Welcome to Metal Lair’s Seven Deadly Songs weekly feature where we curate music from the past and the present for your listening pleasure.
Written By Kevin McSweeney & Graham Burke
Welcome to this week’s Seven Deadly Songs, in which we take a fond look back at some of our favourite metal masterpieces released in 2017. Why that year? No reason in particular, other than the fact if we look back any further, we start to feel old. All misty-eyed memories this week are drawn from the rapidly-fading memory of that idiot in Plymouth, unless otherwise stated.
Æther Realm – The Sun, The Moon, The Star
The North Carolina melodeath band Æther Realm easily impress with their wide range of vocals, narration and storytelling skills on ‘The Sun, The Moon, The Star’, from their 2017 album ‘Tarot’. A breathtaking 19 minute long journey, touching on the themes of dreams, power and (mis)fortune, and ultimately teaching a very valuable life lesson about family and love; in between the constantly progressing and extremely catchy guitar riffs of course. Harsh vocals are eventually juxtaposed by softer and more mellow vocals, evoking a sense of sadness and longing by the song’s acoustic coda. (Graham Burke)
Dying Fetus – Die With Integrity
This track is from the eighth studio album by the charmingly-named Dying Fetus, the equally charmingly-named Wrong One to Fuck With. And the death metal masters from Maryland are really not fucking around here. This is sheer brutality from start to finish. Throughout the track, the pace varies significantly – almost as much as the band’s lineup over the years, in fact. One thing that varies not a jot, however, is the blistering intensity.
Mastodon – Sultan’s Curse
Sultan’s Curse is the opening track from Emperor of Sand, the seventh studio album from the Atlanta-based stalwarts of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, the mighty Mastodon. It’s a gloriously sludgy slab of stoner metal with strong vocal melodies over Sabbath-style riffs, and that’s quite enough sibilance for one sentence. The lyrical themes for the song, and album, as a whole, are incredibly sad, using being cursed to wander the desert as a metaphor for a terminal cancer diagnosis: heavy stuff, both musically and thematically.
Power Trip – Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)
We might be reminiscing about the music of 2017 in this article, but this has me feeling nostalgic for much longer ago. It’s good, old-fashioned 80s-style thrash metal done right. In particular, the chugging riffs and rolling double kick drums bring to mind Beneath the Remains-era Sepultura, which is only ever a good thing. Power Trip swung this little beauty at us on their second album, Nightmare Logic, released on the Southern Lord label. It was awarded Best Metal Song at the 2017 Loudwire Music Awards, and for very good reason.
Paradise Lost – The Longest Winter
Paradise Lost, the legendary British doom merchants, have been producing metal of the highest quality for a remarkable 37 years at this stage, save for a brief dalliance with synth-pop in the late 1990s and very early 2000s. The Longest Winterwas the first single from their fifteenth studio album Medusa, released via Nuclear Blast. It’s a fine example of what the Yorkshire band do best. It’s slow, sludgy, mournful and morose, and thankfully, there’s not a trace of pop music to be found therein.
Code Orange – Forever
This is just over three minutes of snarling savagery from the Pittsburgh band, with a gory accompanying video that is as unsettling as their sound. Forever is drawn from the album of the same name, released via the Roadrunner label, and there’s not a hint of a clean vocal or even the slightest bit of melody to be heard – just brutal, staccato riffing and an exchange of guttural vocals between Jami Morgan and Eric Balderose. Oh, and an absolute beast of a breakdown at the end.
We Came As Romans – Cold Like War
The metalcore maestros from Troy, Michigan released Cold Like War, their fifth studio album in 2017, via the SharpTone label, and the title track is one of its choicest cuts. From the fast, thrashy, shouty verses to the mid-paced, melodic, harmonised chorus, plus the slower, nastier section in the middle with the title chanted repeatedly, it’s an example of their chosen subgenre at its most enthralling. Poignantly, it was their last album with singer Kyle Pavone before his untimely death. Thankfully, the band are still going strong despite his notable absence.