Listmania: Metal Noise Top #5 EPs of 2021!

It’s snow joke that having reviewed 365 plus albums and EPs in 2021 this category is the toughest of the lot to make decisions upon. The Great Plague Years have served to reinvigorate the format with some bands even choosing to split an album into bite sized EP releases over 12 months to keep their stock high and remain in the spotlight and that’s by no means a bad thing. So over a few chocolates and a few cans of BrewDog we whittled down our list to five for this year and it was a tough ask…

In no particular order first up it has to be Hardcore injected Punk trio with itchy trigger fingers My Latest Failure with “Failures Vol 2“, a collection of catchy as hell, sarcastic, downbeat cuts accompanied by earworm riffs that simply has to be heard. Rumour has it they’re working on Volume 3 as we speak…

… leaping from April to October, from England to Israel and from Hardcore Punk to Sludge Metal while remaining strictly Underground, our second choice has to be “Negative Transfer” by Nur. A caustic cathartic skull crushingly good affair, it features one called “The Snake” that we said “Sounds like Nails playing  EyeHateGod covers“…

…switching genres and countries once more we have to talk about  Lima, Peru based atmospheric Black Metal trio Earthwomb and their half an hour of something we can only describe as dark, cinematic, enthralling and epic “Becoming Immanence“. Why? Because it absolutely blew our tiny minds! Even if you’re not a lover of the genre, this is something else.

The resurrection of Dominicide with guitarist Craig Law at the helm as the only original member was a story in itself but their EP “The Architecture of Oppression” left it’s boot print on our skulls with a finely balanced combination of Speed Thrash and Death Metal that hits you like a jab followed by an upper cut from a prize heavyweight champion.

…last but by no means least it has to be “A Hundred Voices” by Ruina. Harvey Lake’s clean vocals have improved on this one and that has helped take the band band from a Metallic Hardcore crew to a more rounded Metal act with this one and the results are impressive.

Now it wouldn’t be us without having a few honourable mentions that would be on this list if it wasn’t, you know, a bunch of five. So let’s just say Moon Reaper, Rat King, Akimbria, Catalysis and Mutant Blast all dropped EPs that were a cigarette paper away from being on this list and we’re really looking forward to hearing what they do in the not too distant future.