New Organon

It’s impossible to overstate how important Mike Scalzi is to the history of American true metal. As frontman of The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Scalzi has been flying the flag for traditional heavy metal since 1990, through some of the leanest years the genre’s seen. It’s some long overdue justice to have Slough Feg releasing New Organon, their best album in a decade, during a boom time for this style of music. It’s hard to imagine an Eternal Champion or a Spirit Adrift emerging without Slough Feg sweating it out in the riff mines for the past three decades. On New Organon, Scalzi taps into the same primal well that fueled modern classics like Atavism and Hardworlder, leaning into the guitar harmonies he and his co-guitarist Angelo Tringali have perfected over the years. (For those inspired to work back through the catalog, their harmonies on 2007’s “Tiger! Tiger!” are my favorite in any metal song, ever.) He also lets his day job as a philosophy professor color the material more than he ever has before, penning a history of philosophy from the dawn of civilization to the present day in the lyrics.