Gatecreeper don’t fuck around, do they? Back in January, when the world of heavy music needed a slap in the face to stir us from our slumber, the Arizona kingpins staged a merciless ambush, giving 12 hours' notice that aptly-titled “double-sided album” An Unexpected Reality was about to split skulls. While the resultant release wasn’t quite as lengthy as some would’ve anticipated, there was nothing insubstantial about its eight neck-wrecking metal nuggets. Inspired by the old-school vinyl format (and released in a few dozen colourfully splattered variants) we got seven blistering bangers on Side A, each clocking in and around the one-minute mark, indebted to the buzzsaw sound of classic Entombed and the zero-fat bludgeon of vintage grindcore, with evocative titles like Superspreader and Sick Of Being Sober. Flip it over and the final track Emptiness sprawls over Side B, longer than the others put together: a pummelling 11-minute masterclass indebted to the dirginess of classic Cathedral, the crushing heft of death-doom icons Disembowelment and, fleetingly, the melodic flourishes of Swedish melodeath and Brit icons like Paradise Lost. None of it sounded like the Gatecreeper we thought we already knew. All of it left us begging for more.