The best contemporary black metal albums you’ve never heard of

Oh no, a cheap clickbait listacle! Fear not, however, I come with good intentions. Staying abreast of new material in 2026 feels like navigating a tiny dinghy through a great storm of biblical scale. All you can do is cling on and stay the course through the sensory overload. The annual AOTY roundup functioning more like a fond farewell to releases we mildly enjoyed before they are consigned to the dustbin of history more than an actual review of the year.

Since starting this blog in 2017, I’ve spent a lot of time scraping through the rough to find the diamonds. With that in mind, and to remind myself it was…definitely worth it, I thought I might scour once again through my end of year roundups and pick out some choice cuts from the black metal camp. Firstly though, I’ll justify the title. These are the best releases I have come across that did not get anywhere near the attention they deserved. A criterion I’ve measured by a lack of coverage, or coverage falling far short of where it should be. Having only one review on Metal Archives for instance (usually my own), or just a handful of equivalent microblogs having picked them up. So yes, the title is a lie, you might actually have heard of some of these releases. I did it for the pussy.

The remaining criteria are simple. They must be contemporary (released in the last decade, a generous window to account for the endless present we’ve been living through since about 2015). They must be something I have covered here. And of course, they must be black metal. An equivalent death metal list may be forth coming at some point. Many of these acts have put out subsequent albums which are also worth exploring, but here I’m focusing on the specific releases that really stood out to me. And even under my exacting scrutiny, I have failed to get the list down to a clean thirty within my chosen period, so spitting in the face of listing etiquette, there is an outlying piece of data in the form of a thirty first entry.  

Ancient Gate: Empire Beyond Dusk (Argentina)
Released 2020 on Hessian Firm

Connects the sparse minimalism of early symphonic black metal with a more dynamic melodic character borrowed from the Greek style, resulting in a cinematic epic, replete with hopeful overtones despite the explicit threnodic impulse. Whilst the presentation is kept deliberately generic, this appears to be intentional, allowing for broad brushstrokes of atmosphere to sit alongside longform melodic development. A clear attempt at narrative construction, creating a world for the listener to inhabit and in turn displacing their sense of time, allowing the fully scoped out storytelling to unfurl over the course of the album.

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Arvas: VI (Norway)
Released 2021 on Whispering Voice Records

On paper this is rather unremarkable. A blackened thrash album delivered with more fluidity, lacking the choppy staccato breaks in order to create space for a latent ambient quality. But this is one of those albums that treats its relatively simple stylistic package as a voice, a pre-written language it then uses to express itself in continuously open ended statements of militaristic intent. What emerges is a highly focused album, a linear metallic thread articulated with a singular purpose, undistracted, highly concentrated, and endlessly re-playable.

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Ascendency: A Manifest of Imperious Destiny (Denmark)
Released 2023 on Me Saco un Ojo records

Bridges pre-Norwegian black metal with the melodic content of Swedish or Greek styles, resulting in a slow burn appeal of playfully dark music. Although each track is foregrounded by relatively simple yet engaging refrains, these are in turn recontextualised via rich harmonic commentary empowered by well placed shifts in tempo, which in turn pave the way for atonal barrages of violence. Through this simple sequencing of phrases, a grander development of material unfolds before the listener’s ears, defined by a gradually accruing complexity and thematic weight which ultimately function as compositional centrepieces.

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Beithíoch: Ghost of a Long Forgotten World (Ireland)
Released 2016, independent

Prima facie this is a downbeat take on Beherit’s now seminal comeback album ‘Engram’. The structure is looser certainly, functioning as one extended descent into darkness. Deadpan, gloomy, understated, it evinces a captivating balance between the barbarity of the rhythm section (guitars included) and the delicacy of the lead guitar refrains which behave more like lyrical violin lines than a typical lead voicing in metal. Guttural vocals add to the imposing weight of this album, but it’s a weight offset by the fragility of its melodic core.    

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Birkental: Peccatum Mortiferum (Germany)
Released 2024 on Void Wanderer Productions

Continuing the tradition of bass led black metal, this energetic and warm take on occultist black metal is refreshingly playful (a rare quality in modern extreme metal) alongside its obvious dark and violent qualities. Although this owes an obvious stylistic debt to Necromantia and Mortuary Drape, the longform, prose like quality of the structure calls to mind the dark folk of early Aeternus. It is restless, churning, and full of life over and above any timbral novelty thanks to an assertive rhythm section, characterful vocals, and clever use of more active keyboard tones such as church organ.

