Imagine Sabaton, but if they were obsessed with one particular conflict and used metal to illustrate the horrors of that conflict as opposed to rousing tales of brave deeds in bad situations. Hailing from Ukraine, 1914 write specifically and exclusively about the First World War. Their barbaric and brutal take on blackened metal fits the subject matter well, creating heart and heart-wrenching tales that fully articulate the horrors of that particular conflict.

“Viribus Unitis” takes its emotive storytelling to a new level by focusing its narrative on one soldier’s journey through the war. The infantryman in question is a Ukrainian soldier fighting in the Austro-Hungarian army. The concept flows over tracks that tell both of his suffering and imprisonment at the hands of the Italians. By also covers the camaraderie he feels and the feelings of enthused excitement he gains from the conflict.

It is a superb piece of work, epic but also human. By concentrating on one individual's journey through the war, they manage to deal with the atrocities of conflict in an insular and contained manner. This is not a sensational work; instead, it is a measured and restrained story of one man’s war, and it is fascinating because of that level of forensic detail. An absolute triumph. 

A progressive, technical, and atmospheric death metal album that is big in ambition and amplification. I just loved its feel of grandeur. It takes a genre that likes to be coarse and corrosive, and it adds a whole dollop of sophistication. This is their first record in eleven years, and it has an epic and aspirational bent. They seem intent on creating a sound that is voluminous and cinematic but without losing the vitality and venomous of death metal. They succeed as “Decay” feels larger than life and has an up-tempo and euphoric bent, even when it is surging forward to righteous anger. An absolutely belting return to form.

There is nothing else on this list that sounds like this album. Heck, I don’t think I have heard anything this year that sounds like this. If I am completely honest, I don’t think I have EVER heard an album this varied, this eclectic and this knowingly random. It's hard to describe because it doesn’t stay in one place or vague musical construct long enough to be describable. It's Prog, if prog was a hyperactive four-year-old off their head on Haribo. It bounces from genre to genre with a swig of attention disorder. At the heart of it and what manages to give it any sense of a linear structure is Gabriele Landillo’s voice. It is astounding and just makes the album come alive. His style is reminiscent of Mike Patton in the way that it morphs and adapts to the storytelling and the musical output. “From Nothing” is not just strange; it is mindboggling and bending. An extraordinary oddity that is fantastically unexplainable.

This record is all about optimism in the darkness. It is a highly personal tale of overcoming depression, and for all its heavy brutality, it is a positive, uplifting tale of the resilience of the human spirit. The musician at play is intricate, complex and of an off-the-charts calibre. It uses death metal but not in a hum-drum manner. Instead, this is a euphoric transcendental record where the heaviness is channelled into self-affirmation and belief. Big and expansive, this is the sound of optimism and confidence.

Named after one of the accused in the Salem witch trials, Abigail Williams are a mainstay of American Black metal. Now reduced to founder member Ken "Sorceron" Bergeron as the sole active member, this is their first album in six years, and it is an absolute gem. This is wide-screen black metal, epic, pounding and utterly exhilarating. It is fantastic in both its scale and scope. It is a sumptuous cacophony of blistering heaviness and ethereal atmospherics. An absolute delight of a record.

I'll put this marker down now. If I had had more time to become acclimatised with this record than it could have very well claimed the top spot. But its late October release date has meant that I have not given it adequate gestation time. What I can tell you is that it is an extraordinary album that deftly marries vulnerability and fragility with strident heaviness and scuzzy, gritty riffs. It wears its sentiments on its sleeves and is an emotionally literate album that is in touch with its own soul. A bold and brilliant album that keeps revealing itself on each listen.

Now you will be getting the gist that I like metal with layers, texture and variety. I love melodic death metal (when, of course, done well) as it provides that juxtaposition between harmony and harshness. This is an astoundingly masterful album that brilliantly combines harsh vocals with fabulously melodic refrains. It is big, bold and blooming brilliant. Every track is an absolute winner and lusciously sounding. Everything is in just the right measurement, and it is a joy to behold.

The much-maligned and misunderstood Ghostbath. This is not a return to form, as they never became out of form. What it is, though, is a reaffirmation of what they do so well. “Rose Thorn Necklace” is a twisty-turny soundscape that continually defies expectations. It never goes where you are expecting it to. When you are anticipating it will speed up, it slows down. When you think it is about to become tender and introspective, it hits you with a mound of feedback. It is a gloriously indignant album that enjoys second-guessing the listener. It is a helter-skelter ride through shifting musical planes, and it leaves you breathless, befuddled, but desperate to get back on the ride for another go.

Yet another astonishingly versatile Black Metal album. Blackbraid has been using the genre to illustrate the indigenous North American people for just over three years. It is actually a one-person endeavour led and exclusively created by Mexican immigrant Jon Kriegar. This is his third record, by far the strongest. It continues his redirection of the claustrophobic and nihilistic might of black metal towards the mistreatment of both the indigenous people of North America but also the environment they now share with the newcomers.

