2024 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE CRITICAL TOP TEN

(Andy Synn does his best to remain objective while selecting his “Critical Top Ten” of 2024)

Out of everything I’ve written and published this week, this is the closest to a traditional “Best Of” list.

But, even so, it’s still a little different, as while it’s ostensibly a “Top Ten”, it’s purposefully not ranked… rather it’s meant to be a snapshot of the ten albums (drawn from yesterday’s “Great” list) which together form the best representation of the year in Metal, across all the different styles and sub-genres which make up our beloved scene.

I’ll grant you that ten albums isn’t enough to fully represent the sheer variety and vitality of the year – you’ll notice for example, that both Blood Incantation and Job For A Cowboy are notably absent – but I’ve still tried my best (while also trying to be as “objective” as possible, despite that being ultimately an exercise in futility, as there will always be some sort of subjective bias involved) to provide a hand-picked cross-section which hopefully illustrates the very best-of-the-best from the last twelve-ish months.

As always, in recognition that many of our readers may already be familiar with some of the albums selected for this year’s “Critical Top Ten”, I’ve also included a few “honourable mentions” – whose primary purpose is to highlight a few extra albums which, while they may not have made it into the Top Ten, still deserve more recognition and attention – so even if you think you know what to expect (and, hopefully, there’ll still be a few surprises) you might just discover a brand new favourite artist/album while you’re here!

CRYPT SERMON – THE STYGIAN ROSE

Let’s start with an album from the Heavy/Doom Metal side of things which I was confident would probably appear on this list even before I’d actually heard it.

Why, you ask? Because the songs the band debuted at this year’s edition of North West Terrorfest were all so good, showcasing even more resplendent riffage, heroic hooks, and multifaceted melodic magic (especially with regards to the increasingly prominent use of bold backing vocals and soaring harmonies) than ever before, that I just knew this was going to be great.

So, of course, when the album finally dropped and we were all able to hear these songs in their fullest it became even more clear that the band’s songwriting – the most important aspect of their sound, in my opinion, even over and above the glorious, larger-than-life vocals of frontman Brooks Wilson – had reached a whole new level, one that’s simultaneously hookier and proggier in equal measure.

To quote from my own review (which I still stand by):

Make no mistake about it, this isn’t just Crypt Sermon‘s best album, it’s the sort of album which should make people completely re-evaluate the band, and elevate them from being “the next big thing” to being full-on headliners… and, quite possibly, one of the biggest names in Metal one day, if things continue on this path.

HONOURABLE MENTION: LOWEN – DO NOT GO TO WAR WITH THE DEMONS OF MAZANDARAN

If Crypt Sermon are the current kings, then Lowen must be – at the very least – somewhere in the line of succession, with their powerful Prog-Metal riffage (reminiscent of both Nevermore and/or Sanctuary) forming a near-perfect canvas for Nina Saedi’s stunning vocals. They’re already a great band, but I have a feeling they’re going to get even better (and if they ever need a bassist they should definitely give me a call).

BRODEQUIN – HARBINGER OF WOE

In contrast to the heroically melodic, shamelessly crowd-pleasing style of the previous entry, the cataclysmically heavy new album from Brutal Death dealers Brodequin – their first full-length in twenty years – is all about inflicting as much auditory damage on the listener as possible, to the point where not only is Harbinger of Woe at least as good as anything from the band’s back-catalogue… it might even, arguably, be their best album yet.

Is that a controversial suggestion? Probably. But even if you don’t agree with it there’s no arguing against the fact that songs like “Of Pillars and Trees”, “Tenaillement”, and the climactic pairing of “Suffocation in Ash” and the tumultuous title-track, represent some of the most powerful, punishing music of the year, and make this a more than worthy representative of the Death Metal scene at its most brutal and belligerent.

Like I said at the time:

In the end Harbinger of Woe is that rare sort of “comeback” album that doesn’t really feel like a “comeback” at all – it’s more of a continuation, picking up right where the band left off and proving that Brodequin haven’t lost a single step (and may even have picked up a few new moves) during their down-time.

