2024: audit of the year

I went into shortlisting for this year expecting to barely scrape together twenty releases worth of calling out. Instead I’ve actually struggled to keep the list south of forty.

2024 has been a rare year where both the overground and underground seem to be in agreement on the uptick in quality (for entirely different reasons of course). It has been an interesting year to witness. Blood Incantation’s long forecasted return – for all the chatter about their worth – has at least given rise to that rare thing in metal, large populations all talking about the same thing. Something we used to call events. Judas Priest continue to confound expectations. And a number of mid-tier death and black metal artists continue to chug along in defiance of any purpose.

This year has also seen the return of some personal favourites of mine (Mefitis, Polemicist, Petrale), along with some welcome surprises from the underground (Valadier, Deathlike Dawn, Critical Defiance), in stark contrast to the otherwise tepid output of 2023 (a Marthe or Demoniac aside). I had a wobble last year as far as my faith in metal’s vialbity is concerned. I think I could chalk this up to being a new father with very limited free time. If we take a longer view though, since COVID, metal has steadily become more exciting, surprising, and at the very least thought provoking as much as it continues to frustrate us.

But if you feel like keeping up with new material is no longer a labour of love but just….labour, it’s ok, I’m here to help. I don’t intend to add loads of new releases to your already lengthy listening queues apart from the fact that that’s exactly what I am doing. But you could also just delete your shitty listening queue and replace it some decent artists like the ones I’m about to discuss.

I’ve ranked them in tiers rather than a formal list, the final list coming to the unusual number of thirty six.

As always thanks for everyone for continuing to support the site, thanks to all the artists for keeping me busy and for all that they do, and thanks to any labels, bands, randomers, or publications that have reached out with words of support and advice.

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Tier 4

Adorior: Bleed on my Teeth
Out 27^th September on Dark Descent Records

The long awaited return of Adorior fails to pick a lane, and in doing so offers an experience more akin to a series of medleys than a coherent sound document. But Melissa Gray’s vocals are a delight to listen to, boasting one of the most expressive voices you’re likely to hear within extreme metal. But the pacing of ‘Bleed on my Teeth’ is such that one comes away with the impression that the band were simply unable to settle on a style or even specific riffs before shifting gear. One can practically hear the compromises being made in the writing process. There remains a latent joy in the sheer chaos of the performances, an overwhelming malevolence is returned with interest. But any binding vision or intent behind this album is sadly lost in the mire.

Black Funeral: Flames of Sam​ū​m
Out 8^th September on Dark Adversary Productions

Material from Black Funeral over the last decade can still rightly make headlines, reliably sparking more talking points than the scene he used to provoke so thrillingly. But in the context of the challenges this artist used to offer on albums like ‘Az-i-Dahak’ and ‘Waters of Weeping’, one can’t help but lament how familiar and comforting Black Funeral have become. Ford is still steeped in his occultist and mythological inspirations, which prove enough to elevate what – in lesser hands – would be rather stale material. There is real world building at work behind ‘Flames of Sam​ū​m’. But the returning characters across this album, the quotations from black metal history, the ruthless familiarity of the presentation, all speak of an artist happy to rest on its laurels and write the odd love letter to the scene, apparently unwilling or unable to challenge it further in any meaningful way.

Cardiac Arrest: The Stench of Eternity
Out 17^th May on Hells Headbangers

Although it lacks the angular precarity of its predecessor, which hinted at ‘Legion’ for its harnessing of unbridled chaotic energy, there is still an underlying menace to the Cardiac Arrest formula lacking in the majority of ostensibly old school death metal. Cardiac Arrest stand apart for their ability to renew archaic forms with modernist urgency. But as this lacks the bite of previous works it fails to dazzle in the same way, making this noteworthy for the geeks but otherwise skippable

Coffin Curse: The Continuous Nothing
Out 22^nd April on Memento Mori

Reminiscent of Vader in spirit if not in content. A vestigial thrash influence is clearly present, but more importantly, it leans into the dense, frantic, almost bombastic violence within death metal innovated on Slayer’s ‘Reign in Blood’, but most profoundly expressed on Deicide’s ‘Legion’. Knowledge and ability is not lacking, but intent is mired by an overeagerness to stuff these pieces with too much activity, clouding the message

Darkestrah: Nomad
Out 29^th March on Osmose Productions

Darkestrah find yet more mileage in the heavy/black/folk military procession metal innovated by Bathory, developed by Graveland, and imitated by everyone from Primordial to Russian and Ukrainian NS bands. The substance of their latest effort ‘Nomad’ consists of marching paced heavy metal riffing, impressive for the amount of information it manages to convey with very little substantive complexity. Darkestrah have delivered a detailed and dignified surprise of modern epic hybrid metal that both celebrates its component parts whilst transcending them.

