Every year it’s like screaming into the void.

I sit and scramble, fine-tuning, adjusting, and then justifying why I listed albums a certain way. Why albums I listen to way more are in the Honorable Mentions list rather than this one. Why some albums aren’t really metal, why “metal” is not the same as “heavy” and some albums are one, some the other, some both.

Some neither.

In the end, this year, here’s what I came away with: I do this because I love music, and I want this silly website to succeed because behind its CSS scripts and server costs I found lifelong friends and brothers (broyters even, Dan). As frustrating as this scene makes us, as infuriating as the gatekeepers who gatekeep even as they scream about gatekeeping are, in the end there is nothing like sitting back and completely geeking out over an album that moved us, that spoke to us in a way that keeps the light of this silly flame called heavy metal from extinguishing.

So again, once more into the breach. Stoner and Psych callouts are here, Honorable Mentions are here. And now, another 25 albums that rocked my world, to close out the old and welcome in the new. Because if I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that there’s still so much I haven’t heard yet, and so much yet to be created.

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The Inner Circle

My Top 25 Albums of 2024, Part I: Albums 25-10

25. Sovereign – Altered Realities: It’s not that Oslo’s Sovereign simply nail the 90s death/thrash tone impeccably; it’s that Altered Realities literally sounds like a lost record unearthed from 30 years ago. The production is spot on; the arrangements technical without ever sacrificing brutality, and those vocals…goddamn those vocals sound like there’s no oxygen in the room and bassist/vocalist Gravskjender is breathing fire and ash with every raspy roar. Early Death, Malevolent Creation…supreme technicality with massive groove and packed in a tight, dry production is the name of the game here, and bangers like “Futile Dreams” and the epic “Absence of Unity” show there’s plenty of gas left in this particular tank. Enough to blow your face off, dude.

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24. Marrow of Man – Ancient Hymns of Apocalypse: Yeah, I’m still a sucker for solid one-man bedroom second wave black metal revivalism, and Marrow of Man fit the bill perfectly. Hailing from the Netherlands, mastermind Sahand Mozdbar never forgets that beneath all the treble and tremolo picking you have to have strong melodies to make this shit work, and songs like opener “Blazing Trumpets of Cessation” and “Beyond The Frozen Meadows” have a terrific sense of songcraft that works to reinforce and uplift the genre as a whole. Check out the cymbal work on “He Who Rides The Pale Horse” – dude knows how to emphasize a moment, I’m telling you, programmed drums or not. Harmonized guitars (even some solos!), tempo shifts and pick slides make Ancient Hymns of Apocalypse a perfect go-to when I’ve exhausted my early Darkthrone binges and want a slick, sick second wave chaser. (profiled here, reviewed here)

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23. Oxygen Destroyer – Guardian of the Universe: There are more than a few times when we have nothing on the books for a week, and I randomly grab a promo to review. It’s much rarer for that to happen and I fall hard for a band. It’s almost never that said band winds up on my end of year list, and yet here we are with Oxygen Destroyer‘s latest, Guardian of the Universe. Yes, I am a sucker for kaiju-themed stuff, but also this was a year where I doubled down on furious death metal, and damn does this deliver. The title track is just ferocious riff after riff before the vocals eventually come in, and the speed metal/thrash elements are amped way the hell up to give the music a sharp bite. Oxygen Destroyer know only one way to rock, and that’s full in your face speed and aggression and when you have song titles like “Eradicating The Symbiotic Hive Mind Entity From Beyond The Void” you better back it up with some viciousness. And boy howdy they do just that. (reviewed here)

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22. Piah Mater – Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun: Oh Piah Mater…you sound so much like Still Life era Opeth it’s a borderline crime…but since Opeth are very busy doing their own thing I’ll gobble it up, hook line and sinker. Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun more than lives up to the promise of the Brazilian band’s 2018 classic The Wandering Daughter; it ups the ante on the Latin elements and pushes the progressive arrangements even further. Outside of the instrumental interlude “Macaw’s Lament” nothing is under eight minutes, and rippers like “Fallow Garden” and “Terra Dois” show that despite my joke in the beginning Piah Mater have enough originality in their writing to stand out from their prime sonic influence and carve a path of their own. (reviewed in a second circle here)

