding it down for the latter, Thom Wasluck’s one-man-band Planning for Burial announced the release of his anticipated third album with “Whiskey and Wine,” a lonely, drunken hallucination of a single. This is the gruesome sound of a slow anxiety spiral, somehow made cozier by how much the song’s twee-ish music boxes and lo-fi glaze make it feel like home.
The Ominous Circle // Appalling Ascension
On their debut album Appalling Ascension, the anonymous, leather-clad members of Portugal’s Ominous Circle make ferocious death metal with an atonal edge that pushes it all the more towards total bleakness. A prime example of their gloomy sound appears in album highlight “Poison Fumes,” in which the riff devolves into a two-note dirge that plods along so slowly, you’ll beg for some kind of motion. Feeding into the entirety of the slow, gruesome record, consider this technique the aural equivalent of feeling totally trapped, unsure of how you got here or how you will escape.
King Woman // “Utopia”
King Woman started out as the solo project of Bay Area musician Kristina Esfandiari, who’s since assembled a band as fully formed and vicious as her constantly evolving compositions. Their power is evident in “Utopia,” the first single from their upcoming Relapse debut, Created in the Image of Suffering (out February 24). While everyone involved sounds possessed, rattling and raging like a plane ascending through a storm, Esfandiari stands at the center of the chaos. The song gains its queasy power through her delirious vocal layers, as she slips in and out of key for the chorus’ eerie harmony. In a stately howl, Esfandiari closes the song asking, “Is this really happening?.” It is really happening, but luckily we’ve got King Woman to help us through it.
Dumal // The Lesser God
The sixth track on Pennsylvania black metal trio Dumal’s The Lesser God is a woodsy, instrumental passage called “The Wind Demon.” Composed seemingly entirely from tribal drums and ’80s synths, the song transcends its status as a traditional mid-album interlude while also sounding atmospheric enough to slot into an early Peter Gabriel album. Suffice it to say, “The Wind Demon” is not representative of the rest of The Lesser God, a record whose heaviness and surprising melodic beauty helped it sell out its entire first pressing in less than a month. But the song is representative of just how talented this band is, how good they sound doing just about anything. It’s a surreal nightmare in the middle of an otherwise steady, blacked-out sleep.