Grand Demise of Civilisation: The Blaze of Abbadon
Out 4^th June on Ordovician Records

This album is archetypical of death metal musicians composing black metal, with all the pros and cons that come with this process. As a rule of thumb, death metal is the more composed form of extreme metal. Black metal, by contrast, is the art of doing more with less. Whilst atmosphere and texture are key ingredients in this distinction, established wisdom overplays their importance. It is the overreach of black metal that marks it apart from death metal, We have picked this album out because despite the lurking sense of overly zealous middle management. The knowledge of longform composition alongside a clear aesthetic intent elevates this above 90% of material confronting us in a similar vein, for the simple reason that ‘The Blaze of Abbadon’ is conceptually loose, modest in design despite its rich sonic tapestries, and intuitively understands black metal as the leveraging of disparate elements (techniques, forms, vibes, contrast) into a project of world building. 

Holyarrow: 勝利萬歲 / Long Live Victory
Out 27^th March on Pest Productions

Theirs’ has always been a proudly heavy metal infused take on black metal, with pieces orientating around a strongly defined melodic core, lyrical solos, and strikingly anthemic link passages. Holyarrow have achieved what few of their contemporaries can even approach. ‘Long Live Victory’ successfully strips back the “epic” qualities of their previous work, a latent feature inherent to a deeper, folk orientated historicity. A sharp, confident militarism emerges to replace this, one that retains a sense of grand narrative whilst referencing democratic forms of music to bring these populist moments of Chinese history into sharper focus.

Void Moon: Dreams Inside the Sun
Out 7^th June on Personal Records

Clear and crisp melodic doom metal replete with bounce and pomposity despite the basic set up. Void Moon are essentially a back to basics heavy metal band, with no thrills, keyboards, or flashy theatrics to distract from a showcase of longform melodic riffing, narrative lyrics told through soaring metal crooning, and unapologetically showy guitar solos.

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Tier 3

Clactonian: Dea Madre
Out 12^th July, self-released

Cacophonous and obscurantist grinding black metal featuring members of Thecodontion and Ashen Tomb. Hubristic in its treatment of the well trodden ground of dark, grindcore inspired black metal in the shadow of Beherit and Blasphemy. Whilst a murky haze lurks over the music with suffocating vigour, Clactonian set themselves apart with an unusually pronounced melodic character, alongside a basket of riffs one would normally associate with the darker aspect of deathgrind al-la Blood. 

Cosmic Jaguar: El Era Del Jaguar
Out 29^th May on Soman Records

Most obviously inviting comparisons to Atheist in their ‘Jupiter’ iteration, Cosmic Jaguar’s genre loyalty is perhaps on thinner ice, their specific conceptual vision being Aztec based means pan flutes and various percussive instruments find their way into the mix. This place them on the border of cacophonous/confusing mess and actually well crafted progressive metal with a distinct identity. Despite this rather tantric approach to venturing an opinion in this review, I’ll just clarify that this album is pretty great.

Deceased: Children of the Morgue
Out 30^th August on Hells Headbangers

Ah Deceased, on paper such a straightforward prospect, in practice anything but.  ‘Children of the Morgue’ is just the latest in a long line of similarly dense, filling offerings from Deceased, a five course meal of melodies catchy enough to land on a pop punk album, boundless percussive energy, a cornucopia of heavy/speed/thrash metal riffs in their armoury, and Fowley’s near unstoppable enthusiasm for retelling high concept horror through the medium of metal.

Mayhemic: Toba
Out 26^th July on Sepulchral Voice

Bears all the hallmarks of Chilean thrash in its excitable abandon, although perhaps a little less focused than Demoniac or Critical Defiance. Despite this more by the numbers than the Chilean contemporaries I have thus far come across, even boasting some rockist tendencies at times (see ‘Valley of the Thundra’), they embody all that is exciting and unique about this part of the world and its astute ability to drag old forms kicking and screaming into the now.