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21. Schammasch – The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean: This might have been the hardest album to place. Schammasch have always traded in dark, complex black metal that follows its own muse into deep and uncharted waters, and the truth is I love everything about The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean even as I freely admit I haven’t quite found my way “in” to the music yet. There’s an impenetrability to the songs, the way the drums seemingly overlap and divide, crashing into each other in even the calmer moments of “Crystal Waves”. The relatively straightforward ballad (if you want to call it that) “Image of the Infinite” has hidden depths that dance and flit just out of reach of my ability to embrace it. But that tease is so very enticing, and there are few albums I’ve gone back to again and again, getting no further but loving the journey each time. (reviewed here)

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20. Slimelord – Chytridiomycosis Relinquished: Talk about thick, impenetrable slabs of metal…the debut from the UK’s Slimelord was so interesting I couldn’t let the interview and formal review on the site stand alone, so I went and reviewed the album over on my personal site as well. The riffs on debut LP Chytridiomycosis Relinquished are molten; a thick, viscous runoff of twisted, Gorguts-inspired death metal. Expertly mixed by Damian Herring of Horrendous, you can hear every squeal and dissonant string bend as the band get truly terrifying on “The Beckoning Bell” and “Gut-Brain Axis” which gets positively funereal in its darker moments. The second half of the album gets even weirder, with all sorts of effects turning “Batrachomorpha Resurrections Chamber” into a hallucinogenic nightmare. I joke a lot about the sameness of many of 20 Buck Spin’s releases, but this year they knocked it out of the park with Slimelord. (interview here, reviewed here)

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19. Gaerea – Coma: I make no apologies for how much I didn’t (and really still don’t) care for the older work of Portugal’s Gaerea. Though it’s broadened I still have distinct (and often contradictory) tastes when it comes to black metal, and nothing the band did worked for me until 2022’s Mirage. That maturity and growth in songwriting continues on new album Coma, but it’s the production that finally gets lifted to the point where it’s now serving the music instead of simply getting it by. “The Poet’s Ballet” is a shot across the bow signaling just how intent the band are in pushing their vision forward. The title track is a candidate for track of the year, and the introduction of robust clean vocal passages, counterpoint melodies and more concise, structured songwriting make this the best album the band have released to date. For the first time I can’t wait to hear what they do next.

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18. 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker) – Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum: For almost a decade we’ve been blessed by the constantly churning experimentation of 夢遊病者, a band whose mission statement seems to be the ravenous exploration of music to its furthest reaches. Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum is in some ways their most accessible work, folding in classical, jazz, ambient and straight up metal in a collection of songs that redefine what it means to be “progressive” in your music. It’s a work that constantly astounds with each listen, from the twisted metal of “Tongue Arc Orion” featuring guest vocals from Ø. Hægeland of the incredible technical death metal band Spiral Architect (RIP) to the absolute brainstorm of styles that converge and collapse on “Jupiterian Convulse Tremor.” When that accordion hits, it’s sublime. (reviewed at Consuming the Tangible here)

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17. Oceans of Slumber – Where Gods Fear to Speak: You could argue that Where Gods Fear to Speak, the latest from Houston’s Oceans of Slumber is the most mainstream metal album on this list. But let’s be honest: metal hasn’t been mainstream since the nu-metal craze of the late 90s/early 00s, and one listen to this shows an uncompromising attitude when it comes to crafting emotive, anthemic songs that don’t waver from also being utterly pissed off and aggressive. The 1-2 punch of the opening title track and the raw rage of “Run From the Light” are terrific, showing just how versatile and powerful Cammie Beverly’s vocals are. They took a bit of a detour on the more gothic tinged Starlight and Ash, but here everything is full on anger and power. When I first started writing for Nine Circles way back in 2016, I put their sophomore LP Winter on my best of list. It’s been a while for the band, but I am glad to see them back with all guns blazing. (reviewed for the Sep 2024 catchup here)

