Heavy metal will never die, which makes sifting through new metal records feel like everlasting torment. Luckily, Andy O’Connor will guide your lost souls to the best metal every month. When the punishers call, you’ll know how to answer.

Vomit Forth, Seething Malevolence
Is brutal death metal, a genre riddled with bands who combine bad torture porn with worse Suffocation thievery, worth saving? Connecticut’s Vomit Forth answer that query with a guttural, slamming “yes!” on their debut full-length Seething Malevolence, out through Century Media Records. Building upon their impressive EPs—2018’s Inherit Laceration and 2019’s Northeast Deprivation—the band galvanizes their rhythmic intensity, laying breakdowns that bounce and crush as their foundation. With something that uncomplicated, it must go hard, and does it go HARD. (There’s nothing worse than a tinny-sounding brutal death band.)

Vomit Forth also bring an evil air not common in this seedy corner of knuckledragging skullduggery—except for a few Texas bands (Infernal Dominion’s Salvation Through Infinite Suffering come to mind). “Predatory Savior” and “Pious Killing Floor” are blasphemous; stacked with tremolo riffs and hidden-message noise hallucinators. The latter song’s death-doom turn adds a sinister compliment to its prolific slams. Seething Malevolence is blood-splattered but not sloppy; the band has discipline rivaling some of their inspirations.