Moral Putrefaction: Moral Putrefaction
Out 24^th May, self-released

This Indian outfit are nominally of the old school camp, but such is the identity and life bubbling through the many contours of this debut that the category is almost by the by. Immolation circa ‘Unholy Cult’ onwards immediately stands out as a key influence, which, as a body of work, is almost defined by the way it distinguished itself from the old school crop it grew from, remaining one of the few pillars of post 2000 death metal to carry a flame of creative progression.

Sorgelig: Φθορά
Out 4^th October on Tragedy Productions

This may be purely anecdotal, but it feels like black metal’s popularity is waning. And that’s a good thing. Finally allowing the genre to catch its breath and take stock. Sure, there are still the Goliaths of the genre that suck out the oxygen whenever they choose to resurface. But at a grassroots level, things seem a bit freer, looser, spontaneous, dare we say creative. There’s nothing particularly revolutionary going on. And thanks to black metal’s easy accommodation of sensationalism and theatrics it remains vulnerable to whatever new fad is thrust upon it. But for the time being the genre’s holding pattern is fertilising some fairly decent releases. Whether the return of Sørgelig is an outlying piece of data or signs of a newfound confidence and freedom within black metal, I lack the statistics to say with certainty. But ‘Φθορά’ is a welcome return to the solid, unoriginal, swaggering fury of the latter days of the Norwegian scene, with a dash of character and unabashed theatrics thrown in for good measure. 

Vorus: Desolate Eternities
Out 1^st March on Loud Rage Music (cassette version available from Macabre End Prods 15^th March)

Austere death metal builds a platform out of an absurdly basic approach to riff construction, and uses this to launch loosely defined melodic material taking the form of licks more than fully articulated sentences.

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Tier 2

Birkental: Peccatum Mortiferum
Out 13^th December on Void Wanderer Productions

Energetic, warm occultist black metal with aspirations toward high melodicism and subtle yet effective gestures toward epic narrative storytelling. Whilst Birkental are hardly the first in black metal to experiment with bass guitar as a lead instrument, this is certainly one of the most successful attempts since Necromantia. The music carries enough character that one can forget its oddities and simply appreciate this as a whole. As an intellectual exercise it is interesting to note the various ways Birkental have overcome the limitations of the bass when compared to layers of guitar. The tireless drum work, the sporadic church organ tones, or the time and effort to craft melodic currents that stick in the mind far longer than a good portion of modern metal bands are capable of. ‘Peccatum Mortiferum’ makes for a late entry into the book of 2024, a delight of black metal oddities.

Boarhammer: II: Chemognosis – A Shortcut to Mushrooms
Out 26th January on Naturmacht Productions

Boarhammer traverse classic heavy metal, black metal, and some blackened thrash, all fundamentally functioning as mere accompaniment to high drama. One of the more eccentric and shamelessly fun entities to arise from the underground recently, their focus on occultism is literal, deploying music as a soundtrack to ritual magic (in this case the use of wood), making reference to the playfulness of pre-norwgeian black metal in Root, Master’s hammer, and tormenter.

Brodequin: Harbinger of Woe
Out 22^nd of March on Season of Mist

Whilst the idea of brutal death metal band armed with medieval concept material feels like a gimmick, Brodequin limit their focus to a persistently violent take on this genre, deploying the occasional nod to classical melodic forms to supplement the relentless atonal attack, that, and a monomaniacal rhythm section make this a curiosity within the current landscape of death metal

Condemner: Male Patratis Sunt Atra Theatra Parata
Out 28^th June, self-released

Condemner take a sledgehammer to the already crumbling edifice of death metal, smashing the lavish facades and elaborate archways, vestiges of a genre that has strayed far from the path of lucidity, relevance(?). Selecting only the most essential foundational stones from the rubble, the project of building anew can begin. This is, however, a step sideways for condemner, a brief, clarifying provocation to the wider extreme metal landscape, a reminder to anyone willing and able to listen that the raw materials of the past are still viable building blocks, configurable into endless novel forms if one has the patience and guile to administrate these bountiful resources.

Culto Licántropo: Culto Licántropo Eterno
Out 25^th April on Sacrilegio Records

Solo project of Cóndor’s Antonio Espinosa Holguín, one of the most compelling outfits in modern underground metal. This EP weaves a fascinating tapestry of suggestive raw black metal by enhancing the underlying riff package, leveraging what feels like elements of doom and death metal to elevate the melodic topography of this notoriously stale subgenre. Perhaps this is because Culto Licántropo are somewhat going beyond metal here via a marked alchemy between folk, medievalism, and contemporary experimental electronica. But to be honest, anything associated with the condor project warrants close attention.

