Judas Priest - Invincible Shield (Columbia / Epic Records)
50 years into their career, Judas Priest are still paving the way for heavy metal. After the uproarious success of 2018’s Firepower, the Metal Gods have somehow come back even stronger. Invincible Shield has everything you’d expect from a Priest release and then some. It nods to eras of Priest long beloved – Screaming for Vengeance / Sinner – and long maligned – Turbo – while forging ahead with classic metal that sounds every bit as modern and cutting-edge in 2024.
Every player is at the top of their game, including long-time guitarist Glenn Tipton, whose battle with Parkinson’s disease has not stopped him from penning songs that still surprise and astound.
But despite the dual guitar leads and fist-pumping, sing-along choruses, Halford’s lyrics and delivery may be the cream of the crop. Lead single “Panic Attack” is possibly the most timely and raw the band has ever been and — while singing about insurrections and memes — his ability to capture the feeling of the moment while bringing the masses together under heavy metal is why this band will truly be immortal. - Jon Garcia
Zetra - Zetra (Nuclear Blast Records)
Transcendent alt mystics Zetra craft a captivating glimpse into their universe with an ethereal experience that offers a different take on musical extremity. The duo's competent, comprehensive meld of neo-goth aesthetic, stylized synth, rich atmospherics and dynamic instrumentation, make the tandem's self-titled debut one of the year's most compelling. Along with guest assists from Serena Cherry of Svalbard and Gabriel Franco of Unto Others, the first full length from The Wanderers is the perfect balance of majesty and mystique. - Ramon Gonzales
Dool - The Shape of Fluidity (Prophecy Productions)
On their third album, Dutch dark rockers blossom into the supernatural powerhouse they’ve always threatened to become. Very few bands can transform a room and the people inside with just their music, but Dool manage to tap into the human psyche and transcend it through beautiful guitar lines, haunting rhythms and the other-wordly croon of frontperson Raven van Dorst. Songs like “Venus in Flames,” “Hermagorgon,” “Evil In You” and “The Shape of Fluidity” employ ear-catching melodies and hypnotic instrumentals with an aura of understanding that everyone is hurting in some way.
While the entire concept of the record is one deeply-rooted in van Dorst’s own personal journey of self discovery, the crux is one that anyone can relate to: We are always shifting and changing with the currents of time, never done bettering ourselves or becoming the person that most feels like us.
“May all those who wander gather under the fluid flag of DOOL.” - Jon Garcia
Seven Spires - A Fortress Called Home (Frontiers Records)
With their fourth album, symphonic metal troupe Seven Spires has really outdone themselves. Vocalist Adrienne Cowan is one of the best in the world, and together with her chemistry with guitarist Jack Costo and bassist Peter Albert de Reyna, Seven Spires delivers an album that’s as rich in story as it is in music.
I dare anyone to listen to “Almosttown” without getting it stuck in their head for weeks. Yet, behind the bombastic chorus and impressive musicianship is a heart wrenching song about yearning, depression and creative struggle: “Now I spend eternity with songs I never wrote / Peace in isolation, in the fortress I call home / Perched in a stone gesture looming lonely in the sky /Musing on those endless might-have-beens”
These more personal and relatable lines don’t just draw in listeners’ ears, but their emotions as well. It’s hard not to feel connected to Cowan given how much she – and everyone – put into the record. It paid off, and the result is a timeless piece of work that should have fans clamoring to the Seven Spires camp for years to come. - Jon Garcia
Heriot - Devoured By the Mouth of Hell (Century Media Records)
At the very front of the UK's emerging class of metal next generation, Heriot more than substantiated their hype with long-awaited full length debut album, Devoured By the Mouth of Hell. Exceeding the lofty expectations that stemmed rom the band's lauded 2022 debut, Profound Mortality, the band augmented their attack with the expertise of Josh Middleton of Sylosis as well as GRAMMY Award-winning producer Will Putney who both oversaw the album's full execution. Debbie Gaugh proves an absolute powerhouse, at the helm of a unit that covers the spectrum of heavy music all while asserting their own contribution to modern heft. - Ramon Gonzales
Knoll - As Spoken (Self-released / Independent)
On the exact opposite end of the musical spectrum from Seven Spires is the scarring and frightening As Spoken from Tennessee’s Knoll. Self-described funeral grind, Knoll’s third album weaves the collective growth of their art into a tapestry of horror. Their music is painful, ambitious and eviscerating; something sinister that should intrigue fans of Portal, Full of Hell, Wake or Imperial Triumphant.
