Commissions done for @local-cryptid-art ! Featuring their Oc Ganja. A Death Metal Troll, who is a Traveling Herbalist. @local-cryptid-art is rad af for making such a cool Oc based on my Death Metal Trolls in my Efflorescence Au. From what little info shared with them (I still am working on putting a proper character sheet together of my DM Trolls, like I did my Lo-Fi ones). Ganja will definitely make some cameos and/or shout outs in my Efflorescence Au stories and art in the future!
First of all I’m going to KICK MYSELF FOR NOT REBLOGGING THIS SOONER HOLY SHIT-
Bc these are some of my FAVS!!!! (Not that I don’t love every commission I get from you fr I treasure them all) But I love these so much omg, and it was such a treat to design a death metal troll based off your genre species!
You blew my ideas out of the park! And I love to see how you transform these ideas and things I have into absolute ✨masterpieces!✨ Thorn giving Ganja her tattoo sleeve, helping me with designing the sleeve, the creative outfits, Ganja and Sid Fret, and I’ll DIE on my little hill of shipping them together bc ultimate stoner couple (I’m still working out the deets on how those goofs met and caught feelings for eachother~) but I digress! In short;
I LOVE THIS ALL WITH ALL MY HEART AND MORE!!! Thank you so much for letting me commission you again, and I will remain one of your biggest fans xD
I wrote a full-length review of this disaster of an album earlier in the month, and yeah, wow. Between the phoned-in performances from the instrumentalists who have proven themselves far above this joke of a band and the half-assed production this would have been a pretty crappy album even without Chris Barnes’ milk-aged vocals. But he’s here, and he’s managed to actually get worse too, gasping his way through the whole album and littering it with these ludicrous “high” squeals that would make Smeagol sound like a more competent death metal vocalist. It’s the worst thing I’ve heard all year, and what’s worse, I don’t think Six Feet Under is stopping.
1/10
With that out of the way, let’s cleanse the pallet right away with some really good shit.
Greg Puciato-Child Soldier: Creator of God
Ever reliable in his artistically integrity, explosive former Dillinger Escape Plan frontman, Greg Puciato, has been pretty sonically and artistically adventurous since the honorable dissolution of the iconic mathcore outfit, his most notable music project being the ethereal, synth-heavy The Black Queen. This year, however, Puciato has gone fully solo for a full-length project, and something told me to get ready for a wild ride, and boy was I right on that hunch. Borne out of an exponentiated process of songwriting that produced songs Puciato deemed unfitting for any of his current projects, what was planned as a small release to ship these songs out of the writing room eventually spiraled into a full-blown debut solo album clocking in at over an hour. A lot of solo projects play like clearly indulgent amateur hour sessions from an artist whose ego has been boosted pretty well from significant success from their main project, leading them to overconfidently try their hand at music they have no business trying it at. And it’s often approached under the understanding that it is a victory lap, more or less, and a satisfaction of creative impulses for the sake of it. Sometimes the resultant material is clearly inspired and showcases a side of an artist that certainly deserves some spotlight. Other times it feels like being trapped in an awkward situation with an acquaintance where they just show you all their newest pedals and production software and you’re just stuck there watching them fiddle around while you nod along and offer the occasional “wow, that’s pretty crazy” every now and then while they don’t pick up on the obvious cues that you are just waiting for them to finish playing with their toys. While Puciato was open about this album being borne from the very creatively borderless mindset that so often damns solo projects, Child Soldier: Creator of God is an actual realization of the type of grand, genre-spanning album that so many solo artists envision themselves making and set out to create, and it’s hardly a whimsical, amateurish crack at the styles within either. Puciato’s foray into sludge metal, industrial rock, harsh noise, darkwave, synthwave, and shoegaze, (1) makes for a hell of a dynamic and exciting track list, and (2) shows a much deeper than average respect for and relationship with the styles being played here. This isn’t some frontman thinking his charisma can carry him through a whole rap solo album; this is a well-rounded artist (also a hell of a frontman, no denying that) giving the most comprehensive look yet into his creative mind. The album leaps around in patches of different styles, strung together mostly by ambient connective tissue of various types, all with a great attention to detail paid to both texture and progression. We get early patches of smooth ambiance, but also aggressive industrial and sludge metal, eventually moving to more soothing and meditative synthy stuff around the middle, finishing with some serene, Have a Nice Life-esque shoegaze. But really there’s no way to sum up this album stylistically without breaking down every single song on here, and that would just ruin the fun and the experience. You really just have to experience it for yourself.
9/10
DevilDriver-Dealing with Demons I
Embarking on a conceptual double-album, Dez Fafara and DevilDriver’s first installment in the pair is a scoop of the, indeed, slightly above average, but unfortunately still plain and predictable modern groove metal they always offer up. I’ll give the band credit for keeping the pace up and clearly putting substantial energy into the performances on this album, while also trying to squeeze in a few shake-ups to their sound, like the clear Gojira-inspired riffage on the opening track. The album loses steam, unfortunately, as its punches lose their impact as it goes on.
6/10
Anaal Nathrakh-Endarkenment
While certainly cultivating a unique sound, Anaal Nathrakh’s unholy fusion of nasty modern blackened grindcore with sweeter metalcore and melodic death metal elements has its mixed results. And while that might at first sound like a relatively critical assessment of the Brits’ eleventh album, I’d say that there is actually a lot to enjoy and take in for at least the interesting mix of styles, most of which are hits rather than misses as well.
7/10
Enslaved-Utgard
Having been a fan of a good amount of their recent output, especially 2015’s In Times, I came out of Utgard moderately disappointed with how infrequently Enslaved galvanized their potent brand of Viking folky, progressive black metal effectively; the few moments the band do channel their strengths cohesively and purposefully left me wanting more rather than savoring those moments.
6/10
In Cauda Venenum-G.O.H.E.
It’s hard to, and indeed seems kind of in just to, sum up a heaping prog metal serving like G.O.H.E., comprised of two 22-minute halves, in a capsule review, but that is kind of the format my current busy circumstances have forced me into. French outfit In Cauda Venenum made a self-titled debut in similar two-long-track fashion back in 2015, and the band’s gothic and somewhat theatrical brand of atmospheric post-black-metal is continued on their sophomore effort here, drawing the obvious comparisons to Opeth and Katatonia, as well as Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Numenorean, and Sólstafir, and apart from the more frequent sample usage and extra drawn-out songs, there really isn’t that much to differentiate In Cauda Venenum stylistically. The band’s second album, unfortunately, resembles so many others in the field with big aspirations and the same inadequate means of getting there.
5/10
Apparition-Granular Transformation
A much more bite-sized early two-track offering, Apparition’s debut EP offers a more promising glimpse into a heady, atmospheric, yet still visceral manipulation of modern death metal that I would be curious to hear in a more long-form format. In a genre as extreme as death metal in recent years has been, finding artists effective at working with negative space can be difficult, but the two songs on Granular Transformation showcase a formidable dexterity from Apparition that I think can take them places.
6/10
Molasses-Through the Hollow
While indeed marred by some rough performances on songs with sometimes more desert to cross than water to make it there, there’s an undeniable occult hypnotism about the Dio-era-esque doom metal hollow that Molasses ritualize their way through.
