I listened to a lot of metal this year, and these are the albums I liked the most. To shift things up from previous round-ups, I've included my personal Top 25, along with separate selections from Pitchfork's metal contributors. At this point I'm hardly the only person covering metal at the site, so I thought it would be worthwhile letting those other voices have their say.
I also included a list from Saint Vitus bar's Dave Castillo. I asked Dave, a close friend, to submit something because he's booked hundreds of metal and hardcore shows, and I was curious what stood out the most for someone in that position. Plus, I live in NYC, and his venue has provided a center for the metal scene here: Sometimes it's nice to step away from the laptop and remember the physical spaces that lured me to this world in the first place.
Speaking of which, I don't usually include books on these lists, but you should check out No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes, an excellent oral history of City Gardens that came out earlier this year. The now-shuttered Trenton venue was important to me as a teenager—I saw a ton of shows there, including the Ramones (my first non-backyard hardcore show), an unexpected Descendents reunion, early Green Day sets, Bad Brains, Butthole Surfers, My Bloody Valentine with Dinosaur, Fugazi, countless hardcore gigs, Gwar (with my frightened kid brother), Skinny Puppy with Pigface and a bunch of goth kids from my college, a few too many ska-punk shows (for unexplained reasons), Shelter somehow, and dozens upon dozens of others.
That space, and its no-bullshit construction and philosophy, helped shape my life and the way I approached doing shows, and things in general. In 2014, I'm especially interested in these kinds of underdog spots—you've already read enough about CBGB's and the like, and it's worth exploring scenes that existed outside of major urban centers, the locales that held scenes together under one roof. This is one of those, the stories are insane, and the book's a treat.
Onto the records.
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25. Planning for Burial: Desideratum [The Flenser]
__Planning for Burial is the project of Matawan, NJ's Thom Wasluck. The mix of highly personalized doom, noise pop, and lo-fi post-metal on his second album brings to mind the '90s under-the-pillow noise of Twisted Village regular Luxurious Bags and the quieter, fuzzier work of Justin Broadrick's Jesu. As his moniker suggests, Wasluck goes into darker spaces, dealing with things like depression, loneliness, and jealousy—subjects you'd expect from music that sounds like it was recorded alone in a bedroom. On "Golden", the 16-minute closer, he offers a prime example of how to move from gentle acoustic strums to room-filling noise without hurting anyone's eardrums. It's like he was afraid to wake up his housemates.
__24. Thantifaxath: Sacred White Noise [Dark Descent]
__On their ambitious, abstracted debut, the hooded Toronto trio play complex black metal that feels like it was recorded in a hall of mirrors—tones are extended and distorted, rhythms shattered and frayed, the overall atmosphere like a twisted carnival. Think a street-punk version of Deathspell Omega or Blut Aus Nord or, maybe, a creepier Krallice with a penchant for flights into new classical. For all the layers of atmosphere and technical chops, though, this is immediate, melodic music: It's enjoyable getting lost in Sacred White Noise, then using the surprise hooks to pull you out of the insanity.
__23. Lantlôs: Melting Sun [Prophecy]
__German multi-instrumentalist Markus Siegenhort split vocals with Alcest's Neige on previous Lantlôs records; he goes it alone on album four, a pretty and still very sturdy collection that blends gorgeous, airy post-rock guitars and heavier, molasses drums with Siegenhort's bright, clear voice. Unlike Neige's flimsier recent work, Siegenhort maintains enough grit here (mostly in the drums) to remind you where the project originated. Ultimately, it's kaleidoscopic and progressive dream pop that often does sound like a sun melting. (Note: Despite the evocative album title, and the mention of post-rock, it sounds nothing like Sunbather.)
Lantlôs: "Melting Sun I: Azure Chimes"
22. Wreck & Reference: Want [The Flenser__]
__The Los Angeles duo Wreck & Reference use a sampler, drums, and voice to express immense, apocalyptic rage. On Want they sometimes hint at a more fucked up and heavy Xiu Xiu, other times Prurient screaming at a wall, and now and again an elegant Godflesh. You even get what might be best described as "Big Black-esque spoken word." Importantly, though, across these 11 spartan songs, they basically sound like no one else. (Of note: They have an entertaining Twitter feed, if you're into those sorts of things.)
21. Mutilation Rites:__ Harbinger [Prosthetic]
__On their second album, and first with Ryan Jones (ex-Today Is the Day, and a very good sound man/producer) on bass and second vocals, the gnarled New York band continued finding a way to cram raw black metal with considerably more hooks, swing, and overall compositional know-how than your average Darkthrone worshippers. (Like Jones, drummer Justin Ennis is also an accomplished professional sound person—I figure this is how they manage to play so loud without losing definition.) Where a lot of black metal in 2014 felt rote, Harbinger is more life-affirming than a suffocating collection with song titles like "Suffer the Children" and "Gravitational Collapse" should be.
__20. Atriarch: An Unending Pathway [Relapse]
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The Portland band, fronted by shape-shifting vocalist Lenny Smith (the guy should have his own reality show), play forward-marching death rock that also cycles into doom, black metal, and punk. (There are dark, catchy songs here you could imagine hearing on vintage 120 Minutes.) At one point on their third album, An Unending Pathway, Smith sings: "When I'm dead, bury me here with no casket or trinkets from life/ I’ll decompose into the Earth so the cycle is whole." It's a beautiful sentiment, and, importantly, you know he's not bullshitting.
19. Teitanblood: Death [Norma Evangelium Diaboli]
The chaotic Spanish duo Teitanblood's second collection of wall-of-noise blackened death metal (or whatever you decide to label a maelstrom) is satisfyingly overwhelming, but also entirely to the point: each track is akin to an uphill life/death struggle, with all the violent flailing you'd assume comes with that sort of experience. In this context, the occasional Tom G. Warrior-style death grunt rings like an actual death rattle, now and then a thrashy solo surfaces from the clamoring muck like an outstretched hand, and sometimes when a song ends you feel like you're the one who needs that sort of assistance. Honestly, it's difficult imagining the guys playing these shambling, suffocating songs more than once, but it's very enjoyable trying to figure out how they do.
18. Gridlink: Longhena [Handshake Inc]
Led by the shredded yowl of Jon Chang and Takafumi Matsubara's artfully complex guitar decompositions, the NJ/Tex./Japan grindcore group's swan song, like their previous salvos, found a way to locate a spot between chiseled violence and spit-shine beauty. On Longhena, 14 songs clock in at 22 minutes, but that doesn't mean there isn't time for a pensive ambient string piece amid the complex explosions. For some reason when I think of Longhena, I imagine it being placed somewhere in an art gallery.
