In compiling my list of 2022’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs I cut back significantly from last year, when I pushed the 2021 list through 25 parts and 99 songs. This year I limited the rollout to weekdays during January, with three songs per day (except only two songs the first day, which I made up for with four yesterday). And the result is a list that includes 66 songs.
As I explained yesterday, and as I explain every year when I halt this list, I’m still not really finished. I began this exercise with a list of candidates that stretched to 564 songs, assembled from recommendations by readers and some of our other writers, as well as a list of my own that I compiled as the weeks and months of 2022 rolled along. Even subtracting 66 tracks from all those recommendations, the balance is still enormous. Inevitably, I had to draw the line somewhere.
These lists always give short shrift to a few metal genres, mainly as a result of the fact that I don’t like all the genres and sub-genres equally, but I do think it did a pretty good job of providing a picture of just how much variety and quality metal brought us last year. In putting it together I also discovered some music I had never listened to before, in addition to revisiting old favorites. I hope you also discovered something new and valued, and that you’ll forgive me for not including all of your prime choices.
Below you will find links to Parts 1 through 22 of the list as they appeared over time before I called a halt yesterday, and of course the names of all 66 songs.
I do want to thank everyone who suggested songs for the list, from the readers who left so many good recommendations in the Comments on this post last November to my NCS comrades who offered some of their own.
PART 1
White Ward (Leviathan)
Tribal Gaze (And How They Wept For Eternity)
PART 2
Immolation (The Age of No Light)
Konvent (Pipe Dreams)
Mantar (Grim Reaping)
PART 3
Kanonenfieber (Stop the War)
Vidres A La Sang (Salveu-me els ulls)
Imperial Triumphant (Maximalist Scream)
PART 4
An Abstract Illusion (Tear Down This Holy Mountain)
The Halo Effect (Feel What I Believe)
Thundering Hooves (A Howl from the Cloister)
PART 5
Allegaeon (Into Embers)
Appalling (Father Inferior)
Autonoesis (Moon of Foul Magics)
PART 6
Misery Index (Complete Control)
Wake (Venerate (The Undoing of All))
Daeva (The Architect and the Monument)
PART 7
Goatwhore (Ruinous Liturgy)
Gaerea (Mantle)
Gloson (Windbearer)
PART 8
Meshuggah (Broken Cog)
Sensory Amusia (Parasitic Alteration)
Tomb of Finland (Coffin Bound)
PART 9
The Otolith (Andromeda’s Wing)
Messa (Dark Horse)
Laudare (Her Enchanted Hair Was The First Gold)
PART 10
Worm (Shadowside Kingdom)
Wormrot (Your Dystopian Hell)
Wormwitch (Age of the Ordeal of Iron)
PART 11
Enslaved (Kingdom)
Thy Catafalque (Fekete Mezok – Live)
Tishina (Јутро Последњег Дана)
PART 12
Sky Pig (State of Anger)
Witch Ripper (Enter the Loop)
Besna (Revúca)
PART 13
Maceration (It Never Ends…)
Decipher (Enslaved To Be)
Gravedancer (The Devil’s Garden)
PART 14
Kampfar (Urkraft)
Strigoi (Byzantine Strategy)
Predatory Light (To Plead Like Angels)
PART 15
Disillusion (Tormento)
Dysgnostic (Silvery Tongues)
Disharmony (The Cynic and the Beggar)
PART 16
BlackBraid (Barefoot Ghost Dance on Bloodsoaked Soil)
Putrid (March Over Ashes)
Gudsforladt (Heads Bowed in Silent Prayer)
PART 17
Obituary (The Wrong Time)
Bloodbath (To Die)
Revocation (Godforsaken)
PART 18
SpiritWorld (Committee of Buzzards)
Werewolves (Nuclear Family Holocaust)
The Antichrist Imperium (Menage A Triumvirate)
PART 19
Véhémence (Au Blason Brûlé)
Nebula Orionis (Halcyon)
Wiegedood‘s (FN SCAR 16)
PART 20
Mother of Graves (Where the Shadows Adorn)
Obscene (Deathless Demigod)
Exocrine (The Watchtower)
PART 21
Wolfheart (Cold Flame)
Black Royal (13th Moon)
Kringa (Across the Firmament, Stride!
PART 22
Ashenspire (Tragic Heroin)
Turbocharged (Irreligious)
Cult Burial (Strive)
Falls of Rauros (Poverty Hymn)