A Guest List from Brerlapn!
Discord sweetie Brerlapn has singlehandedly, through necromantic will, resurrected the LISTMANIA 2K24 we all thought buried 6 feet below. An old man (with a very sore Achilles) once said: “sometimes dead is better;” we’re all about to learn why he was dead wrong.
Brerlapn
Paganizer – Flesh Requiem (Transcending Obscurity Records) & Necrot – Lifeless Birth (Tankcrimes)
Paganizer and Necrot are a tie for my Veteran Death Metal “Damn Kyle, save some riffs for the rest of us!” Category. Paganizer’s 13th (?!?) album is like a demolition Barnum and Bailey clown car for ridiculously infectious riffs; just when you think the car is empty a few more meat hooks climb out and start wrecking shit. The tracks are tight and get straight to the point—the longest clocks in at 4:09—and the crisp Swedeath mix is so on point you’ll find yourself in a fond reverie back to that eye-opening listening party where you first heard Slaughter of the Soul. Once I’d had my fill of full playthroughs, I scattered these around my metal playlists. Having “Life of Decay” or “Flesh Requiem” fire up in between Mortiferum and Nile is like a throwing a crisp refreshing Czech Pilsner in between the Vanilla and Bourbon-Infused Smoked Porter and Rye Whiskey Barrel Aged Imperial Stout (note to self—stock up on some Adroit Theory while I’m off for Christmas vacation).
Necrot’s 4th album, Lifeless Birth is also loaded with meat-hook riffs but the mix is a bit more muted and filthy, fitting for Bay Area death metal. The bass guitar is also higher in the mix, which is always worth a few extra points from the East German judge. The first three tracks are relentless, like doing a demented HIIT workout where the breaks between the all-out-chased-by-a-bear-paced sprints slow down only ever-so-slightly to running-from-the-cops sprints. While the pace is, in itself, glorious, it also sets up the sudden, very rewarding dogleg into “Drill the Skull”‘s andante stomp and sing/growl-along chorus. Never fear, though, one of those cops saw you duck through the fence and the final trio of tracks will resume your flight of scrambling and ducking through empty buildings with very few dark corners to stop and catch your breath.
Devenial Verdict – Blessing of Despair
Transcending Obscurity
I’ve never been able to commit to overly dissonant music, as too much dissonance becomes just chaos to my ear—too unpleasant to be memorable. That’s not a judgment on quality; dissonance typically doesn’t do what I want music to do. Just enough dissonance, on the other hand, can wrap a death metal album in the promise of increasing reward as multiple listens unravel more layers of complexity. Blessing of Despair has just enough dissonance. I’ve only had a short time with this album, but from the first listen it is clear that the dissonant elements are like a prism. While not necessarily the dominant sound of the album, the dissonant threads promise that each additional listen will reflect a slightly different hue of those memorable riffs and white space such that each return to the album will not be just a welcome refresher but also a subtle variation of what you noticed on your previous visit.
Sarcophagum – The Grand Arc of Madness
Nuclear Winter Records
The mix of styles in this album could tempt the label “blackened death/doom,” but I think it is less doom than melancholic death delivered with a fair helping of blackened instrumentation. It is bleak, but even where the music is not furious it still roils with relentless seismic movement, driving forward. The Grand Arc… isn’t full of earworm riffs like Paganizer, nor is there an obvious radio-ready single, so much as the album is a coherent, unified composition progressing across the 4 tracks. As the youths would say, it is a vibe, but a vibe that has you scrambling for a door-frame or solid wooden table lest the ceiling collapse from the force of that movement.
Tzompantli – Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force
20 Buck Spin
I’m seeing this on a lot of Top 10 lists this year, and with good reason. Infused with indigenous elements, thunderous aggression, and hints of funereal doom (quite appropriate for the lyrical themes), the compositions on Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force weave a coherent voice across the album without flattening the distinctiveness of each track. A standout release of death/doom that holds together like the album is a novel and each track is a chapter.
Coffins – Sinister Oath
Relapse Records
I’ve heard a quote from some killjoy that heavy metal is all just Black Sabbath riffs played faster. Well, Coffins has just the right touch of Wolverine Blues style riffs, played slower. Coffins’ sludge-tinged death metal feels even better live, but since they’re from a land far away you’ll have to settle for cranking up the volume and devouring the hellacious transition from album intro “B.T.C.D.” to second track “Spontaneous Rot.” While Coffins tortuously grinds you through those damn-near slo-mo interludes with exquisite skill, these tracks stay just as strong when the clinks and mid-tempo double-bass throw down the tank treads. The only song that didn’t quite hit so hard for me was the 9-minute “Everlasting Spiral,” which stayed at a running underwater pace for the first 6 minutes—solid riffs with perceptible but more glacial movement, at one point giving me a flashback to Key and Peele’s “wait for the drop” sketch when a faster segment’s arrival seemed imminent but faded back into the murk. Those of you more accustomed to the slower cousins—drone, stoner doom, sludge—of death metal (Hi, Reliquary Tower!) will likely notice this less. It isn’t jarring enough to drop the album from my 2024 top-tier, and at any rate the track does eventually pay off the tension and then moves into the driving, crusty “Things Infestation.”