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__17. Krieg: Transient [Candlelight]
__Krieg's Neill Jameson is a prolific NJ-based American black metal lifer, a brainy former record store clerk writer who's made songs about American Psycho's Patrick Bateman and covered the Velvet Underground. He's been around for ages, seemingly always on the periphery. So it was kind of a surprise that his seventh album as Krieg, and first in four years, is a USBM masterpiece, one that comes almost 20 years into his discography. In part this is because Transient feels like a first. There's a punk black'n'roll feel—confirmed by a rollicking cover of Amebix's "Winter"—and an energy that eclipses anything he's done previously. But it's buttressed by his boundless invention—swirling power electronics before a massive hardcore breakdown, boozy post-punk, and, hey, a spoken word piece that pairs his Twilight cohort Thurston Moore with Integrity’s Dwid Hellion. I've booked a few Krieg shows over the years, and remember one time, ages ago, when I paired him with a nascent Liturgy, and watched Jameson down a bottle of honey before the show. That's always informed the way I heard his voice, and how he's figured out what he needs to do to keep things going.
__16. Agalloch: The Serpent & the Sphere [Profound Lore]
__Agalloch's fifth album is the Oregon dark metal group's gentlest—it takes its time with the hushed 10-minute opener and a three-minute classical guitar piece, and remains controlled and unhurried throughout. The record is definitely grand—there are dramatic upswings and echoes and double drumming—but in tone, an often whispering John Haughm and company are pensive, allowing more room for folk and less for blackened whatever. But, of course, when they do decide to howl into the wind, the shivers are even more pronounced, and Serpent suggests an elegant way for these guys to continue mutating around their central conceit for years to come.
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__15. Diocletian: Gesundrian [Osmose Productions]
__The long-running New Zealand war metal outfit Diocletian's third full length features what sounds like air raid sirens emerging from the black/death muck of the second to last track "Beast Atop the Trapezoid". It's a calming moment on an otherwise buzzing, blistering assault of a record.
__14. Eyehategod: *
Eyehategod* [Housecore]
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The classic New Orleans group's first record in 14 years, which comes after Katrina and various personal tragedies, ranks with the best of their over-driven punked-up sludge blues. It's also the last record to feature drummer Joe LaCaze, who passed away in August of this year, a fact that's hard to grasp when you hear how alive he is on these recordings.
__13. Inter Arma: The Cavern EP [Relapse]
__Last year Richmond, Virginia's Inter Arma turned heads with their second album, Sky Burial, a collection that offered a gimmick-free mix of doom, Americana, sludge, groove metal, Southern acoustic ambiance, and filthy crust psychedelia. This year they packed all of that, and more, into one 40 minute song that will keep you glued to your stereo from start to finish. A very exciting band who'll hopefully continue with these sorts of curveballs.
__12. Morbus Chron: Sweven [Century Media]
__The Swedish band's adventurous second collection features 10 songs focusing in one way or another on being stuck in an extended nightmare or astral projection...or something. It's not all that important you decipher that aspect of Sweven—the music's rich enough on its own. The patient, brainy, knotty collection finds the group moving away from their 2011 debut's old-school Autopsy nods to progressive death metal complete with mathy breakdowns, a black metal interlude or two, blazing solos, and tons of atmosphere. Because of the care in these compositions, it's an album best experienced whole, and it's one you can listen to a dozen times a day and continue unpacking. (If you end up being a fan, check out Tribulation from last year's list.)
__11. Primordial: Where Greater Men Have Fallen [Metal Blade]
__On their eighth album, the Irish epic metal band's vocalist/iconic frontman A.A. Nemtheanga chews the vast soundscapes his band lays down behind him. You get eight songs stretching to more than an hour, and he never lags or phones anything in as he intones about Ireland's history, tyrants that oppress the common man, and giving your life for what you love, among other things (hell, there's a song called "Wield Lightning to Split the Sun"). It's a fist-pumping, call-to-arms performance that's made me think of a blackened folk metal Freddie Mercury now and again (why not?). If you at all care about nations and the people working hard to survive in them, this stuff will give you chills.
__10. Dead Congregation: Promulgation of the Fall [Profound Lore]
__The Greek band's second full-length channels the old school death metal of Incantation and Immolation and makes it new. They're not rewriting the book, but they've managed to create another masterpiece of the form. They're a band as technically sick as they are able to create sick atmospheres, and when I saw them live recently, I caught myself staring with my mouth open, a dumfounded witness.
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__9. Indian: From All Purity [Relapse]
__The Chicago doomed sludge band's fifth record features even more feedback and noise than usual, courtesy of Chicago mainstay, Bloodyminded/Anatomy of Habit's Mark Solotroff. Otherwise they remain as single-mindedly focused (and as blown-out and nihilistic) as ever. On the back of 2011's great Guiltless and this record, I asked the quartet to headline my Show No Mercy showcase at SXSW last year—watching them live was like watching four very focused men beat something until it died.
__8. Woods of Desolation: As the Stars [Northern Silence Productions]
__Woods of Desolation is the ongoing project of guitarist/bassist D. and a revolving cast of players. For his excellent third album as WoD, he got help from drummer Vlad (Drudkh) and fellow Australians, bassist Luke Mills (Nazxul, Pestilential Shadows) and vocalist Drohtnung (Old). On paper, the combination of pretty sky-melting guitars and depressive black metal vocals may bring to mind early Alcest and Deafheaven, but this is actually more reminiscent of vintage Katatonia, albeit recorded somewhere deep in the forest and after they somehow got into Explosions in the Sky.
__7. Godflesh: A World Lit Only By Fire [Avalanche]
__The best thing you can say about industrial metal giants Godflesh's first album in 13 years is that it sounds like a record they made more than 20 years ago. On it, Justin Broadrick and G.C. Green returned to their roots—1988’s Godflesh EP, 1989’s Streetcleaner, and 1992’s Pure—and managed to expand upon what they did best without losing any of the original burn.
__6. Blut Aus Nord: Memoria Vetusta III - Saturnian Poetry [Debemur Morti]
__Each year Blut Aus Nord release a record they show up somewhere on my year-end list with a description about how the project of French multi-instrumentalist Vindsval continues pushing boundaries. On his 11th full-length, this one featuring the live drumming of Thorns (Frostmoon Eclipse, Glorior Belli, Deathrow), he returns from the dark ambient and industrial offerings of the 777 trilogy with a proper black metal record—albeit, one clearly from the mind of a guy who's also made dark ambient and industrial albums. Every element, down to the light in the landscape on the cover, is in the right place.
