Metal Storm's outlet for nonmetal album reviews
The place where we'll talk about music without growls or blast beats
unless they still have those but still aren't metal
unless they still have those but still aren't metal
We here at Metal Storm pride ourselves on our thousands of metal reviews and interviews and article; metal is our collective soul and passion, which is why we bother with this junk. That being said, we'd be lying if we stuck to our trve-kvlt guns and claimed that metal is the only thing we ever listen to. Whether we want to admit it or not, we do check out some other stuff from time to time; some of us are more poptimistic than others, but there's a whole world out there aside from Satan-worshiping black metal and dragon-slaying power metal. We do already feature some nonmetal artists on our website and have a few reviews to back them up, but we prefer to limit that aspect of the site to those artists who have been a strong influence on the metal scene or who are in some way connected to it. This article series is the place for those artists who don't matter to metal in the slightest but still warrant some conversation - after all, good music, is good music, and we all know metal isn't the only thing on this planet for any of us.
Down below, you might find some obscure Bandcamp bedroom projects or some Billboard-topping superstar; as long as it ain't metal and the album itself isn't a best-of compilation, it fits. Obviously, we're certain that not everything will be for everybody (you guys can be viciously territorial even when metal is the only thing on the menu, and we're all supposed to like the same things), but we do hope you find at least one thing that you can enjoy, instead of just pointing and screaming in horror "Not metal!" as if that would be an insult.
Here are our previous features:
December 2025
November 2025
October 2025
And now to the music...
Summer Of Hate - Blood & Honey
[Psychedelic Rock | Shoegaze]
Blood & Honey, the sophomore album from Portuguese sextet Summer Of Hate, is an album of two contrasting halves that embrace very different sounds within the world of rock music. The band refer to themselves as an ‘experimental shoegaze’ band, which in some ways is apt, but also feels ill-fitting. On the one hand, the shoegaze found in the Honey portion of the album, which continues on from where the band left off with their 2022 debut Love Is Dead! Long Live Love, feels very conventional in its approach to the genre, even as influences from the likes of slowcore and Britpop are woven in. Conversely, the album is quite experimental in how much the Blood part of the record deviates from this sound, even if said deviation owes very little to shoegaze.
The album’s opening title track is something of a bridge between the sounds; it’s an airy, mellow song with some of the dreaminess of the Honey side, but its raga-influenced sound palette owes more to psychedelic rock, which is the foundation of Blood. As it is, the trio of songs that follow could well be the three best heavy psychedelic rock songs released in 2026. “El Saif” has dancy rhythms and fun trade-offs of driving distortion and catchy guitar hooks (accompanied by guest Thomas Attar’s vocals), but it turns increasingly ominous and brooding. “Ashura” is tribalistic yet also quite playful with its chants and rhythms, but the jewel in the crown is 8-minute “Mayura”, a monster of huge trippy soundscapes, hypnotic vocal refrains, and an up-tempo driving climax. In comparison, the blissful new wave-tinged shoegaze of “Alem” and breezy energy of “Joy” are quite detached musically; this mid-album divide may be too jarring for those that like albums to be cohesive experiences, but each side is strong enough at what it does to charm many listeners from across the rock spectrum.
Bandcamp
by musclassia
Planeoid - Flare
[Progressive Rock]
Planeoid had emphatically impacted the progressive rock scene when they dropped their remarkable debut album Terrapath. With that release they'd already proven to be one of the most imaginative, creative, and diverse groups currently on the scene, and now they hope to continue that form with sophomore effort Flare.
Flare is simply a masterclass effort in modern progressive rock, with an erratically experimental take on the genre that incorporates a staggering range of influences from heavy-psych and math-rock, to jazz fusion and shoegaze. The song-structures have more textures and layers than a sedimentary rock, with a huge variety of chord progressions, rhythm changes, and tempo shifts. It's a fascinating listening experience that can be as irresistibly catchy and charming as it is mind-bogglingly complex and unpredictable, and there is never once a dull moment. Not only is Flare an artistic and creative evolution that pushes the boundaries further than that of the debut, it reaches uncharted territories that you never thought were even possible to reach. So, once again, the exceedingly talented foursome from Brighton, UK, have shown why many are considering them as one of the top acts in the progressive rock business right now, and Flare is an album that fans of the genre should really not want to miss out on.
