Listmania: Metal Noise Top #5 Most Anticipated Releases of 2020!

The Metal Noise Award Season is in full swing with our short lists appearing daily between Christmas and New Year that look both back upon the Metal World of 2019 and forward to what 2020 may bring. Today we’re looking at our Top 5 Most Anticipated Releases of 2020, which actually includes more than one which we thought would drop in 2019 but… you know, the fruit just hasn’t ripened. Or something.

“I Let It In And It Took Everything” by Loathe. Penciled in for 7th February via SharpTone Records, the sophomore Loathe album is one that we seem to have been waiting forever for. It’s predecessor, “The Cold Sun” dropped way back in April 2017 and since then the Liverpool pioneers of the Gloom Metal sub-genre have inspired a generation of bands like Lotus Eater and Gloom In The Corner to name but two. They’ve played everywhere and anywhere since and a the Employed To Serve album release show for “Eternal Forward Motion” we got treated to new song “Gored” for the first time – and it blew our minds!

“The Death Of Me” by Polaris. Much like Loathe, we’ve witnessed Australian Technical Metalcore act Polaris go from being a support band at Camden Underworld to being a support act at the Wembley SSE Arena as they’ve gone around the Globe several times with “The Mortal Coil“. We were treated to a pair of new songs in “Hypermania” and “Masochist” when we saw them last and if they’re anything to go by, when 21st February comes around and the new album appears, it’s going to be every bit as good. They’ll be back in Europe in May on a headlining tour with Alpha Wolf, Varials and Currents in tow.

Our first two choices have release dates penciled in with recordings finished and pre-sales underway. For the remainder of our choices, that’s simply not the case. Cleveland Ohio residents Mushroomhead have been around since the dawn of time but have always taken as long as they wanted to when it has come to getting new material out into the World. It’s been a time of comings and goings on their camp with Waylon Reavis exiting the band and creating a pair of albums in new band A Killers Confession with Mushroomhead still to unveil anything new. Original member Jeffrey Nothing Hatrix has also exited, along with guitarist Church and their replacements in new vocalist Steve Rauckhorst (Pitch Black Forest) and their new guitarist is Tommy “Tankx” Shaffner (VentanA) will have been announced over a year before their to be confirmed March 2020 album.

They may have missed their originally set album release date due to being perfectionists but that’s perfectly fine with us. Arcaeon have been a band we’ve followed since we saw them at The Arusha Accord return show before Tech-Fest in 2017 and their debut EP “Balance” is simply stunning. New vocalist Stuart Sarre has insisted they do a full length this time out and after the quality of the “Dataism” demo and the new songs we heard live in their two shows of 2019, we’re hungry for more.

No 36 Crazyfists puns intended, but at the end of August a Snowcapped Romance started as we were treated to “Eternal Lords“, a brand new single from German Metalcore heroes Breakdown At Tiffany’s. We have loved their first two albums, in particular 2017’s “Gravity” and they’re promising a Q1 2020 drop for their third album after a delay of unknown reason. Hat’s off to these dudes for having one of the best band names in Metalcore! We’re going to give a couple of honourable mentions at this point and say that albums from Malevolence, Emmure and Static-X are ones we have our eyes on…