Meshuggah’s been around for thirty years now, so what could they still have left to prove? It turns out: quite a lot. This is the band who single-handedly invented progressive death metal. They brought polyrhythms into the genre, and proved that math could play a role in the music.

But since then, progressive metal has become a “me too” genre. Today, it’s filled with young upstarts offering sounds that are more populist than Meshuggah’s without sacrificing their technical strengths.

But the genre is also filled with perfectionists. Today, so many progressive death metal bands are using drum machines and computer trickery to perfect their sound that it’s becoe part of the de rigeur of making a metal record.

Not Meshuggah, though. For The Violent Sleep of Reason, the band played everything live in the studio. It’s proof that the band practices what they preach. It’s an impressive metal record, but more impressive is the band itself.

To my ears, this is also the grooviest Meshuggah has been in a long time. “Monstrosity” loosely borrows from Metallica’s “Through the Never”. “By the Ton” has some Pantera influence, notably in its verse groove.

These aren’t necessarily new sounds for Meshuggah, but they haven’t made music like this for a long time. Their records are technically proficient, often to the point of sacrificing the song for the sake of the instrumentation. But on The Violent Sleep of Reason, the music has a higher priority.

None of that is to say that Meshuggah is less proficient than they’ve been in the past. But it feels like the technicality is embedded in the music, and not the other way around. The rhythm section is as tight as always (which is impressive, given the bizarre polyrhythms and time signatures), and the vocals are as insane as ever, but most importantly, these songs are their best in over a decade.

Playing these songs live in the studio certainly adds another dimension to the record. It makes Meshuggah feel young again, like they have something new to say — even when they’re going back to basics.

And after thirty years, sometimes the most important thing is revisiting the basics.

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I use the past tense because Opeth doesn’t make death metal anymore. Sorceress is their third prog rock record. The band is more interested in musical ideas than they are in pure intensity. There isn’t any screaming on Sorceress, and the music is less aggressive than it’s ever been. (And yes, Äkerfeldt may still be one of the best singers in the genre’s history.)

With Sorceress, the band has finally grown comfortable with the sound. This is the best they’ve sounded in ten years. Äkerfeldt has developed a soundscape that brings constant variety to the band’s compositions, without making the music less challenging or absorbing.

No two tracks on Sorceress sound the same. The title track, with all its pummelling rivers, is completely different from “The Wilde Flowers” or the gorgeous “Will O The Wisp”. The songs share lyrical themes about failure and poisoned love, but they rarely share musical ideas. While most musicians write love songs, Opeth writes about love as obsession.

There’s a metaphor to be made here about the band’s songwriting, which reflects an obsession with the new. “Time waits for no one,” Mikael sings on “Will O The Wisp”. “It heals them when you die. And soon you are forgotten, a whisper within a sigh.” It’s often hard to separate Opeth’s music and lyrics from their fear of stagnation and death. They would rather reinvent themselves.

But Opeth struggles to reinvent themselves on this go-around. What hasn’t the band done at this point? If there’s a single noteworthy addition to the band’s sound, it’s a newfound appreciation for jazz.

“I started listening to jazz and bought a lot of Coltrane records,” Äkerfeldt explained in a press release.  “I never really thought Coltrane would be for me because I like ‘dinner jazz.’ Like Miles Davis’ ’50s stuff.” That transition is obvious on Sorceress. Structurally and musically, there’s more than a passing resemblance at time to John Coltrane and other heroes of jazz’s golden era. “Strange Brew” was an obvious ode to Miles Davis’ later work, as well as Coltrane.

“The Seventh Sojourn” experiments with many of the same Eastern sounds that the jazz greats experimented with decades ago. (The track could double for a film soundtrack.) Even on tracks like “Era” or “Chrysalis”, which experiment by combining jazz and rock, the band embraces experimentation and intensity without returning to old habits. They’re better for it.

The difference here between this and the last Opeth record is more subtle than ever before, but it’s noticeable if you know what to look for. But three albums into Äkerfeldt’s new vision for the band, it’s clear that nothing is safe.

Sorceress is the band’s third prog rock record,and they sound more comfortable than ever before. It’s also the band’s first record with Nuclear Blast, one of metal’s most prominent labels. But the new label doesn’t restrict them: the band continues to experiment with new sounds and styles.