Dead Space Chamber Music/hackedepicciotto: Live improvisation, Crypt of St John on the Wall
Out 7^th June, self-released

This live recording of the improvised collaboration with the darkwave outfit hackedepicciotto sees Dead Space Chamber Music’s manipulation of arcane musical forms meet with a cold, clinical modernism, as drone, industrial percussion, noise, and random flecks of traditional melodic contouring melt together in a work both anachronistic yet oddly familiar.

Deathlike Dawn: Among the Graves of the Archetypes
Out 27^th February on Putrid Cult

Bucks the trend for riff based black metal by treating jagged dissonance as a starting point and not an end in itself. Like all good metal, Deathlike Dawn makes great currency out of a binary interplay (light and dark, good and evil etc.), caveating each theme with its opposite in frequently renewed forms. 

Departure Chandelier: Satan Soldier of Fortune
Out 12^th January on Nuclear War Now

Reaching to a form of Celtic Frost derived black metal that thrived before Norway reigned supreme (referenced maybe only by Darkthrone out of the big names of the Nordic set), Departure Chandelier operate with a laser like focus on simple melodic themes, expressed via intermittent guitar hooks sitting atop a foundation of basic, punk derived power chord play, finding their harmonic counterpoint through clever but highly accessible use of keyboards. Articulating an epic historical vision through relatively simple raw materials

Dipygus: Dipygus
Out 22nd January on Memento Mori / Crypt of the Wizard

Dipygus may not be the most striking or obvious habitat for evolutionary death metal, their style resting comfortably on a surrealist recapitulation of early Autopsy, but there’s something left of centre about their chosen subject matter that catches the eye, and by extension the music they leverage to communicate this. A manifesto on how to make death metal weird to the point of abrasion, yet still draw clear and coherent connections with the tradition that it builds upon. It is recognisably the latest in a long and proud lineage within the genre, but one that teases, pushes, plugs holes in the boundaries of the form almost to breaking point, resulting in an unsettling, cloying world of phantasms.

Old Wainds: Stormheart
Out 27^th November on Darkness Shall Rise

Every now and then an album comes along that reminds us that it’s not always the lack of substantial development within a genre that makes everything we come into contact with seem so stale, but how these materials are wielded. There is no unique trick, gimmick, novelty, or flair behind the Old Wainds formula. The same mix of Burzum, Darkthrone, and early Immortal that defined the majority of Eastern European and Russian black metal for two decades. And in this sense it is quite literally more than the sum of its parts. It just works in their hands where in others it fails.

Pestilength: Solar Clorex
Out 16^th February on Debemur Morti Productions

Pestilength’s strength lies in transferring the older language of death/doom into a modern context in a way that avoids both mere replication and an over reliance on swelling chasmic dirge at the expense of all content. They deserve praise for pushing, teasing, or otherwise disrupting the borders of their chosen field whilst performing a rearguard action of impressive creativity, not just raising questions but furnishing us with possible answers.

Slimelord: Chytridiomycosis Relinquished
Out 8^th March on 20 Buck Spin

As with any work disruptive to our preconceptions of artistic governance, in this case that of death/doom, it pleases as much as it frustrates. New angles confront the listener with each fresh spin. It raises many questions for those invested in this arena. And, perhaps most importantly of all, reminds us that despite how cluttered our content feeds have become, there are still limitless vistas of sonic territory yet to be uncovered.

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Tier 1

Antagonyze: Interpretations of the Unknown Wilderness
Out 19^th April on Chaos Records

The questing surrealism of the Chasm meets a more direct, efficient, borderline utilitarian compositional method. Blunt, linear thrash collides against drab doom licks, and alien, undulating death metal tangents deployed as milestones indicating key transitional moments. Melodic doom plays a role in juxtaposing with the blunt object of a formative South American thrash influence. All bound together with an undying commitment to unsettling monstrosity through illogical and at times frantically disruptive deviations. Another example of how Chile is pulling far ahead in the death and thrash metal terrain, with almost every band and release in the last few years being worth dropping everything for.