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16. Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja: Goddamn have I missed Oranssi Pazuzu. I know they technically never left, but honestly after the sonic devastation of Värähtelijä I was left wanting with the band’s subsequent output. Muuntautuja not only rights the ship; it totally upends it, bringing space rock, motorik industrial rhythms and nightmarish psychedelia more to the forefront than ever before. The throbbing gristle of the title track is more than worth the price of entry, but when it really gets weird, as it does on much of Muuntautuja‘s second half (dear lord the depressive spiral that opens “Ikikäärme”) the album really becomes one of the most unique metal offerings this year. Pair this with an album like Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum and your mind just might explode. (reviewed here)

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15. Borknagar – Fall: Grand, majestic and beautifully anthemic, I think Borknagar have only gotten better over time. Rather than repeat a formula that works until it’s dead in the ground (sorry Enslaved, I love you but haven’t really fallen for an album since RIITTIIR), the band under the careful leadership of Øystein G. Brun have expanded and made everything bigger, more epic and richer sounding, especially under the production prowess of Jens Bogren. Fall feels like a summation of everything they’ve been building toward, certainly since 2016’s amazing and expansive Winter Thrice that brought back all the band’s vocalists Helloween-style, five years before they did it. Now with just ICS Vortex on vocals Borknagar are as laser-focused as ever, and from the single “Summits” to the closing epic “Northward” they have delivered an icy gift of frozen beauty that will stand among their very best. (reviewed for the Feb catchup here)

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14. Liminal Shroud – Visions of Collapse: All Virtues Ablaze was one of those albums I expected nothing from and then blew me away with how British Columbia’s Liminal Shroud constructed their take on melodic black metal. So I was prepared for Visions of Collapse, but was still blown away by the trio’s galloping attack on “Nocturnal Phosphoresence.” There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking on the band’s third LP, just this style of black metal done to perfection: the speed accentuates rather than detracts from the mournful tone of the songs, the drumming from Drew Davison is superb, and the string attack from guitarist Aidan Crossley and bassist Rich Taylor interweave and project a Jungian archetype for this particular branch of the dark arts. (reviewed here)

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13. Lascaille’s Shroud – Wyrmfire and Starlight: Who else is up for a single 40-minute track of fantasy-driven and queer-focused death metal that paints with subtle electronic washes even as it rips your face off with its riffing? I always am, and Lascaille’s Shroud was another of those out of nowhere discoveries that, as soon as I heard the opening keyboards to Wyrmfire and Starlight I knew I was hooked. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons to Edge of Sanity, maybe for just the single album-length track, but in my mind this is just as cohesive, and sole composer/musician Brett Windnagle doesn’t let his one-man band status limit his ambition throughout the song’s many passages. This feels and sounds suitably enormous, and it’s been a blast going through his back catalog as I await the inevitable next chapter in his musical journey. (discussed on the mid-year report podcast here)

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12. Paysage d’Hiver – Die Berge: I’m sure others were ahead of the game, but for me there was a moment in 2020 when it seemed like icy cold black metal was taking over, between the foul stew of Lamp of Muurmuur and the inky black void of Paysage d’Hiver. Particularly the maelstrom Paysage d’Hiver’s Wintherr (also of Darkspace) was churning out on Im Wald, an album I’ve only begun to pierce. That wasn’t the case with Die Berge, the man’s third “official” LP (between his album length demos and splits he’s easily close to 20 releases at this point) which chronicles the seeming end of his arching concept of a Wanderer traveling through the universe as he makes his way to the mountains that the album is named for. The description alone should tell you what you’re in for: some of the bleakest, unforgiving black metal you’ve ever heard, albeit with a newfound sonic clarity that emphasizes every droplet of the black metal storm Wintherr conjures up. If you make it through the terror of opener “Urgrund” the next hour and 20 minutes will leave you a believer, too. (reviewed in the Nov 2024 catchup here)