For some fans, Sorceress may allow them to embrace the Acceptance phase of grief in Opeth’s new sound. But there’s a maturity here that no longer sounds like experimentation for the sake of experimentation. Simply put, it sounds like Opeth is finally comfortable being themselves. The music is great, but the band’s attitude is refreshing.

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Most metal fans like it when bands have a unique sound and they don’t mess with it. There was outcry when Metallica went mainstream, and now they’re one of the most hated bands in rock history (for a variety of reasons). Every metal band that goes “mainstream” inevitably loses fans — often because it means losing the magic that made the band what it was.

But for Gojira, going mainstream doesn’t seem to change their core at all.

The story behind Magma is tragic: brothers Joe and Mario Duplantier suffered the loss of their mother early in the recording sessions for the album, and it dramatically shaped the songwriting and sounds of the rest of the record. It’s obvious from the opening notes of The Shooting Star that the band is trying to express grief with their somber music.

In The Cell, a brutally hardcore track, the band shouts “No control over anything… Get me out of here; I’m lost in the dark.” It sums up the record’s stages of grief exceedingly well: the band is wading through the loss of control and the haze of death, and looking for an escape.

In that sense, when they upend things by putting tracks in a seemingly odd order, and sacrificing some of the pacing of the record, we get the sense as listeners that the album wasn’t really made for us. It was made for the Duplantier brothers. We’re fortunate enough to be able to listen to it, though.

Almost every track on the record is worth talking about for some merits. The vocal performances are incredible: the band sings, and actually sounds excellent doing it, on many tracks. Again, it suits the somber tone of the record.

But then there are tracks like Stranded, where the band is in full-out experimental mode, with guitar solos that purposefully misdirect, a chorus that feels more hard rock than heavy metal, and a vocal performance that is as emotionally arresting as it is surprising. Despite the sound being more approachable, these songs are not radio-friendly singles.

Magma also has some of the shortest tracks of Gojira’s career. Yellow Stone comes in at one minute and nineteen seconds, with a brooding bass line that carries it through. It’s the dividing point on the record, one that spends a brief moment in silence (compared to the barrage that much of the rest of the album offers) and then moves on.

The biggest surprise, though, comes with the last track. Liberation is a wordless acoustic track (a first for Gojira in my memory) that exists as the denouement. It might be that the Duplantier brothers aren’t past their loss, but they’re trying to move on. They want to be liberated.

Magma is one of metal’s largest achievements this year. Listening to it gives me the same feeling I had the first few times I listened to Mastodon’s Crack the Skye. It’s an album that’s ostensibly not for fans. It’s not meant to be an experiment, but because of its extraordinary self-indulgence, it comes off as one. But it’s also an immense delight. Magma is the rare metal album that I’d suggest to nearly anybody.

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Originally released independently (in small quantities) in 2015, Iron Mountain has since been picked up Prophecy Productions. The re-release features new artwork, but the songs remain the same.

Despite its short five-track length, Unum is almost fifty minutes long. It doesn’t feel as long as that: with a seemingly endless bevy of ideas, the band comes alive with each track, building them with successive layers of intensity. At moments, their sludgey riffs conjure memories of Black Sabbath or Mastodon at their gnarliest. A couple tracks are reminiscent of Metallica’s thrasher approach (particularly their instrumental work). Blitz reminded me of Iron Maiden.

Yet Iron Mountain is working entirely within their own framework. With flutes, fiddles, and pipes, there is jazz-like backing track happening here (Blitz being another great example of a jazzy bass line with some memorable solo work). The band is completely comfortable with their own identity.

Tracks like Powow begin quietly and slowly ease their way into distorted power chords, still using the higher-pitched flute and pipes and fiddles to cut through the bass-heavy tones of the guitar tracks and the drum kits. The song’s mid-point becomes a total riff-fest, but yet it never descends into simple chugging. Rather than going the route so many metal and rock musicians go now — high-speed chugging on low guitar strings to create an ominous, train-like sound — Iron Mountain forges their own trail.