CMPT : Na utrini
Out 27^th December on Osmose Productions

CMPT took some serious risks on this album. This is expressed not just through the more obvious heavy metal influences, but a good deal of folk music makes its way into the riff contouring. On top of that, the songs are paced out in more accessible chunks, with a clear lead and rhythm section attempting to foreground licks and refrains as opposed to all of the music flowing in the same direction in a more traditional black metal form. Marshalling these elements together could have spelled disaster in lesser hands. But CMPT’s identity was already so well formed on the debut, and carried through on this follow up, that it contains, elevates, or otherwise enhances the more accessible elements they have deployed across ‘Na utrini’. The result is a powerfully emotive yet dignified work, bringing together the brighter, more hopeful aspects of non-extreme metal to bear on dark, longform black metal. A work as intriguing as it is daring.

Critical Defiance: The Search Won’t Fall…
Out 22^nd March on Unspeakable Axe Records/Dying Victims Productions

Yes, Critical Defiance represent a clear continuity with the past. All thrash tends to carry the nostalgia baggage more so than its sister genres. But Critical Defiance treat these features as a starting point, a foundation upon which to place all manner of modules and intriguing divergences. And this is precisely what distinguishes it from base nostalgia. The fluidity of the genre hopping could just as easily go unnoticed for the sake of enjoying the compositions at the macro level for their sheer imaginative novelty. This appears to be a common feature of much thrash and death metal coming out of Chile at present. Not a clear break with the past, but a rehabilitation of it, updating it into an entity fit for a confrontation with the contemporary moment.

Gnipahålan: Folkstorm
Out 25^th December on Purity Through Fire

Gnipahålan borrow the jagged melodicism of Burzum, early Darkthrone, with no small amount of early Emperor riffing thrown in for good measure. But they attempt to dial the symphonics past where any widely available stereo system can capture. The speakers appear to be cutting out the limits at either end of the mix because the sound is so full of stuff, an excess of texture, layers, and activity that portions of it lurk outside our ability to perceive it. Despite the fact that ‘Folkstorm’ – like any Gnipahålan album – is an embarrassment of riches as far as the sheer quantity of textural layers are concerned, the riffs themselves are worth paying attention to. Unoriginal but never uninteresting, never coming across as an afterthought, always well sculpted and fleshed out. Ultimately it’s that interaction of highly familiar black metal furniture combined with a degree of ornamentation and extravagance an order of magnitude above what the nearest competition is working with that makes this such a compelling artist.  

Mefitis: The Skorian // The Greyleer
Out 29^th November on Profound Lore Records

Identity, world building, tonal language, and clear artistic and intellectual designs on genre as a meaningful form of communication through music. These are the things that made the giants of extreme metal in the early 90s heyday unique and enduring. All are things sorely lacking in the current social media scorched landscape. Mefitis may be a rich, calorific experience not to be undertaken lightly (nor often), but they reman unique for continuing to expand their sound world in new and unexpected directions whilst engaging in a thought provoking dialogue with extreme metal itself.    

Petrale: The World Down There
Out 2^nd November, self-released

‘The World Down There’ (and indeed Petrale’s entire catalogue) revamps (or maybe regresses) the aesthetic formula with a pre-Norwegian warmth, expressed through an organic mix and bouncier rhythms harkening back to Celtic Frost, Tormentor, or Master’s Hammer. But more importantly, Petrale cast a shadow of traditional melody over the pursuit of pure dissonance, one nevertheless following modes not often seen in an extreme metal context.

Polemicist: Polemicist
Out 27^th September, self-released

With inspiration taken from the realm of philosophical reflection – as opposed to the raw physicality of a forest or mountain range – Polemicist graduate melodic black metal into a place of pure abstraction. Compositions become self-referential, a bracing, dramatic conflict of competing ideologies and concepts. It hypnotises in its ability to undulate around themes before striking out into surprisingly direct, transparent expressive forms. A rich layer-cake of an EP and a long awaited compliment to their full length material to date.

Sylvaine: Eg Er Framand
Out 22^nd March on Season of Mist

Paradoxically, it is the abandonment of any attempt to integrate a metal backdrop into this unassuming neofolk template that will most ingratiate this album to a metal fanbase, who will appreciate both the excavation of pre-modern musical forms and the elegantly simple structuralism that quietly defies the underlying entropy.  

Valadier: Carmina Belli Apocalypsis
Out 28^th October on Black Mass Prayers

A curiosity of “actually existing” good medievalist black metal infused with folk flourishes, relying on its own ability to compose and communicate its ideas without leaning on the shared symbology of pure pastiche to draw in an audience. This album only improves on repeated listens, any lack of focus and reliance on interludes grows from charming to outright captivating for me, making this a contender for album of the year.