Magnetar have released Gates Of The North today, three tracks, streaming in full. The band are from Manchester and Nick Wallwork, who sings in them, used to be in Winterfylleth.
The third track is the interesting one. Kingdoms Of Chaos was recorded a few years before There Will Be No Peace In My Valley, their debut, in sessions that produced a song too melodic to sit on that record, closer to Dissection than to anything else they were doing. It has waited until now for a release it fits.
The second is a cover of Merciless' Unbound, which places the band's taste precisely: the Swedish Merciless made one of the first death metal albums in Europe and are the sort of name a band cites to say which lineage it claims.
The title track is the one pointing forward. It is blackened heavy metal with NWOBHM melody in it, and the band present it as the direction of whatever comes next, which on a three song EP released between albums is the whole purpose of the exercise.