HONOURABLE MENTION: DEFEATED SANITY – CHRONICLES OF LUNACY

This is one of those rare occasions where you could easily swap the “main” and “bonus” selections and still have the list represent the very best of the year. After all, Defeated Sanity are living legends for a reason, and Chronicles of Lunacy continues to prove exactly why (although it’s worth pointing out that, in my opinion anyway, this isn’t even the best album which Lille Gruber performed on this year!).

DYSTOPIA – DE VERBODEN DIEPTE I: VELDSLAG OP DE RAND VAN DE WERELD

The Black Metal scene gifted us with a veritable horde of great representatives this year, with the likes of Selbst, Griffon, and Kalt Vindur all coming very close to taking this spot.

But, ultimately, I decided to go with the fourth (and finest) album by Dutch quartet Dystopia because while it’s undeniably a Black Metal album – and a rather stunning one at that – as the harsh, howling vocals, taut, strangling tremolo riffs, and scorching streams of seething blastbeats which introduce the album’s explosive opener “Dood van de Wachters” so clearly demonstrate, it’s also so much more than that.

To quote myself, once again:

While the band’s ability to melt their listener’s face with pure sonic fury (the first few minutes of “Giftige Woorden”, for example, are as vicious and as visceral as they come) or drop some serious, stomping heaviness (“Eerst Enkelen…”) is beyond question, it’s their more outlandishly progressive inclinations which really puts them over the top, from the way they play with noir-ish ambience and moody, Morricone-esque atmosphere to their use of creepy choral vocals and soaring, clean-sung melodies, all of which add an extra dose of esoteric emotion and creative charisma to their bubbling Black Metal brew.

HONOURABLE MENTION: FOLTERKAMMER – WEIBERMACHT

Much like the album above, Weibermacht is undeniably an outstanding Black Metal album, but it’s the band’s blending of baroque brutalism and operatic ambition, combined into a series of harsh-yet-hooky songs – overflowing with both animalistic intensity and sinister sensuality – which helped it stand out amidst an already impressive scene.

CANDY – IT’S INSIDE YOU

As I said in the intro, if there’s one uniting thread which links all these albums together it’s that most – if not all – of them showcase a sense of artistic ambition which allows them to push and strain against the boundaries and restrictions of their chosen genre, while still staying true to their core principles.

Case in point, Candy‘s It’s Inside You – while no doubt one of the hardest-hitting albums of the year, with every bruising body-blow and hammering haymaker landing with maximum force and lethal precision – finds the band drawing even more deeply than ever from a well of outside influences, incorporating injections of electronica, industrial and even Nu-Metal to expand the band’s creative palette without compromising their intensity or their integrity in the process.

Sure, it’ll probably be a divisive choice – unlike some of their peers Candy definitely aren’t trying to play to the crowd with this one – but with songs like the short, sharp shock of “eXistenZ”, the thrusting, throbbing grooves of “You Will Never Get Me”, the ridiculously heavy “Dehumanize Me” (a definite song of the year contender from where I’m standing) and the seizure-inducing savagery of “Hypercore” they’ve proven themselves to be one of the true standard-bearers of the Hardcore scene right now.

HONOURABLE MENTION: BLIND GIRLS – AN EXIT EXISTS

Similar to their peers mentioned above, up-and-coming Aussie Screamo-core crew Blind Girls have chosen to temper sound this time around, matching their abrasive intensity and chaotic dissonance with moments of brooding ambience and soothing melody, with the result being an album which is both stronger (“temper” does mean “to strengthen” after all) and more creative than anything they’ve done before.

MY DILIGENCE – DEATH.HORSES.BLACK.

This is another one which may come as a bit of a shock, as we didn’t actually get chance to write about it until now… but from the moment I heard the Progressive Post-Metal magic of My Diligence‘s new album – which incorporates both psychedelic Stoner riffs and delirious Doom-gaze melodies into its bombastic brew – I knew it was likely to make an appearance in today’s list, so why not save it as a surprise?

Make no mistake, Death.Horses.Black. is a mesmerising melding of ear-catching metallic elements, captivating cleans giving way to cathartic screams (and vice versa) while the guitars stomp and shimmer, simmer and swagger, atop an eclectic array of complex, creative drum-beats, all wrapped up in a dynamic aurora of dense, doomy atmosphere and ethereal, melodic ambience.

It’s the sort of album where everything about it – the pacing, the performances, the pure emotional impact – just gets better with every listen.

HONOURABLE MENTION: DVNE – VOIDKIND

Back in April I described Voidkind as “an absolute masterclass in fusing rugged metallic textures and rippling melodic soundscapes” that was “more than just the sum of its parts in more ways than one “, concluding that “the band have, somehow, managed to outdo themselves all over again“. And I still stand by all those statements, as this is arguably the group’s best work to date.

REPLICANT – INFINITE MORTALITY

While I may not have had space to represent the more “Old School” side of the Death Metal scene, there was no way I couldn’t include something from the dissonant end of the spectrum, which truly had a phenomenal year, with both new and established bands absolutely knocking it out of the park.

I’ll grant you, other bands (Mitochondrion, Ingurgitating Oblivion) may have pushed the envelope even further, and the new Ulcerate could also easily have taken this spot, but there’s no question that Replicant definitely delivered the leanest, meanest slab of deathly dissonance that I’ve heard this year, in a form that’s both technically twisted enough for the Tech Death nerds and monstrously groovy enough for the both the Florida and New York jocks, yet wrapped in the sort of artfully abrasive atmosphere that only the true basket-cases will fully appreciate.

To quote from my review:

“…what Replicant have managed to do here is to meld all their influences and inspirations together… and then take the next step with them, not just combining but creating something that feels somehow more than the mere sum of its parts… an album that’s as much a head-banger as it is a mind-bender, and one of the best releases of the year.”

HONOURABLE MENTION: DEVENIAL VERDICT – BLESSING OF DESPAIR

Harsh yet hooky, harrowing yet haunting, Devenial Verdict‘s second album is a quantum creative leap from the band’s debut, focussing even more on the band’s impressive grasp of dark dynamics and palpable, almost physical, sonic weight. And, much like Replicant above, they’ve channelled this into some seriously catchy and compelling songwriting which proves that – in the right hands – Disso-Death can be as hypnotic as it is heavy.

UNIFORM – AMERICAN STANDARD

If there’s one album this year which should come with a content warning… it’s this one.

Taking an unflinching look (ably assisted by the twisted, transgressive contributions of the writers B.R. Yeager and Maggie Siebert) at the human condition – one inspired by the band’s all-too-real experiences of sickness, suffering, and self-loathing – Uniform produced one of the ugliest, nastiest… yet also most vulnerable and empathetic… albums of the year with American Standard.

Built around a core of grinding, Sludge-drenched grooves, all coated in a slimy sheen of acidic industrial effluent and laced with erratic explosions of harsh, ear-splitting noise and poignant passages of eerie, electronica-embellished, ambience, these four songs – running the gamut from the titanic, twenty-minute title-track to the broiling four-minute fireball of closer “Permanent Embrace” – defy simple categorisation, or easy understanding, yet together form of the bleakest, most brutal, yet also most beautiful, auditory experiences of the year,

It’s not an easy listen, by any means, or one that you’re likely to fully “get” straight away… but the long-term payoff is more than worth it.

HONOURABLE MENTION: ORYX – PRIMORDIAL SKY

To quote one of my favourite writers, “…make no mistake, these four tracks are in many ways just as heavy, just as ugly, and just as soul-crushingly bleak as the band have ever been, but by upping the dosage of melody injected into the music, and sharpening up their songwriting skills ever so slightly, Oryx have demonstrated, definitively, that – whatever they once were – they’ve now truly become what they were always meant to be.”

KNOLL – AS SPOKEN

Avant-Grind monsters Knoll delivered one of the first truly “great” albums of the year back in January, and it’s nothing less than a testament to that album’s brilliance that As Spoken finds itself on my “Critical Top Ten” so many months later.

Over the course of forty frenzied minutes (and thirty-one spiteful seconds) the torturous Tennessee quintet reveal themselves to be true masters of contorted, barely-controlled-chaos, bathing the listener in a veritable torrent of abrasive, asphyxiating guitars and gnarled, nihilistic noise – all infused with erratic excursions into delirium-inducing drone and brassy bursts of swirling, squalling trumpet – as they continue to challenge their audience’s expectations and explore the outer limits of just how extreme their music can be.

To quote from my own review:

“On As Spoken it feels, more than ever, that Knoll are truly pushing the envelope with purpose, with songs like the bar-setting opening title-track and late-album highlight “Portrait” combining all the crushing intensity we’ve come to associate with the band with an even more claustrophobic sense of asphyxiating atmosphere and doom-laden darkness which, more than ever before, thoroughly justifies the group’s self-described “Funeral Grind” tag-line.”

HONOURABLE MENTION: FULL OF HELL – COAGULATED BLISS

Speaking of bands known for pushing the envelope… Full of Hell have long been famous for their ever-evolving strain of mutant metallic Grind, and their latest evolution – simultaneously more accessible, in the weirdest of ways, yet just as unorthodox and unpredictable as ever – has the potential to open them up to a whole new audience… even if a lot of them might not survive the experience.

MONOLITHE – BLACK HOLE DISTRICT

As crushing as the record’s title, Monolithe‘s new one quickly reaffirms them as one of the world’s best Death-Doom bands, whose gravity-distorting density and time-dilating intensity is certainly not for the faint of heart.

But it’s the bold, progressive steps they’ve taken on Black Hole District, indulging their moodier and more melodic inclinations even further – both musically and vocally – while also making more space to allow their gloomy, synth-laced soundscapes to breathe and brood for longer, which makes this perhaps the band’s best work yet (or, at the very least, right on par with the best work from their brilliant back-catalogue).

At fifty-five minutes – five massive musical movements broken up by five scene-setting ambient interludes (which play into the album’s underlying neo-noir, cyber-punk concept) – it’s a demanding album, make no mistake, but also a richly rewarding one, which (to use a hoary old cliché) really does take you on both a musical and emotional journey as it ebbs and flows, glimmers and glows, slowly building to its colossal climax before collapsing in on itself under the sheer weight of it all.

So, please, trust me on this… give it the time and attention it deserves and you truly won’t regret it.

HONOURABLE MENTION: AMAROK – RESILIENCE

If you prefer your Doom of a more earthy and organic variety, then you might want to give the gargantuan, grief-stricken new album from Amarok a listen. Be warned though, while there are certainly moments of light and hope to be found amidst all the darkness and despair which dominates the album, they’re not always the easiest to hold onto, such is the soul-crushing weight which this record brings to bear.

ORANSSI PAZUZU – MUUNTAUTUJA

Last, but by no means least, there was no reality where Oranssi Pazuzu‘s new album – which some, myself included, have argued might just be the best of their career – didn’t end up on this list, and I’m going to have to turn, once again, to my own review earlier in the year to explain just why the genre-defying sounds of Muuntautuja belong here:

“While it’s not exactly unheard of for members of the Black Metal community (even if they’re the proverbial “black sheep”) to dip their toes into the waters of the industrial/ambient/darkwave scenes – nor is it entirely new ground for Oranssi Pazuzu themselves – it’s just that it’s so rarely done with such careful craftsmanship or dedication to the form as it is here.

From the stroboscopic savagery of “Bioalkemisti” and the sinister sound-waves of “Muuntautuja” to the predatory Trip-Hop pulse of nightmare-inducing penultimate track “Ikikäärme” and the eerie electronic ambience of “Vierivä usva” – with stop-offs along the way to spit-forth the utterly monstrous “Voitelu” and the apocalyptically industrial strains of “Valotus” – the band continue to do what they do best… which is to defy expectations and redefine exactly what it means to be “heavy” one mind-bending, genre-blending track at a time.”

HONOURABLE MENTION: DOODSESKADER

I don’t want to say too much about this one because, spoiler alert, I’m going to be writing much more about it tomorrow… but I will say that if you’re looking for something with the same unconventional spirit as the album above, albeit one that draws more from Sludge and the darker, harder end of Hip-Hop rather than Oranssi Pazuzu‘s Black Metal meets Trip Hop vibes, then give Doodseskader a shot. You might just like it.