Knoll are pushing the bounds of extreme creativity; whether through their abrasive song structures that drag you deeper in to their sonic lair or the films vocalist Jamie Eubanks made to accompany the music. It’s his performance on “Utterance” that both literally and figuratively takes your breath away. In an improvised take, Eubanks sounds as if multiple harrowing wraiths are streaming from his lungs.
Between his unequaled voice, the turbulent guitars of Ryan Cook and Cameron Giarraputo in front of bassist Lukas Quartermaine and drummer Jack Anderson, the quintet are dialed into their craft. They’ve taken As Spoken around the world, and its next stop should be your headphones. Listener beware. - Jon Garcia
Nails - Every Bridge Burning (Nuclear Blast Records)
Every Bridge Burning serves as NAILS' first studio album release in eight years and the first with the reconfigured line-up of drummer Carlos Cruz of Warbringer, bassist Andrew Solis of Despise You and Apparition and guitarist Shelby Lermo of Ulthar. Led by founder, frontman and architect Todd Jones, the latest from NAILS finds the band evolving their brand of sonic brutality, complimented by the skillful supervision of celebrated producer Kurt Ballou. While retaining the pummel of the early powerviolence that paved the way for so many bands in their wake, Nails add to their arsenal, showcasing a diverse range of influences and progressing as songwriters - unloading a explosive 10-track effort that decimates all. - Ramon Gonzales
Svdestada - Candela (Self-released / Independent)
Though it’s nearly a year old at this point, an unsigned Spanish band may have dropped one of 2024’s most underrated albums just five days in.
Madrid’s Svdestada combines frenetic D-beat crust punk with emotionally charged black metal riffing that’s as captivating as it is empowering. In just over 30 mins, Svdestada fly through seven songs that grab your ears by the proverbial throat, forcing them to follow their melodious and aggressive journey from start to finish. Standouts like “Cierzo” and “Amargor” make excellent use of chord progressions and dynamic, cyclonic drums that make listeners feel like they’ve lived entire lives in the songs.
Closer and title track “Candela” unveils itself across 12 minutes, showing the patience and talent the four-piece have for unveiling their art. Yet, peel back the anguished screams and translate the Spanish lyrics and you’ll find deeply persona poetry that touches on everything from depression and dissolution to the horrors of having to face another day in this ever-blackening world. - Jon Garcia
Poppy - Negative Spaces (Sumerian Records)
Thriving on the fringe of metalcore, Poppy has redefined the subgenre in a way that sets an important precedent. Combining pop sensibilities with fits of unhinged aggression, the songstress flouts the conventional and asserts a degree of sophistication that best characterizes Negative Spaces. This isn't different for effect, this is different by meticulous design - daring to confront the polished production, big hooks and recycled themes of metalcore with an effort that boldly stands alone. - Ramon Gonzales
Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media Records)
A few years ago, a music journalist in his sixties unironically said to me: “The thing is, The Beatles are actually underrated.” Despite the hype and considerable acclaim for Absolute Elsewhere I think that about this album too! Make no mistake, in an era awash with good music, but less so truly great music, this is a classic. It’s the best album of this year and would be the best album for many of the years over the last quarter century. As a death metal album, it’s up there with Altars of Madness, Heartwork, Symbolic, Left Hand Path, you name it. It says a lot about Blood Incantation that they were writing music they simply didn’t have the chops to play, but found the ambition within themselves and the willingness to do the work that got them where they wanted to be.
