It’s finally time. The moment you’ve all been waiting for.

2024 was… a year that happened! The good news? The metal was fucking KILLER, and talking about it and sharing it is still one of my favorite pastimes. And not just to distract myself from the world around me (but that doesn’t hurt either). We’ve been doing this in some form and capacity for a decade now, and each year still brings a whole bunch of incredible stuff from both the familiar and previously unfamiliar. Heavy metal is, frankly, alive and well. In every corner you look, in every genre and subgenre, there is good to be found. To celebrate exactly that we once again determined our nine favorite albums as a writing team. Here’s how it all played out…

As is our annual ritual, every member of the Nine Circles staff chose their nine favorite albums (inclusive of EPs) listed in order, and up to nine honorable mentions. Because duh. A scoring system was than applied to the rankings: A first place album received 10 points, the second received 9, and so on and so forth. All honorable mentions received a single point each. Then, combining the scores across everyone’s lists, we have ourselves a collective Nine Circles ov 2024! It’s a fun process, I swear.

So! Our favorite albums of 2024 are immediately below. We’ll once again start with number 9 so you’ll have to scroll a bit to get to the big winner. We also determined the Label of the Year again, using the same scoring process as above. A title that is surely the pinnacle of internet fame. I can feel your collective excitement and anticipation from here. You’ll have to wait until the very end to find out who took that honor for 2024, however.

I’ve given you the spiel. It’s time to party…

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9. Opeth – The Last Will and Testament

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8. Vitriol – Suffer & Become

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7. Schammasch – The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean

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6. Pallbearer – Mind Burns Alive

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5. Chat Pile – Cool World

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4. Gaerea – Coma

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3. Alcest – Les Chants de l’Aurore

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2. Ulcerate – Cutting the Throat of God

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1. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere

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Truly, I don’t think an “all in” list has ever summed up this collective of contributors better. Maybe one or two surprises up there, but otherwise… yeah that all tracks. Now let’s get into my favorite part: the stats!

• 127 different albums ended up in a “Best of 2024” list across our team, down only one from the 128 that made an appearance last year. We’re nothing if not consistent!
• 100 (!!!) of those albums appeared in only a single list, way up from the 56 last year. So basically, the team disagreed on way more stuff this year. Isn’t that nice? We’re not consistent!
• Blood Incantation appeared on the most lists (8), followed by Ulcerate (7), Gaerea (5), and then Alcest and Chat Pile (4). No real surprises there.
• 10 different participants picked 8 different albums as their #1, with only Ulcerate and Alcest topping multiple lists (2, duh).
• Panopticon ran away with it a bit in 2023, but 2024 came down to a tie breaker. Blood Incantation and Ulcerate both landed at 54 points, with Blood Incantation taking home the gold because they landed on one more list. Alcest was a distant third at 32, with another jump down to 22 for Gaerea.
• Those 127 albums were released through 72 different labels…

…Which brings us to our Label of the Year announcement. Let it be written that for 2024 this prestigious title has been awarded to: Century Media! Again, not much of a surprise. You can all relax with the applause. Five different CM albums landed on our lists, with the mighty Blood Incantation at the top. As far as scoring goes, they ended up with a score of 76. Nuclear Blast followed at 58 (Alcest) and Debemur Morti at 55 (Ulcerate). So join us in congratulating Century Media! (Who doesn’t actually get anything from this beyond a big ol’ virtual high five.)

To close out, Nine Circles would once again like to end the year with a massive thank you to… everyone! The bands, labels, PR folks, fellow bloggers, and anyone else that we’ve connected with in the year that was. Next up, just so everyone knows, our staff absolutely rules, so a massive THANK YOU to them. This Nine Circles ride has persisted somehow, in some way, for a decade. The community you have all created and perpetuated makes every single moment a gift. And to our readers, all of those that make the curious decision to go out of their way to explore our thoughts and words at least one time, thank you. Sharing what we’re passionate about is what this is all about. You give us the opportunity to do just that. The gratitude is endless, whether you align with our hot (see also: cold) takes or not.

Farewell to 2024, and cheers to the rest of 2025 that lies ahead. Satan help us all.