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Boarhammer: II: Chemognosis – A Shortcut to Mushrooms (Germany)
Released 2024 on Naturmacht Productions

Germany’s Boarhammer draw on the eccentricity of central European black metal such as Master’s Hammer, Root, or Tormenter, but are perhaps more explicit in their heavy metal swagger. Theirs is a rich stylistic brew, but such is the strength of their vision that a unique piece of theatrical metal emerges regardless of the churn of influences occurring on the ground floor. This is “jam” black metal, a band thrashing out riffs in the rehearsal space, drawn from classic metal as much as anything remotely extreme. But the expression, warm and organic as it is, still adopts the high drama and sense of occasion that only black metal can achieve. 

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Boreal: The Battle of VOSAD (USA)
Released 2020 on Nebulae Artifacta

Using Summoning as their starting point, Boreal adopt a similar approach to percussion, pacing, and melody construction, graduating keyboards to sit alongside the guitars as counterpoint and often lead instrument. But unlike more explicit and (let’s be honest) rip off acts like Caladan Brood or Emyn Muil, Boreal’s character is immediately clear and distinct from their Austrian forbears. A longform, funereal plod that nevertheless contains glimmers of hope, the pacing is militaristic, yet the melodic construction adopts the haunting fragility of a lullaby. The music prioritises atmosphere first and foremost, but it is not beholden to it, treating it as epiphenomena moving atop these grand, sweeping narrative statements.

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Cmpt: Krv i pepeo (Serbia)
Released 2021 on Osmose Productions

A true successor to Burzum in the sense that nothing is overplayed, nothing is over (or excessively under) produced, but from the inherent modesty of the presentation there emerges a captivating, rigorously curated experience of mystical black metal. It’s akin to setting out on a familiar trail in the woods, only to gradually encounter the fathomless mysteries of deep time lurking within. Elements are placed at varying distances from the “centre” of the mix, some appearing distant and faint, others violent and immediate, Cmpt manipulate our sense of time and motion, as musty foliage gives way to open spaces and planes suspended in a dense brume, the horizon lost to the haze.

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CNTMPT: Von unreiner Willk​ü​r (Germany)
Released 2022 on Into Endless Chaos Records

Materially this album behaves like a blackened grind album, but spiritually it is somewhere between atmospheric black metal and the visceral melodicism of early Gorgoroth. Traditional musical touches are stretched and contorted into a wretched entity, tortured and violent. But the album is also peppered with humour, fragility, and melancholy. The overarching impression from this swirling melting pot of emotions is comedy, that spontaneous human outpouring just adjacent to horror, held together by simple yet effective riff development, the performance is maximalist even if the music is sparse and minimal. The experience is total and enriching, but when caught in the immediacy of the experience it gives the impression that events have well and truly run away with themselves.

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Deathlike Dawn: Among the Graves of the Archetypes (Poland)
Released 2024 on Putrid Cult

Like all good metal, this album emphasises contradiction, bright and hopeful overtones are caveated by their opposite, the familiar is made strange, domesticity is haunted by monstrosity. A riff palette borrowed from technical death metal is the mallet, smashing the peanut of surprisingly rudimentary melodic forms, assisted by sparse keyboard harmonies as if to emphasise the central thread of each piece. The result is a highly active, engaged form of black metal that exudes bizarre atmospheres from every pore regardless, underpinned by an arhythmic vocal attack. A constantly renewing, unipolar sonic landscape reveals itself.

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Grievance: Em Lucefécit (Portugal)
Released 2019 on War Productions

Working at the intersection of Darkthrone and Burzum, Grievance play up the contradiction between articulating sophisticated longform narratives through a highly primitive language. Any clutter is stripped back for the sake of expressing a profound yearning for a fictionalised past, untroubled by the naivety of this desire. The virtues of this album may at first appear modest, but as one peels back the layers, a complex tapestry of melodies and stories reveal themselves in achingly slow evolutions, made all the more rewarding for the fact. A superficially generic take on second wave black metal reaches a new fruition through this quietly creative outfit.

