» 2026-09-30
Monthly Release Round-up: September 2026
The back half of 2026 is looking more and more promising, even if there is one letdown I kept on the list because it's worth evaluating regardless.
Brat, Manslayer
A really fun, short little death metal / grindcore album. Not a lot to say, but I enjoyed it.
Listen: Bandcamp
Krallice, Scour Order
New York's black metal adjacent prolific weirdos are at it again. Another slab of progressive, mystifying metal paired with the synth wizardry of Colin Marston.
Listen: Bandcamp
Crown Magnetar, The Hollowing Of Godflesh
Absurdly heavy, low-tuned deathcore. Reminiscent of Signs of the Swarm and Whitechapel, especially the extremely bass-heavy mix.
Listen: spotify
Anthrax, Cursum Perficio
As a casual fan of the band, and more a fan of the John Bush era than anything else, I was really surprised by how much I liked this album. Scott Ian can still write some riffs and I've developed more respect for Joey Belladona as a frontman after seeing the band live.
Listen: spotify
Godflesh, Decay
I would be lying if I said I've ever been a Godflesh fan. I've appreciated Justin Broadrick's work over the years, and this band is something I like in concept, even if the recorded output never quite matches up to my expectations. As the band's final album, I found it interesting and didn't feel like listening to the entire record was a chore.
Listen: Bandcamp
Sadness, Sunset Blush
It's been a year or so since I checked what Sadness was up to. Naturally, I'd missed a half-dozen album releases... I'm really liking the improvements in the clean vocals on this latest batch of songs.
Listen: Bandcamp
Czarface, Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer
If you told me that one of 2026's best rap records would involve Tom Hardy, I would have banished you from my sight. I'm still struggling to process how good this thing is. I love surprises like this.
Listen: Spotify
Sleep, Hemispheres
A less-than stellar new release from Sleep minus Matt Pike. Judge for yourself.
Listen: Bandcamp
Chat Pile, Who Loves The Sun
A successful follow-up to Cool World, this abrasive combination of hardcore, sludge and nu metal continues to retain my interest.
Listen: Bandcamp
» 2026-09-27
The Last Gasp Of Summer
It's really disconcerting how quickly this year has vanished. A combination of extreme weather — record-setting amounts of rain and relentless heat and humidity — put a damper in a lot of my plans. I'm fortunate that I still got to spend a lot of time with my friends, but a lot of goals did go unfulfilled.
The days are much shorter now. I always hate this time of year, when I'm driving up to the lake and I know I have maybe an hour of daylight before the sun retreats behind the horizon. Those days when the sun doesn't set until 9:30pm never seem sufficient — by the time you can really appreciate it, it's already diminishing.
I've got another 2 weeks to spend at the lake, and then everything gets closed up. A couple of weeks after that, the Daylight Savings time change takes effect and the weather will invariably get worse as winter rolls in. This has been one of those years marked with massive changes throughout my life — both good and bad — so the change of seasons is hitting a little harder than usual.
» 2026-09-11
Slipknot - Arsenal
This new Slipknot single sounds utterly disjointed. Like a bunch of middle-aged guys tried to recapture the spirit of Iowa, but limited themselves to cutting room floor scrapings.
It's also rather funny that "Arsenal" has so much scratching in it, yet they just fired their DJ a little over a month ago.
I'm going to hope this was a B-side they had lying around and not a sign of what's to come. I thought We Are Not Your Kind was pretty good, but the band has jettisoned 2 members since then and hasn't done much else of note in the interim.
The band is purportedly working on their new record right now. If nothing else, I am curious to see what Eloy Casagrande adds to the band's percussion-intensive style. I'm also going to get off my ass and listen to that Look Outside Your Window project and review it.
» 2026-09-08
Sleep - Hemispheres
When this album was initially announced, it was extremely shocking to contemplate a Sleep album without frontman Matt Pike involved. The lead-off single, "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" did little to stoke interest in the forthcoming full-length.
While the band's return to activity similarly came out of the blue — after 15 years of silence — The Sciences ended up being not only a powerful return to form but also one of 2018's best albums. That is not the case with Hemispheres, unfortunately.
Despite elisting talented replacements in Dale Crover (drums) and Bubba Dupree (guitar), the band sounds like a shell of its former self. Nothing on Hemispheres hooks me in, and the material lacks the heavy atmosphere I associate with Sleep records.
As someone who celebrates Dopesmoker — and all 63 minutes of its stoner-rific glory — it pains me to call this album boring and meandering, but that's what it is. I almost wish it was worse, as Hemispheres comes off as immemorable and indistinct; bad records at least give you something to talk about, this was just mediocre and bland.
The circumstances of Matt Pike's departure are currently unknown, but it seems very clear that he is a key piece of the Sleep formula. I'm grateful that I was able to see the full band play live, in the fall of 2019, as it seems unlikely I will get another chance — and this album is sufficiently uninteresting that I'll pass on the current incarnation.
It pains me to say it, but this album is very "meh." It exists; it's not the worst thing I've heard all year, but it's among the least interesting.
» 2026-09-01
Coyote Vs. ACME
I will start this off by noting that I am not a big movie-watcher. The last time I stepped in a theatre, it was 2020 and I made the poor decision to watch Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I can easily say that it was the worst film I've ever seen — an embarrassing waste of time. It managed to undershoot my abysmally low expectations by such a wide margin, that I refuse to believe it was anything more than a rough, first draft rushed through production to meet a schedule.
Then there was that whole global pandemic thing. That swiftly ended my attempt to get back into regularly going to the theatre.
It feels as though most current movies have nothing to offer me. I was done with superhero movies by the second Iron Man release, and the post-Avengers: Endgame slate has looked like absolute garbage — even in the context of Things That Aren't For Me.
It seems like almost everything is either too long and / or lazily based off an existing franchise. I don't need to know about Cruella DeVille's trauma, and I have serious reservations about anyone who does! Why are they making a prequel to A Christmas Carol, about Ebeneezer Scrooge?! But I digress...
My first encounter with Coyote vs. ACME was reading about Warner Brothers scrapping the movie after it was completed, for a tax writeoff. They had originally planned to destroy it, before Ketchup Entertainment bought the distribution rights.
At face value, the notion of destroying a feature-length film after it's already been completed is absurd. In hindsight, it's even more ridiculous because the movie was great!
The combination of live actors and cartoons was incredibly well done, harkening back to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I grew up with Looney Toons re-runs being a staple of my chilhood through adolescence. Even now, I can watch those old shows — episodes I've seen literally hundreds of times — and they still crack me up. They have a timeless quality to them, and the older style of animation not only holds up but feels refreshing in a world overstuffed with generic, computer-generated slop.
Obviously Coyote vs. ACME features a lot of digital editing and modern production technology, but it still manages to capture the essence of the original cartoons. Not only do the characters look right, they feel right. There are a couple of moments where the coyote's despair is genuinely moving; I can't give the animation team enough credit.
This movie hits every item on my checklist: it was fun, had a concise running time, and it didn't feel like mass-produced slop made with the intention of milking an IP franchise first and telling a story second. I'm not saying I want a lot more movies exactly like Coyote vs. ACME, but it would be nice to see more projects made by people who clearly care about the material.