The end of every year is always a good time for music as every aims to get their albums out in time for peoples end of year lists, so its great to see the quality of releases improve, here is a few of my faves from this past month:

GHOST – Meliora

Seeing as that GHOST are by far my favourite band of the last few years there was no chance this was not going to be in the best of this month. Everything about this album is a massive improvement on the already amazing first offerings. The production is the most obvious thing with the Bass and drums sounding truly magnificent and Papa’s new incarnation (hmmm?) sounding better than ever, the layers of vocals really shine in tunes like ‘Spirit’ and ‘He Is’. Having already seen many of these tracks live at this years Leeds Festival its ‘Mummy Dust’ and ‘Absolution’ that really stand out as the biggest anthems on this near perfect album!

SODEN – S/T

the boys in SODEN a Worcester based band that I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with in September had just unleashed their first EP of 4 tracks (well technically 3 and a “bonus” track) and Not only were they an awesome Live act but the demos hold some great hope too. Coming somewhere between Doom and Grunge this instrumental 3 piece have some cracking riffs and the pacing is great too, the best thing is they don’t have the usual ‘I wish they had a vocalist’ feeling that most instrumental groups seem to suffer form in this genre! Give it a go you shall not be disappointed.

BLACK DAHLIA MURDER – Abysmal

These guys are some of the most horrendous yet fun Death/Metal/grind/Whatevercore bands in the world right now. Never have a band that plays such undeniably brutal music but wearing such massive smiles on their faces as they do so and I am happy to report that the album follows the same catchy but down right nasty riffery that we come to expect from the BLACK DAHLIA MURDER. I can’t work out if they are trying to take a more serious approach by the look of the artwork 9but the awesome puns are still present in the albums title) It is worth mentioning also that the song ‘Re-faced’ has one of the best drops I have heard in a long time… Get involved its party time!

That’s it for now, more coming next month!