The Weekly Injection: New Releases From BLUT AUS NORD, DREAM THEATER & More Out This Week 11/28

This week's new heavy metal releases include lots of Nine Inch Nails covers, the beginning of live album season, Black Friday soundtracks, and more! To the metals

Blut Aus Nord – Ethereal Horizons

Genre: Black/avant-garde metal
Origin: Mondeville, Calvados, France
Label: Debemur Morti

Buy now on Bandcamp

Getting this Black Friday started with some black metal. Seems fitting. Album number sixteen feels – dare I say – more palatable than the last few. While the Disharmonium records sent them into a dissonant space, these songs feel more epic and melodic.

Brutus – Live In Brussels

Genre: Alternative/stoner rock
Origin: Leuven, Belgium
Label: Hassle Records

Buy now on Bandcamp

Just over a year ago Brutus took to the Ancienne Belgique stage in Brussels, Belgium and recorded this live album. It features almost all of their most recent album Unison Life as well as seven older tracks. I've only had the privilege of seeing this band once (on this tour cycle, actually), and I was left wanting more. This is exactly what I wanted and you should use this as an entry point to a great band.

Dream Theater – Quarantième: Live à Paris

Genre: Progressive metal
Origin: Boston, Massachusetts
Label: InsideOut

Buy now on Bandcamp

Last year Dream Theater reunited with Mike Portnoy on set out on a tour with him behind the kit in for the first time a bunch of years. In classic DT fashion, they are dropping a live record from the tour. It includes "Night Terror" from their latest record, some classic tunes like "Home" and "Panic Attack," and even a couple Mangini-era songs.

Equilibrium – Equinox

Genre: Folk metal/metalcore
Origin: Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany
Label: Nuclear Blast

Buy now on Amazon

While this is their first full album in six years, some of these songs were singles three years ago. It's rad to have all those songs and more in one grand metal record. It's folksy without being corny and metalcore-y without being – well, corny, I guess. This has a lot of friends like Heidevolk, folks from Viscera Trail, (live) Eluveitie, and more.

Josh Freese – Just A Minute Vol. 2

Genre: Alternative rock
Origin: Orlando, Florida
Label: Loosegroove Records

Buy now from Loosegroove

Josh Freese is already the busiest man in rock by drumming for all the bands. Hell, I saw him with Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle this year. Somehow he found the time to record twenty-five one-minute songs in the follow-up to 2021's Just a Minute, Volume 1. As of this writing only the track below is out, but if Volume 2 is anything like Volume 1, it's going to be a brief but rewarding whirlwind.

male//gaze – Too Late Now

Genre: Extreme pop
Origin: Kingston, Washington
Label: Self-released

Buy now on Bandcamp

Every once in a while I'll get an email about a band and they'll use a combination of words that catches my eye. In the case of male//gaze it was "extreme pop." Now, I thought I knew what that would sound like. I expected something like Poppy or maybe Sleep Token. I was wrong. Too Late Now instead is an EP of catchy songs that hit you with a distorted wall of sound and twists that are unexpected. The Armed are the closest thing to their sound. But yeah, "extreme pop" feels correct.

Moron Police – Pachinko

Genre: Progressive metal
Origin: Norway
Label: Mighty Jam Music Group AS

Buy now on Bandcamp

Sure, there's still about a month left in the 2025, but this is the season where people consider the year wrapped when it comes to albums. So coming in just under this fictional wire is one of the best prog metal albums of the year. This is chaotic, melodic, diverse, catchy, techy, and dense. Moron Police is a name I knew, but when Mike Portnoy went to instagram to praise this, I gave it a real go, and good golly is he right.

Various Artists – Best Of Nine Inch Nails (Redux)

Genre: Various
Origin: Various
Label: Magnetic Eyes Records

Buy now on Bandcamp

There are a few bands/acts that people really shouldn't cover. Save for Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt," I considered Nine Inch Nails to be one of those bands. Leave it to Magnetic Eye to pick a varied pool of bands who almost all shut up this fanboy. The Best Of is the first of two NIN tributes and this one includes The Ocean killing "Even Deeper," a haunted doom version of "Right Where It Belongs" by Grayceon, an absolutely nasty version of "Suck" by Thou, and lots more.

