Friday 6 November did all the work: every one of this week’s six picks landed on the same day. Some weeks the feed trickles: last week needed Halloween to deliver. This one arrived as a single avalanche, with Joe Duplantier’s name turning up twice before I was done reading.
Cult of Luna — In the Shadow of Your Shadow
Sweden · Post-Metal · Red Crk
The week’s centrepiece. Tenth album, out 6 November on the band’s own Red Crk label, their first since 2022’s The Long Road North. Nine tracks, 71 minutes, three of them past the eleven-minute mark, with Joe Duplantier of Gojira guesting on Sadness Will Reign and David Eugene Edwards on One More Day. Twenty years after Somewhere Along the Highway taught me what patience sounds like, Umeå’s finest still build rooms you feel safe in before setting fire to them. If you need the context for why this matters, the post-metal entry is right there. Bandcamp has it.
Extol — Aura of Decay
Norway · Progressive Extreme Metal · Solid State
Thirteen years of silence, ended. The Bekkestua progressive extreme metallers released their first album since 2013’s self-titled on 6 November via Solid State, and the classic lineup is back: guitarist Christer Espevoll rejoined Peter Espevoll, Ole Børud and David Husvik, his first Extol record since 2000’s Undeceived. The singles The One and the Many and Disintegrate did the advance work. Norwegian bands do not usually need thirteen years to find a reason. When one takes that long, I listen.
Konvent — Firesky
Denmark · Death Doom · Napalm Records
Third album from the Copenhagen four, out 6 November on Napalm. Five tracks, all hovering around the ten-minute mark, which is new territory for them: opener Exorcise sets the pace and the instrumental Postludium closes the lid. The band leans further into black metal this time without letting go of the death-doom base that got them on the Copenhell bill. Funny timing. This morning I wrote that Zagreb’s Vûlom were answering Copenhagen. Copenhagen answered back within hours. Bandcamp.
Saor — Caledonia
Scotland · Atmospheric Black Metal · Season of Mist
Read the tracklist before you press play: Aura MMXXVI, The Awakening MMXXVI, Carved in Stone MMXXVI. Caledonia is not an album of new songs. It is five re-recordings from Saor’s first three records, Roots, Aura and Guardians, rebuilt from the ground up and out 6 November on Season of Mist. Andy Marshall wrote these between 2013 and 2016, before he had the means to record them the way he heard them. Now he does. Saor already anchors our atmospheric black metal entry for a reason: nobody folds folk melody into black metal with this much conviction, and these five songs are where that conviction started. Bandcamp.
Underdark — O Come Forth Annihilation
England · Post-Black Metal · Church Road Records
Nottingham, seven tracks, out 6 November on Church Road. Underdark tag themselves across post-black, post-hardcore and post-metal, which usually means a band that cannot decide. Here it means a band that refuses to. The title reads like a threat. Good. Bandcamp.
Mawiza — Iñ Mongeletew
Chile · Acoustic / Mapuche Metal · Season of Mist
The outlier of the week, and the second Duplantier thread: the Santiago band that had the Gojira frontman guest on last year’s ÜL released their first acoustic EP on 6 November via Season of Mist. Five tracks led by the single Wüzapiwken, sung in Mapuzungun, the language of the Mapuche. Metal bands going acoustic is usually a shrug. A band doing it to put an indigenous language front and centre is not. Bandcamp.
Also out Friday: Prong released their self-titled album, their first for Napalm Records, mixed and mastered by Andy Sneap, with a Bananarama cover as a bonus track of all things. Midnight’s live album Satanic Attack Live! landed the same day. American heritage, noted.
Found something that belongs in this column? The Inbox reads every submission: send it in.