This album is a result of craft. In the age of AI, where everyone wants to do things the easy way, Blood Incantation decamped to Hansa Studios in Berlin to show what happens when you choose the difficult route. It’s an album packed with surprises and delights: from the Gilmour-esque guitar solo after the first four minutes, to the deadly slam riff that rounds off “The Stargate”, to the speed metal of Tablet III of “The Message”. For an album that interweaves seventies progressivism into its fabric so well, what we’re left with is how death metal itself deserves recognition as a deeply progressive genre exploring the outer reaches. Absolute Elsewhere astounds absolutely. - Dan Franklin
SPEED - Only One Mode (Flatspot Records)
There is a level of reverence for the greater culture of hardcore that runs DNA deep for the collective from Sydney. It's that conviction and that evident respect that makes Only One Mode such a cohesive presentation. In addition to the band's charged performances, there is an authenticity in the aggression that gives credence to the band's mantra of "Real Sydney Shit". Hardcore isn't a style or subgenre for Speed, it's the intersection of life and art channeled into a rallying cry for those that understand how those are one in the same. - Ramon Gonzales
Thou - Umbilical (Sacred Bones Records)
I revisited this recently to double-check it was as good as I remembered. Holy shit – what an acerbic triumph from Thou. Here, they’ve brought together a self-lacerating worldview, an almost geologically layered heaviness, and their love of the melodic thrust of grunge. “Panic Stricken, I Flee” sounds like a lost Nirvana B-side dipped in tar. “Siege Perilous” could tunnel to the centre of the earth. “Narcissist’s Prayer” is a masterpiece in self-loathing. They’ve lost none of their rich melodic depth – at this point their engineer James Whitten is doing God’s work. It’s music, not a competition, but I’d bet on Thou in the ring against Chat Pile any day of the week. - Dan Franklin
200 Stab Wounds - Manual Manic Procedures (Metal Blade Records)
Cleveland brutalizers 200 Stab Wounds further cemented their reputation as one of the death metal's most exciting new contributors with the punishing follow up to their championed 2021 release, Slave to the Scalpel. Unleashing gloriously gory, splatterhouse grade brutality, Manual Manic Procedures harkens to the genre's greats, while achieving a modern day, extreme metal edge. Toeing a fine line between technicality and sonic savagery, Ohio's death metal standouts bridge old and new schools in a way that moves the genre forward. - Ramon Gonzales
Lowen - Do Not Go To War With the Demons of Mazandaran (Church Road Records)
This was the surprise of the year for me. I enjoyed Lowen’s doomy, mantra-driven music before. I first came across them playing a tiny stage in the middle of the Bloodstock festival and was particularly impressed with Nina Saeidi’s vocal flights. But this album is something else. They’ve injected their bones with adamantium. The production gives it a powerhouse heft, when it could easily just skulk in the lower frequencies. My jaw dropped two minutes into “Corruption on Earth” when the double-bass drum playing began hammering the song into the ground. Epic, visionary and fighting its way out of the underground with bloody knuckles. - Dan Franklin
Graphic Nature - Who Are You When No One Is Looking? (Rude Records)
For Graphic Nature's Harvey Freeman, the 2024 album wasn't something planned, but rather, a presentation he was compelled to complete. The result of a life-altering, violent attack on a London train, the songwriter poured the trauma from his confrontation with mortality into what would become his respite. The end result is a enthralling mesh of emotion and deliverance achieved through potent songwriting that unfolds in 13 explosive tracks. While the band has been categorized as nu-metal revivalists, this album exceeds that nostalgia by giving the subcategory new life. - Ramon Gonzales
Opeth - The Last Will and Testament (Reigning Phoenix Music)
Having enjoyed Opeth’s considerable development over their last four albums, I have to say I was a bit disappointed to hear Mikael Åkerfeldt return to growling on this album. But it was something of a red herring because this is the craziest, proggiest music they’ve ever made, and the band’s performance as a whole is exceptional. The growls in the context of the album’s storyline are fully deserved and sound great. Opeth just writes material which is more interesting and emotionally engaging than almost all their peers. Take the harp breakdown in “§4”, developed into a melodic refrain featuring Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson on flute and a soul-stirring expansion outwards into widescreen stadium hard rock. To quote Carly Simon: Nobody does it better. - Dan Franklin
Giant Walker - Silhouettes (Church Road Records)
My Christmas wish is that Giant Walker get the recognition they deserve in 2025. I’ve seen them twice this year, before and after releasing this album, both times playing rooms in pubs. That’s great! I love small venues and fewer people, but they really deserve wider exposure for what they’re doing. All superb musicians, Steff Fish is one of my favourite vocalists at the moment. Listen to the title track from this album for how she crests the wave of a song and how drummer Alex Black, guitarist Jamie Southern and bassist Jordan Gregory churn up the waters beneath her. If an album this year gets to the point faster than the groovy leadweight swing of opener “Time to Waste”, I haven’t heard it. - Dan Franklin