__5. Nux Vomica: Nux Vomica [Relapse]
__For their first record in five years, and first for Relapse, the crusty Portland-via-Baltimore doom band give us three punked-up, politically minded songs that reminded me of the best of Dystopia and Nausea while adding in unexpected elements (the fluttering guitar beauty of "Reeling," the soaring ambient section of "Choked at the Roots") and stretching to 45 minutes. These very catchy, very inspired tracks already have the feel of classic anthems, and when vocalist Just Dave yells "We must resist!" or "We stopped watching the news/ cause we couldn't take it anymore," it's very easy not only to yell along, but to remember that thoughts like this are what got you here initially.
__4. Tombs: Savage Gold [Relapse]
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From intense frontman/band leader Mike Hill and on, the Brooklyn band Tombs is best described as “muscular,” but are otherwise difficult to pin down. The music is precise, heavy, and powerful, and they mix black metal, post-rock, noise rock, straight-up rock, and other elements into a specific, identifiable sound. (Imagine Unsane discovering black metal and copping to an interest in Joy Division.) It’s a style that's buffed to a shine on their third album, Savage Gold, which was recorded and produced by death metal legend Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal, ex-Morbid Angel). There’s a coiled intensity to these 10 songs, and Savage manages to feel both more stripped back and deeper than their also excellent previous work.
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__3. YOB: Clearing the Path to Ascend [Neurot]
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The Eugene, Oregon doom band and year-end list-regulars' seventh album consists of four instant classics clocking in at more than an hour. Their humble, shamanistic frontman and guitarist Mike Scheidt, who wrote this material after a divorce and decision to go off antidepressants, reminds me of J Mascis in his off-stage soft-spoken manner and on-stage six-string theatrics. The music itself is the usual blend of psychedelic and stoner rock, blues, and something more blackened, capped by Scheidt's powerful vocals. But this time out, the material feels especially classic (especially closer "Marrow"), and it's clear that Yob truly are one of America's great heavy bands, a group that should be much bigger than they are.
__2. Pallbearer: Foundations of Burden [Profound Lore]
__For their second album, the Arkansas doom band recorded with Billy Anderson, who sat behind the controls for the classic Sleep oeuvre and has recorded seminal works for High on Fire, Melvins, Jawbreaker, and others. In an interview I did with Pallbearer co-founder/co-lyricist/bassist Joseph D. Rowland, he said Anderson told them he's never recorded a band that used so many guitar tracks—an element of Pallbearer's sound that explains the massiveness of Foundations, as well as how they saw Sorrow and Extinction's successes as an opportunity to deepen and strengthen their craft. This is an ambitious record that doesn't feel at all over-worked or stale, and while Extinction holds up beautifully two years later, Foundations is the stronger collection to the point that it almost comes across as demos for this new material. And where Extinction often felt like a solitary album—especially in its focus on death and mortality—Foundations is built for larger communal spaces.
__1. Thou: Heathen [Gilead Media/Vendetta/Howling Mine]
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With their fourth full-length, the first since 2010's great Summit, the prolific Baton Rouge band Thou continue putting out important, enthralling music that combines their DIY approach with sludge, doom, and punk. (It's their fourth LP, but they've released more than 20 records when you count the EPs and splits.) Heathen is painful and raw, but melodic and transportive. There are throat-shredders like the 15-minute opener "Free Will", moody acoustic interludes (one's called "Take Off Your Skin and Dance in Your Bones"), and ghostly female vocals (courtesy of Emily McWilliams),
On their label's site, they mention that it's recommended if you like "nature, the sensual world, sexual decadence, pain and ecstasy, actively experiencing the present." Summit reminded me of my mother's death, largely because she passed away the year it was released, but also because of the subtle funereal horns and its overall darkness. Heathen, though, for all its intensity, feels to me like an affirmation.
____Honorable Mention: The Soft Pink Truth: Why Do the Heathen Rage? [Thrill Jockey]
____On Why Do the Heathen Rage?, Matmos' Drew Daniel applies his experimental house project Soft Pink Truth's lusty style to songs by Darkthrone, Venom, Beherit, Mayhem, Hellhammer, and other black metal outfits, incorporating guests like Antony, Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, David Serrotte of the Baltimore vogue ball crew House of Revlon, and Locrian’s Terence Hannum. Snippets from gay house classics (and porn) also play a part.
As Daniel’s made clear in the past, SPT is a queer-focused project, as shown on this LP by his cover of Seth Putnam/Impaled Northern Moonforest’s “Grim and Frostbitten Gay Bar” and artist Mavado Charon’s cover illustration of corpse-painted men fucking and murdering each other. The liner notes feature a piece called “Confessions of a Former Burzum T-Shirt Wearer”, where Daniel talks about what it means to be a gay man as well as a fan of black metal—a genre with a sketchy, violent history that includes the murder of a gay man by Emperor’s Bård “Faust”, as well as the fascism of Burzum’s Varg Vikernes. As Daniel puts it, “Just as blasphemy both affirms and assaults the sacred powers it invokes and inverts, so too this record celebrates black metal and offers queer critique, mockery, and profanation of its ideological morass in equal measure.”
It's an album inspired by metal, yes, but it's also a metal album. Sort of. I gave it Honorable Mention because it feels like it deserves its own space. I did the same thing with Liturgy a few years back when they released Aesthethica. Sometimes an album feel too singular to add to a list. At least to me.
I was also into Cult of Fire's मृत्यु का तापसी अनुध्यान (Iron Bonehead) this year. I discovered it in 2014, but it came out last December, so I didn't include it. Here's a track:
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Here are the rest of the lists...
Zoe Camp
__10. EEL: Endless Fucker LP [Mind Cure/Konton Crasher]
__Who would’ve thought that a bunch of Pittsburgh-based Japanophiles packing would make one of the most enjoyable, hardcore albums of the year? Drawing heavily from pivotal Tokyo punk bands like Lip Cream and Gauze right down to the pronunciation, EEL’s potential status as the nation’s heaviest-leaning weeaboos is redeemed through their clever incorporation of outside elements—like power electronics and freakin’ CHAINSAWS—into one of punk’s frequently-overlooked, massively-underrated variants.
