Top Picks
Enslaved – Mið (progressive black metal)
Albums like this are why I don't bother including (much) basic black metal in these lists anymore. As far as they've strayed, Enslaved are still arguably the best black metal band to ever do it, and Mið is only further evidence to that statement. In contrast to Utgard (2020) and Heimdal (2023), which shook things up a bit with their darker, more distinctive tones, Mið sounds (and feels!) like classic Enslaved. In particular, it reminds me of the masterful Axioma Ethica Odini (2010), which might just be my favourite black metal album of all time. In a way, it seems like a more logical continuation of that record than the bombastic, overblown prog-explosion of Riitiir (2012), blending that era's icy yet driven progressivisms with more of the warmer, folkier tendencies of the criminally underrated E (2017), which still remains my favourite of Enslaved's post-Axioma era—if now only by a hair.
Darkest Hour – Suffer Divine (melodeath thrash/core)
Similarly, Darkest Hour's previous record Perpetual | Terminal (2014)—while solid—just sort of came and went. A monster release by many other bands' standards, it simply seemed like par for the course for the hardcore heroes, especially coming after what might just be their crowning achievement in Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora (2017). Unfortunately for Perpetual | Terminal, but extremely luckily for us, its impact is dwarfed even further by the arrival of Suffer Divine, which stands alongside Godless Prophets and the albums they made their name with in the later part of the early 2000s, as some of the best metalcore ever committed to record. ...If you can even call it that at this point.
Darkest Hour have always had a tenuous and largely historical connection to the "-core" side of their sound and here it has been all but subsumed by the furious, melodeath-infused thrash that has always set them apart, and at which they truly excel. If you don't think Darkest Hour are a thrash band at this point, then simply listen to a second of this album's title track (below). Any second will do, and should not only prove that they belong to that genre, but are absolute masters of it. A link to more extreme, thrash-leaning metalcore acts like Killswitch Engage or Heaven Shall Burn might still be drawn, but otherwise Darkest Hour draw more ready comparisons to the likes of The Haunted, or even Arch Enemy at their peak. This metallic momentum probably has a lot to do with newish guitarist Nico Santora, who cut his teeth playing with The Faceless and Fallujah, really coming into his own on this record, and—together with the rest of the band—forming a fathomlessly formidable front.
Release Roundup
Absolute Power – Needs Must When the Devil Drives (heavy metal)
Abyssal Decay – Call of the Abyss (death thrash)
Alltid Allena – A Quiet Collapse (blackened goth)
Amnesia – Eternal Phobia (death metal)
Arcanat – Inhuman Action (slaming brutal death)
Argion – Vltreia (power metal)
Ash of Ashes – All Must Wither (progressive melodeath)
The Astral Prophets – Invasion (heavy metal)
Backbone – Ama Nesciri (posty goth-doom)
Black Royal – Abyssian (melodeath)
Blatant Disarray – The Ashes Where Our Hopes Lie (alt rock/metal)
Blind Channel – Painstream (buttcore)
Blistered Existence – What Once… Was Not (death thrash)
Bloedmaan – Circle of the Moon (black metal)
Bloedmaan/Crypts of Dusk – Curse of the Emerald Knight (black metal)
Blutgott – Death Of The Bloodking: Die Schlacht Um Knochenheim Teil 1 (GWARC/DC)
Boor – The Stones Hold All Echoes (meloblack)
Breach – Breach (beatdown metal/deathcore)
Brian Moody – Chamber Crawl (groove death/metal)
Carmeria – Ex Cathedra (power H.I.M)
Cathedral – The Guessing Game (Rethink) (new old prog-doom)
Cirith Ungol – All The Shadows (heavy/trad metal)
Cryptorium – Through the Bowels of Ceaseless Dissonance (death metal)
Crystal Eyes – Thunder God (heavy metal, rock)
The Curse Made Flesh – To Each Their Hell (prog death)
Daemogog – Manifest Pulsing Sequelae (weird death)
Dantalion – Dantalion (meloblack)
Dawn of Destiny – Ashes Over Tomorrow (power metal)
Dead Twilight – Totentanz (death metal)
DeathFuckingWound – Teratoma Haruspex (noisegrind, war metal)