It is an astonishingly versatile and virile album. The darkness inherent within this music is repurposed to illustrate the horrors that have been inflicted upon those who originally called North America home. Use of native American instrumentation and musical forms doesn’t in any way feel gimmicky or tokenistic. Instead, it gives the album real depth and character. A rich, expressive record that shows that there is so much more to Black metal than just an obsession with the devil. A protest album like no other.

Whilst known as a hotbed of Satanic nihilism, there is actually much more to Norway, in terms of musical productivity, than black metal. The past few decades or so have had an incredibly vibrant and creative progressive metal scene. There is, of course, a bridge between this much more introspective and gentle riverine of music and the coarse underproduction of Black Metal. Bands like Enslaved, Leprous, Ulver and the mighty Emperor have existed between the two scenes and Tchort, bassist with the latter, put Green Carnation together before he even joined Emperor.

After having laying dormant for a while, “The Shores of Melancholia” signals the beginning of a bout of creativity. It is positioned as the first part in a sprawling trilogy of albums, and if this initial release is anything to go by, it is going to be a fabulous ride. This is a wonderfully rich, warm and captivating album. Rather than go down the route of big epic progressive, this is an understated and sedate record that unfurls as opposed to explode. It is intricate and beautiful, and the tracks flow together in the stream, meandering down a mountain pass. Whilst it does experiment with form and function, in the end, it is an incredibly cohesive album that feels like part of a consistent narrative. An absolute triumph that once again shows my home country’s dominance in the world of progressive music.

For their fourth album, modern hardcore heroes Turnstile have decided to go pop on us. Now it needs to be stated that this is not the bright saccharine pop of boy bands and failed soap stars; this is wonderful, off-kilter, distorted pop. This is the pop of Animal Collective, Sia, The Beach Boys (at their most experimental) and LCD Soundsystem. It is a magnificent left turn that is both accessible and simultaneously challenging. On the surface, it feels all light and breezy, but there is still an element of dissatisfaction and despair running through these songs.

Hardcore punks' disassociation with the norms of society still runs strong through this album, even if musically it abandons the heaviness for melody and harmony. It balances simplicity with complexity, creating a sound that sits somewhere between the two. It is moreish and accessible, and it still retains that feeling of disenfranchisement and being an outsider. A pop album that both reinvents and reaffirms what pop is. Just stunning.

Luscious, epic black metal from Finland. This is a stunningly evocative album because of its wide-screen sensibilities. It feels big and cinematic, full of rousing choruses and soaring, pronounced guitar solos. It is expansive and dynamic, fueling an atmosphere of striking landscapes and heroic escapades. However, it is not all chest beating and plastic swords. There is an organic realism to this album; it explores Finnish pagan tradition with a level of authenticity. They are not romanticising the past; they are using the harsh bravado of black metal to enhance simultaneously its brutal aspects and its attractive camaraderie. Absolutely astonishing in its scope and scale. A euphoric joy to listen to.

This is an album that shines because of its brevity. There are just two tracks here, ‘La Saignee’ and ‘Le Temps Detruit Tout’ and the run time is a brief 33 minutes. Yet what they manage to conjure up in that short time is nothing short of astonishing. Formerly known as Glaciation, these ambitious French men rebranded in 2024 with a manifesto to create intricate post black metal that is full of emotion and introspection.

This is fundamentally a beautiful, soulful album. There are traces and passages of harshness and brutality, but it is measured and exists purely to provide a juxtaposition to the fragile beauty. The sound is lush and enveloping. It is soothing and embracing, with wave after wave of gorgeous instrumentation. In the end, this is a thoroughly uplifting album, sometimes minimal and reserved but, in the main, euphoric and transcendental. Absolutely wonderful.

I may have felt that with 2021’s “Infinite Granite”, Blackgaze pioneers Deafheaven had left the metal behind and fully embraced the post-punk shoegaze sound. However, “Lonely People with Power” proves that they were merely on hiatus from our world and that they still have the stirring brutality flowing through their veins. This is a deliciously variable album that stretches their sound much further than before. Yes, some tracks take us back to their majestic second album, “Sunbather”, but there are others that push their trajectory firmly into post-metal and even metalcore.

In many ways, this is their heaviest and most aggressive album yet. The restraint they have shown on previous releases has gone, and instead, there are moments of real unrepressed anger. All the constituent parts that make up their sound are pushed to their extremes; the black metal is more brittle and more jagged than before, but when engaged, the shoegaze elements are fragrantly more beautiful and enticing. An absolute triumph of an album that shows that Deafheaven are now an unstoppable force in our world.