7/10
Death Angel-Under Pressure
While certainly an odd choice on the surface, Death Angel’s acoustic EP and cover of the famous Queen song actually comes out pretty alright. The acoustic version of Act III’s “A Room with a View” comes off with the energy of something like Rush whenever they went acoustic, and the original acoustic cut, “Faded Remains” isn’t too bad either. The acoustic format did not, however, mask the drabness of “Revelation Song” from last year’s overall disappointment, Humanicide.
6/10
Necrophobic-Dawn of the Damned
The Swedes’ melodic brand of blackened death metal is nothing if not thorough on the quintet’s ninth full-length, Dawn of the Damned, covering all the ground that their fans expect their style to cover and doing so with more compositional and performative stamina than their average contemporary. While the band’s broader compositional approach is akin to the beating of a dead horse, I can’t deny it produces some tasty motifs in the process.
7/10
Bloodbather-Silence
After coming onto the blossoming metallic hardcore scene in 2018 with a standard, but potent enough 14-minute EP, Pressure, Bloodbather are back with another 14 minutes of similar, yet less promising material, doing little to set themselves apart from or on the same level of the likes of Jesus Piece, Vein, Knocked Loose, or Harm’s Way.
5/10
Infera Bruo-Rites of the Nameless
The Bostonians’ fourth full-length is, at the very least, a rather well-executed forty minutes of modern black metal a la Craft or Watain, but beneath the seams the band’s progressive tendencies twist what would otherwise be a fresh, but standard, slab of black metal into a more head-turning offering of the usual shrieks and blast beats.
7/10
Touché Amoré-Lament
While somewhat shaky in their compositional exploration in their fifth LP, the firmness of their emotive post-hardcore foundation allows for Touché Amoré to build upwards relatively steadily without losing that raw vulnerability that has made them so captivating to begin with.
7/10
Gargoyl-Gargoyl
This is the self-titled debut from Bostonian four-piece Gargoyl; a novel blend of dirty nineties grunge and gothic prog metal, Gargoyl come through with one of the more impressive genre fusions of the year, meeting the lofty sufficiency for dexterity with excessive vocal harmonies in a manner so uncanny that would make habe to Layne Stayley proud. While there is the expected room for improvement on the compositional end that many debut projects come with, Gargoyl have laid the groundwork for themselves fantastically and started off on a good foot.
7/10
Crippled Black Phoenix-Ellengæst
Through creative gothic flair and full-bodied guest vocal contributions that bolster the somber atmosphere beyond the typical post-metal album, the UK band’s most recent offering of “endtime ballads”, despite its few low points that undo its otherwise immersive atmosphere, serves as one of the more engaging releases under the broader post-metal umbrella of the past year.
7/10
Wayfarer-A Romance with Violence
The Denver-based quartet follow up 2018’s strong emotive case for the potential for evoking cathartic power of the atmospheric black metal which has so saturated the American scene to the point of numbness, their Americana-tinged third LP, World’s Blood, unfortunately, with a fourth LP whose compositional homogeneity and mere few intermittent bursts of enthralling atmospheric instrumentation more represent, rather than advocate the merit of, the saturation of the American atmospheric black metal scene.
6/10
Armored Saint-Punching the Sky
Though I think the structural homogeneity and John Bush’s similarly limited vocal delivery holds it back, with crunchy bangers like “Do Wrong to None” and “My Jurisdiction” alongside more tempered tracks the clearly grunge-influenced “Lone Wolf”, Bush and company provide a relatively stylistically diverse traditional heavy metal album for an age that could use more contemporary representation of classic styles (beyond the entire stoner metal genre LARPing as Black Sabbath too).
7/10
Spirit Adrift-Enlightened in Eternity
But it’s not just the old guard representing their era of classic heavy metal robustly; a year and a half after their energetically melodic third album, Divided by Darkness, which took a triumphant melodic approach to classic heavy metal and doom metal similar to that of Khemmis on their excellent third album, Spirit Adrift ease up a bit on the hyper-soulful approach to guitar melody that had led me (and others I’m sure) to draw the comparison to Khemmis, and instead dive deeper into the headspace of the genre’s earliest progenitors to achieve that unabashedly glorious rallying cry that is evoked by the very front cover of Enlightened in Eternity. While I am personally pretty partial to the very vulnerable and heartfelt melodic approach that characterized Divided by Darkness, the effectiveness with which Spirit Adrift are able to wield the sometimes Maiden-esque, sometimes Testament-esque sounds of the 80’s on this album is undeniably impressive.
8/10
Fever 333-Wrong Generation
Providing the correction to this generation’s answer to Rage Against the Machine (after Prophets of Rage’s insufficient attempted revival) Fever 333 follow up last year’s debut of heavy, fired-up and modern take on rapcore with another 14 minutes of righteous anti-racist hardcore anger that’s attuned to the issues to a level that I wish more artists would at least express in their art. While the EP is 18 minutes long, the last two songs, “The Last Time” and “Supremacy”, don’t match the sonic energy of the first six tracks. The somber piano-led snippet-length ballad, “The Last Time”, should have been the conclusion of the album, but the closing track, “Supremacy”, while as conscious as the tracks before it, is basically a late-stage formulaic Linkin Park track that flatters neither of the two bands. Despite botching the landing though, Wrong Generation is a ripping batch of songs that well represent the current unrest and provide a positive hypothetical idea of what it might be like if Rage Against the Machine were in their prime and active today.
7/10
Mörk Gryning-Hinsides Vrede
The Swedes return from their 15-year disillusioned absence from the studio with a concise and clearly renewed enthusiasm for the energetic black metal that they put forth on Hinsides Vrede. Dynamically bolstered by folk-metal compositional tendencies and more than a dash of that famed Gothenburg melodicism (I know they’re from Stockholm and in fact their melodic approach often does heaven to that of their close neighbors from Uppsala, Watain), Mörk Gryning’s seamless return to music finds them jumping into the modern black metal scene’s advanced compositional rubric with relative ease.
7/10
Zeal & Ardor-Wake of a Nation
Having covered their output since their debut and being a big fan of Manuel Gagneux’ project, it pains me to say, especially given the noble pretext and occasional momentary flashes of sobering messaging, that this six-song mini release really doesn’t capture the unique sonic pallet that has made Zeal & Ardor such an interesting act to listen to for the past few years in the most flattering light. The title track is possibly the least of the offenders here, but all the songs here function by taking a little snippet of sound that samples Zeal & Ardor’s broader stylistic range, and drawing it out across these short, but all too minimally composed tracks in such a way that they lose their momentum very quickly. Like I said, I wholeheartedly appreciate, sympathize with, and support what Manuel Gagneux is doing to lend his band’s platform to the addressing of the dire issue of today’s racism through musical means with this project, and when its social motivation is at the forefront, it’s at its most potent, but musically, unfortunately, it’s just desperately underwritten in a way that doesn’t fairly represent how accomplished Zeal & Ardor really are with their sound.