__9. Orange Goblin: Back From the Abyss [Candlelight]
__A veritable treasure trove of desert jams packed with wacky references to vampire-armed shotguns and enough riffs to make up a whole Guitar Hero game (if they still made Guitar Hero games), Back From the Abyss is the best outing by the bluesy Brits in a decade—as well as an important reminder that stoner rock need not be slothful or soaked in amps to prove its point.
______8. Mutilation Rites: Harbinger [Prosthetic]
__To the ire of genre purists, flaky listeners, and elitists, Mutilation Rites followed their expansive, uncategorizable 2012 debut with an LP of dense, lengthy cuts sporting star-gazing instrumentals, grunge-seeped outtros, mournful prog, and a mathematician’s trove of polyrhythms—often in the course of a single song. Like the city that spawned them, the Brooklynites refuse to settle on a single musical mindset, thereby producing one of the most engrossing listens of the year.
__7. Stoic Violence: Chained [Deranged/Video Disease]
__Along with their Los Angeles peers Trash Talk, Long Beach’s Stoic Violence offer a venom-drenched rebuttal to anyone claiming that the glory days of southern California hardcore are behind us. Rather than mess with the formula, Chained combines spartan fretwork with lurching, unruly rhythms to evoke the spirits of pretty much every band that’s ever played Fenders Ballroom—the only difference is this time, they know how the stories play out, and see no happy endings. The end result is gnarled, nihilistic and positively nasty.
__6. Boris: Noise [Sargent House]
__In a crushing act of matrimony, Noise weds Boris’ two most distinct styles: the contemplative post-rock of the Flood era, and the sludgier material which formed the basis for their collaborations with Merzbow. The fusion proves sublime, especially the breathtaking self-effacement of the album's eighteen-minute centerpiece, "Angel", over the span of its eighteen-minute fall from grace.
______5. Dead Congregation: Promulgation of the Fall [Profound Lore]
__As an ancient city in a modern world, stuck between the mores of Greek Orthodoxy and the screams of anarchists, Athens’ spirit is rooted in schisms: divides which serve as fulcrums for Greek band Dead Congregation on the fantastic Promulgation of the Fall. Steeped in the shadow-play of '90s death metal, it’s an LP rooted in tradition and infused with modern fury—and one of the most Herculean efforts of the year.
______4. Eyehategod: *
Eyehategod* [Housecore]
__The 14 years separating Eyehategod’s self-titled album from its predecessor (2000’s Confederacy of Ruined Lives) were plagued with far more sorrow than anyone should have to endure. From hurricanes, to addiction, to the passing of drummer Joey LaCaze last year (Eyehategod is his last sonic will and testament), the New Orleans’ story took a dark spin in the aughts—and as all that pain looms in the background of Eyehategod's snarled comeback, its presence ultimately encompasses the engine powering some of the band’s filthiest, most thunderous material to date.
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______3. Gridlink: Longhena [Handshake Inc]
__Longhena marks the final phase in a full-throttle charge to the event horizon that started over a decade ago, when musicians from New Jersey, Texas, and Japan came together to create, more or less, the musical equivalent of capsaicin: fast-acting, overpowering, and ruthlessly addictive. Over the span of 14 tracks and 22 minutes, Gridlink condense their turbo-speed melodies, choppy riffage, and science fiction-informed ambient noise into a meticulous, frequently beautiful aural assault that’s easily more than the sum of its parts.
______2. YOB: Clearing the Path to Ascend [Neurot]
__Doom has always been a transcendent genre by design, but few albums—within and without that framework—felt as heavy as YOB’s Clearing the Path to Ascend. To be clear, the gravity laden in the album's 10-minute-plus tracks won’t cause any immediate, crushing impact. Its lethality is more metaphysical: slow, wailing progressions which echo across vast, slowly-petrifying soundscapes, making the listener feel smaller in the process. On Clearing the Path, the Portland outfit demonstrate a sense of dynamic mastery of which very few can boast, underscored by impeccable atmospheric details and maybe a little bit of catchiness.
__1. Earth: Primitive and Deadly [Southern Lord]
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By listening to Earth’s latest album, you’re giving the Olympia drone legends full authority to use melody as the greatest source of estrangement, repeating a mournful phrase till it becomes a numbing mantra. Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan and Rose Windows’ Rabia Shaheen Qazi are the first vocalists to contribute to an Earth record in years, and while purists may scoff at the inclusion of vocals, they’re vital to reigniting the shamanic component of the band’s early, ritualistic craft.
As the name suggests, Primitive and Deadly is a record firmly lodged in the primordial brain (animals run dominant, and half of the album is titled in reference to predatory creatures). Earth’s carnal appetites are insatiable: sex, blood, death, drugs. The cyclical suppression and expression of these appetites shape the tortured framework through which the album works its subtle black magic. Ultimately, it’s a doom meditation for the ages.
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Grayson Haver Currin
There’s been a prevailing sense of apathy to year-end lists at large in 2014, with critics collectively throwing their hands up at an apparent lack of very big, very important records. But that hasn’t been true in the metal community, where it seems like an army of very varied albums is vying for a few precious spots.
From black metal to doom metal to records that scrambled or scrapped any such signifiers, this year has offered a wealth of loud riches. A few consensus favorites—like YOB, Pallbearer or the tantalizing combination of Scott Walker and Sunn O)))—have even broken into general year-end ranks. And in particular, I had one hell of a time slimming this list of favorites down to 10 records, a process that entailed cutting great work by Primordial and Mayhem, Wrekmeister Harmonies and Horseback, Coffinworm and Morbus Chron, Pallbearer and Thou.
But that’s not a problem I mind at all.
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____10. Krieg: Transient [Candlelight]
__Remember Blake Judd and how, just a few years ago, his Nachtmystium felt like it might forever alter the popular trajectory of black metal in America? That train has long-since slipped off the tracks, something that Krieg’s Neill Jameson witnessed as a contributor to that band and a member of Judd’s fallen supergroup Twilight. But Transient, maybe the best record ever from his long-running Krieg, offers its own damaged take on that expired promise. "Walk with Them Unnoticed" is a hit waiting in rock radio’s imagined wings, while "Return Fire" seesaws between sheer aggression and the threat of it. Jameson even managed to rope Thurston Moore and Integrity’s Dwid Hellion into the same-spoken word track. It’s kind of incredible.