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Hagel: Veneration of the Black Light (Mexico)
Released 2021 on Personal Records

Similar to a lot of Southern European black metal, Mexico’s Hagel bypass the punk and speed ancestry to reach back to the heady melodicism of classic heavy metal alongside a generous dose of understated symphonics. The explicitly retro mix gives off a degree of authenticity that precludes any accusation of kitsch. Romanticism and folk sit happily alongside one another, as expressive keyboard lines compliment the dominant guitars, which in turn give way to frequent acoustic interludes as if to expand the thematic range. For all the album’s variety and energy, it embraces that laid back, ethereal vibe that tended to define black metal from hotter climbs until the turn of the millennium.

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Irillion: Fatanyu (Venezuela)
Released 2019, independent

Although a raw black metal EP at heart, there are surprising hints at an upbeat entity lurking beneath the mournful guitar lines, provoking both joy and pathos within the listener. Judas Iscariot meets older influences in the form of Celtic Frost, Irillion make greater use of rhythm than is typical for this style of black metal, using it to squeeze more juice out of every idea. Although brief, the minor tweaks they make at the micro level lead to a broad landscape of emotive diversity rarely seen in such explicitly lo-fi black metal.

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Kaeck: Gruwelijk onthaal (Netherlands)
Released 2025 on Folter Records

War metal walking through treacle, this album manages to imply size and scale through its relatively primitive methodology. The final statement always more than the sum of its parts. Just as chess creates a world of possibility through the very limitations it imposes on each piece, the borders Kaeck impose on themselves grant them access to expressive possibilities shut off from more excessively elaborate artists. Death metal works as an antagonist to this endeavour, seeing early Emperor riffs collide with the destructive, staccato anomie of atonal percussive barrages, the quest for spiritual meaning thwarted by a seemingly illogical material reality.

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Kõdu: Unusta kõik (Estonia)
Released 2021 on Nigredo Productions

Takes typical black metal forms and subjects them to a barrage of dissonance and rhythmic eccentricity. A stripped back yet clear mix allows for no distractions from what is functionally a death metal album in terms of its primary concern, namely the organisation and testing of riff sequences. A subtle form of world building takes place, as the listener is slowly beckoned in before being introduced to the album’s uncannier aspects. Kõdu have finally put out a follow up this year which is stylistically more diverse and wide ranging, but adopts a similarly provocative stance toward pacing and arrangement.

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Krvna: Sempinfernus (Australia)
Released 2021 on Séance Records

There are albums that attempt to break with tradition, and those that work within its strict limitations, but both amount to nothing unless they can find a reason to act thus and so, or more precisely, grow their own identity within their direction of travel. Krvna sit comfortably within traditional, sweeping, melodic black metal. But such is the unique voice they articulate within this schema that originality becomes almost incidental. A great wave of layered guitars behaves more like a symphony orchestra, blasting the listener with richly realised melodic lines, delivered at speeds that approximate ambience. In this sense the album is a triumph of arrangement as much as it is composition.  

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Malacath: Eternal Roar of the Thunder and Rain (USA)
Released 2025 on Eternal Death

Atmospheric black metal that takes the legacy of Burzum more seriously than most, in that early Burzum was not all that atmospheric by today’s standards, relying instead on an idiosyncratic approach to melody formation, riff construction, and efficient arrangement to “stimulate the fantasy of mortals”. A similar impulse can be found here. A stylistic frugality, and a lack of any clear impulse to stamp a distinctive, individual identity onto the music counterintuitively works in its favour, as space emerges for a more expansive, generalist vision of the essence of black metal. A sweeping, ambitious survey of the form, tight and well executed at a technical level over and above its artistic merits.

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Moonchapel: Chasms of Ash and Iniquity (USA)
Released 2025 on Blackened Label Records

The ferocity of Blasphemy and Profanatica is offset by the uncanny atmosphere of Beherit or Black Funeral, matching the raw physicality of the former with the meditative reclusion of the latter. Moonchapel explode the formula of so called war metal by deconstructing their own momentum and remaining fixed in place with near monomaniacal perseverance. Any aspirational compositional element attempting to rise above the barbaric rhythmic sequences devolves into plaintive cries of high pitched simplicity, crushed in place by the chasmic bluntness at the centre of the music.