It seems this year the albums that I have loved most have been those that display variance and eclecticism in the combinations and mergence of sound. This is yet another one that takes distinct genres and combines them to create a new cohesive whole. “The Regeneration Itinerary” is a highly ambitious and astonishingly diverse record. It successfully blends extreme black metal with symphonic, electronic, techno, and even folk elements. It refuses to sit still, and instead, it’s a hyperactive maelstrom of differing sounds that slam chaotically into each other. It is a highly immersive album, pulling the listener into an ever-shifting soundscape of fluctuating velocity and ferocity. The vocals also shape-shift randomly, moving from harsh to smooth without prior notification. It all builds into a simply extraordinary listener. A metal album unafraid to step out of metal's confines and unafraid to meddle with its constructs. Utterly incredible.

Sometimes all you need is simplicity. A straightforward album that does what it does well. This is German technical death metal specialists' first album since their lineup settled down after a period of upheaval. It sees them dial down the technicality and dial up the melodic splendour. Technical death metal can sometimes feel cold and detached. But there is a real warmth to this album; it concentrates less on how many notes it can fit in and more on creating exquisite soundscapes with rousing choruses and divine instrumentation. The songs are allowed to breathe, and in doing so, they instigate a magnificently rounded listen that revels in its clear direction. A decisive advert for less is more!

So if Deafheaven are Blackgaze, then this is Deathgaze, the unholy matrimony of ethereal beauty and raw aggression. Hailing from Arizona, “Alunea” finally sees their conceptual vision realised. It is a highly ambitious album that deftly combines the harsh with true euphoric beauty. These two competing entities twist around each other in the vibrant quest for dominance. It is an astonishingly vivid dance, the opposing sounds folding in and out of each other, creating a quivering movement of continual aural motion. There is a sense that the sound is contracting and expanding simultaneously, a furious flurry of experimentation that is rich in brutal provocation but also empowered by melodic splendour. An astonishing listen that is staggeringly ambitious but also smart enough to know when it should rein it in. Just splendid.

Thrash spoke to those of us who wanted more extremity and righteous anger in our metal but refused to be enticed by the nihilism and unruliness of punk. It was a movement at the right time and right place that rejuvenated metal and forged its modern playbook. Beyond the big fours in America and Germany thrash implanted its unrelenting ethos across the global. In Switzerland, three roadies for Celtic Frost were inspired to form a band that took that unstoppable gallop of thrash but pushed its technicality and its spirit of invention forward. Coroner was born, and over thirteen years and five albums, they explored thrash’s avant-garde side, pushing its boundaries and reinventing its rules.

They called it a day in 1996 but were tempted back into circulation in 2011. Since then, rumours of new material have regularly appeared, but nothing concrete has transpired. Until now. For the first time in 32 years, we have a new Coroner album, and it is an absolute beauty. This is a continuation rather than a reinvention of their sound. However, what is extraordinary is how contemporary it sounds. It is a fresh, invigorating album that is inventive and supremely intelligent. It is dense and dexterous, using keys and samples not to dilute the aggressive temperament but to enhance and augment. It is a stunningly clever record that builds huge cathedrals of caustic but cohesive sound. There is always a nervousness when a revered entity makes an album after such a long layoff, but this quite simply is lightning caught in a jam jar. Brilliant.

An astonishingly mature prog rock from the Norwegian many stays. Even back in Black Metal’s heyday In the Woods… were trying to do different things with the art form. Long before the term black prog was coined, they were exactly that, taking their influences from the avant-garde tones of Celtic Frost as opposed to the usual sources of Venom and Bathory. This is an extraordinary, deep and textured record that almost divorces itself completely from its creator's musical origins. The vocals are deep, clean and lush and full of astonishing storytelling. The music operates as part of the narrative, creating a rich atmosphere that just builds as the music progresses. Astonishingly adept and lusciously vivid.

This is without doubt the most significant metal album since Gojira unveiled “Magma” nine years ago. It takes the template of metal and moves it all forward. Orbit Culture has long promised to do something, and here (five albums in) it is. It is deliciously heavy and delectably harsh, but it realises a good album isn’t made on screamed lyrics and pulsating riffs alone. This is a groundbreaking release that embraces the intensity and the claustrophobic nihilism but opens it all up in a way that lets light and air in. It challenges convention and presents metal that is simultaneously harsh and harmonious.

Whilst it is by far not a minimalistic or slight release, it does boil Metal down to its core function, and that is to be an explosion of euphoric energy. Every song is a hedonistic display of power. Proudly proficient in its intensity and in its anthemic quality. The tracks course with kinetic energy and bristle with hyperactive brilliance. It's meticulously crafted, and every single number is big in scope and ambition,

Its uniqueness and specialness do not come in its content (we have all heard high-tempo melodic death metal before); it is in the way it is sculpted. This is metal, uncompromisingly intense and accessible. It achieves accessibility not by dumbing down or watering down the aggression but by making every single song feel like it is a big number. An astonishing piece of work.