When was the last time you heard a new metal song at a party? I'm not talking about a nü metal song; that's something else. (Honestly, I can envision plenty of situations where you're drunk with friends and you need to hear Alien Ant Farm's version of "Smooth Criminal" right now. That's fine. Nobody's judging.) I'm talking about a recent metal song, something released within the last five or 10 years. This seems like something that would never happen. I guess there are probably groups of metalheads who congregate with one another in large urban areas, and maybe they'll throw on the new Gorguts record at their gatherings. But I've never been in a situation like that. I've been in situations where people throw on old Sabbath or Metallica records and everyone's happy to hear them. But that doesn't happen with anything new. Metal has become, in a lot of ways, a zero-sum game, everyone trying to perfect their chosen subgenre or find ways to out-brutalize everyone else. Very few people are making music that you might listen to for fun, in large groups of people. Even something as genuinely great and widely beloved as Deafheaven might clear out a room if you suddenly dropped it on a crowd of acquaintances. And that's what I love about Kvelertak, the Norwegian warriors who are about to drop their third album on the world. Kvelertak are the only underground metal band I can name who make records that you and your friends might enjoy in a binge-drinking situation. They're fun. How many metal bands are fun?