5/10
Sevendust-Blood & Stone
The flashes of crushing grooves reminiscent of their earlier work on Blood & Stone that highlight how well Sevendust can harness nu/alternative metal to execute pummeling attacks with the right crunchy guitar tone, unfortunately, don’t come frequently enough on their twelfth LP to mirage the exhaustion that has come of the band’s writing process after such frequent, unrelenting output and the all too apparent desperate need for a recalibrating, refreshing break, which they certainly deserve for their tenacity.
5/10
Undeath-Lesions of a Different Kind
In one of those cases where the ridiculously gratuitous album cover actually represents the album’s sound quite well, Rochester, New York five-piece, Undeath mince neither words nor sounds on their debut LP in their 100% upfront, no-nonsense, and wonderfully nasty delivery of death metal. Eschewing even the slightest sense of snobbery or pretense for aimless ambition, the band simply compile the genre’s tried and true elements of bellowing growls, filthy riffs, mean-ass down-tuned chugging, and blood-pumping double-bass with blast beats into an addictive slab of raw, uncured death metal that serves as a testament to the merit of not overthinking shit.
8/10
Griffon-Ὸ Θεός Ὸ Βασιλεύς
On their sophomore LP, Parisian quintet Griffon channel the world innovative ethos that has become rather prominent in their scene into a somewhat short, but definitely sweet offering of modestly ambitious black metal that captures much more effectively than most albums of similar style and lesser imagination, the divine grandeur that the genre so often tries and fails to embody.
8/10
Bring Me the Horizon-Post-Human: Survival Horror
After taking the hard left into current pop music trends very transparently on their controversial, which was at least partially intentional on their part, and ultimately really patchy, but not wholly awful, 2019 album, amo, Oli Sykes and co. walk it back substantially for this smaller release here, back to That’s the Spirit, even Sempiternal, a prospect that might get a lot of the band’s more long-time, metalcore-centric fans excited, but I would suggest those fans temper their expectations of Post-Human: Survival Horror. The band reunite with the anthemic metalcore/deathcore that put them on the map for a good chunk of this album, and the intro track, “Dear Diary,”, might even give some false hope of the prodigal sons returning home. But songs like the cookie-cutter single, “Teardrops”, provide strong evidence that, while the band have re-embraced their old aesthetic, they have not kicked the pop vocal or compositional habits. And the project really does run out of energy in its final third because of this compositional homogeneity. I do want to highlight the song, “Kingslayer”, which features a very in-form Babymetal (I loved their album last year), because their fun, not-so-serious approach to the crossing of J-pop and metal music in their feature on this track among the other songs around it provides a contrast to the more formulaic, disinterested radio pop swagger that Bring Me the Horizon have been trying to jam into their sound that could perhaps inform Bring Me the Horizon’s artistic approach to integrating pop music if they really are so hellbent on doing so. Ultimately though, as much as they want to move into newer territory, this trajectory-revising release shows just how much more solid Bring Me the Horizon are in their metalcore territory than they were on amo. It had its predictable hiccups, but this thing wasn’t too bad.
7/10
Pallbearer-Forgotten Days
With the slow, sludgy, down-tuned riffing of the menacing opening title track and the similar chug of “Vengeance & Ruination” being the sole exceptions, the remainder of Pallbearer’s fouth full-length largely sees them operating in the same niche they have in their three previous albums. And while this could invoke accusations of playing it safe, the brimming heartfelt sorrow and resistance to succumbing to despair across Forgotten Days is enough to wave that away, as Pallbearer showcase just how emotive doom metal can be.
8/10
Bleeding Out-Lifelong Death Fantasy
The very new act and fresh Profound Lore signing, Bleeding Out, certainly display more dynamic capability than your average local grindcore scene’s biggest names here on their 18-minute debut for the label, but as of now it is still just a glimpse of potential for more effective future implementation. It’s a good start, though, and I’ll be looking forward to a more long-form project from these guys.
6/10
Evildead-United States of Anarchy
Every year we get the resurrection of some long-inactive old-school band who seem to have found that missing spark at last; we’ve seen the return of smaller bands to the studio like Angel Witch or Sorcerer and long-awaited revivals of iconic acts like Possessed. This year, Los Angeles’ Evildead has seen fit to make their commentary on the massive ongoing sociopolitical upheaval. Despite my love for the 80’s thrash scene they were born out of, the combination of the utterly lame band name, logo, and covers for either their ‘89 or ‘91 albums never really made me want to check them out, but seeing the horridly cheesy and incoherent cover of United States of Anarchy (I mean how much more on-the-nose can you get), my morbid curiosity got the best of me. Maybe I’d be wrong to have judged them by their cover, plenty of my favorite 80’s albums have particularly goofy cover art. So what do we get from Evildead in 2020 with this fucking album? Well, it’s not as poorly performed as the past few Anvil albums I’ve had to review have been, but Jesus the lyricism is similarly cheesy 5th-grade-level stuff and smacks of silly political incoherence that essentially boils down to “enlightened centrism” with mix of that good ol’ Illuminati-conspiracy-theory belief that no political thrash album is apparently complete without. I mean there’s just basic acknowledgment of the prominent problems of the day and the fact that both major political parties are bad and that corruption is rampant all throughout DC, but Evildead not only barely scratch the surface, they apply the same level cynicism to the “both sides” they criticize with no substantiation to their criticism despite that mindset being a big reason for our being where we are right now, mixed in with the occasional conspiracy-paranoia about the shadowy underworld running everything, so no real solutions or even proper addressing of these problems. Like, the same level of criticism is levied at right-wingers and communists, like communists are at all why this country has gone to shit. And the generic Anthrax/Megadeth type of thrash instrumentation, while rumbly and mixed well to highlight its bass heaviness, doesn’t exactly make it easy to get past the commentary deficiencies on here.
4/10
Emma Ruth Rundle&Thou-May Our Chambers Be Full
Rounding off their year (at least I think), with a long-teased collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle, Thou finally present their massive sludge-doom sound in a much more flattering light than the previous cover albums this year did. Thou’s original material continues to highlight just why their relatively stiff sound is much more cut out for that, original material, than for trying to bend beyond its flexibility to tribute grunge songs. And while Thou being back in their more effective department, Emma Ruth Rundle’s contributions, beyond just her gorgeous and ethereally haunting vocals, to the album’s atmosphere, dynamic, and structuring really take the collaboration to the next level. Not to say that Thou are completely overshadowed and relegated to the background on this record or that they don’t contribute to a fair share of the legwork here; the workload is shared pretty equally, and both collaborators have their moments of prominence, but Emma Ruth Rundle’s ever-present gothic/folky influence really directs the music in a way that plays to Thou’s strengths in a way I’m not sure they would have been able to on their own. It’s great work from both of them, and I’d be eager to hear Thou find more collaborations like this in the future that push them into doing more interesting things with their crushing doom sound, as opposed to the rather tepid collaborations with The Body.
8/10
Auðn-Vökudraumsins Fangi
Sadly, three albums in, Auðn have only barely exceeded the bare minimum for naturalistic atmospheric black metal, with no signs of significant improvement to be found. The Icelandic band earn points for their earnest delivery, but they never seem to fully make it out of the rut that the genre’s many contemporary acts have dug.
