(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!

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(Today we have Andy Synn‘s mammoth second article rounding up the year that was 2024)

Ok, so this is where “List Week” really gets going.

Before we get stuck in, however, a quick explanation for those of you who are new to the site at this time of year.

The following article is not a normal “Best Of…” list, nor is it intended to be treated like one – instead, think of it as a resource which rounds up all the albums I’ve heard this year (well, almost all of them, there’s a few that got cut simply because I didn’t feel strongly enough about them to include them at all) which didn’t make it onto my “Great” list (which will be published tomorrow).

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check them out, however, as there’s a lot of good stuff here (including some of my personal favourites), and the list itself runs the gamut from “it’s pretty good, you might like this” to “this is really fucking good, bordering on great, and needs to be heard”.

It’s not, of course, in any way definitive, because:

• I’ll obviously have forgotten to include some things
• there’s a few big names I just didn’t have time to get around to
• some of what isn’t here will appear on tomorrow’s “Great” list
• some bands we purposefully don’t feature/cover (for a variety of reasons)

And, obviously, there’s going to be more albums than I can count that I won’t even have been aware of… but it’s still a pretty big collection of records and releases, split up by style and sub-genre, which I hope you’ll find useful as a way of catching up on stuff you might have missed.

Feel free to drop any questions about anything you’re interested in via the comments… and, yes, I’ve provided links for every single album featured here.

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