The Best of 2024…So Far

Allie X – Girl With No Face

This is one of the most addicting albums I’ve listened to all year; Allie is an absolute master at crafting hooks that you just can’t rip out. Girl With No Face sounds lush, expensive and classic with hint of queer and weird edge.

Cave Sermon – Divine Laughter

Crushing, dissonant and constantly morphing, this album plays with tone and mood in a way that mimics painting. Capable of serene beauty and gripping darkness, Divine Laughter is the sound of being beaten to death by abstract art.

Convulsing – Perdurance

I like weird death metal and this is some of the best I’ve heard in years, with constant inconstancy and almost jazzy structures and moods. I feel far too stupid to describe Convulsing’s music, which is exactly as it should be because these riffs are stupid good.

Dionysiaque – Diogonos

It may be cliché to rip myself off and once again describe this album as a mystical drunken woodland orgy, but I’ll just claim it’s my literary leitmotif. This is aggressive doom metal with enough energy and black metal flourishes that it twists into an unwieldy monster that exists to consume revelers.

Hekseblad – Kaer Morhen

Kaer Morhen remains my most listened to record of the year so far, and while I’m not sure if that makes it my favourite, it certainly carries weight. This record is both retro and modern in a way that mirrors some of the others on my list – there is something to love and discover in every single era of every genre of metal, and Hekseblad show black metal still has plenty of castle ruins left to mine.

Job For a Cowboy – Moon Healer

Moon Healer sounds immaculate, seamlessly blending ten years of changing musical landscapes with the band’s own constant identity that feels like an evolution that is in no way out of step with their own history.

Lucifer’s Hammer – Be and Exist

The New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal has been going strong for over a decade at this point, and it’s incredible to still find bands that sound as fresh and energetic as Lucifer’s Hammer. Fun, melodic and the guitarist knows how to make that thing sing.

Slimelord – Chytridiomycosis Relinquished

Chytridiomycosis is an infectious disease that spreads amongst amphibians via a fungus, which is exactly what it feels like to listen. This is gnarly, dripping death/doom that will root inside your nervous system and blossom it’s goopy disgusting morass to infect yet more beyond.

Upon Stone – Dead Mother Moon

Upon Stone channel the best of 90’s In Flames through the ramped up intensity of decades of death metal development, particularly by brushing up close with hardcore in a way that feels particularly modern even when entwined with classic sounds.

Witch Vomit – Funeral Sanctum

Good old death metal, nothing beats that. In a sea of slamming hardcore influenced rhythm sections, Witch Vomit spotlight guitars and mood in a way that feels underappreciated today. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of good old death metal.

10 Engulfed – Unearthly Litanies of Despair

I listened to this one late—like it came out in April and I spun it the day I started writing this list—but I listened multiple times and am convinced it deserves a spot here. Riveting murderous death metal from members of Hyperdontia, Decaying Purity, and Burial Invocation, this album is pure evil brutality. 

9 Job for a Cowboy – Moon Healer

Goddamn did we wait a long time for this, and goddamn was it worth it. Jonny Davy and company built on the prog-forward acrobatics of Sun Eater and delivered a remarkably replayable record that’s as fun as it is impressive.

8 Septage – Septic Worship (Intolerant Spree of Infesting Forms)

Imagine, if you will, the filthy swill of goregrind but with grooving death riffs stirred in and production that’s juuuust clean enough to hear all that goodness squishing together in there. Well you don’t have to imagine, because that’s this album. 

(Postscript: I found out while putting this article together that Septage have broken up, and now I am sad.)

7 Vitriol – Suffer & Become

This album is a fucking firestorm of astounding intricacy and unstoppable brute force. The successful combination of that level of mindboggling complexity and sheer violence is extremely rare, but Vitriol undeniably nailed it. 

6 Hamferð – Men Guðs hond er sterk 

This was probably the most unexpected and pleasant surprise of the last six months for me, a devastating and beautiful effort from a band I hadn’t encountered before. It’s the ideal balance of crushing weight and melodic allure, dark and light, stormclouds with rays of light breaking through. 

5 Hyperdontia – Harvest of Malevolence

My favorite non-legacy act death metal band remains extremely good at what they do, which is write the most pummeling and engaging OSDM you’ll hear. This album is riff central, the songs are catchy and smartly written, and every burbling bass lick and serpentine guitar solo is another feather in their bloodsoaked hat. 

4 Houle – Ciel cendre et misère noire

I was blown away by Houle’s self-titled debut EP back in 2022 and thus my expectations were sky high for Ciel cendre et misère noire, which turned out to be nothing short of stunning. This is everything I want in a black metal album, and vocalist Adsagsona is a goddamn star. 