5/10
Botanist-Photosynthesis
The black metal traditionalists might have had to accept that the floodgates to bright ambience and serene shoegaze in the genre have been opened and that there’s no going back now, but even as an avid Deafheaven fan, I’m sometimes momentarily surprised at just how heavenly some black metal has gotten lately, and this new album from Botanist is one of those albums. And while it sometimes slips into some of the current wave’s typical ruts, the sheer blindingly illuminating aura of this album when it reaches those high points (and it does so frequently) is enough to pull it out from those gutters and high into the cosmos. Yeah, another splendid offering of nature worship from Botanist.
8/10
Mr. Bungle-The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
Making their return after over a decade, Mike Patton recruits both Dave Lombardo and Scott Ian for the long-awaited fourth Mr. Bungle album, which is titled in homage to the first Mr. Bungle demo which it is comprised largely of much clearer re-recordings of. Ever impressive, Mike Patton balances aggression and eccentricity like a tightrope walker on this project too, while his bandmates do the same with thrash metal’s natural adrenaline rush while pushing the genre into new compositional and stylistic territory without sacrificing that crucial whiplash. It’s a great time, and definitely one of the year’s best thrash albums.
8/10
Carcass-Despicable
While they’ve been much less prolific since their reboot than they were prior, Liverpool’s melodic death metal pioneers simply continue to demonstrate their excellence in this seemingly effortless four-track appetizer to next year’s Torn Arteries. Anyone familiar with the band’s brutal form of melodic death metal will certainly be pleased with the four quite sufficiently pulverizing cuts here; those who may only be familiar with some of the band’s many less muscular imitators might be surprised, and pleasantly so, with the Englanders’ ability to lay on the infectious guitar melody without sacrificing an ounce of force.
I know it’s a good week into 2021 now, but I had too much fun on Excel to not post these STATS!
2020 was a wild year for everyone, and I had plenty of life changes going on amidst the pandemic, the economic collapse, the social unrest to make it an even crazier year. Despite being busier than ever, 2020 (potentially due to shelter in in place) ended up being my most prolific year ever, reviewing 301 METAL ALBUMS that came out just this past year.
And that’s not counting the 10 non-metal albums I also reviewed, the albums from 2019 that I had missed that I went back to shout out, or the other 55 non-metal albums I enjoyed and various metal albums I heard but didn’t get around to reviewing. It felt apt to put a few graphs together, which are below.
The resolution is high enough on my end, so I think they should be nice and discernible. But I graphed the genres I listened to and the ratings I gave.
I’ll make sure to explain the process well enough to make the numbers make sense.
First up are these genre tables which should be viewable. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but I did also account for albums that extended into multiple genres. In the “Subgenres & Blended Genres” graph are genres like blackened death metal, ambient black metal, deathgrind, etc. Each of those I factored in to parent genres proportionally (i.e., 1 blackened death metal = 0.5 death metal & 0.5 black metal). Its not perfect, given that those proportions aren’t the same for every blackened death metal album, but it worked well enough. Naturally this got pretty tricky with albums that combined several genres or just ran the gamut of genres like Greg Puciato’s solo album. So I went through ALL 301 ALBUMS THAT I REVIEWED, and added up their proportional genre components. It was messy and I did end up with a lot of decimals, so I smoothed it out a bit by doing some rounding that I don’t think affected the data all too significantly, which is why there are all whole numbers of albums per each genre.
The results really weren’t too surprising; death metal and black metal at the top, with a good focus on progressive metal, metalcore, doom, sludge, and thrash. If anything, it shows me where I can turn some more of my my focus: folk metal, power metal, industrial metal, etc.
In a world where I had time, I might see about doing separate charts to see where I rated albums of a certain genre, but I don’t have that time and I think this overall rating histogram is pretty good on its own.
The right skew was not surprising, with most of the albums I reviewed being positively so. 7 was the mode, with 8 being pretty close. Naturally, I wasn’t looking for shit music, but if I was, maybe this graph would shape up a little more normally. Even so, the right skew is probably also indicative of just how much I naturally gravitate to and enjoy metal music as a whole.
Well, cheers to 2020, good riddance to all of it except for the music, and here’s to 2021, which will come with some changes that I’ll make a different post about.
2020 was a pretty fucked year, but we got some good shit in spite of the world trying to kill itself and the music industry. A lot of people speculated a huge slowdown in production and release pushbacks since artists wouldn’t be able to tour, yet while artists’ being stuck at home and unable to tour their studio material has been not just a downer but a huge financial stressor on smaller blossoming artists especially, the continuation of creative output has shown just how inspiration-driven, rather than market-driven, the music world is. Music has become less and less of a cash cow for artists as the years go on, but this abrupt halt of all touring was probably one of the biggest blows artists have had to deal with, and it really has done a number on the music industry as a whole. There’s not much money to be made here right now, but goddamn it if that hasn’t held back anyone inspired to offer their musical voice to our aching world, and I’m thankful as hell for it. So here’s to the best metal music of the year, and all the (not piece-of-shit) artists out there weathering the COVID storm and adapting to the suddenly altered climate.
It tends to go without saying, but I’ll just clarify that I construct this list based on what I reviewed this year, which is primarily metal music, yes, but it also sometimes gets into music that is more metal-adjacent. It might not be bonafide metal music, but it does somehow find itself in the broad metal sphere culturally or even stylistically. So when I include albums in this kind of list like Lingua Ignota’s Caligula or Uboa’s The Origin of My Depression, while those albums aren’t exactly metal per se and rather noisy industrial neoclassical post-modern neo-Marxist darkwave (lol), that’s why. When I include Me and That Man even though it’s a gothic acoustic country/folk project, it’s because it’s spearheaded by the frontman of Behemoth. And of course, my opinion, blah blah blah. These always end up being massive and take tons of time, so enough formalities, you know what it is.
70.Vile Creature-Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm
The Ontario duo come through with a massive record that seems too thick and sludgy to be just two people. And yet it is, and the band make quite the expressive statement with the style with just the two of them on their third album here, mainly by injecting much more than the usual emotive performance and vulnerability into the mix.
69.Thrown into Exile-II: Illusion of Control
On their sophomore LP, the L.A. band take a step back from the Trivium comparisons that characterized their first album and focus on making vibrant, energetic metalcore with conviction, however familiar and potentially dated it might be.
68.Eternal Champion-Ravening Iron
With one infectious melody after another, Eternal Champion really do evoke their namesake on this infectious batch of the most old-school, power-metal-adjacent 80’s heavy metal, refurbished just enough to make it fitting for the modern era.
67.Blood from the Soul-DSM-5
Another shared brainchild of the prolific Jacob Bannon, along with former Napalm Death guitarist Shane Embury, Blood from the Soul has shifted to become a rather familiarly hardcore project that feels very in line with the Converge frontman’s main project.DSM-5captures that raw, vibrant energy that the style requires, and runs elegantly with it.
66.Havok-V
I’ll grant that I was kind of expecting a little bit more from Havok after my loving of their 2017 thrash revival album, Conformicide, which was quite possibly the thrash album of that decade. Although it didn’t really emerge much from behind the shadow of its predecessor,Vis still another fiery, opinionated outing of Megadeth-inspired thrash that further establishes Havok as one of this new decade’s foremost names in thrash.