Kanonenfieber – Die Urkatastrophe
Century Media Records
The sophomore release of slightly-more-deathened-than-Menschenmühle black metal from Kanonenfieber. Where the basement-dwelling, pasty chuds who have never left their cloistered suburban existence to experience the world-collapsing disintegration of true violence stamp out romanticized wanks to the Vaterland or Blood and Soil wars perhaps fought over by their grandfathers or great-grandfathers, Kanonenfieber instead peels back the convenient, foggy gauze of temporal distance to wave the immediacy embodied in the diaries and letters from those great-grandfathers to tell the true experience of horror and fractured psyches of those who bled in the trenches and steppes.
The crushing martial reality and aftermath of alcoholism, PTSD, suicidal ideation, and broken relationships of Kanonenfieber’s WWI stands in stark contrast to the Call of Duty dilettantism of your Marduks and Panzerfausts. Now, unflinching realism in lyrical themes is admirable, but I am a riffs and chuggz fellow first and foremost, so this album would gather dust on my Bandcamp wishlist if the musical craftsmanship wasn’t their equal. And it is: the composition reflects the irresistible merger of death and black and stands as testimony to the impact of a well-mixed sound. I have rarely listened to just one or two tracks without feeling compelled to finish the full album. Like Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force, Die Urkatastrophe is not a collection of essays to be sampled but a novel to experience from beginning to end.
Vulvatorious – S/T
Bad Morning Records
Vocalist Ditte Krøyer’s striking mohawk may promise punk, but to my ear this is an exquisite mix of blackthrash with a strong undercurrent of post-. Although I don’t really know what post-hardcore or post-metal are supposed to mean, I think of them like I think of the tiki part of a tiki drink—the “there’s a flavor note in this drink that feels familiar and I like it but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is and that lack of full recognition may haunt me later” mystery element, and Vulvatorious has plenty of it. I was introduced to this album via the anthemic sing-along “FUCK YOU INCEL,” which is quite fun and catchy. But what pulled me back to the album was several days later having a rich, mystery melody bouncing around my skull that I couldn’t quite place and realizing it was from Vulvatorious. “FUCK YOU INCEL”‘s anthemic appeal is straightforward and fun, but once it coaxes you to sidle up to the tiki bar, you get standout post-tiki tracks like “Witch Burns Black,” “Shrouded Mountain,” and “Mormors sang.” This is one hell of a debut album.
Ashen Tomb – Ecstatic Death Reign
Everlasting Spew Records
I first heard Tribal Gaze‘s full length The Nine Choirs well long before I checked out their earlier EP, so by the time I got around to Godless Voyage I already knew—like watching a movie prequel—that their full-length would absolutely be able to cash the whopping checks with many zeros that their EP had written. My first listen to Ashen Tomb, however, was their self-titled EP from late 2022, before Ecstatic‘s release. Like Tribal Gaze’s Godless Voyage, Ashen Tomb’s EP set a very, very high bar for their debut full-length, before “They Live Beneath” was even finished playing, but unlike Tribal Gaze I had only a hopeful question mark as to what would come next.
When a flawless EP like Ashen Tomb precedes a full-length, awaiting the full LP feels akin to watching a French pole-vaulter step up to the Olympics: will he be able to clear that conspicuously girthy hog over the impossibly high bar set the year before? Well, the results are in and Finland wins the gold! Last Saturday night, I went on a dive-bar crawl and by the third spot I just kept thinking, “maybe I’ll duck out for a bit and go listen to Ecstatic Death Reign, at least for a few songs? After all, why shouldn’t I!” (I did, and highly recommend this gambit for recharging when an extended party is grinding you down.) With Ecstatic Death Reign, Ashen Tomb debuts with an unapologetically 100% pure, uncut platter of exquisitely-crafted death metal.
GRIND – Grace and Misery
7 Degrees Records
With a band name defying the demands of SEO, GRIND’s Grace and Misery is easily the most genre-fluid album on my Top 10 this year. The haunting composition of “Manifest” turns seamlessly to the grind of “Hysteria” and then the pit-opening deathrash riffs and pummeling double bass of “Freedom of People.” None of the shifts in tone or intensity feel forced or unpleasant; the shapeshifting flows across the course of the album as naturally as a river going from a wide calm to winding through a valley to rapids and falls then back to a broad, slow-moving course across the plains. GRIND has only been a band for a few years, but the expertise with which they maneuver across their landscape of styles within the course of this album feels like I’m listening to the crowning work of a veteran act.
