[Ksyrup]

It's been a pretty low-key summer for music for me. I have a bunch of pre-orders queued up but I haven't bought anything since mid-June, which is unusual for me.

That said, it's about to start heating up. New Leprous, Bent Knee and Zeal & Ardor by the end of this month, followed by Oceans of Slumber.


Z&A continue with the evolution of their black metal-meets-soul/black gospel sound that was born as a dare on 4Chan:




This is classic Leprous - bloody awesome. The way they use dynamics to build a song is phenomenal. First 2 minutes are quiet, funky, meandering, then a gut-punch into a heavy/intense last 2 minutes. This song will be EPIC live.




Bent Knee is a band I loved early on, then they went weird (crappy music and over-saturation of auto-tune), then lost 2 key members. But the 2 songs they've released for the upcoming album feel like them going back to their roots. As usual, Courtney Swain's vocals are amazing but definitely a "love her or hate her" type of quality to them.




Oceans of Slumber is an under-the-radar great metal band. From Houston, and what sets them apart is that their vocalist is an A-A R&B singer-type. You rarely hear such direct soul/R&B sound melded with metal and they do it really well. They've been adding covers to the past few albums, and this time it's Wicked Game, which is pretty good. But this is the first single, an original. It kicks in for real at about the 1:50 mark.