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____9. Tombs: Savage Gold [Relapse]
__I saw Tombs split a bill with Pallbeaer and Vattnet Viskar at a mid-sized rock club in Chapel Hill on Halloween night. Those circumstances sound exceptional, but the evening was actually disappointing. The sound was too quiet, and the room seemed stiff. While playing at a rather low volume, though, Tombs reminded me just what I loved about Savage Gold, the third and absolute best LP from the Brooklyn band. Though they’d worked through a web of several styles on their previous records, particularly 2011’s lauded Path of Totality, Savage Gold contained a clarity of purpose and a decisiveness that can seem hard to find in these polyglot times. That’s not to say they’ve chosen black metal over post-punk over industrial rock, but instead that they’ve finally been able to mold them all into one shape to call their own. With the volume turned down, I could watch all those parts work simultaneously, without the weight and bluster of the tidal sound I’d expected.
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____8. Blut Aus Nord: Memoria Vetusta III - Saturnian Poetry [Debemur Morti]
__I never should have worried about Blut Aus Nord, right? Between 2011 and 2012, Vindsval released three of my favorite albums of the band’s big discography, a knotty and ecumenical trilogy known as 777. Piling together black metal and harsh noise, industrial rock and synthesizer fanfares, those records had suggested an increasingly grand vision for the old institution. But the trilogy ended, and it seemed likely that Vindsval might make another turn. When Blut Aus Nord’s six-song split with P.H.O.B.O.S. fell a touch flat this summer, I wondered if the upcoming album would hold personal purchase. It did: The third installment of the Memoria Vetusta series, Saturnian Poetry was immediately electrifying. Vindsval recharged the band’s black metal beginnings and added a measure of uncanny accessibility, particularly in the radiant guitars and smeared psychedelic endings. Who knew Vindsval would have this much fun with this much black metal this year?
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____7. Indian: From All Purity [Relapse]
__In the past decade, Chicago’s Indian have offered a fine string of sludge metal records, full of heaving guitars and hammering drums. But this year, they truly arrived with the six-song paroxysm From All Purity, the rare "slow" album that balanced enormity and tone worship with unmitigated power and momentum. Every element seems to be at war with the others, rendering a volume that suggests great machines in battle, but Indian move together in perfect motion, too. The pivotal contributions of noise heavyweight and special guest Mark Solotroff are notable here, too, as he provides the hissing, high-end counterpoints to the band’s low- and mid-range tendency. Between this, Anatomy of Habit and Wrekmeister Harmonies, Indian’s Will Lindsay and Solotroff shared an enormous mutual output in 2014. I hope it continues.
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6. Slough Feg: Digital Resistance [Metal Blade]
__Who knew that old-guy paranoia could be so magnetic and fun? On Digital Resistance, Mike Scalzi turns a cynical and scared eye toward technology and tapped-in surveillance. The theme sometimes arrives as a straightforward phobia, with Scalzi singing of eyes welded to cell phones and "interfacing clouds, binary brains." At other points, his unease manifests itself through strings of Edgar Allen Poe references and mercenaries lurking in the shadows. Scalzi and Slough Feg guard against the future’s creep with an old-school bevy of inescapable melodies and irrepressible guitar duels. There’s no genre bending and little form advancement—simply hook-driven metal supporting the cries of a worried citizen, shaped meticulously into 10 electrifying songs. Scalzi is so good at this stuff that I sometimes worry he’s the very evil overlord computer program about which he sings. Clever trick, man.
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5. Impetuous Ritual__: Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence [Profound Lore]__
__Was there a more daunting and demanding album this year than the second from Impetuous Ritual, the Australian death metal mess-makers that share members with Portal and Grave Upheaval? Like Portal, Impetuous Ritual fucks with time, so that tracks that clock in at three minutes are so dense with layers and distorted by dynamics that it sometimes seems impossible to count past 10 while listening to it. And as with Portal’s best, no matter how often I revisit Unholy Congregation, it feels like I’m hearing it for the first time.
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____4. Inter Arma: The Cavern EP [Relapse]
__I ran my first marathon in November. In the months leading up to the race, I slowly pieced together my ideal playlist for the 26.2-mile autumn jog, considering what might get me motivated, what might move me through the course’s middle and what might guide me toward the end. The Cavern, Inter Arma’s 45-minute, one-song album of escalating intensity and sidewinding styles, became the mix’s core. There was enough power there to drive me through the race’s midsection and more than enough intricacy nested within Inter Arma’s motion to let my mind drift along as my feet moved forward. I tried to ignore the fact that The Cavern was one of metal’s great new "epic death" songs and focus, instead, on its unbound glory.
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3. The Soft Pink Truth: Why Do the Heathen Rage? [Thrill Jockey]
__If I had so much trouble whittling this list to just 10 entries, you might wonder, why would I include this trolling bit of electronica from Matmos member Drew Daniel? But why not? On this collection of covers of black metal classics (Venom’s genre-naming jam) and curios (AN’s "Let There Be Ebola Frost") alike, Daniel reveals a deep veneration for the form and an equally deep need to question its endemic beliefs. Daniel knew all along that Why Do the Heathen Rage? would upset people, and he embraced that provocation. But what’s most important and lingering about these takes is their vivid, collective consideration of his relationship as a gay man and a mere person with metal’s sometimes-schoolyard animosity toward outsiders. Daniel, in effect, claims these songs as his own, filtering one part of his musical heritage through his broader intellectual and physical identity. Isn’t that, well, metal?
______2. YOB: Clearing the Path to Ascend [Neurot]
__These four songs felt flat to me the first several times I heard them. In the three years since the last YOB LP, maybe I’d just grown accustomed to Mike Scheidt’s voice in high-flying motion with the powerful Vhöl. But when I stopped listening, certain moments—like when the full band smothers samples of Alan Watts toward the close of "In Our Blood" or when Scheidt’s brilliant, beautiful falsetto leads a stadium-sized charge through the coda of "Marrow"—would suddenly flood my memory. What had initially felt flat, I now understood, was instead a graceful and careful upward curvature, representing the slow and steady liftoff of a nearly 20-year-old enterprise.
