Gojira and Tetrarch drop massive albums, plus major tracks from Atreyu and Like Moths to Flames, while Pulse continues to shake the Earth awake with releases from Spiritbox, SeeYouSpaceCowboy and more on this week’s throwdown.
Stream Each Playlist
Tribe Leaders Top 50 Playlist
Pulse of the Maggots Playlist (Emerging Artists)
New Flesh Playlist (Newest 100 Tracks)
Tribe Leaders’ adds are led by the extremely anticipated new album from Gojira, ‘Fortitude’ – plus new tracks from Atreyu and Like Moths to Flames.
Ever since a tweet carrying a cryptic hashtag and GIF emerged from the band’s twitter account back in early August 2020, the entire genre has been steadily awaiting the full serving of Gojira. Today the band finally divulges the demand with the release of ‘Fortitude’, the band’s first album in five years – since the release of the critically acclaimed and Grammy Nominated ‘Magma’.
Gojira hasn’t kept the fans in total drought though, teasing the album with four massive singles: the kickoff track “Another World”, album announce hit “Born For One Thing”, The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil fundraiser awareness track “Amazonia”, “Into the Storm”, and now this week’s “The Chant” which punctuates the album release on the Tribe Leaders playlist. All 5 tracks land in the Top 25 this week.
Atreyu slash their way towards their own album release, June 4th’s ‘Baptize’, with their latest “Catastrophe”. They’ve stayed extremely relevant during quarantine with “Save Us” followed by the double bass kick of singles in “Underrated” and the Travis Barker supported “Warrior”. “Warrior” itself made a sizable jump in this week’s countdown moving up to 8th.
The OC natives recently went “back home” to spotlight the OC bands that changed the landscape of heavy music. In the KNOTFEST exclusive, the band paid focus to Death By Stereo, Thrice, Adamantium and more.
Read their full thoughts here.
Additionally, frontman Brandon Saller joined Hyro the Hero in a Ryan J. Downey hosted “Legendary” episode of Hyro’s Knotfest Exclusive series “Mixtape Dive”. In the episode: the two chat the origins of Hyro’s upcoming mixtape, their collab track “Legendary”, rock’s raging return in a genreless world, and the unique bond rock music has between artist & fan. Watch below.
Following last week’s Beartooth release, Columbus, Ohio is getting another prideful ripper – this time from Like Moths to Flames with “Inherit the Tragedy”. The track comes packaged as a double with “Basilisk” acting as the opposite side. The band was last seen on 2020’s ‘No Eternity in Gold’ which featured long tenured Tribe Leaders hit “Habitual Decline”. The two new tracks act as an extension of that album, as both previously received late cuts from the initial album process.
The Top 5 is represented by the Bring Me the Horizon x Babymetal collab “Kingslayer”, Greta Van Fleet’s “Built by Nations” off the recent album drop of ‘The Battle at Garden’s Gate’, long lasting “Animals” form Architects, previously mentioned Gojira and System of a Down’s “Protect The Land”.
Stream the full Tribe Leaders Playlist
The Pulse of the Maggots playlist adds fiercely roar this week with a new album from Tetrarch, plus releases from Spiritbox, Oceans, TheCityIsOurs, SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Mirrors and more.
A circled calendar date finally arrives as Tetrarch’s ‘Unstable’ has been released. The long awaited Napalm Records debut flexes a strong assortment of nu-metal heavy hitters that started off with “I’m Not Right” and closed today with “Addicted” with the amazing (and Tribe Leaders charting) “Negative Noise” and “You Never Listen” in between.
Spiritbox premiered their latest, the fierce bop “Circle With Me”, with Jose Mangin over at Sirius XM Radio’s Liquid Metal where the band’s previous track “Holy Roller” was named the station’s #1 song of 2020 (Crystal Lake’s Ryo Kinoshita would later collab on a version). In addition, the band was recently among 70 others including Megadeth, Deftones, Korn and more that were added to Download 2022 (Check the full details here).
While they’ve yet to release an album, that should be changing in the near future. Back in March, the band tweeted it was their last day in studio adding additional tinder to the growing anticipation of a full course from them. Fingers crossed….tightly. Though lead singer Courtney LaPlante has definitely stayed busy launching the ‘Good For A Girl’ podcast, an “inside look at the realities and challenges of being a woman in the music industry, especially the metal scene – which has been male-dominated for a long time and still is today.” Listen to episodes featuring Caity Babs, Lisa Garelick, Francesca Caldara and more here.
Following March’s release of the impressively brutal “Violent”, TheCityIsOurs comes full force with “COMA” which acts as the title track of their just announced Oct 22nd album – the band’s second. The consistent attacking “COMA” serves up a clean vocal charismatic chorus crafting a solid ying-yang balance that plays nicely off each other.
