Best Metal Albums of 2024

Produced by Will Putney (Fit for an Autopsy), Body Count’s eighth album features cameos from metal luminaries such as Corpsegrinder, Max Cavalera, and Howard Jones — but the main attraction as always is rapper Ice-T, who at the age of 66 is still spitting rhymes with the same unflinching attitude and gleefully twisted sense of humor that he’s been bringing to the game for more than four decades now. Hard-crunching tracks like “The Purge,” “Psychopath,” and “Drug Lords” offer up cartoonishly lurid tales, but the emotional centerpiece of Merciless is the band’s jaw-dropping reinterpretation of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” wherein Ice casts a cold eye on the current state of humanity while guest guitarist David Gilmour wails away as if our very future depends on every string bend. —Dan Epstein

From the shrieking Mexica death whistle on opening war cry “Tetzahuitl,” Tzompantli’s Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force immediately distinguishes itself from the death-metal pack. The California-based indigenous death-doom project is a 10-musician effort helmed by Brian “Bigg o)))” Ortiz. He also plays in hardcore heavyweights Xibalba, but Tzompantli is much more personal. Inspired by Ortiz’s indigenous heritage, many of the lyrics on the album are delivered in roars of Nahuatl, and traditional instruments elevate the death-doom compositions’ otherwise cavernous gloom of monstrous bangers like “Chichimecatl.” Otherwise, Ortiz and Co. hew closely to the gruesome blueprint laid out by the likes of Evoken or Coffins, with murderously slow, percussion-heavy salvos that bridge the depths of death metal and funeral doom. Dark, brutal, and ominous, Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force redefines American folk metal with maximum brutality. —Kim Kelly

Aussie headbangers Battlesnake resurrect fantasy metal on The Rise and Demise of the Motorsteeple, a short but hard-hitting eight-song record full of chainsaw guitars, brontosaurus-heavy drums, and outsize vocals. Singer Sam Frank toggles between Rob Halford shrieks and Alice Cooper growls on tracks like “Alpha & Omega” and “I Speak Tongues,” while singing lyrics that would make Manowar’s Eric Adams seem grounded in reality. “Hear the engine as it howls and roars/Feed the flame upon the cross!” Frank bellows on the title track, an apocalyptic road song that drives home the album’s motorbike theme. The highway to hell just found its new soundtrack. —Joseph Hudak

Darkthrone will forever be remembered as the band that helped to steer Norwegian black metal toward a dreary and relentless minimalism on early Nineties classics such as A Blaze in the Northern Sky and Transilvanian Hunger. More than a dozen albums and several sonic swerves later, the duo now operate completely outside of subgenre or scene. On It Beckons Us All, they once again throw all of their weight behind artfully crafted riffs that combine the serrated edge of black metal with the primitive chug of doom and other primordial styles, rendering their methodical creations in gloriously thuddy retro sonics. Songs like “Black Dawn Affiliation,” where guitarist Nocturno Culto’s signature croak gives way to drummer Fenriz’s stagy croon, or the expertly paced, seven-and-a-half-minute “The Bird People of Nordland,” feel immersive and ancient, like musty emanations from some long-sealed heavy-metal time capsule. —Hank Shteamer

One of the year’s most potent moments of musical catharsis came on “The Sharpening,” a caustic standout from the third LP by Gouge Away, a Florida outfit that blends hooky, atmospheric rock with an abundance of pure, seething aggression. “What’s better than a brand-new pencil?” vocalist Christina Michelle asks in a subdued murmur. She describes the writing implement being sharpened and used to repeatedly stab her in the chest, then sings, “You’d expect me to clean up the mess,” her voice rising to a fearsome scream as the band explodes into a flurry of turbulent hardcore. Befitting their namesake, a song by an outfit renowned for dynamic contrast, the band deploys this heavy-light duality brilliantly throughout Deep Sage, building tension before boiling over into their next riveting outburst. —H.S.

In which the Atlanta-based trio hit the riffs, rail against the haters, and drop what’s easily their tightest, toughest, most satisfying album to date. Building off the less-sludge-more-rage momentum of 2016’s Gold, singer-guitarist Christian Lembach sprays noise and vitriol at his enemies, including the one who may be staring back at him in the mirror — “This/Is how it ends/Broke my life apart/Because I couldn’t bend,” he yowls on “Sicko” — while bassist Casey Maxwell and new drummer Douglas Barrett keep everything nailed down. Songs like “Malinches,” “Every Day Is Leg Day,” and the post-hardcore-inflicted “Hieronymus Bosch Was Right” contain enough headbanging to keep a legion of chiropractors in business, and when this unholy trinity locks into a groove, then goes full-metal-jacked-up in “Quitter’s Fight Song,” good luck not trashing your house. (The video for that track, in which the band’s music inspires members of Red Fang, Gaytheist, Naselrod, and Help to beat the snot out of one another, almost feels like it could double as a nature documentary.) —David Fear

Unholy Altar came slithering out of the Philadelphia underground only three years ago, but their full-length debut is already one of the most deliciously nasty things to come out of Hostile City in recent memory. Veil of Death! Shroud of Nite is an unabashed throwback to black metal’s primeval early days, when Satan was king, the punk influence was obvious, and production was an afterthought. The corpse-painted quintet have embraced the raw, bloody, chains-and-black-leather aesthetic to great effect, and poured their efforts into constructing a faithfully old-school sound devoid of any reactionary baggage. Grandly sepulchral songs like “Infernal Flesh,” with its biting atmosphere and melodic underbelly, exhibit a brilliant grasp of what makes the genre so great. —K.K.