Bandcamp
by AndyMetalFreak
Sunday Mourners - A-Rhythm Absolute
[Art Punk | Krautrock]
Not sure how much I should associate the band's music with that familiar feeling of Sunday's dread of your free time sipping out of your fingers as a new week approaches. But that is a pretty neat image evoked by the "Sunday Mourners" band name, and that's just the first impression, then comes the music. A-Rhythm Absolute is a debut and there's nothing I can find in terms of lineup connections, so first impressions is all the context I had while diving into this, and the only thing thing that felt very relevant about it is that A-Rhythm Absolute does feel like a debut.
The sounds of A-Rhythm Absolute are very much informed by the post-punk/art punk of the late 70s and early 80s in it being quite snarky and cynical in lyrical and vocal performance combined with melodies focused on, as the album title suggests, interesting rhythms and repetitions. That rhythmical repetition along with an occasional dash of 60s psychedelia does give it a slight krautrock edge, and there are definitely a lot of moments on the album that show a band ambitious enough to bite into more ways of songwriting, but it also feels like there's room to grow.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Red Vox - Retcon
[Alternative Rock | Neo-Psychedelia]
It's been ten years since Red Vox's debut album What Could Go Wrong burst unto the alt rock scene with a sound that blended both some 90s grunge-ish leanings, with indie sensibilities and a penchant for the psychedelic. It was the kind of album that had clear nods to sounds of the past without sounding like it tried to accurately reproduce them in a way that one could be fooled into mistaking it for the actual thing. Still, even though Red Vox have been fairly consistent in release schedule and quality, they never quite became a household name.
Retcon is the band's seventh album, following the longest gap between releases so far for the band. It seems like that extra "baking" time served the album well, with the album's runtime, though fairly standard at 43 minutes, does fell diverse and thoroughly thought out in how it plays around with more grunge-leaning sounds, more psychedelia, or even some alt-country in some of the slide guitar sounds. The "neo-psychedelia" tag is one the readers will see often in this edition alongside eye-raising genre combinations, but it's here where it feels more akin to how the genre originally evolved as, with songwriting that's standard enough to be accessible and memorable enough to make this the best Red Vox album since 2020's Realign.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Dry Cleaning - Secret Love
[Indie Rock | Post-Punk]
For some reason a band I often mistake for Wet Leg, both being indie rock bands that had a lot of potential with their debut but I haven't found either to really hit the mark just yet, but there is something that I always remember about Dry Cleaning, how accurate the "dry" in their name is. The vocal performance's deadpan delivery is something that feels very specific to the band, even if it obviously reminds me of other similar artists, like Kim Gordon or Cate Le Bon. And I am mentioning the latter very specifically for Secret Love.
Cate Le Bon's weirdo art pop is something I have a soft spot for, even if more cerebrally, so knowing that she produced Secret Love leads me to find that same weirdo art rock sauce sprinkled all throughout, and something about how the deadpan delivery works with the post-punk deconstructed into something that's both weirdly groovy and dissonant at the same time, ethereal only in that it feels like music made inside a world with a slightly different operating logic. I guess that's about as accessible as avant-garde pop can get.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Memory Engine - Memory Engine
[Rock | Americana]
Memory Engine isn’t Metal, but it is Metal Storm Adjacent. This three track release marks the first effort of Memory Engine, a duo out of Vancouver, Washington featuring Gwendolyn Gudaitis on vocals and Joshua Kramer on guitar and other instruments, whom some of you who have been around Metal Storm for a long time might remember as Team MS member Forged Soul.
“Lady Aqiba” opens with a distorted, muted trudging riff and beat to serve as the backbone for Gwendolyn’s fantastic vocals. As the song chugs along the background spaces are filled as Joshua shows off his chops with some fluttering runs, but never taking center stage, always filling in empty spaces in the background. The focus remains on the story being painted by the vocals.
After the opener the duo switches up to Americana-style. Acoustic guitars and the appearance of additional instrumentation beyond guitar/drums/bass… a mandolin here, harmonica and piano there. “Dear Dismay”, my fave, is a jangly, jaunty piece with support from the Mandolinorian. It’s the kind of track that has me nostalgic for Mrs COld and I driving some unpaved back road in our truck, with our dogs riding in the tiny back seats. Nice and uplifting. “Across The Cuff” closes the EP out in melancholic style. And as with the opener, the focus remains on the captivating vocals –I lack the technical descriptors, but something about the affectation, phrasing and delivery draws me in.
