They say music can soothe the savage beast. But what about the times when the music proves the more beastly of the two? The moments when the feral creature might run for safety from the music that is far more monstrous than it?
If you’re looking for the latter, consider Body Void’s Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth, a positively eldritch piece of sludge metal that leaves no wonder as to why anyone would call a genre that. It’s as black and thick as tar, and just like the thousands of specimens at Le Brea, there is no savage beast that bears a chance of survival.
When Kyle Bates holed himself up in his Pacific Northwest apartment to record an album about isolation, grief, and personal trauma, he had no way of knowing how universal those feelings would become by its release. On the other side of lockdowns, protests, and relationships frayed by the above, Bates’ examinations are endlessly relatable—however, they still sound deeply personal, almost as if he never intended to release it.
Elephant in the room: this is probably the biggest hole in my collection. I’m a huge fan of 
“Ecstatic black metal” seems a bit like an oxymoron. If you were to ask someone to describe black metal in one word, “ecstatic” might not come up very often. In fact, if you were to create a relevant Family Feud category, guessing it would land you a big fat X and a Steve Harvey overreaction.
I’m not sure anything contributed more to my music taste than Deep Elm’s Emo Is Awesome, Emo Is Evil compilation (maybe Songs From the Penalty Box 4, but that’s a different story). Like many a Millennial youth, I grabbed a copy after seeing it next to the register at Hot Topic. I didn’t recognize a single name on the tracklist, but it introduced me to a group of bands that showed just how diverse emo could be, like Red Animal War, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Logh, Benton Falls, the Appleseed Cast (still an all time favorite), and so many more.
If there’s one thing the metal community loves, it’s hyperbole. There are thousands of metal records that come out a year, and they are all described with superlatives.