65.Inter Arma-Garbers Days Revisited
Undoubtedly the best cover album I heard all year, the Richmond band’s boisterous tributes from the likes of Venom and Ministry to Tom Petty and Prince (and Metallica with the album’s title) showcase their southern rock roots while still letting their sludgy sonic identity shine through it. It’s one of the most mindfully approached cover albums I’ve heard, and one that I’m not at all surprised to hear Inter Arma excelling at.
64.Sumac-May You Be Held
While it’s not as out-there and sludgily expressive as 2018’s post-metal masterpiece, Love in Shadow, this year’s more traditionally ambient May You Be Held still comes with a good deal of ambitious song structuring that allows the band’s eccentricity to come through.
63.Sodom-Genesis XIX
With another solid thrash metal offering on this list, the German thrash metal pioneers seem the pull from a bottomless well of enthusiasm as energy for the genre as they blast and riff their way through their 16th album, and you can feel the love the band still have for the style and you can’t help but join them.
62.Voidsphere-To Sense | To Perceive
I was prepared for the worst when the super lo-fi black metal tremolo picking kicked in, but Voidsphere’s fourth LP kept the dark celestial acid trip exciting and the sonic spiral into the unknown unceasing to make for an album that throws you to the void and really captures that “void metal” moniker in wholy engulfing atmospheric black metal fashion.
61.Sinira-The Everlorn
With some of the most consistently engaging Swedish melodeath of the year, this debut full-length from the Texan band was one of the most promising and already accomplished debuts I heard all year, and I hope that Sinira can keep the vitally soulful melodies and performative energy going on their future endeavors because The Everlorn is a real treat already.
60.Völur-Death Cult
Though it does get off to a bit of a slow start with the more standard doom metal of the first two of the album’s four tracks, Völur’s Death Cult eventually does make good on its promise of freakish folk metal that makes you feel like you’ve wandered off into the woods and run into a cult that wants to rope you up and hang you over a fire to slow roast your legs.
59.Thou&Emma Ruth Rundle-May Our Chambers Be Full
After a pair of ill-conceived and resultingly lackluster cover albums, Thou come through with a win with their latest offering original material, which their collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle certainly bolstered significantly. Her haunting vocals add a unique element of hypnotism to the band’s brash atmospheric blackened sludge that really makes the album the success that it is.
58.Suicide Silence -Become the Hunter
Probably one of the most significant turnarounds I’ve covered since starting this blog: I wasn’t as harsh on it as most critics (and fans especially), but the band’s widely panned self-titled album still ended up on my first list of worst albums of the year back in 2017. And here in 2020 they’re on my best-of list with their follow-up. It’s no surprise really; the self-titled album was really just a weird misguided blip on the deathcore icons’ timeline, and with Become the Hunter, Suicide Silence (who clearly heard fans’ message loud and clear) drop the tee-hee and resume their mantle of tasty, groovy deathcore with the best album they’ve made since losing Mitch Lucker.
57.Aseitas-False Peace
With their second album, False Peace, Aseitas establish at the very least a respectably ambitious and experimental ethos that produces both fascinating results in the present and exciting prospects for the band’s future of warping death metal, industrial metal, and metalcore into twisted forms.
56.Psychotic Waltz-The God-Shaped Void
One of the year’s most impressive comebacks comes from the San Diego prog metal pioneers of Psychotic Waltz, whose fifth album finally materialized a decade after their 2010 reunion. And it makes sense, given that context, that the band’s comeback album sounds so fluid and well-balanced. They’ve been rebuilding that chemistry for a decade now, and have had plenty of time to groom this long-awaited release, which serves as a prime guiding example of both a return from the grave and of classic progressive metal.
55.Obsidian Kingdom-Meat Machine
Perhaps the most overtly eccentric and attention-grabbing album on this list, like a dude in a rainbow tuxedo at a death metal show, Obsidian Kingdom first and foremost put on a dazzling show that keeps you engaged and interested, experimenting freely with modern progressive and sludge metal elements, but also showcasing an aptitude with the styles they contort that gives them the capability to do so intentionally rather than amateurishly.
54.Hatebreed-Weight of the False Self
Jamey Jasta and company came through with one of the most energizing and motivational hardcore/metalcore albums of the year. After the raging political commentary of 2016’s The Concrete Confessional,Weight of the False Self directs Hatebreed’s hardcore energy toward individual encouragement and betterment, and it’s a lyrical approach that I think fits them well and directs them to make some of their most slamming and effective hardcore music. Its songs have all already received a good few plays in my workout playlist.
53.ACxDC-Satan Is King
And speaking of vibrant hardcore, ACxDC come through with a quick, but wickedly biting offering of thoroughly aggitated and fired-up powerviolence that seems perfectly tailored to the broad social unrest of the year, channeling it more than capturing it. It’s a sharp, vicious album that feels fit to represent a lot of people’s feelings about the prominence of governmental failures in responding to the economic distress of the pandemic, the rise of fascism, and police brutality.
52.Regarde Les Hommes Tomber-Ascension
The French five-piece’s third album was one of few vibrant post-black-metal records I heard this year in the vein of Numenorean, and Ascension certainly struck for me a similarly emotive chord that kept me coming back to it all year long despite my listening to so much other music.
51.Afterbirth-Four Dimensional Flesh
One of my favorite brutal technical death metal extravaganzas of the year, Four Dimensional Flesh is a treat in both departments without sacrificing one for the other, and it’s a fucking blast the whole way through.
50.Scour-Black
It really says a lot for an EP to make it here, but Scour (despite indeed being a supergroup) have really outdone themselves with their high-octane, grindcore-informed black metal on their third, and best, EP so far, Black. The band of seasoned players packs more into 16 minutes than most bands in their proximity do in 3-4 times that length.
49.Moloken-Unveilance of Dark Matter
Moloken go mad and experimental on their sludgy and tormented atmospheric fourth full-length, Unveilance of Dark Matter, affirming their status’s one of the style’s foremost innovators alongside the likes of Amenra and The Atlas Moth.
48.Lorna Shore-Immortal
On their third LP, Lorna Shore showed that deathcore at its most gratuitous and sickening is a force to be reckoned with, with nastily inhuman vocals and ripping instrumental shows of physicality.
47.Avatar-Hunter Gatherer
The melodeath showmen silence their doubters with a gloriously anthemic and theatrical performance on Hunter Gatherer that never blinks or flinches in embarrassment, and it has no reason to. The album is more conceptually cohesive and intriguing than a lot of the prog I heard this year, and more life-affirmatinf and inspirational than pretty much all the power metal I heard too. This one was a big, definitive win for Avatar.
46.Spirit Adrift-Enlightened in Eternity
Just a year after the beloved Divided by Darkness, Spirit Adrift go even more retro on Enlightened in Eternity, bringing (albeit less than last time) a vital melodic beauty with them that few other acts in their vicinity are doing to the degree they are.