3 Replicant – Infinite Mortality

One of my favorite bands on earth returns with yet another banger, stuffed to the grimy gills with groove-laced dissonance. It’s animalistic, brutal shit that never loses a sense of respect for its stylistic influences—Gorguts, Negativa, and Demilich, most obviously—even as they focus their songwriting to impressive new levels. 

2 Atræ Bilis – Aumicide

The Vancouver quartet narrowly beat out Replicant for this spot, and I reserve the right to change my mind come December; in the meantime, though, Aumicide takes the silver medal for its unbelievably tight and nuanced take on futuristic techdeath. The songwriting is wicked good, the riffs won’t quit, and the cold filter of technological body horror permeates every second. 

1 Spectral Voice – Sparagmos

It feels like the legend of Spectral Voice has already grown to enormous proportions as the much-anticipated follow-up to their beloved debut impressed on every front, garnering deserved universal praise. Sparagmos is an unparalleled, nightmarish trip into subterranean ritual, bone-filled depths of caliginous caverns and moss-covered stone passageways that echo with mysticism and grotesque violence. 

Honorable Mention: Domain – Life’s Cold Grasp

Two words: Florida metalcore.

5 Wristmeetrazor – Degeneration

Wristmeetrazor maintain their trajectory of constant evolution from one album to the next by going harder, heavier, and way more industrial. Degeneration sounds like it could either have come out about 20 years ago or from a not-too-distant dystopian future, which ultimately must be a mark of timelessness right?

4 Terminal Nation – Echoes from the Devil’s Den

As Kep rightly suggested in his full review of this one, Terminal Nation are literally the best band doing the whole hardcore-influenced death metal thing that’s all over the place at the moment. This album is an absolute steamroller of crushing riffs and even crushing-er breakdowns that extends a merciless hand to the throats of fascists and oppressors the world over.

3 Splitknuckle – Breathing Through the Wound

This record should essentially cement Splitknuckle’s status as UKHC legends if they had not attained it already. Drawing from death metal, beatdown, and apparently even bands like Mastodon and Gojira, the compositions on Breathing Through the Wound are complex, jagged, and mean as hell.

2 Despize – Scotland’s Hardcore

Despize are the first of the current crop of awesome Glasgow hardcore bands to release a full-length and they have set a high bar for the others to follow. It’s basically all mosh fuel, which is basically all you could want from a band this good at it.

1 Contention – Artillery From Heaven

22 minutes of breathless apocalyptic straight edge metalcore that lives up to the lofty expectations Contention have set for themselves with their fantastic previous EPs. Vocalist Cosmo sounds so desperate and furious as he screams of humanity’s ever more inevitable demise over a backdrop of glorious 90s metalcore/H8000 worship.

10 Wormwood – The Star

Tonally bright and swaying from the sound of their previous records, Wormwood decided to play into a lot of folksy noises, new vocal styles, and more of a melodic approach than usual. There are still many points of intense black metal that harkens to their usual modus operandi, but intermixed with that is experimentation that sounds like the band had a lot of fun making this record, as I had a lot of fun listening to it.

9 Rotting Christ – Pro Xristou

Rotting Christ delivers another epic blasphemous black metal record just as they have for the past three decades. To be around this long and to have this many albums and for them to still pack a punch like this despite their formula remaining mostly unchanged is a testament to how great they are at their craft and their sound, and I hope they keep on giving us albums like this forever, I can’t get enough.

8 Olhava – Sacrifice

Another gorgeous offering from the outfit I love to listen to while I sit and think about how beautiful nature is and how I’m so mad it’s being destroyed, which makes the wonderful screeches the perfect backdrop. This album is extremely contemplative, taking its time with each soundscape to draw in the listener and invite you inside like a warm hug beneath a weeping willow tree, an atmospheric black metal record that truly lives up to its atmospheric name.

7 Antichrist Siege Machine – Vengeance of Eternal Fire

This is an absolutely evil record, pummeling you into the ground from the very first riff and never once letting up. It’s rare to find bestial black metal like this without some kind of sketchy connection, so the fact that they’re leftists makes this all the better – the perfect album to listen to while thinking about TERFs dying.

6 Dödsrit – Nocturnal Will

Clearly I’ve been listening to way too much DSBM in my life because these uplifting albums are really hitting the spot with me right now; Dödsrit’s latest output has an aura of optimism around it, with the guitars taking center stage and emitting a joyous tone that reminds me a lot of Darkthrone’s The Underground Resistance. Definitely the perfect black metal album to pull for storming a castle in Elden Ring or walking in the park on a sunny day.

