Aether Realm have put out Broken Fist, with Taj Jewett guesting, the second song to come off Season of Bloodshed before Napalm Records releases it on 11 December.
The band described the album as one made out of anger when they announced it, and this is the song that tests whether that holds up past a press line. A guest vocal on a record built around a single mood is a risk, since the point of such a record is usually that one voice carries the whole of it.
They have been doing this from Greenville, North Carolina for well over a decade, long enough to have survived the stretch when American folk and melodic death metal was something people apologised for liking. What keeps them apart from the Finnish bands they get compared to is a sense of humour that never quite leaves the songs, even the heavy ones.
Broken Fist is streaming now with a video. The album follows in December.