My verdict? As Gudaitis sings “such a promising start.” Can’t wait to hear me. A far cry from the power metal Kramer used to preach during his time in MS Towers, but hey, you’re reading a clearly Non-Metal article, indicating you are a listener of expanded taste and palette. This is definitely worth the twelve or so minutes of your time.
Bandcamp
by BitterCOld
Renatto Olivares - Aguas Raras
[Jazz-Rock | Art Rock]
RaduP's pick
You must understand the pleasure I feel scouting for new albums, seeing a Spanish-looking name, and finding out that the artist is from Chile, all the while we have a writer from Chile. Hence why you had X-Ray Rod writing about many such acts on my behalf. I decided to spare our little Chilean friend this time around, mostly because we're too close to the deadline as of me finding this album, but also because I found myself resonating with it more than I expected. To wrap up the context, Renatto Olivares is the vocalist/saxophonist/guitarist of Hesse Kassel, who you can guess were already covered by.
The solo music or Olivares has a lot in common with the band music of Hesse Kassel, in that there's a strong art rock and jazz leaning and a penchant for the experimental, but whereas Hesse Kassel went into more of a post-rock direction, Aguas Rasas puts a lot more emphasis on the avant-prog and jazz parts of the sound, with a lot of noodly almost math-rock sounding interplay between the guitars and the drums with a very strong jazz presence also emphasized by the saxophone, with Olivares' vocal performance on top reminding me a lot of a Spanish speaking version of Georgie Greep.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Backengrillen - Backengrillen
[Experimental Rock | Jazz-Rock]
RaduP's pick
I just wanna grill in my backyard, but I keep getting my experimental jazz rock Refused!
Bad jokes aside, with Refused having just recently called it quits (and I was lucky enough to catch them on their last tour), it was only a matter of time before some sort of side-project would emerge. I didn't expect for it to be so soon, even if it seems like Backengrillen has been in the over (or rather on the grill) since at least 2022, but I also didn't expect to see a project that would involve this many ex-Refused members in one spot. So here we have three of them, the vocalist, the drummer, and the bassist, joined by saxophonist extraordinaire Mats Gustafsson, a name one is very likely to bump into whenever heavy jazz is involved.
The self-titled debut from Backengrillen is thus very heavy, keeping a lot of the hardcore and metal energy that Refused had, but both replacing the guitars with a piercing saxophone and the tastier electronics with noisier ones, and elongating the songwriting to make most songs land around the ten minute mark. Of course that also comes with some head-scratching experimental free improv moments, but when the two sides of this merge to create something heavy and groovy, it works like wonders to create something provocative and exciting.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Hér - Monochrome
[Dark Folk | Jazz]
Monochrome is the debut record from Polish quintet Hér, and while the group doesn’t seem to share members with fellow Poles Drowned In Silver (who released their own debut last year), there are a number of similarities that mean that those who enjoy one of these projects are liable to like the other. Like Drowned In Silver, Hér feature a saxophonist, and they also clearly draw influence from Nordic neofolk; however, while that sound is a piece of a metallic puzzle for Drowned In Silver, Hér are first and foremost a dark folk band.
It’s by no means a simple regurgitation of the Nordic folk sound that has become so popular in the past decade, however. The opening 10-minute “Chant” does feature spiritual folk chants akin to Wardruna, as well marching drums and ominous ambience, but there’s also saxophone and violin melodies that feel very distinct in their origin, particularly when the saxophone and drums become a bit more cacophonic in the closing minutes. There is a free jazz influence to the album, which coalesces with the Wardruna-esque lead vocals in remarkable fashion in the closing stages of “Needless And Bark”. There’s also an off-kilter singer-songwriter feel to certain tracks that is comparable to pioneers such as Nick Cave and Tom Waits. Furthermore, while it is by no means a metal album, Monochrome does have moments of darkness or heaviness that render the band’s place on the Season Of Mist roster somewhat logical, most notably the driving percussion and shrieking violins in “Praise The Day”. Monochrome is dark folk like you have never heard it before.
Bandcamp
by musclassia
YĪN YĪN - Yatta!