Deathwards – Realms of Sin (death thrash)
Dread Witch – Cult (death doom)
Dream Unending – Certain Uncertainties (progressive doom)
Dungeon Serpent – Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms (meloblackened death metal)
Eldfödd – The Night Belongs to the Dead (death metal)
Electric Guitars – What Are We Waiting For (melodic rock)
Embrace Of Thorns/Invocation – Invoking The Noumenon/Crushing The Feeble Messianic Embrace (death metal)
Ereboros – From Oblivion to the Grave (blackened death metal)
Eternal Crypt – Memories Fade in Time (gothy meloblack)
Exhumed/Nunslaughter/Molder/Traffic Death – Split (death metal/doom/grind)
Finality – Singularity (progressive metal/melodeath)
Fractality – Fractured Reality (crossover thrash)
Gabriel Lejeune – Pyramids (heavy metal, shred)
Genital Shame – Wellness Plan (depressive/progressive/posty black metal)
Goat Rider – Hellkvlt (speed metal)
Grave Hex – Domain of Foul Rebirths (death metal)
Grave Monolith – Grave Monolith (blackened death-doom)
Grotesqueries – Nightmare Delirium (death metal)
Haul – Magna Kalahar (post metal/doom)
Hellir – Hollow Moon: Aphelion (blackened sludge-doom)
Hope Collapse – Age of Heathens (crust death)
Hydra – Sign of the Witch (doom metal)
Invultation – Inferno Descends (brutal death metal)
K-Tion – K-Tion (heavy metal, thrash)
Kingdom Collapse – Survivor (butt rock)
Korrupt – The Weight We Carry (melo/black metal/doom)
Laser Dracul – Hin Håle Blues (sludge doom)
Lord Gallery – Insurrection (heavy metal)
Lude – The Angst of Being Reborn in Nameless Flesh (progressive blackened-death)
Lumsk – Einsemda (folky post-prog)
Mastic Scum – Void (groove death)
Master Boot Record – Computer Metal (synth metal, chiptune)
Ministry – Hate to Go: Take Out or Delivery (go away already with this shit)
Mortual/Noroth – Split (death metal)
Mystification – Cosmic Disclosure (blackened death metal)
Necroseminal Spatter – Sick Ways To Sodomy (ew)
Negativus – Invidia (death metal)
Nickelback – Everything Under the Sun (actually good butt-rock/metal)
Nitroverts – Under My Skin (pop metal/rock)
No Man – Between The Sword And The Neck (crusty black metal)
Ocean Of Illusions – Nexus (prog death)
Odious Sanction – Overwhelming Hatred for Humanity (groove death)
Pallas – A Song For Tomorrow (post prog)
Pantheïst – Uncanny Times (post doom)
Picha – Despichado (deathgrind)
Powermönger – Powermönger (speed metal/thrash)
PreHistoric Animals – Magic Love Destruction (prog rock/metal)
Putrid Stu – Poopee (slaming brutal death)
Queens of the Stone Age – Perfecth (indie/hard? rock)
Rattlesnakes – Shadows in the Night (power metal)
Raw Ensemble – The Psychomorph Curse (techy death-thrash)
Red Light Acid Test – Little Death (alt doom)
Rev3erent – She Let the World Run Rampant (deathcore babies)
Revenge from Beyond – The Dark Cycle of Golden Crown (meloblack)
Roky Erickson And The Aliens – The Evil One Re-Release (Fire)
The Samuel Jackson Five – A Passage To Elsewhere (psyche/prog rock)
Sarcator – The Ones We Follow (thrash black)
Satanic Planet – Dead Deities (weird Satanic shit)
Scarblade – Guardians of Time (heavy thrash)
Scott Hepple And The Sun Band – Wyrd Seasons (psyche rock)
Seidhr – Algolhorde (black thrash)
Sek – Wallensteins Garage (prog rock)
Shogun Mojo – Shogun Mojo (y tho?)
Single Print Index – Confessions (new old Code Orange)
Slam Band – The Album (slaming brutal deathcore)
Sledeon – Sovereign (prog metal)
Sleep Throne – We Were Never Meant to Be Here (death metal)
Sneglefeber – Ormekulten gryr (sludgy black-doom)
Somnent – Heirloom (mellow doom)
Thomas Miller’s Lazarus Effect – Thomas Miller’s Lazarus Effect (prog metal)
Tormentous – Siege Bastards (noisy deathgrind)
Traumatomy – Ascension Of The Ineffable (slaming brutal death)
Trolldom – Tronen (black metal)
Unchained Vengeance – Unbound And Unforgiving (heavy metal)
Valkyrie Zero – Last Way Forward (thrash)
Velnias – Substrate Haruspex (progressive/blackened folk-metal)
Victoria Lies – Vendetta (My Chemical No-mance)
Vigil – Primordial Rites (blackened thrash)
Warout – We Never Stop, We Never Out, ‘Cause We Are Warout (thrash)
White Hills – Collected Consciousness (ambient drone)
Xentrix – Allied with the Enemy (thrash)