It’s July! Wild stuff, this year is absolutely flying by. I promise to do more writing in the second half of 2026–work and home lives both have been crazy busy, but I’m gonna make time to bring you the good shit. In the meantime, check out this list of tremendous albums from the first half of the year.
Good Ass Death Metal
Kicking things off we have five death metal albums worth getting all hot and bothered about. Think some of these bands are death/doom and should’ve been in another category? Sucks, idc, they’re here because I say so.
It’s been the year of the Fs: Danes Foetorem released their first LP of grimy, groovy, crushing riffs that get stuck in your head for days; Brazilian duo Fossilization ratcheted up the sheer evil brutality with another grim, breathtakingly violent opus; and Funebrarum returned with their outstanding first full-length in 17 years, now featuring the brilliant shredster Philippe Tougas as part of their lineup. Meanwhile Italian quartet Devoid of Thought followed up their excellent 2021 debut with a colossal and daring effort, the twists and experiments of which outdo the myriad of squirming patterns on the cover, and Immolation continued their streak of never releasing an album that’s less than exceptional with Descent. Death metal remains great in 2026.
Slow Shit
Boy howdy did Furnace Floor come out of nowhere back in May. Ceremonial Passage Through Fire is a smoldering, incendiary listen of slowly churning magma, the best death/doom, blackened or not, I’ve heard this year by a large margin. Bell Witchian melodic lines and crushing, enormous riffage. St. Louis metal scene, I wasn’t familiar with your game.
I’ve been lukewarm on some of the big death/doom releases this year that others loved—Bone Weapon comes to mind—but Malignant Aura really hit me hard with their blend of dirging sorrow and choking rage on Where All of Worth Comes to Wither, a sophomore album that concentrates the best aspects of the debut into a particularly potent listen. And Ennui’s is the lone funeral doom album I’ve really loved in 2026, delivering the enormous swells of emotion and towering elegant riffs that I crave.
BRVTALITY
Three records from differing spaces within the brutal death scene, each doing what they do particularly well. You want good old fashioned pummeling à la Disgorge and the like? Stabbing have got your back, with a sophomore record that leveled up all that they offered on their debut. Want a frankly ignorant amount of impenetrable blast beats and the constant WANG of dodgeball snare? Gibbeting truly beat the breath out of me on Execution Rampage, a listen that has far more layers than are immediately apparent. And Trichomoniasis delivered something that’s simultaneously more experimental and more accessible than any of their previous material. It’s goregrind-y and atmospheric and suffocating but spacious and noisy but oddly intelligible and I dare you to not find it fascinating at a bare minimum.
It’s Proggy, It’s Techy, It’s Weird!
Does the idea of prog death from the school of pre-Tangerine Dream obsession Blood Incantation get your motor running? Ordh’s crunchy cosmic debut is your new favorite listen, and if I was ranking these albums it would have a real shot at the top spot. Then at a completely different point in the prog death spectrum is Speglas, whose blackened prog- and post-metal influenced take on melancholic Eurodeath is immaculately melancholy and ultra-polished, and their long-awaited full-length debut was worth every bit of the wait.
Rounding out the category are two disparate examples of avant-garde and/or technical death that really shine brighter than the rest. Growth’s take is an ultra-polished, cleanly produced post-metal influenced listen that veers wildly from atmospheric narrative passages to intensely affective emotion to jagged, visceral heaviness. It’s the sort of thing that feels deeply personal but adventurous and wide-ranging while remaining remarkably cohesive. Then there’s Bekor Qilish, whose new album feels like a set of complex geometric equations, warped into impossible shapes by cosmic radiation, viewed through eyes that are slowly freezing solid in the frigid darkness of space. It’s dizzying, horrific stuff.
Simply: Black Metal
Black metal in general hasn’t been impressing me much this year, but the ones that have hit have been big winners. Miserere Luminis, for example, are creating some of the most moving and dynamic atmoblack out there these days, and Walg are now six(!) albums deep since their inception in 2021 and Walg VI is as pristine an effort as any they’ve offered. Elsewhere, French mining black metal quintet Galibot followed up a re-recording of their debut in February with a brand new album in May that ripped harder than the first, while Fire Magic’s new record was an absolute firestorm of jubilant, soaring riffs. My favorite entry on this list, though? That of the delightful Astral Alchemy, a duo from NYC whose band pic and album art includes a glowing pink orb and whose riffs are equal parts icy, woodsy, and cinematic. There’s even a slam with pig squeals!
u grind?
Short and to the point here, just like these albums. Okay fine, the Pilori is 34 minutes because they’re not strictly grind. But it doesn’t feel that long! Portland grinders Fake Dust are my new grind obsession and their debut is 19 tracks in 20 minutes of absolutely feral shit in the style of greats like Insect Warfare and Wormrot. And if you like your grind mixed liberally with crust and hardcore and other assorted filth, it’s hard to come across a band that’s doing it at a more quality level than Pilori.
Extremely Good Other Shit
Here in the catchall category for shit I loved that doesn’t fit neatly elsewhere, chaos reigns. Dionysiaque’s stentorian, theatrical doom is one of the most unique listens of the year so far, all slabs of thick riffs, baritone vocals, and thrashing madness. Polaris Experience, out of Japan, gave us their debut Drifting Through Voids out of nowhere, and it’s the vibrant, addictive prog thrash opus you didn’t know you needed in your life. Hellripper have delivered another triumphant (hell)ripping festival of deliciously wicked blackthrash, and northern Michigan’s enigmatic trio Pan returned from a period of long dormancy with Glacial, a doomy, soulful, crushing ode to folklore and nature that I can’t recommend highly enough. That Atlantic Ridge album, though, is a really special one: blackened doom, slowed to funereal speeds and immaculately balanced in elements. A two-man project from Bedsore’s Jacopo Pepe and Thecodontion’s G.E.F., it somehow feels ancient, mystical, and daring all at once.