Tight, brutal, and expertly produced by Drew Fulk (Lil Wayne, Disturbed), You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To serves up both the catharsis during a troubled time — and invitation to fight back. From the revenge-drenched “Suffocate” (featuring Poppy) to the class-warfare swagger of “Slaughterhouse 2,” Knocked Loose’s latest is not only one of the best metal records of the year, but also of their career. Need more convincing? Just check out Kentucky hardcore band Knocked Loose’s November appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which saw lead singer Bryan Garris pig- squealing and guest vocalist Poppy shrieking in the rain as the studio audience got down in the pit. —Brenna Ehrlich

Some bands are content to simply play metal; others, in the vein of staunch avant-gardists such as Khanate, seem intent on ripping it apart, seeing what they can reconstitute from its strewn and scattered parts. Few acts are more adept at this grisly business than Sumac, who have increasingly embraced abstraction and improvisation across their 10-year history. On their latest, the underground lifers — including Aaron Turner of Isis and Old Man Gloom and Brian Cook of Botch and Russian Circles, along with powerhouse drummer Nick Yacyshyn — present their most forbidding soundscapes yet, where hovering feedback and waves of distended anti-rock give way to concussively brutal or jarringly jagged riffing. The Healer is exemplary art metal — a monolith of uneasy listening that doesn’t skimp on either heaviness or true musical risk. —H.S.

Swiss black-metal project Paysage d’Hiver have been plumbing the icy depths of creator Tobias “Wintherr” Möckl’s soul since 1997, but Die Berge marks only their third official full-length. It also marks the 14th(!) chapter in an ongoing narrative about a mysterious Wanderer that has fueled each of the band’s releases, from cult demos to EPs to LPs; this time, the theme is death. Inspired by the foreboding mountains that loom over Wintherr’s native Bern, Die Berge offers a harsh, low-fi strain of atmospheric black metal that feels almost vintage in its orthodoxy. Its long, slowly churning compositions (“Urgrund” alone spans 18 shivery minutes) emphasize a grim, icy simplicity that recall the genre’s second wave, and subtle crystalline melodies shine through. The overall effect is hypnotic, an ode to the raw desolation of winter in a rapidly warming world. —K.K.

Although much of Thou’s recent work on EPs, compilations, and collaborations has veered toward the grandiose or gothic, Umbilical harkens back to a more primordial version of the band. The Louisianans’ sixth full-length is a punchy ode to Nineties grunge and Eighties hardcore. It explores their own relationship to the DIY-or-die mentality that has fueled 20 years of cerebral anarcho-sludge experimentation. The overall vibe is noisy and nervy, like a bootleg In Utero run through a crackling amplifier in a ruined church. There are still moments of unfathomable heaviness, as on the lumbering “I Return as Chained and Bound to You” (and thankfully they’ll never shake their Louisiana swamp stank), but this time around, Thou’s more interested in cracking skulls than expanding minds. —K.K.

Cool World contains everything people have come to love about Chat Pile, but kicked up a notch. The songs switch between genres with ease, and listeners will hear nu-metal chugging, technical syncopation, post-punk warbles, and driving percussion. “The New World” moves quickly with strange, D-beat-style drumming, while “Masc” starts out with a loud guitar break before launching into a math-y section, moving toward riffs loaded with shoegaze-y delay and ending with lots of yelling and massive bass. Singer Raygun Busch’s lyrics are more explicit on this record. Chat Pile previously explored the nihilistic malaise of American life with God’s Country, but Cool World examines how the thanatotic violence of the imperial core gets directed outward before reverberating back upon us when the chickens come home to roost. The record is an attempt to shake us awake from the American nightmare. —Rick Carp

The third album from Chicago’s Huntsmen finds the quintet perfecting their unique blend of prog-sludge, stoner doom, and Americana. The Dry Land‘s six haunting tracks swell and recede with an almost elemental confidence, slowly drawing you into a dark and distorted aural landscape that’s as enticing as it is forbidding. But even with their brooding, ornery, and occasionally explosive music, it’s the vocals of Chris Kang and Aimee Bueno-Knipe that really set Huntsmen apart from their contemporaries. Whether harmonizing or singing separately, the two singers tap into something deep, soulful, and timeless, making tracks like “Cruelly Dawns” and “Rain” sound as if they’ve been harvested from seeds planted a hundred years ago or more. —D.E.