45.The Black Dahlia Murder-Verminous
I had a bit of a change of heart on The Black Dahlia Murder this year, and a big part of that was the undeniable death metal power of the band’s ninth album, Verminous, whose slick melodies and punishing brutality work exquisitely together without one dulling the other. I’ve been harsh on the band’s work in the past, but the infectious brutality of Verminous has really made me rethink my views on them, and by repeated returns to the album throughout the year have been the sufficient indication that I might have had it all wrong about them.
44.Alestorm-Curse of the Crystal Coconut
How this band are able to keep going is beyond me, but I’m here to applaud it, not argue with it. The Scottish pirate metal masters came through with a strong return-to-form album back in 2017, with No Grave but the Sea recalibrating the band to their unique brand of folk metal that they established on Captain Morgan’s Revenge after going off into the stylistic weeds on Sunset on the Golden Age in 2014. But that Curse of the Crystal Coconut embodies that carefree pirate life attitude that makes Alestorm so fun, venturing again into weird stylistic seas, this time with more success than last.
43.Xibalba-Años en Infierno
As fiery as their album’s title implies, Xibalba bring a simple, but welcome, hardcore flavor to slow-beating death metal that frames the genre’s naturally crushing attributes in a flattering light.
42.Tombs-Under Sullen Skies
After a less-enticing appetizer EP earlier in the year, Tombs unleashed their full power and mastery of the arts of death, doom, and black metal on Under Sullen Skies, a record whose consistently solid compositions kept me hooked into it and rather impressed after the taster the band offered earlier in the year.
41.Autonoesis-Autonoesis
Riding a melodic steed into the fray of progressive black metal and thrash metal out of fucking nowhere, this was hands down one of the best independent debut albums of the year that I feel very lucky to have caught wind of before year’s end. I’m eager as hell to see what’s next, if there is indeed something next, for Autonoesis.
40.Dark Buddha Rising-Mathreyata
Coming hot off their collaboration with Oranssi Pazuzu last year, the Finnish psychedelists clearly sharpened their approach to their spacey, atmospheric sludge drones through their collaboration with one of the best acts to train alongside. Mathreyata is significantly more layered and engaging than past Dark Buddha Rising albums, and I have loved basking in the band’s progress since it came out.
39.Sylosis-Cycle of Suffering
Maybe a little too metalcore-influenced and melodic to be considered a straight-up thrash album, but if we let thrash be a diverse field, this was my thrash album of the year. And it’s just a simple recipe of delicious riffs, soaring melodies, and performances with conviction that carry Cycle of Suffering over the line.
38.Carach Angren-Frankensteina Strataemontanus
And speaking of big performances, the theatrical Dutchmen’s sixth album is as conceptual and immersive as ever for them as they take freakish artistic liberties with the 18th century science experiments that were supposed to have inspired Frankenstein (the novel). The symphonic elements are bigger than ever and the band are committed to the act, which makes for an intensely captivating show.
37.Executioner’s Mask-Despair Anthems
A goth melancholic waltz equal parts White Light from the Mouth of Infinity-era Swans and Type O Negative, Despair Anthems is a bleak, meditative set of entrancing songs that certainly felt all too fitting during much of this year.
36.Red-Declaration
Completing basically back-to-back bouncebacks with the release of Declaration, Red redeem themselves after the release of what I think is their worst album (Gone), which followed immediately after a very welcome return to form on Of Beauty and Rage. And like their previous return to form, the band drop the contrived overproduction from Gone and bring back the bombastic, cathartic orchestral elements that have given their brand of inspirational alternative metal its muscle, serving as a reminder of what made this style so resonant in its mid-2000’s peak.
35.Code Orange-Underneath
Probably one of the most big-hyped follow-ups of the year, I saw a lot of reviewers and publishers calling this thing perfection almost reflexively immediately after it was released, but for me, I don’t think it quite reached the lofty bar the band set in 2017 with Forever. But even though I wasn’t as floored by it as so much of the music writing world was, what Code Orange do on Underneath to push metallic hardcore deeper into the more glitchy industrial territory they helped open up is a thrill and much more exciting than the vast majority of the metalcore and hardcore out there.
34.Pharmacist-Medical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition
Well we didn’t get any Pissgrave or old school Carcass this year, so Pharmacist came through to fill the void with some of the most surprisingly accomplished and compositionally astute goregrind albums I’ve heard in a long time. The band are able to make the absolutely nasty into something weirdly inviting through their keen sense of groove.
33.The Acacia Strain-Slow Decay
The Acacia Strain are another band who I warmed up to this year after being kind of overly critical of them in the past, and their roaring back into form with Slow Decay definitely helped that along. The band found again in this album the hardcore mojo that they’ve used to set themselves apart from the rest of the deathcore crop.
32.Ulver-Flowers of Evil
I was surprised at Ulver’s continuation of the new wave synth rock worship that they engaged in on 2017’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar, but not at all surprised, given how well the band fared on their previous foray into the style on that 2017 album, at how smoothly and effortlessly the group once again embodied the style’s best characteristics.
31.Ghostemane-ANTI-ICON
I don’t know if the verdict is out on this album among critics, but something tells me Ghostemane probably isn’t the darling of most people writing for Pitchfork or Rolling Stone. And while I get the sense that its shouty, tormented, edgy industrial metal take on rapcore didn’t make ANTI-ICON a high-minded enough of album to place in most publications’ year-end lists, I couldn’t help returning to it repeatedly this year and loving its raw honesty and addictive expressive realness.
30.Tortuga-Deities
This was one of the most happenstance of my Bandcamp findings this year, but I was so thankful to have heard this debut. After dealing with a lot of uncreative or just tired stoner doom Sabbath-worship, Tortuga’s progressive brand of stoner metal that they showcase on their debut here is full of life, dynamic, and creativity and is refreshingly far removed from the Master of RealityandVol. 4.
29.Cryptic Shift-Visitations from Enceladus
I’m definitely riding alongside quite a hype train with this debut album here, which was quite lavishly adorned with praise and exultations within the Bandcamp world. Deservedly so, Visitations from Enceladus is quite the bold debut into the technical death and thrash metal void that Vektor have left behind. And it’s far from being a meandering wanktest; the band go super-big-brained on the sprawling progressive compositions, especially the 26-minute centerpiece of the album, “Moonbelt Immolator”. It’s an adventure of an album for anyone eager for that techy sci-fi thrash; the hype on this one is legit.
28.Caustic Wound-Death Posture
Out of all the grindcore I went through on my big grindcore binge earlier in the year, Caustic Wound’s thick, quick, nasty, no-nonsense Death Posture was the album I kept coming back to the most for its totally engulfing storm of deathly musical shrapnel. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but the way it’s sure spinning the shit out of the wheel is something you don’t see that often.
27.Myrkur-Folksange
And on a very different note, the Danish singer’s return to her folky roots on Folksange is without a drop of metal in it, only here on this list because Myrkur is what people would consider a “metal band”, but god do I love this album a lot. Amelie Brunn’s long-standing love for and experience with Scandinavian folk music shines magnificently on this album and its ethereal beauty really transports you to some quiet pre-industrial Scandinavian village in the snow-topped mountains and makes you feel like you could stay there.