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1. Old Man Gloom: The Ape of God [Profound Lore/Sige]
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I first listened to parts of Old Man Gloom’s The Ape of God in the basement of Chris Bruni, the Profound Lore Records owner who beamed as the early mixes pounded from his office. What I heard was good, but I didn’t realize that it was great until I heard it within the full context of The Ape of God’s two-album, two-hour terrain. As twisted, involved and involving as anything I heard all year, metal or otherwise, these 12 tracks refuse to accept that very much is off limits or uninteresting. They barrel through hardcore monsters, power ahead with harsh noise, crest into post-rock crescendos and snarl through the same irreverent, burly rock that made Harvey Milk matter. Somehow, this unlikely quartet makes it all fit together, as if these surreal crossover combinations were the most obvious mixes in the world. Old Man Gloom disappeared for the better part of a decade, returning in 2012 with the very good No. This, the next phase of their revival, is so emphatic, urgent and open that they could have simply called it Yes.
Jason Heller
10. Stoic Violence: Chained [Deranged/Video Disease]____
Lots of records that came out in 2014 reached for the ambitious, the epic, and the profound. Then there’s Chained by Stoic Violence, a seven-song shitstorm of crude, sadistic, punk-throttled hardcore in the hate-ravaged vein of Poison Idea and Negative FX. Keep it stupid, stupid.
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9. Gas Chamber__: Hemorrhaging Light [Iron Lung]__
__Speaking of progressive: What the hell are Gas Chamber up to on their debut album, Hemorrhaging Light? Pummeling and malevolent, it’s hardcore to the hilt—except for when it meanders off into interstellar prog micro-jams. It’s jarring, it’s courageous, and it’s unsettlingly beautiful.
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____8. Pallbearer: Foundations of Burden [Profound Lore]
__People couldn’t make praise fast enough for Pallbearer this year, as the band’s second album, Foundations of Burden, spurred lots of talk about sensitive, progressive doom. Foundations is all that, but it’s also a crushing work of deep blacks and blinding lights. With songwriting this supple and assured, the sky’s the limit.
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7. Okkultokrati__: Night Jerks [Fysisk Format]__
__Okkultokrati are Norway’s answer to… well, nothing, really. Who else out there is mixing charred noise-punk, semi-industrialized drone, and the melted remnants of whatever black metal records were sitting in dad’s back seat? Night Jerks isn’t just sui generis, it’s elusively, eerily reality-altering.
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6. Punch: They Don't Have to Believe [Deathwish Inc]
__Meghan O’Neil, Punch’s incendiary lead singer, left the Bay Area hardcore band with little public explanation this September—and while that’s a bummer for Punch, it doesn’t put a dent in the group’s third (and last?) album, the bruising, consciousness-raising They Don’t Have to Believe.
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____5. Morbus Chron: Sweven [Century Media]
__The men of Morbus Chron don’t seem to care what might be expected of them, as either Swedes or practitioners of death metal. Sweven breathes, hooks, and flows like any Scandinavian occult-rock group, but it takes that swampy atmosphere and slathers it over harrowing yet pinpoint eruptions of grim resignation.
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4. Protestant__: In Thy Name [Halo of Flies]__
__Milwaukee’s Protestant has been around for a few years now, but something lit a fire under their asses for In Thy Name. While they’ve never slouched, the new album welds together crust, powerviolence, and a sheen of unholy metal; the result is desperate, bloodcurdling abandon.
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3. Mare Cognitum__: Phobos Monolith [I, Voidhanger]__
__Jacob Buczarski has a head full of things, and Mare Cognitum is his method of externalizations. Not that his latest album, Phobos Monolith, draws a clear picture; blurred and murky, it still manages to etch vivid melodies and impeccable composition onto its blackened mystique.
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____2. Godflesh: A World Lit Only By Fire [Avalanche]
__Thirteen years isn’t what it used to be—that is, if A World Lit Only by Fire is any indication. After that long of a hiatus, Justin Broadrick and G. C. Green return with one of the most mechanistically vulnerable, hopelessly megalithic albums of Godflesh’s formidable catalog. Austere and rapturously agonizing.
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1. Failures: Decline and Fall [Youth Attack!]
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As the former frontman of Charles Bronson, Das Oath, and many others (as well as the head of Youth Attack! Records), Mark McCoy has nothing to prove at this point in his anti-career. Yet he does so anyway with Decline and Fall, the fractured, brutally compressed opus by his current group Failures. Along with guitarist Will Killingsworth (of Orchid, Ampere, etc.), McCoy screeches like a hanged man whose lungs won’t surrender; meanwhile Killingsworth and crew hurl themselves off a cliff and write riffs on the way down.
Kim Kelly
Best EPs and demos of the year (in no order)
Keeper: MMXIV [Black Plague/Grimoire]__
__Imagine a slightly faster Burning Witch, or a somehow even angrier incarnation of Thou with a harsh electronic edge, and you’re close to what Keeper is hurling out. This might be the heaviest record I’ve heard all year—and it’s been a real heavy year.
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Svartidauði__: The Synthesis of Whore and Beast EP [Terratur Possessions]__
__Their sickening, uncomfortable shifts in tone and tempo may leave a listener gasping, but there’s a certain deranged beauty to be found in Svartidauði ‘s grim, complex odes to chaos. This Icelandic entity has consistently released game-changing, ruthlessly intelligent black metal since its inception back in 2006, but this latest EP is a great stride forward for a band that’s got nowhere to go but up.
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Ritual Chamber__: The Pits of Tentacled Screams [Nuclear War Now!]__
__This demo sounds like it was recorded in the Devil’s asshole—and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Anchored by Numinas (best known for his work in depressive black metal project Krohm), Ritual Chamber ladles out dollops of murky, oppressive death metal in the grand old early Incantation tradition with splashes of Teitanblood and woozy, off-kilter melodies for seasoning; if they’re killing it this hard on a mere demo, imagine what they’ll dish out on an LP!
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Sabbatic Goat__: Imprecations of Black Chaos [Vault of Dried Bones]__
__New Zealand’s extreme metal scene is currently the best on Earth (save, perhaps, for Iceland) and the black/death maniacs behind Sabbatic Goat are some of the younger talents to come up out of the depths of Wellington and wreak apocalyptic havoc upon eardrums around the world. Put quite simply, their 2014 demo fucking rules.
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Act of Impalement: Echoes of Wrath EP [Caligari]
__Act of Impalement effortlessly filters shades of lo-fi black metal and crippling doom through a crunchy, old-school death metal guitar tone, then colors in the gaps with loads of grime and crust. This Nashville band is still young (formed in 2012), but is certainly well on its way towards making some real waves.
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Rippikoulu__: Ulvaja EP [Svart]__
__Finnish death/doom legends Rippikoulu took one hell of an extended break between this and their last release, 1993’s revered Musta Seremonia demo. Ulvaja marks the band’s first new recorded material since then, and sees the reunited quartet shoehorn three songs into eighteen minutes and trudge confidently through the funeral fog of atmospheric death/doom horror that we’ve been missing for so long.
