Sculptor, Untold Secrets (Frontiers Music)

Is “melodic death metal” an oxymoron, a shameless way to sell out, or a sure sign that a band doesn’t belong together owing to artistic differences? This quintet is from Brazil, here tabling their debut album, which is released through one of the few record labels that actively seeks out this kind of stuff, specifically Evanescence-level power-metal sung by guys whose preferred vocal style is totally Cookie Monster. Well, maybe not strictly Cookie Monster; there’s black-metal devil-monster caterwauling too, and rainy gloom-death riffing if you tend to keep score when listening to this kind of album, not that I ever do. I mean, good luck to these dudes, is what I say, not that a Brazilian death metal band that sounds kind of like In Flames would need extra help in the form of best wishes from a critic as detached from the genre as I am — São Paulo is where I’d want to be personally if I were playing in a band like this. B- — Eric W. Saeger

Deafkids, Ritos do Colapso (self-released)

I honestly had no intention of turning this week’s column into a central repository of Brazilian doom-music, but that’s how the dice rolled, first with Sculptor’s debut album and then with this one, which basically caught my fancy after discovering that this slightly experimental ambient-noise-techno band landed a spot on the soundtrack for Cyberpunk 2077, a dystopian role-playing video game starring none other than Keanu Reeves (it seems Australia has some sort of problem with the game’s messaging, which means it’s probably fun in some way). Whatever, this digital-only EP reads like a Whitman Sampler of experimental spazz-beats, starting with two dubstep-ish rinseouts that were apparently played on real drums. That’s a pretty cool trick, but “Tentáculos” is a lot more interesting, a creepy blend of tribal rhythm and random snake-taming bizarreness that would have fit in well on the Hurt Locker soundtrack. Like I said, strictly experimental, but cool; nicely organic, undoubtedly with an eye toward more soundtracking gigs. A

Retro Playlist

I have to admit, sometimes I’ve gotten it right the first time. For those who’ve subjected themselves to this column for the last 15 years plus, you may remember the bit in 2009 when I talked about New Orleans band Stanton Moore/Garage A Trois’s then-new All Kooked Out album, and how there was “nothing wrong with you” if you’d never heard of him. On this one-man effort, I posited, Moore was trying to be “Spyro Gyra and That F–ing Tank in the same album,” a recipe for commercial failure if ever there was one, or, just as possibly, a spazzy version of Charles Mingus’ least listenable records. As you’d guess, the random fricassee of honking, clattering and Wayne Shorter-style sax suddenly stopped about a third of the way in, for a decent-enough tune called “Purgatory,” and then a rather mellow version of Roberta Flack’s “The Closer I Get To You.” As well, there was “Fragile,” which sounded like the E Street Band trying to weird each other out, and “Electric Door Bell Machine,” a look at what Weather Report might have sounded like if they’d been really idiotic hipsters. Nevertheless, believe it or not, in my review of the album, I didn’t cover Moore in snark gravy and bake him at 350 for an hour. I was pretty nice to the dude.

At times I’ve experienced the joy of dissing multiple artists at a time, when unwary compilation albums come in. But it’s not always mean-spirited claptrap I spew; in fact I was quite genial to the various artists featured on 2014’s Le Sigh, Vol II. Le Sigh is/was an online zine based in Brooklyn, supporting women in the arts. In order to prove they were serious, the editors threw together a couple of female-punk comp albums, which gathered together such bands as Slutever, Fleabite and Alice. Soundalike touchstones ranged from X-Ray Spex to The Waitresses, but it was all good fun, really, with more attitude than a 13-year-old girl threatened with losing her iPhone if she doesn’t wear the cute bunny pajamas Grandma sent for Christmas.

Moral: I can be nice at times. It really depends on the quality of our current dinner leftovers, to be honest.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• OMG, it’s totally the last-minute holiday rush, when those 14 million newly unemployed Americans, all snug in their warm cardboard refrigerator-box condominium complexes comfortably located somewhere under the overpass, need direction as to where to spend that stray $20 bill they found skittering across the parking lot at Whole Foods! Well, I’m here to help, homies, with the latest albums you can buy, all of which are coming to your stores and whatnot, on Dec. 18! As you’d guess, there is basically nothing new coming out except for metal albums and reissues from rich bands and whatever, and trust me, I already looked. First thing that jumped out at me was a 50th anniversary of The Kinks’ eighth album, Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, a fine album that was released in 1970, in case you’re deficient in math skills like I am! I have to confess that I was never the biggest Kinks fan, like they were basically the prototype for every joke-band ever put together, but this album did have one awesome song on it, I’d be the first to admit it. No, I don’t mean the titular “Lola,” a song I could literally live forever without ever hearing again; it’s in fact “Apeman” to which I refer, a joke song about alienation or whatnot, and it was kind of ahead of its time. Check out these lyrics: “I think I’m so educated and I’m so civilized / ‘Cause I’m a strict vegetarian / But with the over-population and inflation and starvation / And the crazy politicians / I don’t feel safe in this world no more.” Cool, huh? Anyway, there you go, fam, the Kinks, with a new-old album, you are now free to go pay good money for whatever you’re going to get out of it, maybe extra cowbell or whatever.

• If you can stand the suspense and wait until Saturday the 19th, there is a new EP from hip-hop guy Letoa coming out that day, called Glocstarr V1! There is already a user review (not a review from an actual music critic, in other words) on the Album Of The Year website, from someone identified as mIlk, and that person says it’s awful. Actually they didn’t say anything, they just left a one-star rating and wrote “0” as a comment. All that goes to prove is that no one really uses the Album Of The Year website except for rock critics who are desperately trying to find albums coming out at the last minute, because nearly a half-million people have streamed at least one of the tunes, called “Ice Cold.” The beat sounds like some incidental theme music from Lord of the Rings, except for the beginner-level haunted house bass and the stupid trap drums. Can I shut this off now?

• OK, I give up, there’s nothing else coming out this week, and I refuse to talk about whichever black-metal bands are only putting out records because they either hate Christmas or don’t even know when it is, so we’re going to wrap up with chillwave/ambient techno guy Tycho! It’s not that he even has a real album coming out, just a remix album, called, appropriately enough, Weather Remixes, based on his 2019 Grammy nominated LP Weather. That one was great, a little bit guitar-tronic and a little indie-rock, so I’m sure all the remixes are good as well, if they’re even half as decent as the gorgeous remix of “Japan” by Satin Jackets. Awesome stuff.