Friday’s are not only the best days of the week for starting the weekend and getting paid, but they are also great because of all the new albums that get released! This week was no exception as some highly anticipated records were put out to high praise. We will highlight these in this piece and if you haven’t checked any of them out yet we hope you will!
The Acacia Strain-‘Gravebloom’
This record was a record many people had their eye on as when it comes to deathcore The Acacia Strain never disappoints. ‘Gravebloom‘ was not the exception as they gave their fans what they wanted and then some! Of all the new albums out this week this one is by far the heaviest with the fast riffs and skull crushing breakdowns with frontman Vincent Bennett’s powerful vocals sitting right on top. The third track ‘Bitter Pill’ is a great example of this as the song progresses to get heavier and heavier as it closes out.
Sworn In- ‘All Smiles’
If The Acacia Strain gets the heaviest album notion, Sworn In gets the darkest of the new albums out this week. Sworn In took everything fans have loved about them and their previous releases and thus ‘All Smiles’ has become their best effort yet. The haunting ominous atmosphere portrayed with their trademark guitar effects and sporadic rhythms adding to Tyler Dennen’s vocals make for quite the record. When it comes to the clean singing on this record it is the strongest it’s been yet. Dennen has clearly evolved and made himself a powerhouse in this regard as one of this biggest critiques early on were the singing aspects of his vocals. The record gets pretty experimental throughout also using weird vocal patterns and musically which adds into the great things going on on this record.
Outer Glow- ‘Lunar//Effect’
We have reported on this band extensively so if you’re a regular to our site, you have seen this name before. For those who haven’t, this is the project in which former I See Stars co-frontman Zach Johnson is now a part of. This EP dropped Friday as well in which saw the band playing their first show as a band in Greensboro, NC at The Blind Tiger (interview coming soon!). The style on this EP isn’t what fans of I See Stars’ old work are used to as it incorporates an older style of metalcore from the late 00’s. The Kile Odell produced offering is tight and deep showing off a nice full sound. It is a great step to what the band is building on as all but two songs have been released over the course of a year as singles.
Greeley Estates- ‘Calling All The Hopeless’
Released after last Friday but before this past Friday was a weird release time for Greeley Estates. This is the band’s first release since 2011 or so when they announced they were done. To fans’ shock, they announced this Spring they were releasing this new EP which did not disappoint. They showed off some of their classic sounds while showing growth as musicians over the years.