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Necromantical Invocation: Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (Greece)
Released 2021 on Helter Skelter Productions

Side project of Echetleos of Caedes Cruenta fame. Part homage to Necromantia, part ritual ambient, this EP is a cornucopia of experimental theatre as much as it is a communication with the black metal tradition. Warm, rich, primitive, and unapologetically flamboyant, this is a striking example of Weird (capital W) metal in the traditional sense. The occultist themes, the classically evil presentation, the high drama, all told through a very old school metal language despite the bass-only delivery of the black metal material and the extended sound art piece at the heart of the EP.

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Petrale: Salvation Precipitates (Croatia)
Released 2023, independent

Surrealist concoction of pre-1990 black metal elements, updated with rampant dissonance, menace, and a subtle avant-garde undertone. The production speaks of an artist keen to contextualise themselves within an artisanal, DIY tradition, the warm guitar tone, organic mix, and sparse delivery standing in stark contrast to the dense, non-linear reality of the compositions themselves. Despite this eccentricity, the vision is understated, restrained, incrementally building on itself. Allowing for a new logic to grow between the cracks, a peripheral, conflicted work seeking to reconcile its disordered and ordered elements as they exist in constant antagonism with one another.

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Polemicist: Zarathustrian Impressions (USA)
Released 2019 on Fólkvangr Records

Somewhere between the frantic melodicism of early Abigor and the esoteric riffing of Sorcier des Glaces sits ‘Zarathustrian Impressions’. At least, in terms of the raw impression it leaves. On a technical level one could argue that it is closer to ‘The Red in the Sky is Ours’ for its contrapuntal approach to riffcraft, creating a clear distinction between an ambiguous rhythm guitar and a constant stream of melody in the foreground, the two elements often working as antagonists to one another. Although more fluid and linear than the acuter technicality of the follow up ‘Return of the Sophist’, the flow of these pieces remains hard to predict, with a dynamic rhythm section creating tension and release, resulting in an elegant ballet of crisp, traditionally metallic melodic black metal.

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Sammath: Godless Arrogance (Netherlands)
Released 2014 on Hammerheart Records

The exception in the list in that it is 1) older than ten years, 2) slightly more well known, 3) I haven’t covered it in depth before. But Sammath’s inclusion is motivated solely by the simple fact that they should be bigger than they are. The brainchild of one Jan Kruitwagen (also guitarist for Kaeck), they have been consistently and not so quietly putting out material since the 90s, forging a respected reputation within a discerning but vanishingly small subset of underground fans, and a body of work that could make a claim to be the best black metal this side of 2000 with practically no one paying attention. 2014’s ‘Godless Arrogance’ is generally considered their peak, although the material either side remains astoundingly strong. War metal in a more literal sense of the term, the pieces flow illogically, drums adopting an ambient posture, the energy ebbs with an atypical momentum for black metal. A strikingly curious release over and above its relentlessly violent presentation.

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Skare: Skare (Australia)
Released 2022 on Amor Fait Productions

This is a masterclass in internal consistency. A tight, rigid, finely tuned machine of melodic black metal, the virtues of which are difficult to sum up quantitively. But from a quality perspective, meaning the raw experience of the album, its inclusion here becomes obvious. Binding the best elements of the genre into a neat thread of active, borderline life affirming music. Efficient in the fact that there is no wasted space, as differing elements blend seamlessly together to create a totalising picture of black metal at its most exhilarating.

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Tempestarii: Chaos at Feast (USA)
Released 2020 on Transcendance

A heavy emotionality is disciplined into cascading waves of structured chaos, as the music seems to bulge into great swelling tides which cannot be contained, only to be released in great flurries of speed and activity. The drums adopt a similar liquid like motion, approaching a form of ambience instead of any tight rhythmic framing. Riffs bleed into one another, acting more like a constant stream of information than a clearly segmented series. In this sense it resembles post black metal, but achieves a far more dynamic and vital expression than the often tediously static expressions associated with the “post” tag.