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Derketa__: Darkness Fades Life EP [Mind Cure]__
__It’s high time these underground death metal icons got their due, and this short EP (released on the heels of 2012’s debut-comeback combo record, In Death We Meet) is another tantalizing glimpse into this Steel City institution’s dark future. The Sepultura cover doesn’t hurt, either.
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Cult of Fire__: Čtvrtá Symfonie Ohně EP [Iron Bonehead]__
__The Čtvrtá Symfonie Ohně (Fourth Symphony of Fire) EP features two flowing instrumental compositions, "Vàh" and "Vltava", named after rivers in the band’s native Czech Republic and neighboring Slovakia. Originally composed in 2012 but shelved to make way for मृत्यु का तापसी अनुध्यान, the two tracks showcase earlier stirrings of the diabolical genius that would ultimately manifest on this Czech outfit’s brilliant 2013 opus.
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Bleed the Pigs__: Overcompensations for Misery EP [self-released]__
__Nashville’s Bleed the Pigs is one of the most exciting new grind/sludge/hardcore hybrids I’ve heard in years, and their Overcompensations for Misery EP is one of the angriest, most uninhibited releases in recent memory. It probably helps that they’re raging against institutional—rather than imagined—evil via vocalist Kayla Phillips’ socially-conscious lyrics, and that the bass tone is the ugliest thing this side of Man is the Bastard. Their Nirvana covers EP is fantastic, too.
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Yellow Eyes: The Desert Mourns [Sibir]
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NYC black metal squad Yellow Eyes continue to grow and improve by leaps and bounds—no small feat when even your earliest output is as great as theirs. The Desert Mourns is their first of two (!) EPs released this year; Stillicide is more recent, and both are rock-solid, but the haunting, surreal despair of "One Rock for the Wild Dogs" catches hold and won’t let go.
Honorable Mentions: Radioactive Vomit: Ratflesh EP, Gg:ull: Waan:Hoon EP, Bölzer: Soma EP, Iron Force: Dungeon Breaker EP, Genocide Pact: Desecration EP
Andy O'Connor
__10. Foreseen: Helsinki Savagery [20 Buck Spin]
__Power Trip’s Manifest Decimation might be the hardest crossover record of recent memory, but Finnish mosh maniacs Foreseen have ushered a real contender to that throne with their full-length debut Helsinki Savagery. Remember how much of a beast Paul Baloff was? Imagine a whole band as furious as he was in his Exodus heyday. Foreseen even have a song called "Bonded by United Blood", both a tribute to Baloff (and Agnostic Front’s "United Blood") and a challenge to imitators to...give up, because few could even think of making a record this hard. Dive bombs and whammy squeals constantly clash on one another, as if you’re really riding the lightning. Most bands play fast, but Foreseen imbue Savagery with the right amount of chaos, sounding totally demented while ready for slip-and-sliding on a beer-and-blood soaked dance floor. "Structural Oppression", from last year’s 7'' of the same name, gets a makeover, prettied up and even more ready to slay. When Foreseen hit the States, you better be ready.
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____9. Wreck & Reference: Want [The Flenser]
__No band is attempting to reprogram metal like Wreck & Reference, the duo of instrumentalist Felix Skinner and drummer Ignat Frege. As popular music moves away from guitar music (for better or for worse), underground metal may eventually follow suit, and Wreck & Reference are quite ahead of their time. Skinner conjures up waves of doom with his sampler, sounding barely familiar to any sort of doom and totally alienated. "A Glass Cage for an Animal" and "Flies" might work if transcribed to guitar, but what’s the point? Frege is apt at restraint, where the fills he doesn’t hit say as much as the ones he does. By cutting back on business, he lets Skinner engulf himself and the listener in bountiful misery. Want deals with the impossibility and horror of freedom, something Skinner and Frege acknowledge even as they smash through what is possible in metal. They’re begging you to "surrender" on "Apologies", and you better surrender what limits you. Wreck & Reference even offered bits and pieces from Want to sample, bastardize, or mangled as Spill/Fill. How many metal groups would even think to do that?
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8. Darkspace: Darkspace III I [Avantgarde]
__Are Darkspace even human? The Swiss trio seem to be much more comfortable in the void of space than they are on Earth. They only look barely like people, like intergalactic soothsayers warning us of our fiery demise. Darkspace are the leading entities in "space black metal," driven by dark ambient and a lust for the otherworldly and unknown, for well over a decade, and their fourth full-length, Darkspace III I, continues in their warped tradition. They lull you in with Lustmord-like fields of black, then pulverize you with warp-speed explosions of cosmic energy. Occasionally, they will lock in a Ministry-like groove, which can almost be as destructive as their full-on black metal moments. All members contribute vocals, but they’re buried as distant howls. No use speaking to them, your own cries are useless. Make sure no light—none—enters your space while this is on.
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7. Impetuous Ritual: Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence [Profound Lore]
__2014 was an impressive year for death metal, with strong releases from Dead Congregation, Teitanblood, Swallowed, Morbus Chron, and Artificial Brain. Standing above them all is the second record from Impetuous Ritual, Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence. This is death metal interpreted as noise, riffs not caressed by rhythm but subjugated by it. Drums and vocals crawl in the back, but the guitars, looped by possessed hands, are the central instrument of oppression. Leads, as much as they are conjure the recklessness of Hanneman and King, are almost a relief from the maddening rhythms. Other records may be more technical or intricate, others may have a clearer attack, but none are the sheer marathon that this record is. If Hell is a panopticon, this is what would be playing on a constant loop, creating eternal paranoia in the damned. There is no escape.
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____6. Blut Aus Nord: Memoria Vetusta III - Saturnian Poetry [Debemur Morti]
__Blut Aus Nord are the trailblazing act of French Black Metal—no one comes close. Leader Vindsval is without peer; every album he puts under the Blut Aus Nord banner carries its own distinctive sound while sounding like they could only come from him. Memoria Vetusta III - Saturnian Poetry is more of an obvious "black metal" record than some of their other work, especially their warped industrial black metal as of late, but this is not Vindsval returning to any sort of roots. He has traded cybernetic mastery for transcendence into the heavens; Poetry is a blazing ride through the golden skies that adorn its cover. His screech is ever-present, but the chorus vocals really take his performance over the top. Harmonies are seductive and unparalleled; Blut Aus Nord know nothing but glory. Vindsval has given you the reins to the fiery chariot, now run!