26.Aversions Crown-Hell Will Come for Us All
Aversions Crown bring a good dose of passionate melody to the high-octane techdeath they play and they integrate it in a rather constructive manner on Hell Will Come for Us All that only bolsters and takes nothing away from the grandiosity of their sound.
25.Terminal Nation-Holocene Extinction
The doomer energy is strong with this one, and for good reason; I can’t blame Terminal Nation for their bleak outlook. But alongside the band’s apocalyptic prophecies on Holocene Extinction is a well-balanced cocktail of doom, grind, and death metal generating plenty of justified ire and directing it at the deserving institutions.
24.Within the Ruins-Black Heart
At the intersection between techdeath and deathcore, Within the Ruins provide a desperately needed creativity and instrumental freshness to the style that makes Black Heart such a fun and exciting listen.
23.Neptunian Maximalism-Éons
At 123 minutes in length, this thing is a monster of an album. Yet it speaks to the album’s effectiveness that its two-hour length really doesn’t feel like much of a factor while listening to it. Time doesn’t really seem to mean anything in the throes of the massive whirlpool of chaotic percussion, disconcerting jazz arrangements, and monolithic metallic drones that pull you in and envelope you in completely. It sure is a time commitment in the real world, but in the alternate dimension the album constructs, time doesn’t matter, and you’re too busy being sucked through the sonic vortex to care about it.
22.Thy Catafalque-Naiv
Thy Catafalque is a well-loved and well-respected band for their consistent ambition and avant-garde approach to metal music. And maybe it’s because pushing boundaries and crafting odd, unique progressive metal experiences is the norm for them that Naiv seemed to fly under the radar as an early-year release. Regardless, it’s an album whose brilliant experiments in progressive metal and jazz fusion deserve to be appreciated and applauded.
21.Spirit Possesion-Spirit Possesion
One of the year’s freshest and most invigorating black metal albums was this eponymous debut from the Oregonian duo. Sticking to the gritty and rebellious attitude that metal built its roots in and which black metal developed its own corpse-painted spin on, the band reject modernity and embrace tradition, and the fiery performances of all the tasty licks and riffs they sprinkle over the album really makes it hard to argue with their choice in doing so.
20.Inexorum-Moonlit Navigation
Inexorum really put the “melodic” in melodic death metal on the beautifully soulful melodies of Moonlit Navigation, whose harmonious, Khemmis-esque guitar leads give the Viking battle cries behind them a deeper sense of purpose than just surviving and beating whatever challenges lie ahead.
19.Emmure-Hindsight
Now here’s an album that I don’t think any of the critics are getting wet for. Frankie Palmeri and Emmure were always kind of the pariah of the metalcore world, and Frankie’s hunger for controversy, however tasteless, outshining the band’s generic try-hard tough guy metalcore music made them a pretty easy target to pick on. But after the Palmeri reset in 2017 with a new band and the mission statement of Look at Yourself, Emmure are starting to hit back, and the strength they’ve trained up is simple. Bangers. That’s it. Hindsight is a sharp, punchy, and to-the-point, no fat to trim, nothing but agile, dirty-fighting djenty metalcore. With only a few songs cracking even the two-and-half-minute mark, the band pack only the densest, most hard-hitting shit into the tight boxes they have, handing the baton to the next song before the first gets even a little fatigued and loses even a little bit of pace.
18.Countless Skies-Glow
With big prog metal ambitions and a real drive to shoot for the stars, Countless Skies hit their celestial target on the absolutely gorgeous progressive melodeath of Glow, whose operatic glory and symphonic majesty would make Devin Townsend smile in awe. Feel free to judge this one by its beautifully painted cover, because it really is beautiful.
17.AbysmalDawn-Phylogenesis
I was relieved that this band had not hung up their capes after the six-year wait for this album, and once again, Abysmal Dawn’s compositional focus produces some of the most crisp and infectious death metal songs of the year. Phylogenesis is a representative of modern death metal in its most photogenic, highlighting the benefits of the genre’s technical evolution.
16.Expander-Neuropunk Boostergang
I suppose this is my thrash album of the year. Having listened to the band’s previous and rough experiments with thrash in preparation for their debut on Profound Lore, I wasn’t really expecting much, but the band did really get their grip on the experimental steering wheel with this album. Crystalizing their sound on their sophomore LP, Neuropunk Boostergang is a fascinating and eye-catching blackened disfigurement of the genre in the best way possible. The harrowing sounds give the futuristic apocalyptic outlook of the album its fear factor, and this is a kind of technical, experimental, blackened form of thrash that I certainly don’t hear anyone else doing.
15.Carnation-Where Death Lies
Another breathtaking sophomore effort, Carnation follow up the bulgingly muscular old-school death metal of 2018’s Chapel of Abhorrence with another punishing offering of the same ass-kicking on Where Death Lies. It’s another of the year’s many monuments to the natural power of the unadultered death metal delivery. Thick, ground-shaking distortion. Fast double-bass. Mean fucking low-tuned grooves. Fierce growls. Carnation don’t need much else to pound your skull into the ground.
14.Undeath-Lesions of a Different Kind
And an even more deathly debut album, Undeath come out of nowhere with the stupidest, nastiest death metal riffs of the year. Even more old-school, even more down-tuned, even deeper gurgly death growls than Carnation, Lesions of a Different Kind is an indulgent exercise in Morbid Angel worship that I can’t help but keep coming back for repeated helpings of. The nasty, stupid caveman riffs, the delectable bass lines, I can’t keep myself away from it.
13.Gazpacho-Fireworker
The Norwegian prog-rockers go big on the layered and choir-bolstered arrangements of Fireworker, which transforms their ordinarily tempered and unassuming prog rock into a cinematic statement piece of instrumental grandeur, and god what a fun time it is. It’s great to hear them take this leap and put more instrumental weight on the bar to see how much more they can lift by playing with all these new elements, and I do hope this isn’t the last of it.
12.End-Splinters from an Ever-Changing Face
This meeting of brilliant minds, to me, was the metalcore album of the year, and the various contributors’ pedigrees show through the smart arrangements, tight performances, and raw energy in every nook and cranny of the album. Splinters from an Ever-Changing Face is less industrially supplement than Code Orange’s or Vein’s recent work, and less openly angsty than Nails or Knocked Loose, but in its raw and violent form, it’s a great showcase of the natural mosh-inducing aggression of metallic hardcore.
11.Haunt-Mind Freeze
In seeking to emulate the glory of the glory days of heavy metal in the 1990’s, the Fresno-based traditionalists have also matched the prolific output of their heroes in their early years. After putting out an album last year and the year before, Mind Freeze was the first of two albums the band put out this year, and what a tribute to the genre’s melodic forefathers. Advantaged by hindsight and informed by the styles of melodies of today that the band show to fit well with the older style, Haunt would undoubtedly hold their ground in the landscape it time-travels to, and Mind Freeze is my favorite 80’s metal album of 2020.
10.Neaera-Neaera
The German quintet’s inspired comeback after their brief disbandment produced the most committed, unflinching offering of melodic death metal the year had to offer, made all the more impactful by the band’s invested performances and metalcore-influenced punch. It’s an album deserving of its eponymous status that the band certainly should feel proud of, proving whatever they needed to prove to come back after their break-up.