[Psychedelic Rock | Funk Rock]
YĪN YĪN are kind of a weird case. They're one of the biggest names in modern funk, or at least of a fusion of a myriad of sounds including funk, but a lot of the attention is focused solely on their debut album, 2019's The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers. Well, not solely but very disproportionately so. That does likely has to do with the fact that that album was not only the world's first taste of that sound fusion as done by the band, but also still their best (spoiler alert for this album too, I guess, it's not better than their debut), making it so that their follow-ups don't attract the same amount of excitement.
That said, I still think there's plenty to be excited about Yatta!. I get reminded of Khruangbin quite a lot, but with a lot more East Asian sounds sprinkled in, and a stronger leaning towards disco and funk, so while it still operates in a relaxed psychedelic vibe, there's something more upbeat about YĪN YĪN's music, and Yatta! specifically continues to amp up the disco/funk side of the band's sound, while also making sure that there's a slight difference in nuance for each song. There's something very specific about the drum mixing that makes them have some well earned punch.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Imarhan - Essam
[Tishoumaren]
By now you must've came across one of the many Tishoumaren albums we covered, but just in case you haven't, Tishoumaren is a music genre that is the result of the cultural meeting between the Western guitar music and the Tuareg folk music, creating a very specific kind of desert rock with a strong folk element. Names like Mdou Moctar, Etran de L'Aïr, Tinariwen. Imharan are relatively "new" compared to some of the others, but they are celebrating two decades of existence but only once since their debut album, and their previous album was one that felt like it could make them a household name.
Essam is not exactly standard sounding for a Tishoumaren album, perhaps more so because the opening track lacks the guitar that sets the genre apart. There is plenty of that later on, and it's always exciting whenever it shows up, but the atmosphere on Essam has a warmth that works both in the more guitar-centric and the folkier cuts, with the synths and vocal harmonies doing a lot to set that warm jovial mood. The album is helped a lot by how pristine the production is, making its ambiance feel even more inviting.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Zach Bryan - With Heaven on Top
[Americana | Country]
I might not be the biggest country fan, still put off by the worst of the mainstream stuff, but Zach Bryan was a name I've enjoyed hearing from since the 2023 self-titled that was ironically not a debut. 2023 isn't that long ago, and since then Zach has also released a follow-up record one year later that I also enjoyed. Jumping from one year between albums to two years between albums isn't that huge of a jump, so Zach still makes sure to deliver music often, but with both of the aforementioned albums in the 55-65 minutes range and With Heaven on Top being more than 75, it's delivering "much" not just "often".
While I do enjoy most of what I'm hearing in With Heaven on Top, it is the kind of thing where there's too much of a good thing, especially so soon, and it's especially iffy that none of the songs I hear on With Heaven on Top are highlights to the same heights that the previous two albums' highlights were. That said, enjoyable it still is, Zach is a fantastic and emotional vocalist, and even though they're not as hard hitting, the lyrics are a cut above what I'd heard from most country in how heartfelt they are. The album also comes with an acoustic version as well, and though it does add to the bloated feeling, it's nice to hear how Zach can make the same songs work in both a more lively orchestrated sound and a more stripped back one. Hopefully there's more time spent on the cutting room floor the next time around.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
I know darkwave is quite stylistically tied to metal, especially its goth metal counterpart, though I can't exactly pinpoint why we have Canaan featured here. Granted they're far from the worst headscratcher, the founding member having played in the doom metal Cultus Sanguine and the early Canaan albums like Blue Fire having some doom metal influences, but it's probably just the case that they were added because someone wanted to review them. But the name Canaan, as a band name rather than a historical-geographical term, is familiar to me for another reason: their clever release dates.
More than once I got to see a Canaan album specifically because it was released either very early in January or very late in December, times in the year when release schedules are lighter and you're more likely to get noticed, which they did. While I did like what I heard I was however not very excited looking at the huge tracklist of this album. Having been a band for more than three decades, you'd expect that experience to reflect into a more honed sound, but I find that For A Bird That Never Flew is not only extremely extremely bloated, but that even if trimmed down to a manageable normal album length, I'd still find it too amateur sounding to be exciting, and a lot of that is due to the vocals feeling out of sync with the instrumentals.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
PVA - No More Like This
[Trip Hop | EBM]
PVA is a name I have completely forgotten, only remembering that I stumbled upon them when I checked the rest of the albums and I realized I recognized the cover art of their previous album, 2022's BLUSH, and album whose EBM sounds I enjoyed but that didn't end up making the cut for whatever edition I would've included it in. Now, with a more relaxed release schedule for new releases in January, No More Like This has more room to make an impact with its dark seductive soundscapes, even if I can't quite say that No More Like This surpasses its predecessor.