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5. Kayo Dot__: Coffins on Io [The Flenser]__
__When a band makes a record that is not only among their most accomplished, but also more accessible, there are fewer feelings as sweet. Kayo Dot has long been the vessel of Toby Driver’s dense compositions, but on Coffins on Io, he’s fused the sex appeal of Type O Negative and prog’s more refined side with a spacey smoothness. It’s a radical reinterpretation of his main project, but not a simplification. Driver has clearly been influenced by his role as Vaura’s bassist, as he stretches out their gothy hooks into sensual voyages. There’s a great deal more synth on Io, and some of those patterns isolated would themselves make for a night of ecstasy. Imagine listening to the keyboards of "Longtime Disturbance on the Miracle Mile" or "Offramp Cycle, Pattern 22" on a cool beach or a dimly lit master suite. As much as this is a record about space, the grooves on the latter half of "Library Subterranean" are so earthy and freaky, George Clinton would approve. And for those worried that Driver has lost sight of heaviness, the driving guitars and angry saxes of "The Assassination of Adam" will quell such concerns. For the cosmopolitan hesher, who is neither afraid of luxury nor amplifier-driven urges, Io is essential.
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____4. Gridlink: Longhena [Handshake Inc]
__The first exceptional record of 2014, Gridlink’s Longhena, was also a goodbye, as they broke up prior to its release. Does the opening riff of "Constant Autumn" sound like a farewell? No, it’s so moving and sprightly, and only a dude with dexterity and heart like Takafumi Matsubara could pull it off. Every member delivers the performance of their careers, taking the already dense and intricate grindcore of their first two records, and making those look like rehearsals. The band performs as if they knew—and likely, they did—that this would be their final statement. Jon Chang’s lyrics combine dystopian science fiction with timeless longing. Along with Matsubara’s guitars, Longhena is perhaps the only grindcore record you could call beautiful. It’s over in just over 20 minutes, yet you’ll spend much longer than that unpacking it all. Longhena is a testament to what grindcore can be, and who knows if any band could come close in the future?
______3. Thou: Heathen [Gilead Media/Vendetta/Howling Mine]
__Thou live and breathe DIY, preferring to play in all-ages spaces and not being too fond of bar culture. The egalitarianism comes into question, however, because they’re simply better than almost all of their peers, both in punk and in the Louisiana sludge that they model their sound after. Heathen is an elevation above all their other records, which themselves were in a class of their own. Their sludge is more pointed, the post-rock elements are even more delicate, and vocalist Bryan Funck’s tongue is sharper than ever. Really, all of what could be said about Heathen is in the lyrics to the final song, "Ode to Physical Pain". Thou are about embracing pain, not in a macho "what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger" way, but in taking all of your tribulations and making something breathtaking and lasting from it. You’ll have to put in some serious work to get on their level, but they would likely encourage that you attempt to topple them.
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____2. Planning for Burial: Desideratum [The Flenser]
__With artists who tend to release material frequently, there’s always at least a couple definitive works, where the creator puts a great deal more effort to say "This is my vision." For Thom Wasluck’s Planning For Burial, it’s his second full-length, Desideratum, his most fully formed work yet. Heartbreaking and affirming all at once, he’s taken the disparate elements of his various tapes and EPs—dreary post-metal, lovesick drone, electric Mark Kozelek depression, and bare-bone clean tones baring so much—and synced them all into five of the most devastating songs he’s recorded. While they all flow next to one another, they’re also suitable for individually repeating on loop, when nothing else will help you cope. "Where You Rest Your Head at Night" is industrial metal stomp given an overdose of pure want. Personally, there have been times this year I’ve listened to that song over and over, its gloominess so infectious. The title track and "29 August 2012" are both perfect for strolling on a cloudy beach, by yourself, wondering where you fucked up. Closer "Golden" kills nostalgia dead, going from barren cleans to ultimate lush noise decay. Even an interlude like "Purple", where a voice text of a nearly-forgotten love is recited, is not for the meek, as it shows how we haven’t quite figured out how to maintain in the face of new communications. This is not a record for everyday listening, but when it hits, you won’t be out of its grip for a long time.
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____1. Pallbearer: Foundations of Burden [Profound Lore]
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If any of the best metal records have a running thread, it is triumph. Triumph over one’s own expectations and fears, triumph above cancerous cynicism, triumph for progression in metal. Who triumphed most this year? Pallbearer, who are probably used to the deafening praises by now, but are in no way undeserving of them. They may have ditched the purple hues of their past work for reds on Foundations of Burden, but they are the royals at the top of the heap. Billy Anderson, doom sage to Sleep, Witch Mountain, Eyehategod, and Agalloch to name but only a few, gives them a magic touch here, raising everything and reducing nothing. Brett Campbell has been taking lessons from doom sensei Mike Scheidt, hitting the highs while retaining enough grittiness. He floats along with the ghostly riffs, almost womb-like in their hypnotism. Warmth clashes against cold words and wins, though occasionally you can feel a breeze from the despair of the lyrics. You don’t know you’ve needed that opening riff of "Worlds Apart" until you hear it, and you wonder why Pallbearer used to take their time starting records. "The Ghost I Used to Be" dominates alternate-universe Pazz and Jops, where they want the feel bad hit of all seasons. "Ashes" is such a precious reprieve, the "Solitude" for the new generation. In fact, Pallbearer is the doom of this uncertain yet exciting era, where excellence wins, where rising above is the standard, where finally getting that stubborn friend of yours to like a metal record deserves a goddamn Frazetta mural. Can Pallbearer top Burden? The mountains will be bigger, but their boots are tougher.
David Castillo of Saint Vitus
Top 15 Albums/EPs/7''s:
Godflesh: A World Lit Only By Fire
Eyehategod: Eyehategod
At the Gates: At War With Reality
Thantifaxath: Sacred White Noise
Swans: To Be Kind
YOB: Clearing the Path to Ascend
Pallbearer: Foundations of Burden
Pharmakon: Bestial Burden
Full of Hell + Merzbow: Full of Hell + Merzbow
Behemoth: The Satanist
Indian: From All Purity
Tombs: Savage Gold
Young Widows: Easy Pain
Anatomy of Habit: Ciphers + Axioms
Occultation: Silence in the Ancestral House
Youth Code: A Place to Stand EP
Xibalba/Suburban Scum
Stonedagger
Grga
Uniform
