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Music journalist. Likes heavy metal and hamsters. Let’s Scare Jeff… To Death! Vol. 5. Special post-Halloween entry! This year I watched 45 movies in October (46 if you count watching Hack-O-Lantern twice due to its surprise appearance on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs ).
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Jeff Treppel is a writer who has done everything from...
- Career of Evil
Career of Evil. Jeff Treppel grew up in the untamed suburbs...
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- Carcass – Torn Arteries (NB) If I thought I could get away with just posting a GIF of Beavis and Butthead thrashing around in their living room for this review, I would.
- Genghis Tron – Dream Weapon (Relapse) Wrote this one up as the featured review in the DecibelApril 2021issue, but in summation: the first album in 13 years for this beloved “nintendocore” act will piss off purists but make literally anyone else with ears happy.
- Mastodon – Hushed and Grim (Warner Bros.) If you’ve been bitching for the last 15 years that Mastodon need to make another great album, well, here you are – two discs of absolute prime pachyderm.
- Night Flight Orchestra – Aeromantic II (NB) Melodic death metal vets book Abba, Styx, and Journey on this flight tonight, soaring into the stratosphere for the second part of a conceptual suite about lovelorn stewardesses.
- Carcass – Despicable
- Eternal Champion – Ravening Iron
- Slift – Ummon
- Zombi – 2020
- Thy Catalfaque – Naiv
- Anaal Nathrakh – Endarkenment
- Mr. Bungle – The Raging Wrath of The Easter Bunny Demo
- Haunt – Flashback
- Armored Saint – Punching The Sky
- Midnight – Rebirth by Blasphemy
I like EPS but too often they just feel like maxi-singles or unnecessary stopgaps. While yes, Despicable is a stopgap, most full-lengths don’t contain four songs as jaw-droppingly great as these throwaways. I expect Torn Arteriesto top next year’s list just based on this triumphant melodeath mini-album.
“Thousands of swords, no one can take them from me,” is a hell of a difficult line to deliver if you are not extremely confident in what you’re doing. Eternal Champion’s sophomore album brims with that self-assurance. Proof that trad metal doesn’t have to sound like it’s from 1983 to kick ass.
It’s not hyperbole to say that Monster Magnet’s Dopes to Infinitywas one of those life-changing records for me. While Slift’s second full-length could never have that same impact, it does a superb job of capturing the same sense of excitement I got the first time I took a trip on the space rock ship.
Zombi up the guitars and the “prog” part of their synth-prog sound this time around. Cold and desolate in a way even their previously darkest material never quite felt, it packs quite a punch. Reminds me of the brutally utilitarian aesthetic of Richard Stanley’s Hardware.
Hungarian multi-instrumentalist Tamás Kátai continues to put the “experimental” in experimental black metal. While normally traditional Middle Eastern sounds would seem wildly out of place in this kind of music, he uses the repetitious motorik drumming to seamlessly weave them together. Talk about sentences I never thought I’d type — or music I nev...
Honestly was not expecting a new one from Anaal Nathrakh — much less an album with that cover art — to wind up in my top ten, but Endarkenment succeeds on pretty much every level it shouldn’t. I still don’t know how they make such chaotically extreme metal seem so fun.
Back when I had the fortune to see one of the transcendent Mr. Bungle reunion shows earlier this misbegotten year, I remarked to my friends that if they recorded those songs with that lineup, it would be the thrash album of the year. Turns out I was right.
I’ve loved Haunt since I first heard the Luminous Eyes EP, but I feel like their studio albums never quite matched the dynamic stage shows. Flashbackfinally lives up to the live. One-man army Trevor Church’s addition of synthesizers fills out Haunt’s sound and makes his band sound like the arena act they were always meant to be.
Listened to this sucker a LOT when prepping my Decibel cover storyso I’ll admit I’m a little biased. Still, the best album in thirty years from one of my all-time favorites was gonna wind up marching onto this list anyway. All killer, no filler — talk about planting a right hook from left field right in the face of expectations.
Midnight put on a ridiculously awesome live show, but — even moreso than Haunt — they’ve always felt like one-trick ponies on wax. AC/DC in bondage masks. Rebirth by Blasphemybursts out of the gate with statement-of-intent “Fucking Speed and Darkness” and then slams through 35 flesh-rending minutes of top-shelf riffs and hooks.
Dec 19, 2022 · Jeff Treppel lays out his favorite metal records of 2022
Jul 21, 2021 · MetalSucks' chief critic, Jeff Treppel, shares his favorite albums of 2021 so far. Includes Helloween, Tribulation, Haunt, and more!
Oct 30, 2020 · Night of the Comet (1984) is a great little B-movie that’s even underrated by the text on the back of the Blu-Ray sleeve. Although the logline is ostensibly “The Last Man on Earth but with two valley girls,” the teenybopper duo of Regina Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart) and her sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney) turn out to be surprisingly well-rounded, capable characters with lots of nice ...
