these are what are going through my musical rotation rn and i'm pretty stoked about all of these, because they're all quite good
followup on all of these:
Anciients - i do like this a lot but i feel like i'm not digging it quite as much as i could be. i also feel like it still deserves plenty more spins and i'm excited to listen to it again when i do, though, so...
Canvas Solaris - i just like how atmospheric this tends to be for an instrumental prog metal album. i'd like it more if not for some of the dopey synth sounds at times though. not amazing, but pretty solid for sure
Cult of Luna - ooohh yeah. gimme more of this. i definitely need to check out salvation. this isn't the best post-metal i've heard, i still don't think i'd prefer it over panopticon for one, but it's pretty good. last track drags a little tho.
Earthside - this album kind of lacks depth and it's pretty immediate, but everything is pretty dang memorable and the orchestra adds a lot of bombast and power to the tracks it appears on, but the fake-strings on the rest are still pretty strong too. i like this as a whole for sure.
Exotic Animal Petting Zoo - man. this is a tough nut to crack. i feel like these guys are a lot better at writing the non-metal parts of their sound, really. the stretch from tracks 7-9 is a bit unmemorable tho, i have no clue what any of those sound like atm. i like this though, yeah
Irepress - also a pretty tough nut, but in a different way. there's a lot of creativity and solid music on display here but i find myself grabbed by very little of it, yet random moments of this album get stuck in my head pretty often. the sample on fletchie was a mistake, tho, i hate that
Nadja - this is... solid. i'm kinda getting the feeling that drone metal will stay as the kind of music i like was background music but can never get overly into on its own, this is nice and crushing and i enjoy it but not like, a ton
Thy Catafalque - this is like, surprisingly normal compared to their earlier albums, when i think about it, but it's pretty cohesive and probably the most fun black metal's ever sounded. nice amount of variety here too. can't wait to dig into their earlier albums.
also, what i've put into the rotation for this week:
a little less enthused about this set in general but they're all pretty solid. ihsahn album needs a lot more listens than the rest of these, i think