The formula for PVA is deadpan vocals combined with dark electronic beats, and that's a combination that's as old as time (or rather as old as the first synths), and it's mostly the electronica part that really hits it for me, not really being easily defined by one genre. EBM is still a massive element of that, as it was on BLUSH, thus having a tad of a retro industrial rock inspired nuance, but with a darkness that occasionally seeps into either something more gothic akin to darkwave or something even more dreamlike a la trip hop.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Geologist - Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?
[Neo-Psychedelia | Experimental Rock]
Time for Animal Collective to pack it up, since we finally have at least one solo album from each of the four members. While Avey Tare and Panda Bear have been extremely prolific, Deakin's Sleep Cycle from 2016 left Geologist as the only AnCo member without a solo album. Last year almost sort of rectified that, with a weird collaborative album between Geologist and Doug Shaw, which was an album with no other AnCo members but not exactly a solo album per se. Now we have that.
With a title as silly as Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights? one can obviously expect something either more tongue-in-cheek or less concerned with being accessible, and it's the latter that applies here. There's a kind of psychedelic post-rock drenched in orientalist elements, deconstructed into experimental drone that has more in common with avant-garde jazz than anything else in a way that can sometimes feel interesting when the elements align, but at other times it feels like the textures, from the drums, synths, and hurdy gurdys sounding too haphazardly thrown together.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
Dealers Of God - Bushranger (Act 1)
[Experimental Hip-Hop | Neo-Psychedelia]
Man, the underground is full of weird shit. I first stumbled upon Dealers Of God in 2023, when their Dealer's Choice album, released on the 1st of January, was one of the first albums that one would find when looking for albums from that new year. That album's nearly 90 minutes runtime was quite daunting, but it was enough to stick the "Dealers Of God" name in my memory, mostly because it does make you wonder whether they are dealers belonging to God or whether they "deal God". The way their music goes, I'm rooting for the latter. And seeing their interview on the front page of RYM made it clear that I need to get into them.
Bushranger (Act 1) is a much more manageable record at 53 minutes, though that is contrasted by it being a "Part 1", so it will eventually be paired with a follow-up. But the sound on it is a kind of hip-hop whose abstract nature once again pushes beyond it comfortably being called "hip-hop", there's a lot of effects-ridden singing that feels closer to weirdo neo-psychedelia than even cloud rap was, an electronic palette closer to illbient trip-hop and an odd dash of Americana that does make Bushranger (Act 1) feel like such a dazzling collage of ideas and sounds.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
By Storm - My Ghosts Go Ghost
[Neo-Psychedelia | Experimental Hip-Hop]
RaduP's pick
It's a bit improper to call My Ghosts Go Ghost a debut, even if it is technically the first album released under the "By Storm" name, but it is basically a continuation of the Injury Reserve project, which I've covered before. The difference is that Injury Reserve's last album, 2021's By The Time I Get To Phoenix was released following the passing of rapper Stepa J. Groggs, turning the trio into a duo and also releasing their most experimental and genre-bending album yet. The duo rebranded once Groggs' legacy was cemented with the posthumous album, and following a "split" album passing the torch between the two entities was released in 2023, pairing Injury Reserve's closing track from the last album, "Bye Storm", with the debut By Storm single, "Double Trio".
I praised By The Time I Get To Phoenix for how mind bending its move past the hip-hop label was, even if it still had some roots in the genre, it moved into a much more abstract and psychedelic direction, even more so that just the "abstract hip-hop" subgenre, and My Ghosts Go Ghost pushes that even further. There's hip-hop roots, even a Billy Woods feature that is ironically not a record highlight, but for the most part the electronic backdrop is bathed in abstract psychedelia, glitchy ethereal wave, avant-garde jazz, and deconstructed orchestration, all at different moments of the album, that makes it feel like emotions moving with the logic of dreams.
Bandcamp
by RaduP
And that was it. You've made it through still alive. Congrats. See ya next month. Here's a YouTube playlist we compiled out of stuff featured here:
