OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE COMPLETE LIST

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Feb 182025
 

(written by Islander)

This year I was able to pick up my tradition of gathering a list of the last year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, having been unable to do that last year (though Vizzah Harri picked up the baton I dropped for songs from 2023). In compiling my list of infectious songs from 2024, I wound up with 69 songs before forcing myself to stop at the end of January. (Yuck it up, but I promise that number was coincidental.) That was just a tad more than the 66 songs on my list for 2022.

Of course, I really wasn’t finished when I stopped. A lot of candidates just as worthy as those 69 were left by the wayside when I hit the wall — as witnessed by a couple of posts that got added the week after. For the first time that I can recall, both DGR and Andy Synn created their own addenda to my list. In one fell swoop, DGR added 70 songs, though there was a small overlap with my own list. Andy added 10 that weren’t on my list or DGR‘s.

Knowing that those addenda were coming, I delayed putting together a wrap-up post with links to all the songs I picked. And then after we published those addenda I forgot about the wrap-up — until yesterday. And so now you have it. Continue reading »

2024’s MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THINGS WHAT ISLANDER AND DGR MISSED

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Feb 072025
 

(Andy Synn is here to correct some egregious oversights by the rest of the NCS crew)

Well, I guess it’s finally time to draw a line under last year… in fact, it’s probably well past time… but before we consign 2024 to the great internet graveyard I wanted to get in one last edition of “2024’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs” focussing on some of the coolest and most killer cuts that my buddies Islander and DGR missed.

Credit where credit is due, however, the two of them did end up featuring a couple of tracks I assumed would end up on my list (namely “Dehumanize Me” by Candy and “Blackwater” by Bloom Dream) but the rest of these ten selections (I decided that was a nice limit, considering between them Islander and DGR already highlighted over 100 tracks) come from artists/albums/EPs they didn’t touch in their lists.

I’ve also resisted the temptation to include anything by my own band… although if I had it probably would have been “Until Morale Improves” (which, you know, you should definitely check out)… or any bands I’m too close to personally, but that still left a pretty massive “short list” (short being a relative term) to choose from, so whittling it down to just ten options meant a whole heap of songs were left behind on the cutting room floor.

But, hopefully, what you’re about to hear will encourage you to further check out the rest of these records.

Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE DGR ADDENDUMB

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  2 Responses »
Feb 032025
 

(Last week Islander finished his month-long list of 2024’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. It included 69 songs in all. Today DGR has provided an addendum. It includes… 70 SONGS! Though there is some small overlap with Islander‘s list.)

At the time this article is being published we’ll have drawn our Most Infectious Songs of 2024 rollout to a close. There are likely a handful of questions surrounding how such a list gets put together or why I am once again exhuming the corpse of 2024 for a few more stick-whackins that are swirling around your mind.

To put it bluntly, the idea of doing an addendum to the 2024 song list was offered to me by the NoCleanSinging head honcho, in part due to a desire for differing opinions from his own but also to highlight, once again, just how wide the spread of music was in the 2024 world of heavy metal and just how much you’re likely to miss no matter how much you try to keep up. It’s fucking impossible.

Originally, this was just going to be an Andy shindig as a sort of quick “here’s a few more that might’ve been overlooked,” but then I was asked to contribute as well so I thought it might be a fun exercise to peel the curtain back a bit and show just how much the internet cabal decides who is going to break through and be famous this year.

The answer is, simply put, “fuck all”. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 22): LOSTRÉGOS, Ὁπλίτης (HOPLITES), CANTIQUE LÉPREUX, MEFITIS, BEEHIVE REVOLT

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 312025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s the last day of January and therefore I’ve reached the end of this list. It’s still likely that Andy Synn or DGR, or perhaps some other NCS writers, will chime in next week with songs I failed to include, but my work is done, other than compiling the usual wrap-up post listing all the songs in one place, with links to where they can be found.

Approaching the conclusion has increased the internal agonies. There are so many songs I didn’t want to leave out, so many difficult decisions to make, even with a list as long as this one turned out to be. That explains why there are five songs today instead of three or four.

As for why I grouped these five together, it’s because I decided to conclude with variants of black metal, which over time has become my favorite extreme genre. Maybe it’s because I listen to a lot of such variants in organizing my weekly SHADES OF BLACK column, but my list of candidates for this list has been heavy on the metallic black. These five have their own personalities, but I’ve found all of them exhilarating, memorable, and highly likely to spin your minds like a centrifuge.

I’ll save concluding thoughts about this list until the forthcoming wrap-up post. Onward to the music! Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 21): FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, VITRIOL, DEFEATED SANITY, CONVULSING

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 302025
 

(written by Islander)

You can tell I’m getting close to the end. How can you tell? Because I expanded yesterday’s entry to four songs and am doing the same again here in Part 21 today. Unless I collapse from writer fatigue, tomorrow’s final episode will probably include five. I’m trying to cram in as many songs as I can before I hit the February wall that will abruptly halt this list.

The four I’ve grouped together today are all high-speed, high-octane, high-intensity onslaughts on the senses, and they’re all mind-benders of a high order too. Obviously, I also think they’re all contagious. For reasons you’ll see, this grouping will also especially please my comrade DGR.

One more installment left ahead for tomorrow, and 20 other Parts lined up behind us for you to explore if you haven’t already, and you can do that via this link. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 20): SINISTRO, MAN’S GIN, DEVIN TOWNSEND, YOVEL

 Exceptions to the Rule, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  2 Responses »
Jan 292025
 

(written by Islander)

When I picked the name for this blog in 2009 it was partly a joke and partly dead serious. A joke, because I made clear from the outset that some of my favorite metal bands included singing in their music; serious, because at the time I was annoyed by a budding trend among metalcore bands I liked to substitute fairly lame singing for yelling and snarling.

In the ensuing years we’ve written about many bands who have included singers, but it’s fair to say that they’ve been in a minority. Speaking only for myself, I still generally prefer extreme vocals in metal, and it still takes a special singing voice to overcome the prejudice.

In the case of all four songs that I’ve bundled together today, I thought the exception was well-earned, although I’m not sure you would agree that “singing” is the correct way to describe the vocals in the fourth song. Of course, I think all four songs are infectious too. (If you’re new to this series, you can find all the other songs on the list via this link.) Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 19): SPIDER GOD, SUMMONING SATURN VOIDS, THE BLEAK PICTURE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 282025
 

(written by Islander)

Welcome to Part 19 of this nearly-finished infectious song list. Although I’ve had some “organizing principles” for the most recent installments, I can’t say I had one for the grouping of today’s three songs, apart from the fact that all three of these got stuck in my head the first time I heard them and they have remain rooted there ever since.

To check out the 53 songs preceding these 3 on the list, use this link. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 18): THY CATAFALQUE, HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, SEAR BLISS

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 272025
 

(written by Islander)

If you were with us when I started rolling out this list 26 days ago, then you know I’m going to call a halt to it on January 31st. That makes this the last week, with five installments left to go — though there are rumors that Andy Synn and DGR may prepare addendums that include favorites of theirs which I didn’t get to.

This week will be a disappointment to me and to many of you, not because the songs will be disappointments but because my self-imposed deadline will force me to leave out a lot of songs that deserve this kind of recognition.

Today’s group of three leans into black metal (among many other things), though the songs differ significantly from each other — and they are all out of the ordinary. To see the other songs on the list so far, this link will take you to all of them. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 17): DISENTOMB, WESTON SUPER MAIM, HYPERDONTIA

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 242025
 

(written by Islander)

Welcome to Part 17 of this still-expanding list, which ends this week’s rollout and paves the way toward one final sequence next week. I again had an idea of why I thought these three songs would fit together. It’s not that they’re all the same (far from it), but I still detected some kinship among them: an amalgamation of brute-force brutishness and other manifestations of head-scrambling extravagance.

In case you haven’t explored the songs in the preceding 16 Parts, you can find all of them via this link.

DISENTOMB

We didn’t get a new Disentomb album last year, but we did get a very arresting EP named Nothing Above. It was the subject of an Andy Synn review, and another review by DGR in the context of him putting the EP on his year-end list. I’ll excerpt from both: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 16): PAYSAGE D’HIVER, MERRIMACK, AKVAN

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 232025
 

(written by Islander)

The unifying theme that explains the grouping of today’s three selections for this list is… black metal… but although they all fit under that large and ever-expanding genre tent, each is quite different from the others.

To explore the songs laid out in the preceding 15 Parts of the list, go here.

PAYSAGE D’HIVER

In Part 6 of this list I included a song by Calcarata that I was confident was the longest song I’ve ever picked for one of these lists in the 16 years I’ve been doing them. That song was 17 minutes long. But today I’m starting with one that’s even longer, the 18+ minute opening track from Paysage D’Hiver‘s monumental 2024 album Die Berge. Continue reading »

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