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11. Ulcerate – Cutting the Throat of God: The other album along with Schammasch I had the hardest time placing. I readily admit I wasn’t the biggest fan of Stare Into Death and Be Still, the 2020 juggernaut from New Zealand’s Ulcerate, but there was something in the undulating murk of Cutting the Throat of God that held me captive. The album is more progressive, allowing its cleaner sections to branch out and hold the song more without immediately resorting to the band’s crushing weight of death metal. Especially on “The Dawn is Hollow” which might be my favorite track. It’s another album that doesn’t invite you in; you have to work to get through its labyrinth passages and unwind its intent. Ulcerate might win the award for the most despairing music of 2024 – it’s not something I turn to on the regular, but it gives me something literally nothing else on this list can. (reviewed here)

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10. Chapel of Disease – Echoes of Light: I swore after leaving 2018’s …And As We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced The Eye off my end of year I would never take the incredible Chapel of Disease for granted again. And here we are with Echoes of Light and…man this is not what I was expecting. It took a little bit for the shock to wear off and get used to what the band were doing, but once I settled in and focused on the music it all came together. The rock and roll is elevated, the distortion is dialed back, but the solos…dear lord the solos are so magnificent. Singer/guitarist/bassist Laurent Teubl plays with space and expectation, bringing metric tons of tension to his songwriting and playing, and the rest of the band follow suit, constructing an intricate web of riffs and musical ideas from the opening title track to the closing moments of “An Ode to the Conqueror” that may not have the punishing death of their earlier modern classic, but bring something more ethereal (though no less deadly) to your ears. Magnificent. (reviewed in the Feb 2024 catchup here)

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The Ninth Circle

My Top 25 Albums of 2024, Part II: Albums 9-1

9. Lord Dying – Clandestine Transcendence: A lot of bands gave good Mastodon this year, and what I mean by that is a crushing amalgam of progressive sludgy death and thrash. But for my money no one did it better than Lord Dying on Clandestine Transcendence. The five years since the stellar Mysterium Tremendum were spent seriously woodshedding on the songwriting, and with Kurt Ballou pulling out all the stops in the production department Lord Dying soar above mirroring a sound and truly make it their own. I love the crazy funk that permeates “Dancing On The Emptiness”, and the a cappella moment in opener “The Universe Is Weeping” is still a fantastic break I forget is coming. It’s also an album that consistently surprises from beginning to end – if you think it’s front loaded thanks to tracks like the killer “I Am Nothing I Am Everything” check out the back half, particularly the solos on “A Bond Broken By Death.” Too many great moments to count, and for an album that came out in mid-January to remain this high up speaks to its bonafides. (reviewed in the Jan 2024 catchup here and discussed in the mid-year round-up podcast here)

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8. Darkthrone – It Beckons Us All…….: I know…I said we need to be more critical of our favorites, and that during the mid-year round up I intentionally didn’t bring up my beloved Darkthrone. I tried to stick to it, but the pull of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto was too much, and over the autumn and into winter I found myself coming back again and again to It Beckons Us All……. Their current run of caveman doom trad metal feels like it hit an apex here, after the too-cold and prehistoric Eternal Hails……. and the adjustment (and awesome album cover) that was Astral Fortress. The pair are so adept at crafting simple yet infinitely catchy riffs everyone says are too simplistic yet no one else ever comes up with, like the driving riff of “Howling Primitive Colonies” and the fabulous (yeah, I used fabulous in describing Darkthrone…suck it) “Black Dawn Affiliation.” Fenriz finally returns to the mic for a few tunes, and it gives the album a breath of fresh air and an ever-so-slightly wider scope across It Beckons Us All…….’s (is that how you do it?) seven tracks. Every song is an opportunity to air guitar, and the news that they’re already in progress on the next one is exactly what I needed to hear. (reviewed here)

