NEW ARRIVAL ROUNDUP: May 23-30, 2025
We’ve got new arrivals in the Gimme store every week. I’ll be highlighting some under-the-radar titles landing on our virtual shelves here on the Gimme Metal blog. This month, to close out May, we’ve got as much crushing death metal as you could need, a Christian metal band that never met a subgenre it didn’t try, and some thrash so primitive I should have summarized it with a cave painting. Check ‘em out!
Crust – Where Light Fears to Descend
Russia’s Crust have been at it since 2015, with five previous full-lengths under their belts alongside a string of EPs and singles. On LP number six, Where Light Fears to Descend, Crust conjure the heft and drama of prime Neurosis through the idiom of black/death metal. There are fast parts on preview track “Soul-Grinding Abyss,” but the buildup at the beginning of the song and its climax, both practically weeping with emotional lead guitar, are where the real action is. “Apokatastasis Panton” stomps on the gas more often, but its lulls are cleaner and more placid. Both tracks tackle philosophical themes like the concept of Stoicism and the journey of Dante’s Inferno, so Crust are clearly operating with big brains, not just big riffs.
Vindicator – Thrash and Demo-Lished
Slayer really goofed when they had themselves illustrated as cool rotted zombies on the cover of Live Undead. Hard not to be disappointed when you find out they’re just regular alive guys. This is why I’m never looking at a photo of Vindicator. I’ll keep imagining them as slobbering teenage ghouls in leather jackets all jacked up on original recipe Four Loko, based entirely on the music contained on their first two demos, thank you very much. Thrash and Demo-Lished collects the Ohio band’s demos on vinyl in reverse chronological order, which makes sense here. South Amherst Thrash from 2006 is all crazed energy and evil riffing (American and Teutonic flavors), served up raw, with bleeding-throat vocals that recall Kreator’s Mille Petrozza and Tomas Lindberg of At the Gates. Rehearsal Demo, recorded a year earlier, has all the fidelity promised by its title, and that recorded-on-a-boombox murk gives the songs a death metal edge. A couple of songs appear on both demos, so you can compare them yourself, and a cover of Venom’s “Bloodlust” proves that these dudes know their roots.
Deliverance – Assimilation / Learn / As Above—So Below
Christian industrial thrash/power metal. We’re in a niche of a niche of a niche here, folks. And that’s honestly kind of a reductive take on L.A.’s Deliverance, whose discography stretches all the way back to 1985. Some say it continues to this very day. (They’re still active but their last release was 2022’s Camelot in Smithereens Redux.) A trio of Deliverance reissues from Retroactive Records showcases the breadth of their ambitions; a high level of musicianship and vocalist Jimmy P. Brown II taking care to articulate all his explicitly Christian lyrics are the main common denominators among these three LPs. After four albums’ worth of straight Bay Area-indebted thrash, Deliverance took a turn toward doom metal in 1993 on Learn. These are BIG songs in the mold of Dio-era Sabbath, with then-recent offerings like Metallica’s self-titled album and Alice in Chains’ debut Facelift in the mix as well. I mentioned industrial in my summary of Deliverance, and this period of the band is solidly represented by 2001’s Assimilation: chugging guitars over bright electronics, not far off from Static-X, with catchy choruses. “From the Beginning” fakes at full-on thrash for a few seconds before electronic bloops play counterpoint to the riffing. Jump forward in time to 2007, and As Above—So Below finds the band hanging with the contemporary extreme metal of the time. Deliverance haven’t turned into Cannibal Corpse here—while Brown’s delivery gets grittier at times, he’s still singing like he always has—but it’s a move analogous to Judas Priest’s Painkiller: a veteran band seeing the next generation’s aggressiveness and taking a swing at it themselves.
AntropomorphiA – Devoid of Light
Dutch death metal maniacs AntropomorphiA write riffs that sound designed to sink into flesh: sharp and mean, and maybe a little bit shiny. Think Behemoth and you’re not far off. Listen closer to Devoid of Light, though, and the depth of their old-school death metal influences reveals itself. They can get slithery like Immolation, as they do on the title track, and take on Peaceville-style death-doom on “In Withering Rapture.” Drummer “M.” plays like he’s getting paid by the double kick hit, like so many ‘90s death metal drummers. (Oh yeah, everyone in AntropomorphiA goes by a single initial, and they’ve been at it since 1989 so their old-school vibe is firsthand.) Maybe the frenzied drumming is why the shorter, faster tracks like “Funeral Throne” and “Cancerous Bane” hit my ears extra hard, but there’s plenty of midtempo steamroller to crush you if that’s how you want to get crushed.
Graceless – Icons of Ruin
…And if you need to get crushed some more, proceed directly to the new Graceless LP Icons of Ruin. Another Dutch band, tuned WAY down, with riffs that trudge, lumber, and bludgeon. It’s the kind of stuff that can get samey if the band doesn’t have enough tricks up its sleeve. Graceless do pretty well in that regard: a clean guitar intro and triumphant melodies on “Hardening of the Heart,” and a head of Repulsion/Nihilist energy on “Resurrection of the Graveless,” with its pounding D-beats and another pretty sweet guitar solo.
—Anthony Bartkewicz