This f**king insane year has just got the perfect soundtrack

We have just escaped a volatile summer. COVID spikes, police brutality, Black Lives Matter protests and far-right conspiracies are all topics that have refused to leave the headlines for months. And, rightfully, it doesn’t look like the discourse echoing around these things will stop anytime soon.

Released as the dog days of 2020 dissipated into autumn, Summits Of Despondency – the new album from German dissidents Ancst – is a timely summation of the world’s turmoils. Anti-fascist, anti-cop and anti-racist, it’s a 12-song scramble for hope and morality in a time desperately lacking both.

Songs like Kill Your Inner Cop and Denazification do as they say on the tin, raging against the unjust machine via the medium of brazen, blackened death metal. The riffs of Behemoth are given an incendiary, nonstop speed akin to At The Gates, resulting in 45 minutes that fly by with the speed and savagery of a lobbed molotov.

A more essential death metal album you will not find this year. Summits… is that perfect fusion of timely lyricism with timeless musicianship. In years to come, its aural savagery will hold up as well as ever, while its themes will be a chilling reminder of how fucked this year truly was.

Head over to Ancst’s Bancamp page to check it out.

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.