9.Pyrrhon-Abcess Time
No album I have ever heard captures quite so vividly the real-life nightmare world of the late-stage capitalist state through such productively experimental means as Pyrrhon here on Abscess Time. Stringing together these off-kilter rhythms, disorienting progressions of dissonant chords, and migraine-tormented screams about the horrors of alienated labor with thematically relevant film samples that help give the album a cinematic sort of immersiveness, Abscess Time is a freakish monster so hideous it’s impossible to look away, because all its ugliness is already a part of you.
8.Humavoid-Lidless
The album that scratched my Meshuggah-loving itch the best this year, Lidless is a blast of a prog metal album and a hell of a mission statement from the up-and-coming Finnish band. Stirring smoothly the proggy grandiosity of Devin Townsend, the synth-play of Dream Theater, and the hypertense jazz piano that Imperial Triumphant are known for into their Meshuggah-inspired sense of groove, Humavoid have made something entirely their own in spite of the identifiable sources of the ingredients, and it’s a whirlwind of an experience in a very positive manner.
7.Gaerea-Limbo
The mass that Gaerea sit us through on Limbo is hardly like any boring-ass religious ritual you’ve ever had to actually sit through. Though the experience the masked Portuguese liturgists create on their second full-length is a pretty religious one, holding back nothing as they bleed out an utterly transfixing and petrifying opus of expressively raw and emotional shaking blackened death metal and post-metal. It’s an album that doesn’t hold back and it’s heavy more than just in its distorted guitars and titanic growls; I highly recommend it and can vouch for the hype it got.
6.Mamaleek-Come and See
The anonymous San Francisco-based duo really outdid themselves on this one; Come and See was by far the weirdest and most artistically experimental album (to succeed to such a degree) that I heard all year. Twisting dizzying swells of jazz and blues instrumentation into hypnotizing, yet unsettling figures of noise and metal. Even though I don’t think I would ruin it by doing so, it’s one of those albums that I feel like I couldn’t possibly describe well enough to do it justice. It’s a one-of-kind album for which “interesting” is a gross understatement. And I highly suggest you join me in figuring out what the hell this thing is if you haven’t already.
5.Greg Puciato-Child Soldier: Creator of God
But speaking of albums I don’t want to spoil by going over every detail about them, Greg Puciato’s debut solo album, Child Soldier: Creator of God, is the solo album every artist dreaming of a solo career dreams of making. Puciato admitted the album came about through his accumulating of songs that felt unfit for any of his other projects, and it’s an album that seems to be born out of a lot of the same wide-variety ambitions that makes so many other solo albums like it fall flat on their faces. For every style from sludge metal to shoegaze to synthwave on here, Puciato shows a deep familiarity with it that makes the songs here feel so genuine. I have been absolutely in love with this album and only falling deeper with it. It is absolutely beautiful and stunningly impressive in what it’s able to accomplish. I can’t say enough good things about this album; Greg Puciato has quite possibly outdone himself with this one here.
4.Ulcerate-Stare into Death and Be Still
Somehow simultaneously atmospheric, emotionally gripping, and crushingly heavy, the sixth album from the forward-thinking New Zealanders is their most accomplished. The way the band strip away the artificial layers to pull the fast-pumping heart of death metal to the surface of the music and present it in a very human light is something else, something that I hear much more of in the black metal world, yet Ulcerate have made death metal atmospheric and meditative, strengthening rather than sacrificing the core heaviness of death metal. Those the band’s supposed pretentiousness has already pushed away might even see more clearly in the band’s reaching of an aspired sound on this album what they have been going for all this time and might be reeled back in by the crushing emotional heaviness and the crushing death metal heaviness in the gorgeous, somber, yet fire-throwing guitar work and the stoic humanism of the monstrous death growls. Ulcerate really landed on something here, striking the gold they’ve been steady tracing their way too, and while it definitely has its barriers to entry, I can’t recommend this album enough.
3.Deadspace-A Portrait of Sacrificial Scars
This album sadly is the Australian band’s last, which they announced their disbandment with the release of back in March. And while it’s a farewell as bittersweet as any, if it’s a high note the band wanted to end on, so can’t blame them for stepping away now because they certainly did so here. The band revitalized their sound in a big, and ultra-drepressive, way with the ample output of last year, and A Portrait of Sacrificial Scars is the indeed grand culmination of their work toward this more full-bodied, and terrifyingly existential form of DSBM. Adding tastefully the haunting singing of backing choirs to their arsenal of depressive black metal weaponry, Deadspace go out in as much of a blaze of glory as a band in their field can, with pure emotional realness and a despondent sound so black, heavy, dense, and crushing it starts to swallow the light from the soul into the black hole of despair the supernova of a band has collapsed into. And like any big celestial event, this album is a fucking thing to behold and be swept in awe into. I don’t think there will be another album like it for a long time. Thank you Deadspace, not just for your final work, but for all of it. I’ll miss you a lot.
2.Imperial Triumphant -Alphaville
This fucking album! Launching into a second similarly styled avant-garde album about the ugly corporate underbelly of their home city, the New Yorkers double down on the harrowing integration of nightmarish jazz instrumentation from 2018’s Vile Luxury, proving with Alphaville that their enigmatic genius was no fluke. And now the band are even more fluent in this unworldly language they’ve created, capturing the hell of the urban sprawl in horror trip hallucinations set to death metal that scares you off the ledge of the skyline and cockeyed jazzy piano lines that smile creepily as you fall through a bottomless pit of skyscraper lights sprinting past you. It is a hell of an album in a very literal sense of the phrase!
1.Oranssi Pazuzu-Mestarin Kynsi
At last, my favorite album of the year, one I could not stop playing over and over again like a drug, and very much like a drug-induced experience, is Oranssi Pazuzu’s psychedelic black metal magnum opus, Mestarin Kynsi. Like Ulcerate this year, Oranssi Pazuzu found on this album an optimized sonic formula that they had been tweaking meticulously toward perfection since the beginning of their career, and what a crystallizing point Mestarin Kynsi is! I wrote a lot about it already this year, and I feel like I am probably just going to repeat myself if I go on about its intense cerebral experience and how layered and evolved the band’s psychedelic black metal sound has become; this album is an experience unlike any other that at this point I just want to slather more praise onto. This album is a huge achievement for Oranssi Pazuzu and psychedelic black metal, which is realized to its fullest form yet (as far as what I’ve heard goes) on Mestarin Kynsi; if the prospect of psychedelic black metal ever sounded ludicrous or if previous products of that genre or other albums slapped with that label didn’t sound convincingly deserving of being called psychedelic, Mestarin Kynsi changes that. The band’s brilliant sense of dynamic and atmospheric build is on full display here as the effects-drenched walls of guitar sound and other-worldly swells of synthesizer psychedelia they employ create this colorful, hypnotic wormhole that swallows you whole and spits you out, after a time too unimportant to comprehend during such an experience, wide-eyed and sweating on the ground, stunned and speechless. Without a doubt my favorite album of the year.
