It's not just that there won't likely be a better metal album than the new Cattle Decapitation released this year. It's that there probably won't be a better album, period. Metal (like most every other genre right now) is treading a lot of water; which is fine; it keeps you afloat; but it's hardly exciting, or worth working oneself into a lather over. Cattle Decapitation are an exception. The Killing Floor, their new one, is a masterpiece. It reminds me of those natural formations you see driving through Wyoming, big old weird-shaped rocks against a blank sky. They come into view, and you say: "what the fuck, dude, that shit is awesome." Maybe somebody in the car mentions Close Encounters or 2001 or some other lame Hollywood comparison, so you throw food at him and tell him to shut up and look at the goddamn awesome rock. Because the awesome rock is sort of its own description of itself. It's sufficient. It's enough.

That's how it is with The Harvest Floor; it sounds like some other stuff, it's not in any new genre. It is not past comparison to other bands or albums. It's just better at what it's doing than all of them; than any of them. I hear a lot of metal albums, and I like a bunch of them, but not many new ones do the job of transporting me from point A (Earth) to point B (some distant planet that's not on the charts). This one does. It is rare and wonderful and we should all be grateful for it.

Standard practice in press kits is to anticipate the approximate neighborhood of any comparisons an artist will draw, then double down on your wager. Your artist sounds like - legitimately really honest-to-goodness sounds like & invites comparisons to - Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band? Compare him to Springsteen instead, because Springsteen is the big fish in that pond. Your artists are copping moves from Psychocandy? Shoot the moon, young one-sheeter: compare them to the Velvets, invoke Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.

Do I have a specific artist in mind? Yeah, I do. Am I gonna get even more petulant than I already am about it and call them out by name? No, I'm not. Their press kit compares them to the Cure and Joy Division. LPTJ is here to call bullshit on that. This particular artist sounds like Cabaret Voltaire ca. The Voice of America (like, exactly like specific Cabaret Voltaire tracks from that era, specifically "Jazz the Glass"), and like Clock DVA, and generally like a whole lotta Sheffield stuff. Which is an awesome thing to sound like. And would be a lot more interesting name-drop than the nth Cure comparison this decade.

The same press kit uses the word "Brooklyn" three times in two paragraphs, at one point doing so twice in two lines, but that is a subject for another day.

I'm just gonna say what I mean, and hope that others will reiterate the same point until some much-deserved rest is granted to inboxes around the world. Publicity folks, have I got your ears? Good. I would care more about the news you send me if you didn't send me news five times a day. In the days when it cost you money to send stuff, I'd get packages from you once or twice a month, and dutifully listen to everything you sent. Now I delete most of your emails without reading them, because you email me three to five times a day. Am I the only person who feels this way about being constantly bombarded with news about whatever up-and-coming band you're promoting?

That's not a serious question, is it?