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7. Inconcessus Lux Lucis – Temples Colliding In Fire: More black and roll with soaring guitar solos and a sense of epic power? Yes, please…even if it wasn’t at all what I was expecting from the UK’s Inconcessus Lux Lucis. 2017’s The Crowning Quietus was a great mix of epic metal with second wave black and a heaping teaspoon of death stretched to complex songs that had the perfect amount of GRIM and fun. But Temples Colliding in Fire goes for broke with the guitar heroics, the anthemic heavy metal, and the propulsive rock, with the death and black metal curled up in the metal trunk, only occasionally getting through to the driver. Who, in this terrible metaphor, is William Jackson. There is so much blistering epic rock on “I Am The Crooked Blade” I had to check to make sure I was still listening to the same band. Same with the title track, and even the sharp inhalation of breath that is the interlude “Meditations Upon Burning Breath” is strapped to the gills with righteous rock before diving into the second half of this veritable rock monster of an album. Did I use the word “rock” too much? I think I used the word “rock” too much… (reviewed in the Jun 2024 catchup here)

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6. Crypt Sermon – The Stygian Rose: At this point my top six albums are completely interchangeable depending on my mood – they’re all perfect to me, doing different things better than anything else on any of my lists. There are some common themes, though: they all blend together multiple styles I love, and in many instances take their time crafting albums. In the five years they’ve been away, Crypt Sermon have made every single second count, and they have plain and simple made the album of their lives with The Stygian Rose. Brooks Wilson has never sounded better, and might have the voice of the year. The absolute gold riffage of Steve Jansson is reinforced and built up beautifully thanks to “Christ what CAN’T he do?!” producer of the moment Arthur Rizk, and even Tanner Anderson works magic on keyboards. Every track is painted on a much larger canvas, the ambition and scope taken to 11 on songs like “Glimmers Of The Underworld” and the mammoth closing title track. In between there’s the furious gallop of “Down In the Hollow” and the AOR meets Mercyful Fate-inspired “Scrying Orb.” It all amounts to Crypt Sermon’s best album, and one of those touchstones folks are going to be referencing a decade down the road. No shit, it’s that good. (reviewed here)

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5. Five The Hierophant – Apeiron: I could have sworn I talked about Five The Hierophant here (turns out I did, right here). Apeiron is supremely heavy without being “metal” – this is probably my one outlier for the list, six luxuriant instrumentals where saxophone is the primary melodic driver. Sonically this is the hypothesis: what if someone got Angelo Badalamenti in a rock band, and then during a gig late one night Angelo spotted David Lynch in the back of the crowd, and he suddenly realized he was in a Lynch film, not just scoring it? That’s what gets into my ears and brain, the sax slithering serpent-like through mournful, exotic lines on “Moon Over Ziggurat” and then laying back for the noise on the two “Tower of Silence” tracks. There’s nothing else on this list that sounds remotely like Five The Hierophant, and I love it for that. (reviewed over at Consuming The Tangible here)

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4. Bedsore – Dreaming The Strife For Love: Am I giving the game away? Two albums into my top five albums and they’re both super progressive? Only time and a few hundred more words will tell, so let’s get into it with Bedsore, an Italian progressive death metal whose debut was so good it made my end of year list in 2020. As great as that was, I don’t think anyone was suspecting the massive change the group would undergo on Dreaming The Strife For Love, which firmly puts the band in psychedelic and progressive rock territory. The death metal is still always lurking just below the surface (particularly in the vocals), but from a songwriting and arrangement perspective this beast is taking its cues from King Crimson and Yes. Come for rippers like “Scars of Light,” stay for the fury of “Realm of Eleuterillide” and the sublime centerpiece “A Colossus, An Elephant, A Winged Horse; The Dragon Rendezvous.” (reviewed here)

