Cherd

Cool World gives us the best one-two punch you could ask for.

Umbilical is a different beast than their classic Heathen or their top-notch collaborative albums, but it’s Thou through and through, and that’s a great thing.

They’re the same shaggy beast as ever, but beneath that matted, coarse coat is a rippling form mid-shape shift, stretching, pulling, and crossing back on itself constantly over the course of New Heaven’s shockingly concise 42 minutes.

All the things I love about past releases are still here. They’re just slowly succumbing to pure technicality. There are songs here that stand with the very best of what Stortregn have put out, but Finitude falls a bit short of the band’s own potential.

With Hyacinth, his three-and-a-half-decade career adds another bright star to his glittering crown and announces what I hope will be a richly rewarding solo career.

Big|Brave deliver a stunning, unique statement on Nature Morte. Without changing the core of the band’s sound, it signals a remarkable refinement of vision a decade into their existence.

Throughout God’s Country, they manage to access the universal through the tiny door of the specific, a mark of artistic maturity. It’s a harrowing statement of despair, but one I can’t stop listening to. AOTY contender.

Even in the midst of an almost unrelenting intensity, Thought Form Descent manages at times to find an even higher gear for chills-inducing moments.

With Rare Field Ceiling, Yellow Eyes have placed themselves right in the middle of the current zeitgeist and put American black metal in the same conversation as the current wave of Icelandic and European bands holding up the tent poles of the genre.