Wipe the blood from your teeth and get in the pit, it’s time for a recap of this week’s best hardcore, metal, and punk rock. We dug through the record crates to find the new tunes we think you need to spin and rage to. Strap in, kiddies, it’s time to rock.

Nothing gets the blood pumping quite like a song from Nails. “You’ll Never Be One of Us” is a grinding and intense minute and a half. It’s like swallowing gravel and crapping out fire. Nails’ new album comes out June 17 and we’re so ready for it to crush our souls and squash the beauty in the world.

Kvelertak are like Iron Maiden if Iron Maiden were a party band that made you want to skateboard and smash broken bottles. Endless riffs pepper this lightning-fast jam that would sound like cheese in lesser hands. Instead, Kvelertak make fun, fast, hardcore infused metal that you can’t help but swoon over. This is grade-A rock through and through. Nattesferd is out in just a few short weeks, so enjoy the track below and preorder the hell out of this thing.

Muscle and Marrow make the soundtrack of your nightmares. Their music is beautiful and heavy, but filled with a sense of creeping doom. “Black Hole” is what it sounds like when the shadows in your soul slowly consume you. Singer Kira Clark is the real deal, taking us on a haunting journey into places that would give H.P. Lovecraft chills. Seriously, guys, this is scary stuff. Awesome, but freaking scary.

Oh, Weekend Nachos, why must you leave us? Why do you have to call it quits? You even called your final album Apology? It’s like you know you’re breaking our hearts! On the plus side, we are very, very thankful for songs like “Writhe,” which showcase just how awesome this final album of yours is. Still, we’re gonna miss you. Promise us you’ll write, okay? Don’t be strangers, Weekend Nachos. We have something special. When we told you we loved you, we meant it.

Gutter Instinct make ugly metal. Ugly, raw, thick metal. You can hear the song “Age of the Fanatics” below and you’ll see what we mean. While other metal bands are beefing up their sound to deliver something slick and overproduced, Gutter Instinct heads the opposite direction. This stuff sounds like it was recorded in your garage, but in a good way. There’s no fluff here, just black, dark, heavy metal that’s punishing from start to finish. We love this stuff, folks. If you ask us, this is how metal should sound.

We have a thing for bands that fall into that “post metal” category. Bands like Neurosis, for instance. Perhaps that is why we dig Inter Arma so damn much. Their sound is a bit more riff driven and less atmospheric than your typical post metal act, but the feeling is there. Hell, all it took was hearing the track “Transfiguration” one time and we pre-ordered their new album, Paradise Gallows. Big, heavy, and spacey, Inter Arma takes you on the kind of journey that usually requires you to strip naked, bathe in goat’s blood, and dance around a fire to take. Save the goat’s blood and buy this record. It’s cheaper and it’ll keep your nosy neighbors from calling the cops on you.  Yeah, I know it was you, Jim! Mind your own damn business!

A supergroup that contains members of Mastodon, At the Drive-in, and Queens of the Stone Age? Sign us up! Gone Is Gone is truly a sum of its parts. They sound exactly how you would expect them to sound given their pedigree. “Violescent” is our first glimpse of their upcoming record and it’s supremely rockin’. We love the guitar sound, the vocals, the pounding rhythm. We love everything about this. Supergroups don’t always work, but Gone Is Gone appears to have pulled it off. We’re counting down the days until this one is in our hands.

That’s it for this week. Go forth; throw some horns up and keep spinning in the black circle. If there’s a metalcore, grindcore, hardcore, or any other core song you think the world needs to hear, sound off in the comments below. \m/

Images: Cartoon Network