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3. Chat Pile – Cool World: I’m not going to try and make the claim that Cool World, the sophomore full length from Oaklahoma’s Chat Pile is a progressive album, but how else to describe the expanded scope and ambition of the noise rock band? The group looks further out from this local community to see the same sickness and corruption boiling over, well…everything, and they build out their sound to capture that unrest. “I Am Dog Now” is one of the best openers of any album this year, and the rest of Cool World matches that ferocity and attack. When I pitched this for the October Album of the Month (which it won, BTW) I spoke about the incredible array of influences present, like the Sonic Youth indie drive of “Shame” and the bass-heavy crush of Angel Dust era Faith No More on the killer “Frownland.” Any way you slice it Chat Pile came and stuck a finger in the eye of everyone else trying to do the whole hardcore/noise rock thing. (reviewed in the Oct 2024 catchup here, and reviewed in full at Consuming the Tangible here)

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2. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere: It was so close, my #2 and #1 albums basically neck and neck since their releases. And honestly, depending on my mood on any given day Absolute Elsewhere could easily jump into the top spot – it’s a game changer, the full realization of everything Blood Incantation have been reaching for since their inception. With the best production of the band’s career (is Arthur Rizk the MVP of 2024?), you can hear every twist and turn of Absolute Elsewhere’s two massive three-part suites. The science fiction narratives remain in place (check out the insane video for “The Stargate”) and they’re accompanied by alternating turns of vicious death metal and some of the best psychedelic and progressive rock outside of my eventual and perhaps inevitable #1 album. When Paul Reidl and Morris Kolontyrsky lock into their Pink Floyd worship on Part I of “The Stargate” it’s a thing of beauty and nails Gilmour’s tone so well I laughed out loud even as I was playing along with my vintage air guitar. When they break into their Tangerine Dream phase they do so with the actual Tangerine Dream assisting them. All that and I think the second suite, “The Message” is even better. When they decide to just stick to the progressive death metal it’s divine. Make no doubt, all the hype about this album is true, and I’m already thinking about the next spin of it on my turntable. (reviewed in the Oct 2024 catch up here, and reviewed in full at Consuming the Tangible here)

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1. Opeth – The Last Will And Testament: The long delays, the rumors and the almost stupid price of the limited box set (I did get a notebook, fountain pen and ink, though!) were all worth it, as was the absolute rage of the death metal and prog fanboys when Opeth finally unveiled the entirety of their 14th observation, The Last Will And Testament. Prog nerds lamented that the death growls were back, and death metal freaks railed that the music, despite having death growls again, was still very much in the same vein as everything the band had been chasing since 2011’s Heritage. And through it all was Mikael Åkerfeldt, laughing and giving the finger to them all. When have Opeth ever capitulated to what their fans wanted?

If anything The Last Will and Testament is even more progressive than their last few albums, and there was definitely little to no thought about making these stand-alone “songs” with easy hooks to latch onto. When your narrative concept extends to simply naming your songs after the paragraphs of the titular last will and testament, and you have freakin’ Ian Anderson both narrating and playing flute throughout you know you’re still very much in the thick of it in the best way. New drummer Waltteri Väyrynen is phenomenal, bringing a death metal dexterity to the songs while innately knowing when to hold back and when to simply swing. As for the rest of the band, they are locked into the vibe like never before, and when you get into the truly curvy passages of the second half of the album, it’s an absolute thrill ride. (reviewed here)

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Did I go overboard this year? 62 albums over three separate lists, and that doesn’t even include the separate lists I’m managing for all the straight up prog stuff (hello Sykofant and Frost and Papangu and Beardfish and Neal Morse and…etc.) or my non-metal albums, which I discussed at length with Dan for our annual non-metal podcast, going strong since 2019. Like it does every year, music saved my life, and it felt like an obligation to praise and raise up as many great albums as I could.

So I make no apologies. Music matters, now more than ever, and writing for over eight years with this group of knuckleheads has been a true joy. For all of you that have clicked, read, commented, and supported us, thank you so much. We plan to keep going, keep championing the bands and albums we love, and can’t wait to learn what music moved you as well.

It’s 8am on New Year’s Day as I wrap this up. Time for another cup of coffee and another spin of a good record. As always, keep it heavy, keep it safe.

— Chris

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