Free Download: Adult Swim's Righteous Metal Compilation

​In their ongoing colonization of the fertile realms beyond the province of television, the indefatigable content-providers of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block -- in partnership with Scion's weirdly savvy marketing team -- have seen fit to drop another bomb on the internet. Enter Metal Swim, "16 tracks of rare or unreleased metal from the heaviest bands in existence."

Unlike previous Adult Swim compilations, including the excellent Ghostly Swim and Chrome Children, this one isn't centered on a particular label's roster. Instead, it offers a pretty great sample of the contemporary metal scene without restricting itself to any one corner or prefix: there's blastbeat-riding death metal, ominously lumbering doom metal, art-damaged drone metal, and cheesy throw-up-your-devil-horns metal metal. Nary an acoustic instrument to be found. All that's missing is Dethklok.

Highlights include "Pliable Foe, "an obscure B-side from the recently disbanded Isis; tuneful thrash workouts from Torche, whose Songs for Singles came out yesterday, and Kylesa, whose Spiral Shadow is due on October 26th (both bands play next Wednesday at the Great American Music Hall with High On Fire); and a surprising gem called "Path of Ash" from San Francisco's own metallurgists Ludicra (who according to Wikipedia play "crustcore-influenced black metal with neoclassical tendencies" -- how can you not love metal's bouquet of frothy subgenera?).

The whole thing clocks in at 82 minutes, just too long to toss on a CD-R (unless you cut out Skeletonwitch's "Bringers of Death," but why would you want to go and do that?) but free to download, play, and headbang to the point of whiplash, or until you get kicked off the MUNI. Cop it here while, uh, supplies last.

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