A band in Judas Priest’s position could have easily spent the past decade-plus in victory-lap mode, regaling fans with back-catalog favorites as it soldiered on beyond a 2011 tour originally conceived of as a farewell. Instead, with help from new guitarist Richie Faulkner, the heavy-metal legends have written one whole new chapter after another. Like its excellent 2018 predecessor, Firepower, Invincible Shield offers ready-made anthems built around the precision riffing of Faulkner and longtime member Glenn Tipton that recall Priest in their prime while embracing a flashy, larger-than-life sheen. The MVP here is Rob Halford, whose fierce conviction and staggering range — from belt to snarl to full-on shriek — keep the band’s British steel sounding arena-primed and battle-ready on mighty, shout-along rockers like “Panic Attack” and the title track. —H.S.

This Denver death-metal quartet have been staring deep into the cosmos since their debut 2015 EP, Interdimensional Extinction, but they’ve never before journeyed as far as they do on Absolute Elsewhere. A six-track (or, if you prefer, three “tablets” divided between two tracks) launch into the outer galaxies, this adventurous album seamlessly interweaves bludgeoning blast beats and technically precise metallic assaults with spacey synth excursions — Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning even guests on a track — and quietly intense moments of Pink Floyd-like introspection. Don’t let anyone tell you that in space, no one can hear you shred, because this mind-blowing masterwork quite definitively proves otherwise. —D.E.

A testament to the continued potency of Dickinson’s long-running collaboration with guitarist-songwriter-producer Roy Z, the Iron Maiden frontman’s first solo album in nearly two decades is typically — and gloriously — over the top, a 10-song concept album about an occult-obsessed scientist involved with a secret project that’s harvesting and storing the souls of dying billionaires. There’s a Mandrake Project graphic novel as well, but you don’t even need to follow the story to be blown away by the theatrical (and at times intensely emotional) punch of tracks like “Afterglow of Ragnarok,” “Rain on the Graves,” or the 10-minute gothic closer, “Sonata (Immortal Beloved).” —D.E.

High on Fire’s ninth full-length marked a momentous shift for the Oakland trio fronted by Sleep guitarist Matt Pike: the first drummer swap in its quarter-century-plus history. But the arrival of Coady Willis (well known in the underground for his sturdy bashing in Melvins, Big Business, and Murder City Devils) turned out to be more of a footnote. Cometh the Storm delivered exactly what fans have come to expect from the band: a relentlessly riff-y ass kicking that makes you feel like you’re galloping into battle alongside some ruthless barbarian horde. Whether rocketing along at hardcore-punk speed (“The Beating”) or digging into a craggy stoner-metal groove (“Sol’s Golden Curse,” epic closer “Darker Fleece”), Willis provided the thrust and swagger needed to power this weathered but still formidable behemoth. —H.S.

Epic doom metal is a difficult (and highly specific) genre to nail without feeling derivative or cheesy, but Philadelphia’s Crypt Sermon have been making it look infuriatingly easy for nearly a decade. The band’s six members bring a ridiculously high level of musicianship to the table, and Crypt Sermon’s true strength lies in their stellar songwriting (“Heavy Is the Crown of Bone” alone could fuel its own prestige fantasy series on HBO). The Stygian Rose is awash in muscular, deftly executed riffs that stomp between brooding doom and traditional heavy metal. The band confidently conjures fist-pumping hooks, rippling solos, and speed-metal swagger without losing an ounce of esoteric edge. On the mic, Brooks Wilson’s gritty, commanding wail illustrates the LP’s fantastical tales with aplomb, beckoning the listener toward certain doom. The album also sounds huge. In a just world, Crypt Sermon would be on tour with Judas Priest tomorrow. —K.K.

Yes, Opeth’s 14th full-length finds frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt unleashing his first death growls since 2008’s Watershed, but the real story here is that Sweden’s premier purveyors of progressive death metal continue to outdo themselves nearly 35 years into their career. A concept album about dark family secrets unspooling in the wake of a rich nobleman’s death, The Last Will and Testament is as moodily cinematic as it is musically dexterous; you can practically see the crumbling old ancestral mansion in which the action takes place. It’s the kind of album that requires and rewards your full attention, and not just because you won’t want to miss the pitch-perfect narration provided by Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson. —D.E.

The first solo album from former Slayer guitarist Kerry King is basically the “Still D.R.E.” of thrash metal. But where Dr. Dre wanted to remind his fans that he was still puffin’ his leafs, still fucking with beats, and still not lovin’ police after close to a decade of absence, King wants his fans to understand that even though Slayer are essentially hell bound, he’s still Satan’s preeminent ambassador. On From Hell I Rise, King is still drinkin’ his tequila, still fucking with riffs, and still not lovin’ the priests. In other words, it sounds like Slayer — and at times, Slayer at their best. —Kory Grow