Welcome to Pitchfork’s 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’s theme is introducing. Below you’ll find five of this month’s most exciting releases by rising metal bands.
The metal debut is a tricky thing. Many now perceived as classics—Death’s Scream Bloody Gore, Metallica’s Kill ’Em All, Slayer’s Show No Mercy—earned their place in the canon retrospectively, once these bands fully arrived at their sounds. But the passing of time makes it fascinating to return to these early documents, looking for glimpses of the music to come. What did they sound like when they thought no one was listening?
The best metal debuts often feel like invitations. “Hang out with us,” Sleep’s 1991 debut Volume One suggested, “and we’ll listen to Black Sabbath, watch Jodorowsky, and smoke pot”—a promise they made good on with their more immersive follow-ups. Finding a good debut becomes a way of finding your people, pledging to stick together as you both evolve. But it’s a bond that often gets broken. This is how metal bands become vulnerable to the biggest cliche across music snobbery: the cred-building claim, “I only like their early stuff.”
Sometimes, this change of heart is earned. Black metal purists who latched onto Emperor’s promising demos probably weren’t expecting them to add keyboards into the mix by the the time they got to making their full-length debut, In the Nightside Eclipse. Other times, bands are held to unfair standards: would Celtic Frost’s more commercial turn with 1988’s Cold Lake be nearly as reviled if they hadn’t begun with one of the ’80s’ most dynamic, devilish, and disorienting debuts?
Whether an act switches things up from album to album, it’s easy to look at their early work—before there were expectations, lineup changes, major labels involved—as the purest document of a band’s vision. Yet there’s more to a good debut than just properly setting up the story to come. This month, we look at new works from several rising bands—ranging from demos to early-career breakthroughs—to find music that stands up strong on its own, regardless of what may follow.
Suffering Hour - In Passing Ascension
This crushing debut from Minneapolis trio Suffering Hour has been a long time coming: “I wrote the thing as a teenager, for Christ’s sake,” said guitarist/vocalist Josh “YhA” Raiken, now in his 20s. In Passing Ascension shows all the signs of a fine-tuned work of art, its crushing mixture of black metal and death metal plays seamlessly. But more than anything, In Passing Ascension is fueled by relentless momentum. These songs explode with queasy transitions and unexpected changes—like the gnarly breakdown three minutes into “For the Putridity of Man”—like they’re trying to bust through the speakers and drag you into their disorienting landscape. “I think I speak for everyone in the band when I say we’re hungry and ready to conquer the world with our music,” said drummer/vocalist Jason “IsN” Oberuc in the same interview. With In Passing Ascension, their reign begins.
Legionnaire - Dawn of Genesis
Legionnaire may be Finland’s newest metal gods, but they’re unabashedly old souls. The cover art for their debut Dawn of Genesis looks like a fleshed-out doodle from a bored high schooler’s notebook, and the music is precisely what would be soundtracking those daydreams. Aku Tiensuu’s got a forceful set of pipes: he does a viking metal bellow on the title track that pairs with drummer Aksu’s relentless gallop like a jouster on horseback. The plentiful dual guitar riffs and references to mythological heroes should pique the interest of anyone who likes like their metal traditional (as in, so traditional that it wears a suit of armor and offers its lyrics on pieces of parchment). It all builds to a debut that feels like a glorious declaration of purpose.
Dauðyflin - Ofbeldi
On their early recordings, Iceland’s Dauðyflin could be neatly categorized as hardcore or crust punk, but on their first full-length, they’ve adopted a thrashier energy and a wider scope. The longest song on Ofbeldi is just over two minutes long, but the four-piece has a tantalizing way of packing myriad ideas into tiny spaces. “Óvinir” is the album’s two-part highlight. In its doomy intro, bassist Dísa delivers a haunting, Geezer-worthy motif that gets torn to shreds in the song’s pulverising second half. The vicious chorus finds Alexandra Ingvarsdóttir seething, “I hate you/We are enemies.” She’s singing in Icelandic, but her message is inherent in her delivery: spitting through her teeth as the band propels noisily toward a feedback-soaked collapse.
Ceremonial Bloodbath - Command Sacrifice - Demo
The Vancouver quartet Ceremonial Bloodbath traffic in dense, dismal war metal akin to Beherit, but they’ve got a gruesome dynamic all their own. The band allegedly recorded the five songs on their demo Command Sacrifice in a day or so, leaving them little time to overthink the perfect mix or the right atmosphere. Instead they pack everything into their performances, adding near-goth edges to their melodies that will inspire dreams (or nightmares) of what this band has in store.
Slægt - Domus Mysterium
Okay, officially Domus Mysterium might not be a debut, but it’s a breakthrough for Slægt. The quartet’s 2014 debut and 2015’s Beautiful and Damned EP showcased the Danish band’s keen taste for early black metal and epic ’80s riffs. Yet Domus Mysterium is distinctive enough to sound like the work of a completely different group. The compositions here span from full-throated anthems like “I Smell Blood” to diabolical instrumental jams like “The Eye of the Devil,” touching on doom metal atmospheres and classic rock riffs in the process. Slægt sound masterful in all the territory they cover—so focused on grooves that their songs occasionally drift towards the 10-minute mark. Of course, there’s time to refine all that later. Domus Mysterium is pure energy and ambition—indulgent in all the right ways.