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (Loma Vista Records)
A musical shapeshifter like Chelsea Wolfe who has bent the forms of metal, folk, electronica and industrial to her will arriving at an album very personally about the idea of change and transitioning form has resulted in one of her true major works, an insular cocoon of an album wherein past, present and future versions of the self hold conversation. Drawing on trip-hop and electronica at an increased capacity but painting it with touches of rock guitars and intoxicating industrial, by the time she emerges from that cocoon on vampiric love song closer Dusk she has taken full flight and made potentially 2024’s most emotionally rewarding piece. - Perran Helyes
Hulder - Verses In Oath (20 Buck Spin)
Augmenting the acclaim of 2021's Godslastering: Hymns Of A Forlorn Peasantry and The Eternal Fanfare EP, US black metal practitioners Hulder amassed a career year based on the strength of Verses In Oath. The extreme metal mystics showcase a masterclass of grim, grandoise Pacific Northwest frost. Achieving the requisite bleakness defined by the genre's preceding greats, Hulder broach a new era of black metal modernity characterized by the band's ability to conjure terror and intrigue with compositions of controlled chaos. This was one of the year's early frontrunners for best albums of 2024 and sure enough, it remains. - Ramon Gonzales
Inter Arma - New Heaven (Relapse Records)
Quite simply one of 2024’s most bewildering, perception-warping, and electrifyingly free metal releases. No other band ostensibly from the spheres of post-metal can create a galactic expedition like this, that moves from the utterly mind-melting sound of a sludge band playing technical dissonant death metal as they do on the sickest riff of the year in the title track, to winding up then booting you through a wormhole on Violet Seizures, to eventually landing at a gothic Americana finale that sounds like moon settlers from Virginia have shot out to the stars and yet taken that home culture with them. - Perran Helyes
Folterkammer - Weibermacht (Century Media Records)
The sound of Swiss opera singer Andromeda Anarchia absolutely unchained in feral, venomous delivery atop the sadistic “torture chamber music” black metal of a band featuring members of Imperial Triumphant is one of 2024’s most perversely rewarding endeavours. With a title roughly translating as “Bitch Power” and a cover depicting a witch riding a prone man’s body as a broomstick, Folterkammer have cannily spotted the kinship between traditional Satanic black metal’s stance of anti-religious repression and the overt female sexuality demonised throughout history by those same institutions, and so through this marriage have created black metal’s ultimate ode to prude-provoking kink. - Perran Helyes
Ihsahn - Ihsahn (Candlelight Records)
Norwegian black metal’s ultimate iconoclast makes quite simply the biggest flex of any metal musician in 2024, knuckling down after years of smaller side ventures to create the ultimate representation of what Ihsahn can do three decades after Emperor’s debut. Bursting with constant maximalist intensity and carnivalistic impulses yet all under the icy grip of a steely-eyed artist who knows exactly where every single note must place, Ihsahn weaves his magic through it all to create another landmark release in his legendary career. - Perran Helyes
Night Verses - Every Sound Has A Color In the Valley of Night (Equal Vision Records)
Progressive champions Night Verses marked their celebrated return from a five year hiatus with the release of the masterfully executed, Every Sound Has A Color In The Valley Of Night. A absolute clinic of prog showmanship without the pretense, the album asserts artistry an ebb and flow with energy that makes the effort especially cohesive. An impressive instrumental lockstep in the trio of Nick DePirro, Reilly Herrera and Aric Improta - Night Verses assert their expertise in a way that goes beyond performative spectacle. Boasting features from Anthony Greene of Circa Survive, industrial innovator Author & Punisher and Justin Chancellor of Tool, Night Verses emphasizes all that is great about the genre, while daring to color outside the lines of it. - Ramon Gonzales
Unto Others - Never, Neverland (Century Media Records)
On album three with a new label and new producer in hand, the leading lights of contemporary gothic heavy metal make a record that takes advantage of their foundation now being very much established to travel down all manner of new avenues. There is a more slickly polished approach to Butterfly or Angel of the Night that sounds exactly how commercial metal should, yet so much clear evidence of just how much fun and love they have put into making it from horror-punk-thrash blast Momma Likes the Door Closed to an insanely joyous near-instrumental in Hoops to slow jam experiment Cold World that ensures that no move feels overly calculated and instead a band prepared to explore every idea that might come to them. - Perran Helyes
Upon Stone - Dead Mother Moon (Century Media Records)
Southern California's San Fernando Valley has fruited one of heavy music most promising new prospects in Upon Stone. Showcasing a strong Scandinavian influence combined with modern execution and a hardcore pedigree, the band has resonated with a cross section of fans spanning generation and genre. Fusing elements of melo-death and blackened thrash, the band's resounding debut set a high bar at the start of the year and remains one of the best across the entire spectrum of heavy music in 2024. - Ramon Gonzales
