{"id":42633,"date":"2025-08-03T17:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T17:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/42633\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T17:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T17:26:08","slug":"records-o-the-month-april-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/42633\/","title":{"rendered":"Record(s) o’ the Month – April 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cApril is the cruellest month,\u201d wrote T.S. Eliot in a poem<\/a> that no one quoting it has ever finished reading. And while Eliot was quite metal in his exquisite, existential despair about WWI or whatever, he never understood true existential dread. I speak, of course, of the dread of being force-fed twenty-five promising albums, half of which are drenched in so much reverb that you feel like you\u2019re swimming, only to realize that you didn\u2019t even review the Record o\u2019 the Month yourself. Regardless, this April continued to be cruel. But this cruelty came bearing bloodied knuckles and a furrowed (and noticably pronounced) brow. Dormant Ordeal took that energy and weaponized it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not every month that a death metal album crawls out of the woodwork and shatters the Score Safety Counter like a warhammer through a pi\u00f1ata, but Dormant Ordeal\u2014whose new record Tooth and Nail<\/a> dropped April 18th, 2025, from Willowtip Records [Bandcamp<\/a>]\u2014did exactly that. Tooth and Nail is a masterclass in (blackened) death metal\u2014\u201dthe classic Polish death metal sound\u201d\u2014done right. It\u2019s taut, unreleating, melodic when it counts, and angrier than Angry Metal Guy when reminded of the existence of Disqus. This record hits a sweet spot inside of me best described as the \u201coh yeah, that\u2019s how death metal is done\u201d spot. The riffs flow, and my brain just opens up the spigots, releasing a veritable tsunami of dopamine. Every riff that cuts, every transition that seethes, and every recognition of the slick, skilled ways that these guys construct songs, I get a nice big kick of that Happy Chemical. Tooth and Nail is dynamic, punishing, aggressive, and better yet, it\u2019s smart. Dormant Ordeal is like a boxer who knows exactly when to drop his guard and knock you out. Our very own Tyme was so excited he penned an overwrought review of Angry Metal Guyan proportions. In one of his more uncontainable moments of verbal climax, he ejaculated: \u201cTooth and Nail represents the absolute best of what Dormant Ordeal can be.\u201d The rest of us wiped down the walls and nodded in agreement. And I, being an instantiation of the will of the staff through my very existence, elected it to be Record o\u2019 the Month.<\/p>\n

Runner(s) Up:<\/p>\n

\"\"Structure \/\/ Heritage<\/a> [April 25th, 2025 | Ardua Music | Bandcamp<\/a>] \u2014 \u201cSolo\u201d doom project Structure did a thing that I never thought possible. It made Steel Druhm feel about a Dutch doom metal project like I felt about The 11th Hour<\/a>. Oh, also, it crushed our collective will to live in the most painful way possible. A labor of love from Bram Bijlhout of Officium Triste, Heritage is crushing, exquisite, and dramatic in all the right ways. Pim Blankenstein\u2019s vocal contributions take this funeral doom lament to operatic heights. Steel Druhm, while shotgunning his seventh doppelbock, enthusiastically spilled his beer all over the bar while trying to emphasize for everyone slightly louder than necessary that Structure has written \u201ca monumental doom epic that caves in your chest with its raw power and brings a tear to the most jaded eye with its heartwrenching beauty!\u201d He even gave it a 4.5, which is 5.0 in Steel Druhmese. And if none of that convinces you, I, too, concede that this is a great record and I suspect it\u2019s going to be quite present during Listurnalia.<\/p>\n

\"\"Messa \/\/ The Spin<\/a> [April 11th, 2025 | Metal Blade Records | Bandcamp<\/a>] \u2014 The reason I started doing three, or sometimes four, releases for Record(s) o\u2019 the Month was because there were times when it was just impossible to choose. This month is actually kind of cruel in that all three of these could have been Record o\u2019 the Month without question. Italian doom-jazz mystics Messa put up a good fight with their most seductive release yet. The Spin sheds the sprawl of Close in favor of tighter, moodier bangers. For my part, this is as good as I think they\u2019ve ever sounded. Sharky Shark Boy was right when he said that \u201cSara\u2019s smouldering, siren-like vocals have hit a whole new level,\u201d lending the compositions a power I don\u2019t remember Messa having. The Spin is doom with eyeliner and a degree in art history\u2014classy, smokey, and ready to crush you with riffs and moody quotes from a Frenchman. While Messa has always had some appeal, there\u2019s something about The Spin that works differently. It\u2019s not like they\u2019re a new band with a new sound, but instead, to quote Sharky Shark Boy, \u201cRather like using a velvetizer to make your hot chocolate. It\u2019s still hot chocolate. But it\u2019s thicker, richer, and, well, velvet-ier.\u201d Yeah, I think that analogy pretty much says it all. No? Fine, The Dolphin Half of the Aquatic Duo chirped and bobbed overexcitedly: \u201cMusic this powerful stands ready to inspire binge listening, tone envy, and, with any luck, another generation hopelessly addicted to six strings screaming at unadvisable volumes.\u201d And that seems like the final word on the matter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cApril is the cruellest month,\u201d wrote T.S. Eliot in a poem that no one quoting it has ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[975,30337,49,48,30338,75,12032,30339,341,30340,30341,30342,30343,30344,30345,30346],"class_list":["post-42633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-975","tag-apr25","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dormant-ordeal","tag-entertainment","tag-heritage","tag-messa","tag-music","tag-officium-triste","tag-records-o-the-month","tag-records-of-the-month","tag-structure","tag-the-11th-hour","tag-the-spin","tag-tooth-and-nail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}