I'm compelled to shout the praises of Anthrax's newest -
For All Kings. It hit Spotify around the same time as
Jomsviking (maybe even the same day - though I know FaK had been out for a few weeks prior to its streaming availability), and the difference is night and day. Both are incredibly melodic expressions of their specific genres - thrash and death - but the execution of that expression on FaK is leagues ahead what Amon Amarth has put out.
Twilight of the Thunder God is such an important album in my metal history - it was my gateway into death metal as a whole (which led to discovering brilliance like Bolt Thrower, which I'm eternally grateful for), so I naturally get jittery with hope with each new AA album. And while
Joms is at least better than their last two, it's still about five notches below TotTG.
FaK, on the other hand - it just flat-out rocks. Catchy, interesting, and attention-holding throughout the entire runtime. This coming from someone who actively disliked Anthrax (admittedly based on nothing more than hearsay) until very recently. But after checking out
Among the Living, uh, a year or two ago, and now FaK, I can firmly say I'm a fan.
Breathing Lightning has gotten the most plays from me. Definitely the most hooky and upbeat of the whole album, and edges
so close to the line of "too much cheer" in its major chord progressions, but stops at the precise moment to put it right in the absolute perfection that is the ULTIMATE MELODIC METAL ZONE.
Good, good stuff. Between FaK and Megadeth's
Dystopia, the new Metallica has a helluva high bar to clear for "Big 4 relevancy in 2016".
Shame
Repentless turned out the way it did. It would be cool to be batting 3/3 in the leadup to the new Metallica.
Agree with Hesemonni, There's something...off about the recent albums. They started losing me at Viva Emptiness, TGCD was mostly blah, NITND annoyed me except for 1 song. I didn't bother buying anything after it. I'd listen to the "singles" every time a new album came around and found myself annoyed every time the song ended.
Out on May 20th also along with Scream Bloody Gore. Which the EP will be an homage to.
Sadly the "exact match" advanced search parameter will not match something like Némesis (one in Chile too) so you get 36 results, but my database search shows all 38.