Various Artists – The Downward Spiral (Redux)

Genre: Various
Origin: Various
Label: Magnetic Eyes Records

Buy now on Bandcamp

As is a Magnetic Eye tradition, please find a classic album covered front-to-back to pair with the Best Of above. This one has more surprising takes on un-fuck-withable classics. Daevar's slow burn cover of "Closer" made me a fan of them, Author & Punisher somehow made a more mechanical and industrial version of "Reptile," Between The Buried And Me found the perfect balance of honoring the original and making "Hurt" their own, and then the rest of the record is presented in interesting and largely successful ways.

In addition to this year's Black Friday Record Store Day releases here are albums also dropping this week…

• 1349 – Winter Mass (Season Of Mist) – Live black metal
• 5RAND – Ordhalia (Art Gates Records) – Melodic death/groove metal
• All We Leave Behind – In Absence Of Light (Octopus Rising / Argonauta Records) – Gothic/death metal
• Avdagata – The Apocalyptic Aeon (At Dawn Records) – Melodic death/black metal
• Azzaya – Infernal Blasphemia (Maledict Records/War Prod) – Black metal
• Bezdan – Upon the Altar (I Hate Records) Black metal/thrash
• Black Magic Tree – Terra (Majestic Mountain Records) – Stoner rock
• Carnal Savagery – Crypt Of Decay (Moribund Records) – Death metal
• Dead And Dripping – Nefarious Scintillations (Transcending Obscurity Records) – Brutal death metal
• Ergot – Decade (ATMF) – Black metal/ambient
• Excide – Bastard Hymns (SharpTone) – Hardcore/alternative
• Feather Mountain – A Liminal Step (Self-released) – Progressive metal
• Lungtoucher – My Consort, Eternal (Phantom Lure)
• Lynch Mob – Dancing With The Devil (Frontiers Music Srl) – Hard rock
• Magnetic Morning – A.M. (Outer Battery) – Rock/psychedelic
• Malefic Throne – The Conquering Darkness (Agonia Records) – Death metal
• Master's Hammer – Maldorör Disco (Darkness Shall Rise) Experimental black metal
• The Old Dead Tree – London Sessions (Season Of Mist) – Gothic/progressive rock
• The Ominous Circle – Cloven Tongues Of Fire (Osmose) – Death/black metal
• Onsetcold – Apocalyptic Sleep (Wormholedeath) – Avant-garde death metal
• Paintrail – Nocturnals (Corrupted Records) – Progressive rock/metal
• Pale Horse Ritual – Diabolic Formation (Black Throne Productions) – Stoner/doom
• Phobocosm – Gateway (Dark Descent) – Death metal/doom
• Soho Dukes – Nighthawks, Acrobats And Everything Under The Moon (Cargo) – Rock
• Starmen – Starmenized II (Melodic Passion Records / Sound Pollution) – Hard rock
• Struck A Nerve – Struck A Nerve (Listenable Records) – Thrash
• Suffering – Things Seen But Always Hidden (Apocalypse Witchcraft) – Black metal/doom
• The Tea Club – Chasm (Self-released) – Progressive rock
• Thermality – Concept 42 (Sound Pollution / Black Lodge Records) – Melodic death metal/metalcore
• Triskelyon – Maelstrom of Chaos (Moribund Records) – Thrash
• Unviâr – Disglaç (ATMF) – Black metal
• Vast Pyre – Bleak (Octopus Rising/Argonauta Records) – Stoner/doom
• Verilehto – Aarnihauta (Self-released) – Black metal
• Voyna – Monsters (Aenaos Records) – Post-punk/darkwave
• Will O’ Dusk – The Long Lasting Dusk (Diotima Records) – Heavy metal/hard rock