Temple of Abraxas: Temples Forlorn (USA)
Released 2019 on Forbidden Records

Put simply, one of the best black metal albums this side of 2000 (according to me). Masterminded by one Sleepwalker, also behind the A Transylvanian Funeral project whose 2010 ‘The Outsider’ also ranks as one of this century’s best, this album is almost perfect in every way. A mystical, arcane atmosphere bleeds through every pore. The riffs adopt an intuitive melodic flow, achieving a perfect balance between regal dignity and primal yearning. The vocals and lyrics (such as they can be made out) perfectly underpin the balance between ritualism and deep time. The music feels old, almost weary, straining under the burden of knowledge and the years it has been forced to endure. A feeling perfectly captured on the sparse cover art. It’s as if the music arose from the earth itself, fully formed and ancient.

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Ultra Silvam: The Spearwound Salvation (Sweden)
Released 2019 on Helter Skelter Productions

Slides neatly into the more death metal adjacent style of Swedish black metal, pivoting on riffs and traditional melodies over atmosphere. But here the formula is updated into a frantic, almost maniacally euphoric entity, as triumphalist riffs blast past at a pace that is hard to keep track of. It feels like a plethora of elements was thrown into a blender and pieced back together. There is a metalogic at work, but the album makes a point of burying this away from the foreground. From a different angle, the experience could look cheerful, bouncy even, a joy in violence and darkness subtly expressed.

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Valadier: Carmina Belli Apocalypsis (Italy)
Released 2023, independent

Whilst most medieval black metal adopts a folky bounce and lots of jaunty melodic licks, this album embraces the violence and darkness of medieval combat. Somewhere between early Satyricon and Demoncy, the character of this music is at once atmospheric but also horrific, in the sense that the riffs feel pregnant with threat, gravity, significance. The experience feels “heavy” in a more literal sense than is typical for black metal. There are plenty of interludes and folk flourishes that work to contextualise the material to an extent, placing it in the proper setting and lending a sense of theatre over and above the visceral immediacy of the experience.

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Vengeful Spectre: Vengeful Spectre (China)
Released 2020 on Pest Productions

Folk metal performed like they meant, as husks of Rotting Christ are salvaged into this sharp, clarifying iteration of melodic black metal. A balance of atmosphere alongside some more technical riffing fleshes out the album, allowing for quiet contemplation and stirring militarism in equal measure. The slower moments on the album are still peppered with activity, losing none of the momentum throughout. At once a well-oiled machine, but as the scope of the album stretches well beyond its short runtime. Delivered like a sprawling epic poem, one feels like they have experienced an extended journey by the end. Sadly the follow up, 2023’s ‘Vengeful Spectre II’, was mired by a sterility characterised by a Behemoth derived death metal approach to riffing and construction, lost in flamboyantly dramatic gestures that lead nowhere.

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Vómito Vacuo: Locura y un cuerpo (Chile)
Released 2022, independent

Borrowing from Black Funeral and Profanatica, this demo feels like music for the unwell. Warm, dark, haunting, an explicit doom thread running throughout lends all a cavernous, haunting atmosphere. This is a theatrical horror story blended with a blunt simplicity expressed through the keyboard lines. Jarring transitions, sudden tonal swaps, elongated scale runs defined by the uncertainty of their resolution, to riffs that build in momentum only to be cut down midway through by angular drumming. All amounts to a carnival of psychological torments.

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Vortex of End: Abhorrent Fervor (France)
Released 2021 on Osmose Productions

Despite being released on Osmose, I think this one was “slept on” as the kids say. A variant of progressive blackened death metal for want of a better phrase, but a much tighter and more expressive version of this style than the often sterile or generic expressions we are treated to. Organised chaos, an energy offset by swelling atmosphere and contained by disciplined arrangements, unbridled speed checked by open ended size. An album broad in scope emotionally, technically interesting to listen to, compositions unfold in ways both intuitive and unpredictable.

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Widziadło: Void (Poland)
Released 2017, independent

If Tangerine Dream wrote a black metal album. This mysterious Polish entity had the cheek to release one of the best ambient black metal albums of the last few years and then disappear entirely. It achieves what Darkspace hinted at but never fully realised, namely the feeling of being suspended in the void of space expressed through black metal. The music has more motion and landmarks than typical ambient, the complex is presented in simple forms, linear, and instinctive across this album. A wandering, dreamlike atmosphere tempered by a grounded logic expressed through the sequencing of the material.