It’s worth saying that these gentlemen really know how to play their instruments. The drummer keeps excellent time, and the guitar work is particularly intricate. But what really shines are the solos throughout, which are rarely played on a traditional instrument associated with the genre.

The sound Iron Mountain’s got going for them is unique. Thanks to their appropriation of many genres, Unum has more to reveal with every listen. If there was going to be one album you listened to over the next week (or month), Unum would have enough depth to make the cut. It’s also a refreshing listen for those of us who think metal has had little to offer lately; it’s a reminder that it’s still possible to do something original in what’s beginning to feel like a stale genre.

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That article is still a fairly apt summary of what makes Gojira so wonderful: they’re a death metal band from France that are uninterested in following trends, releasing “bangers”, or following everybody else’s lead. Gojira are thoroughly interested in making their own brand of heavy metal.

Their 2008 record, The Way of All Flesh, might be their best record yet (although it’s tough to pick a favourite from their discography). Oroborus (the album opener) and Toxic Garbage Island are two perfect tracks to dig into this style with: the guitars and drums are pounding and oppressive, the vocal work is impeccable, the production is astounding, and the band’s sense of rhythm is both difficult to approach and easy to appreciate.

All of that isn’t to say that Gojira is impossible to groove to, or that it’s completely experimental — there are moments sprinkled throughout that are easy to whip your dreadlocks to, or riffs that pretty easily played on an air guitar. Gojira simply doesn’t have an interest in that sort of music.

A Sight to Behold is the track I keep coming back to: the song is largely guitar-less, and the verses sound like an electronic song. It doesn’t sound like death metal at all. But Gojira have earned the ability to take the genre in whatever direction they want, and they don’t have to explain themselves.

Gojira is one of the most original and creative bands in heavy metal, and not to say that their other albums are lesser, but The Way of All Flesh is perhaps the clearest statement of their vision.

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That makes Binge & Purge a time capsule of sorts: it’s the closest thing we have to real Best Of record from the group, and it’s the only great-sounding live recording we have left from this era of the band. (The next live recording Metallica released was S & M, a recording they made with a live symphony orchestra that unfortunately included too many of their post-Black Album songs for many fans’ likings.) This means that, as a great summation of what made early Metallica so great, Binge & Purge is essential.

It’s also, in retrospect, a sign of the reckless debauchery and cyclical addictions that the band members would experience throughout the next ten years before beginning the road to some of their recoveries during the recording of St. Anger. Frontman James Hetfield infamously throws a pint of beer on a well-meaning fan. The band disappears for fifteen minutes in the middle of a show, leaving hazed bassist James Newstead to play on his own until they return. (They call it a solo, but you just know they were backstage getting mid-show blowjobs from whatever women were around that night.) And while this drunken idiocy leads to some great laid-back moments, it also feels sad in retrospect.

Maybe I’m just getting old and missing the point though.

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Opeth is also unique for their take on jazz and blues, and when you merge that with folk and the sort of instrumentation and songwriting that metalheads are used to (the songs are long and filled with great instrumental breaks), you arrive at an incredibly unique record.

Opeth is also known for its frontman/lead singer’s voice. Mikael Åkerfeldt’s impeccable voice is in fine form here, taking the band to incredible new heights.

Most people now suggest that Damnation was the first sign of Opeth’s future exploration of 1970s progressive rock, but that doesn’t give the record enough credit as a folk album. Damnation is an impressive record, perhaps a masterpiece, and my favourite from Opeth’s entire oeuvre.

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But every year, there’s a couple metal records that come out that are well-produced and just stupidly good. This is one of those records.

A couple years ago, Lamb of God’s vocalist was (wrongly) imprisoned in the Czech Republic for the death of a fan at one of Lamb of God’s shows. And this is the first record the band has made since his release.

And he sounds mad.

This is the sort of thing that makes for a great metal record: pure, focused aggression. This is the best Lamb of God record since As the Palaces Burn, one of their earliest. They have not been this on fire for probably around a decade, if not longer. These guys sound amazing. The guitar work is insane, their drummer is a beast, and vocalist Randy Blythe sounds positively possessed.

I wouldn’t describe this as a pop record, but if you need something new to work out to at the gym, or to run to, or to listen to in rush hour traffic, this is tops.

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