After “bloodstainedeyes”, their superb collab track with If I Die First, SeeYouSpaceCowboy navigates alone on “A Clear Picture from a Unreliable Narrator” – a chaotic tasteful assault. Get ready for a straight fucking ripper. The combined split with If I Die First explodes May 14th.
Mirrors swing the hammer on “Beneath the Sand”, the band’s first sounds since 2019’s ‘Cold Sanctuary’ EP. The powerful vocal range is worth the price of admission alone as Patrick Goodman rips aggressive screams on a bed of caring pillow cleans.
VCTMS brings it dominating destructive style to a devastational surface on “Hell is Other People.” It’ll join Pulse favorite “Carefully // Caged” on the band’s upcoming album ‘Vol. IV Numb The Ache’ coming July 9th. Check the band’s site for pre-orders and merch bundles – which are always in premium style.
Apparently we’re not the only fans of Oceans as Machinehead’s Robb Flynn guests on their latest and last release “Everyone I Love Is Broken”. The track completes the ‘We Are Not Okay’ EP that sees Flynn join an acclaimed parade of guest vocalists including ANNISOKAY’s Christoph Wieczorek on “Shark Tooth”, Lena Scissorhands on “Voices and Caliban’s Andy Dörner on the title track.
Another full release comes from Off the Cross with their album ‘Enjoy It While It Lasts’. The album features previous Pulse playlist mainstay, the fierce party banger “Exist”, and today’s “Blackbox” – a smashing foot-taping rager.
Additional adds from Atlas, Mental Cruelty, Colosseums and Scarlxrd join last week’s releases from Vexed, Once Awake, The Southern Oracle, Deadlights, Wristmeetrazor and more.
Listen to the full Pulse of the Maggots Playlist
New Flesh (Most Recent 100 Tracks) sees can’t misses from Attack Attack!, Red Fang, At the Gates plus Royal Blood, Tom Morello teams up with Pussy Riot, Dropkick Murphys, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes and more
Just when you thought you had all the Columbus, Ohio you could handle in a week (or two) – in comes flying the door kicked by Attack Attack! with their continued return on “Brachyura Bombshell”. The track is the third from the band since their reunion (on break since 2013) following “Kawaii Cowboys” & late 2020’s “All My Life”.
Tom Morello brings his signature style to the must-listen “Weather Strike” with Pussy Riot, whom he calls “one of the most radical and important activist musical groups of all time.” Morello’s fiery guitars lay the ground work for the the mixed language vocal assault from Nadya Tolokonnikova, together meshing in perfect harmony for a truly great rock track that hooks in for required multiple listens.
Red Fang brings their signature gnarly riffs (and humor) to “Funeral Coach”, another ripper from the upcoming album, ‘Arrows’ hitting June 4th (the band’s first in 5 years). The album campaign kicked off earlier this month with the title track and a massive ass Katana sword.
The legends of death metal, At the Gates, announce a new album (their 7th – 3rd since the reunion in 2014), ‘The Nightmare of Being’ coming July 2nd, in a massive way with “Spectre of Extinction”. The intense track slays its way through roughly 5 minutes in a truly diverse approach.
Royal Blood’s ‘Typhoons’ drops today encompassed with another funky heavy alternative jam, “Oblivion”. The track follows the newly funk focused style of singles first exposed on “Trouble’s Coming” and later with “Boilermaker”, “Limbo” and title-track “Typhoons”. While the band has clearly blended in another element, they’ve definitely not lost the aggressiveness of earlier tracks, just layering it more deeply in the core songwriting.
Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes enlist IDLES’ Joe Talbot for the new-era punk anthem “My Town” that bleeds the punk culture aesthetically, though especially lyrically. The track is the first from the band since 19’s ‘End of Suffering’.
Dropkick Murphys’ ‘Turn Up That Dial’ album comes loaded today with the release of the title-track as a single, a song that brings the campaign full circle back to the style, speed and vibe of “Smash Shit Up” which acted as the kick-off track a year and a half ago. The Celtic punk legends hit again as the single “Turn Up That Dial” delivers on everything you’d want with a Dropkick Murphys’ song as they’re fully immersed into utilizing their Irish components in beautiful, but still roaring, success.
Afterglow, Before the Dawn, Led By Lanterns and Crobot feat. Howard Jones round the rest of these week’s adds joining the previous two playlists’ adds plus major hitters (Bodom After Midnight, Cannibal Corpse, Corey Taylor), new acts (Our Hollow, Our Home, Holding Absence, To the Grave) and everything in between on the New Flesh Playlist.
Stay up to date with the latest on the New Flesh Playlist
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