I had a revival of interest in music (metal exclusively) just after the pandemic shenanigans but sad to say it's died off a bit, which might coincide with me feeling stressed and stuck in a rut lately. Still, even though I'm not feeling as inspired as I was, I remain impressed on a technical level by how much death metal bands have stepped up their playing beyond what I thought was possible. With drumming in particular, 10 years ago I feel like nobody was playing as fast and skilled as some of these guys are now.

Archspire - Drone Corpse aviator. Archspire and Vitriol (below) might be old news to some but they're new discoveries to me across the past year or so, as I caught up on things. Archspire have become a bit of a guilty pleasure, guilty because they're way more melodic than I'm normally comfortable with, but they camouflage it under the absurd drumming and vocals. Guess that's another way of saying this is as tuneful as these links will get. Without the drumming they wouldn't really be my thing but at the same time it's easy to fall into a trap of listening to nothing else, because they're so catchy.

Vitriol - Shame and its Afterbirth Still not quite up my alley, but pretty sick. I bought their latest album basically on the strength of this track alone. It turned out to be the best on the album, although the drummer pulls off some more impressive Archspire-tier stuff elsewhere compared to this track. Superb solo makes the song.

Origin - Heat Death Fiending for more single stroke snare rolls at this stage, I remembered John Longstreth. So I bought the last Origin album sight unseen, because why not. He's drumming better than ever too. Album was merely all right, great track though.

Nile - Stelae of Vultures Glimpsing at the thumbnails of a metal reviews youtuber revealed that a new Nile album's out. 20 years ago I used to love this band like nothing else, but IMO they changed a lot and lost me along the way - in fact there are several albums in the last decade I didn't even check. But I gave this album a shot and was once again blown away by a top tier drummer (George Kollias) somehow having gotten even better. This is the first track and I like it, but for some reason I haven't been able to get through the whole album yet without my attention wandering, could just be old age and a ruined attention span.

So my enthusiasm for music atm is more limited to being impressed by technical prowess, moreso than is characteristic for me anyway since I also swing the other direction and appreciate minimalistic black metal. I haven't found something I can really evangelise to the level of Absu's comeback album in 2021 which I still go back to practically weekly. I'd love another album from that lineup but won't hold my breath. On the black metal side, last thing that really reached me was Hate Forest - Innermost - I also caught up on that guy's non-Drudkh side projects including Windswept, under which he penned the very memorable title Disgusting Breed of Hagglers.