5 Vorga – Beyond the Palest Star

Amazing cosmic black metal as always, Vorga return with another stunning record that dives into epic doom metal sections, adds captivating synths that are reminiscent of 80s space-themed rock n roll, and as always nails it on the atmospheric black metal sound. If you enjoyed their previous albums, you’ll love this, too.

4 Saidan – Visual Kill: The Blossoming of Psychotic Depravity

Saidan have always stood out for their unique J-rock black metal blend and they have elevated it on this latest album, giving us not only more J-rock black metal goodness but also adding in punk sounds that take their unique sound to the next level. Between the amazing guitar solos and the fist-pumpable blast beats, this is a downright fun record that will leave you craving more.

3 Hulder – Voices in Oath

Straddling the perfect line between old school second wave black metal and modern symphonic black metal, Hulder’s latest effort is the best yet. Not only did it deliver for fans of Hulder, but it exceeded and outperformed all expectations, intricately weaving powerful, classic black metal sounds with atmospheric shifts and folksy sections that tie it all together in a perfect bow.

2 Frail Body – Artificial Bouquet

My little emo, black metal loving heart adores this album so dearly as it takes screamo and makes it blackened in the most killer, innovative way possible. The vocals on this record are absolutely wild, the riffs are gorgeous, and every single second of this thing feels like what I’ve been searching for my whole life – a band I didn’t know before this album that has quickly shot up to being one of my favorites. 

1 Amiensus – Reclamation: Part 1

While I’ve always enjoyed this band, this album made them into a favorite, as they have released something so beautiful, warm, hopeful, and inviting that it immediately went into my “favorite black metal albums of all time” list. There are clean vocals all over this record and they work perfectly, and because of that the harsh vocals sound even more extreme, in a chaotic, mesmerizing, and gorgeous work of art that will be difficult to top in the second half of the year.

Knoll – As Spoken

When this album was announced, my first thought was, “What the fuck is ‘funeral grind’?”  But what I got was way more than what I could have ever expected, and I even got to see them tour behind this record.

Tangled Horns – Lighter

Since signing to Polderrecords at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023, Tangled Horns have literally been teasing this album for a year.  In some circles, you might call that “edging,” but this album pays huge dividends—especially for old grungeheads like yours truly.

Amiture – Mother Engine

It’s rare for an album to blow me away the first time I listen to it.  Probably close to a dozen more times (maybe more), and I think I love it even more now.

Commander : ) – Starberry Perzervz

The fun thing about noise rock is that you could take ten different bands who cite the exact same sources of inspiration and come back with an incomprehensibly diverse and eclectic collection of sounds.  Fusing hip-hop beats with post-punk, industrial, neo-psych, and garage rock, this compilation is so good it’ll seep into your bones and build a nest inside your brain.

Clouds Taste Satanic – 79 A.E.

Goddammit…I fucking love Clouds Taste Satanic.  Their ability to not just write but perform some of the most lush, grandiose riffs is the stuff of legends, and 79 A.E. is just another chapter in their already storied career.

Cell Press – Cages

Similar to Amiture’s Mother Engine, I find myself loving this album even more each time I listen to it. It’s an incredibly engaging and challenging album while also very accessible and is absolutely a strong contender for Album of the Year.

GAIVS, spaceseer, & Heaven — Realms of Antiquity

The world of underground music is rife with unbelievably prolific artists, and spaceseer is no exception.  After a sabbatical to Greece to seek inspiration for new music, what resulted on this new collab is some of the best dungeon synth I’ve ever heard and possibly the best ever recorded.

Black Band Shirt – Proud Filth

Are you one of those who like Deafheaven but think they’re a little too “artsy-fartsy”?  If so, you’ll love the earnest, heart-on-your-sleeve approach of Black Band Shirt, whose debut is guaranteed to blow the sleeve of tattoos off your arms and tighten up those earlobes you’ve been stretching out for the last decade or so.

Whettman Chelmets – A New Place

I swear, I don’t know how some artists are capable of churning out such impeccably wonderful music time and time again, but Whettman Chelmets must be a wizard of some kind.  While not as challenging or sonically dense as last year’s Koppen, A New Place is challenging and dense on an emotional level while maintaining that blissful sonic quality of a true masterpiece.

Subverge – Xoubec

I realize we’re quite a few years away from intergalactic travel, but, if we did have such a thing, this would be the soundtrack of everyone’s hypersleep while awaiting arrival at their destination planet.  The third installment of Seven Trees’ Henrik Karlsson’s side project gives off major Alien film series vibes and will have you checking your air ducts for any hidden xenomorphs.