Highlights in metal, 2024

Highlights in metal

Achelous – Tower of High Sorcery

While not highly original, this mix of power metal and traditional heavy metal is both well arranged and diverse, spanning fast-paced gallopers to ballads to soaring epics. A distinguishing feature is the guest vocalist appearing at key moments; the intertwining male and female vocals create majestic effects especially in the final track. An album that has gone largely under the radar, this was my favorite power metal release of the year. In fact, it was the only one that left any impression on me.

Neon Nightmare – Faded Dream

A side project of Spirit Adrift’s founder and frontman, Neon Nightmare is at first glance a shameless homage to Typo O’Negative, complete with a rather good Peter Steele impression. With that framing, I was reluctant to consider it for this list, but besides the fact that I enjoy the album very much, it says something that I’m not the most dedicated fan of Type O’Negative, finding famous albums like Bloody Kisses too long and repetitive for my taste. Faded Dream, barely topping forty minutes, is focused and succinct. That it can sound so fresh in 2024 is a reminder of how completely this style of gothic metal has disappeared. There is life left in this sound yet.

Iotunn – Kinship

Iotunn’s second album so thoroughly blends progressive, power, death, and even black metal that subgenre classification is impossible. That, combined with an opener and closer each exceeding ten minutes and a total run time of well over an hour, puts Kinship at severe risk of collapsing under its own weight—a fate all too common for progressive music. But in fact it all works marvellously, kept afloat by strong songwriting throughout. The longest tracks are, if anything, the most compelling. Metal is a genre of excesses, and Kinship exemplifies that.

Borknagar – Fall

The release of Fall finds Norwegian band Borknagar, now thirty years old, somehow at the height of their powers. From their origin as pioneers of black metal, Borknagar now play mainly progressive and folk/Viking metal. Frontman ICS Vortex, always instantly recognizable, sings mostly in his clean style and is captivating as ever. The title of the second track, “Nordic Anthem,” is representative of the album: the tone throughout is triumphant. Fall is musically and thematically similar to Borknagar’s previous album, True North, but while True North has more obvious standout tracks, Fall attains such a degree of consistency and coherence that it emerges the superior album. Listening to Fall transports me to another place, the highest mark of achievement for an album of any genre. My overall favorite metal release this year.

Thy Catafalque – XII: A Gy​ö​ny​ö​rü Álmok Ezut​á​n J​ö​nnek

The only thing that can be reliably predicted about a Thy Catafalque album is that it will be weird. XII is indeed weird, but it’s also highly listenable. Insofar as the album is metal, it is rooted in black metal, but the feelings evoked are quite the opposite of what one usually expects. I would describe XII as joyous and cinematic; for a suitably strange movie, it could work as a soundtrack.

Hauntologist – Hollow

Black metal is first and foremost associated with Scandanavia, but in recent years Poland has emerged as a focal point for the genre. No band has done more in service of that cause than Mgła, releasing back-to-back classics in With Hearts Toward None and Exercises in Futility and inspiring countless imitators. Hollow is a case study in how to do an effective side project, combining Mgła’s distinctive riffing and drumming styles with post-rock and post-punk influences that would never be found on an ordinary Mgła album. The album cover, a derelict building set against a gray, fuzzed-out sky, suits the music perfectly. This is a gloomy album evoking urban decline and a general sense of anxiety.

Aara – Eiger

What if someone wrote new classical music, but to be played on electric guitars with the outward trappings of black metal? Aara are the answer to this question, and they have reliably produced an album in this style every year since their inception in 2019. While they have by now established a formula, I don’t mind because they just keep getting better at it. If you’d like to hear the most soaring and melodious riffs ever tremolo-picked over a wall of blast beats, try this album or another in Aara’s back catalogue.

Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere

Often and accurately described as “death metal meets Pink Floyd,” the latest album by Blood Incantation has garnered a lot of praise, as well as a few complaints by fans who prefer the more conventional, but still ambitious, style of technical death metal found on previous albums. For me, Absolute Elsewhere is a clear success. The spacey sci-fi theme is a perfect fit for the music, and amidst all the experimentation, the band has not neglected to write some of the most exciting and inventive riffs you’ll hear this year.

Olhava – Sacrifice

Olhava have taken the naturalistic, minimalist black metal popularized by albums like Diadem of 12 Stars to its logical conclusion. The band creates enveloping walls of sound that morph slowly over the course of four very long songs, separated by interludes. It’s hard for me to imagine actively listening to the hour and a half of music found on Sacrifice, but I like to put it on while I work or rest and just let it wash over me.

Brodequin – Harbringer of Woe

I don’t normally go in for brutal death metal but this one caught my ear on a first listen and I’ve returned to it many times since. Avoiding the recent trends to sound dissonant or, worse, “cavernous,” Brodequin play death metal with surgical precision, brought out by the album’s crisp production, but tempered with the straightforward sense of groove and rhythm that makes this kind of music fun in the first place. It’s a highly effective combination. I didn’t know for a while that this album is a comeback for the band after twenty years of inactivity. In retrospect, it makes sense.

Not quite metal

The year 2024 also featured a number of great releases that are not, by my lights, metal but have reliable cross-genre appeal. I couldn’t resist making a section just for them.

Ulver – Liminal Animals

While I can certainly enjoy their early black metal classics, of Ulver’s several reinventions throughout their long career, it is their latest as a synth pop band that is unequivocally my favorite. Liminal Animals continues to explore the style of dark synth pop found on their recent albums The Assassination of Julius Caesar and Flowers of Evil. Compared to those two, Liminal Spaces has greater variety, mixing the really immediate, danceable numbers with slower atmospheric pieces, such as the two “Nocturnes” and the droning closer that calls to mind their mid-career ambient work. The track “Hollywood Babylon” also contains more overt political commentary than I can recall ever hearing from Ulver. But whatever the proportions, it’s all just so catchy and listenable. I’d consume a lot more pop music if it sounded like this.

Chelsea Wolfe – She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She

Chelsea Wolfe seems to have emerged as the official favorite singer-songwriter of the metal community, making it all the more unfortunate that I’ve never connected with her music. But from the opening moments of this strangely titled album, with pulsating synthesizers building to an industrial heaviness that would do Godflesh proud, it’s clear that Wolfe has shaken up her sound. Little remains of the gothic rock and folk from her early career. What we find instead is a blend of industrial, trip hop, and other electronica that perfectly suites Wolfe’s modern-sounding voice. I hope she continues in the direction set out here.

Doedsmaghird – Omniverse Consciousness

Readers of last year’s review will know that I, like many, was a big fan of Dødheimsgard’s latest, Black Medium Current. If you liked that album, you’ll probably like this one too, being a side project by one band member. The ingredient are similar but the proportions are different: here metal takes a back seat to the electronic and avante-garde. More experimental and less polished than its predecessor, Omniverse Consciousness is a trippy, unpredictable experience well worth having.

Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja

Oranssi Pazuzu are usually classified as metal: Metal Archives describes their style as “psychedelic black metal,” and I’ve seen their latest on several metal best-of lists. But while it uses a certain amount of metal instrumentation, along with a bunch of electronics, Muuntautuja doesn’t sound like metal to me. Conventional riffs are nowhere to be found, and the song structures are alien. The descriptor “psychedelic” is, however, entirely accurate. Depending on the tempo, listening to this album feels like drifting through space or falling into a black hole. I’m not sure I enjoy it, but I put it on this list because it keeps pulling me back in.