It was a bit of a slow week this week, but there was still some really good stuff coming out! Winds Of Plague returned with a very noticeably non-garbage song, Zao continues to be relevant and heavy as ever, Exhumed made me think they covered Bob Seger for a second, and Converge is still an unstoppable force.
Let’s get to listening.
Winds Of Plague – “Never Alone”
Trying to enjoy Winds Of Plague has not been easy over the years. The first two albums in 2008 and 2009 are solid, but then came 2011’s Against The World. That album contained the atrocity “California,” which answered the question “what if Red Hot Chili Peppers wrote a deathcore-meets-nü-metal song?” Nobody wanted the answer, but we got one.
The band released Resistance in 2013, which was an album that contained music, and then went on hiatus for a bit. Now equipped with an entirely new band aside from founding vocalist Johnny Plague and longtime drummer Arturo Cruz, Winds Of Plague is back and clearly got its shit together. “Never Alone” is the song everyone knew they were capable of producing but just didn’t for a while. It’s super heavy, it’s got a ton of orchestration, and it features absolutely zero hardcore-style lyrics about California.
Blood Of My Enemy is out October 27, and might actually be awesome.
Zao – “The Host Has Bared Its Teeth”
Zao took seven long years to release 2016’s The Well-Intentioned Virus, though the wait was worth it because the album ruled. Zao also promised that it would release new material every year from now on, and has thus far kept that promise. More importantly, the band is keeping its promise with fantastic new music.
“The Host Has Bared Its Teeth” is a solid 210 seconds flat of plodding, crushing riffs that extend the heaviness Zao brought to the table with The Well-Intentioned Virus. The song is one of five you’ll find on its new EP Pyrrhic Victory, which is out November 3 independently.
Exhumed – “Night Work”
I got really excited about this song initially because I thought Exhumed had covered Bob Seger‘s “Night Moves,” but I was unfortunately mistaken. Turns out “Night Work” is still pretty damn good and even sounds a little like Slayer‘s “Raining Blood” with its similarly-structured intro, so Exhumed gets a pass… this time.
Exhumed‘s new album Death Revenge follows a gruesome story of body exhumation and experiments in 1820’s Scotland, and the song and video for “Night Work” both detail that concept. Death Revenge is eerily out on October 13, does not contain any Bob Seger covers whatsoever, and can be pre-ordered here.
Converge – “Reptilian”
Well, here it is. A completely perfect lesson on how to a build a song up. Converge takes a full two minutes to build up to the verses of “Reptilian,” and then takes about half that time to break it back down to its essentially and beat the living hell out of you with them. I’m generally wary about judging an album by its singles, but The Dusk In Us really does sound like it’s going to be nothing less than perfect.
Once you’ve put back all the stuff you knocked over whilst moshing to this song, go ahead and pre-order The Dusk In Us before its November 3 release date.