Gaerea - Coma (Season of Mist)
Coma proves in no uncertain terms that Gaerea is easily able to transcend black metal and stand tall with its own gnarly—nay, depraved-adjacent—sound. Gearea’s remarkable growth as documented on Coma isn’t unlike Deafheaven’s striking transformation on their own fourth album, 2018’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love; or Uada’s stylistic alterations on—you guessed it—their fourth LP, last year’s Crepuscule Natura. But neither of those records turned out to be as glorious as Coma. No, you’re not living in a scary dream-state à la Tim Robbins’ character in Jacob's Ladder You’re just witnessing Gaerea 2.0 for the first time. And you will be very pleased to meet them. - Kurt Orzeck
Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (Pure Noise Records)
Hands-down the most seismic, zeitgeist-shaking, transgressive and commercially successful heavy record of the year — a feat that a band accomplishes only once every few decades. The impeccable quality of You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To cannot be denied, not by the fans of hardcore, punk, and even indie-rock who relished Knocked Loose’s new flavor. When a single record delivers a breakthrough band from headlining club shows to topping the Billboard charts to delivering the most controversial heavy-rock performance on national TV to opening for Slipknot on arguably the biggest metal stadium tour in the same year, it has achieved irrefutable status as a tour de force largely thanks to once masterpiece of an album. - Kurt Orzeck
Candy - It's Inside You (Relapse Records)
Metallic outliers Candy leveled up when it came the follow up their celebrated 2022 sophomore release, Heaven Is Here. The band's third and arguably most ambitious effort to date, It's Inside You, touts the collaborative muscle of principle songwriter Michael Quick along with Ben Greenberg of industrial noise provocateurs Uniform. Paired with super producer Kurt Ballou, the collection presents a caustic mesh that blurs the lines between subcategories of metallic heft. The album is a dizzying, dominant show of force that is impressively as menacing as it is methodical. - Ramon Gonzales
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja (Nuclear Blast Reocrds)
Muuntautuja, a term that originated in Oranssi Pazuzu’s Finnish homeland and translates in English to “transformation,” is the latest tongue-twister the quintet is employing, perhaps as a forewarning that the record of theirs you are about to listen to is challenging from start to finish. Those familiar with the gang know this is the modus operandi of Oranssi Pazuzu. And yet, with all the dedication they apply into knitting together those often-divergent musical strains, Oranssi Pazuzu impossibly manage to heap even more styles onto Muuntautujanto, a mountain of a record that proves their penchant for monumental ambition — and that they are, once again, somehow able to rise to the challenge (pun very much intended). - Kurt Orzeck
Alcest - Les chants de l’aurore (Nuclear Blast Records)
- Kurt Orzeck
Full of Hell - Coagulated Bliss (Closed Casket Activities)
The result of a new focus and a refined approach, noise specialists Full of Hell's abrasive brand diversified their attack after their 2023 collaboration with heavy shoegaze outfit, Nothing. Releasing the joint EP, When No Birds Sang, last year, the band earned a new awareness as songwriters - better distilling their sound and prioritizing their harsh DNA while honing in its execution. Working with producer Taylor Young, the Maryland collective sources the best elements of their previous five albums to better construct their chaos. Anchored with blast beats and a healthy dose of distorted low end, Coagulated Hell is as devastating as anything Full of Hell have ever crafted - only this time, especially sharp and succinct. - Ramon Gonzales
Kublai Khan TX - Exhibition of Prowess (Rise Records)
There are few frontmen built like Matt Honeycutt. His ability to be provocative and powerful at the helm of Kublai Khan TX is what shines brightest on Exhibition of Prowess. His delivery is enough to compel his audience to charge through brick walls if they had to - tapping into the most visceral element of heavy music that resonates with us all. A resounding showcase of the band's musical brawn, bolstered by Honeycutt's dominant presence, this is metallic hardcore that strikes with ruthless intentions. - Ramon Gonzales
Wage War - Stigma (Fearless Records)
Wage War's “Stigma” captures raw emotion and unmatched energy, blending crushing riffs with heartfelt lyrics. Cody Quistad and the boys push the boundaries of modern Metalcore with this instant classic. They told you they are coming and hell’s coming with them! - Joshua Toomey
The Ghost Inside - Searching for Solace (Epitaph Records)
The Ghost Inside are at the top of their game 20 years in and nearly 10 years removed from their tragic bus accident. While staying true to their metalcore roots, The Ghost Inside incorporates more clean vocals and explores new song structures, showcasing their growth and maturity as a band on Searching For Solace. Death Grip crushes and is a perfect gateway track. - Joshua Toomey
P.O.D. - Veritas (Mascot Records)
P.O.D. laid the boom in 2024 with this return to form. “Veritas” comes through your speakers with backup, including Lamb of God's Randy Blythe on "Drop" and Jinjer's Tatiana Shmayluk on "Afraid to Die. Sonny Sandoval always hits the mark with his positivity and powerful hooks. - Joshua Toomey
