Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts.
Calling June a “big month for underground metal” is like calling a night out with your boys a “legendary event.” The scope of the statement is immediately dwarfed by the reality that it’s insignificant to nearly everyone outside a select bubble. It’s cool that a handful of metal’s most forward-thinking bands and exciting artists all dropped an album within the same 30-day period, just like it’s cool that your buddy Kyle shoved four Zyn pouches into his gums at once. The world still spins, you still have to work the next morning, and housing isn’t getting any cheaper.
Yet, if we do not cherish these moments, then all we have is the endless spinning of the globe and the ever-rising price of houses. So yes, congratulate Kyle on not puking or passing out in the bar, and celebrate all that June brought us. Its lineup was headlined by the not-quite-underground-but-still-underground Alcest, signed to Nuclear Blast and thus ineligible for this column. However, their latest record Les Chants de L’Aurore is wonderful (and mentioned on Heavy Consequence‘s mid-year list of the Best Metal & Hard Rock Albums of 2024 So Far). It’s the endgame to their decade-plus pursuit of a celestial sound, where all they’ve worked towards comes together in a new light that, while obvious in hindsight, was yet unheard.
June’s release schedule was stacked beyond its headliner and, for some, even more titillating. Ulcerate returned after their extremely contextual-relevant Stare into Death and Be Still, released right at the start of the COVID pandemic and bottling the early anxiety of those first months better than any album released during the lockdowns. The 2000s post-metal giants continue to lord over their domains as both SUMAC and Julie Christmas dropped new music, the latter being particularly surprising considering it’s been over a decade since her last album. The Converge and Hatebreed supergroup that is Umbra Vitae also released their second record, showing how death metal and hardcore would interact in a perfect world. Finally, there was Thou’s stellar return to solo LPs, Umbilical, that strengthened the bond between sludge metal and grunge.
These are by no means the only worthwhile records that came from metal’s underground this month. They are just the biggest acts, all of whom have awoken after a long slumber of at least four years (with some caveats in the case of Thou and Jacob Bannon). Somehow, someway, daddy delivered this past Father’s Day. And he didn’t just bring back the milk, he also brought the eggs, flour, and sugar. June would be a gift even if those releases stood alone, but of course, metal burrows as deep as Lost Izalith, and there are other projects also deserving a spot in your ears.
– Colin Dempsey