Ischemic – Condemned to the Breaking Wheel
Independent
Condemned…‘s 30 minutes feels like a train ride through the American West: you’ll go from high plateau at Denver to the whitewater of the Colorado River gorges to rolling valleys and then the expanse of Utah desert and canyons before climbing into the pine-covered Sierra Nevada range. The death/doom heart of Ischemic’s style lays the tracks and and the bassist drives that locomotive like a sledgehammer. The black metal, grind, dissonance, and hypnotic riffs are the scenery that really keep you turning your head to check if you just heard what you thought you heard. GRIND’s Grace and Misery felt fully (and seamlessly) genre-fluid; when the album shifted from one tone to another it often felt like a complete transition without a trace of the room you just left. Condemned…‘s death/doom, however, remains the foundation throughout the album, never quite stepping fully off the stage regardless of what other elements are currently front and center.
Holdovers: The 2023 “I Can’t Quit You” List
Xoth – Exogalactic
Independent
Goddamn this album is still fun.
Horrendous – Ontological Mysterium
Jesus tapdancing Christ, “The Blaze” is an all-time Top 5 metal intro track, in the same league as “The Hellion.” The whole album builds from those opening notes and before you know it you’re emerging from the trance, ringing the death knell GO TO HELL! Prog is an element I rarely tolerate in more than small, measured doses, at best as a garnish, like the twist of lemon over a cocktail—and I sure as hell wouldn’t be sucking on a lemon peel without all that bourbon. But I’ll be damned if Ontological Mysterium isn’t just a Big Gulp cup full of perfect glorious lemon peels with just a few splashes of bourbon for the whole lot.
Trespasser – Apocalypse
Independent
If Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force and Die Urkatastrophe are novels in album form, Apocalypse was biblical. Pulling the threads on the Hebrew practice of Jubilee, where every 49th year all debts were forgiven, slaves were freed, and land returned, Apocalypse brings the Debt-Strike to modern times. In the face of a monstrous machine built to dehumanize us all, this album is a defiant cry of exceptional, no-filler, relentlessly well-crafted melodic black metal all the way to the concluding gang shouts of Ἀφέσεως σημασία!, the trumpet-blast of liberty.
Tribal Gaze – The Nine Choirs
Maggot Stomp
Many years ago, some coworkers invited me to go to a burrito place with them for lunch. I said no thanks, I hate beans. They said, this place makes the burrito in front of you so you can tell them to leave out the beans. Intrigued, I joined them for lunch. That evening when I got home, I had Chipotle for the second time that day, and then 9 more times over the next 6 days. After that I settled into a more moderate routine of having Chipotle only 5 or 6 times a week. Why am I telling you about burritos in an albums of the year list?
Well I was regrettably oblivious to Tribal Gaze until Beavis Christ submitted “As A Thousand Voices Sing” for a Toilet listening party. I was instantly hooked and continuously gorged on the richly layered tracks of The Nine Choirs for what felt like a glorious infinity wrapped in on itself. There are no beans in this album, only a perfect mix of double pollo, fresh pico, bright green guac, and lime-cilantro crack rice. A powerhouse of groovy death metal, if the first 90 seconds of “Cold Devotion” do not still—over a year after the album’s release—drag you into the middle of the room like a vicious irresistible undertow and keep you there until your exhausted lungs are finally saturated with the final notes of “Worthless Offering” and some dipshit pit ninja has cracked two of your ribs, then I weep for your cold, dead, empty husk of a soul.
Honorable Mentions
Fleshgod Apocalypse – Opera
Nuclear Blast
FA has been hit or miss for me over the years, but Opera and their previous album are hitting the sweet spot.
Gaerea – Coma
Well-written and mature, this this album is one that feels best as a full composition and not as singles.
Emasculator – The Disfigured and the Divine (New Standard Elite) | Misyrion – Kingdom of Misery (Independent)
These albums are in the neighborhood of what sound to me like the intersection of tech/slam/maybe brutal death, which isn’t a spot I visit very often. Along with the groovier Pneuma Hagion‘s From Beyond release this year, these two albums have got me stretching my comfort zone in a new direction.
Longhouse – III: Nìjwàswe
Independent
Tagged on Bandcamp as doom and post-metal, to my ear the dominant notes are atmoblack, but whatever the tag, the third album from Algonquin band Longhouse is a compelling release. “Mishi Pijiw” is an infectious tune.
EPs of Note
Goetia – Tomb Essence
Independent
With members of Genocide Pact, Perpetuated (RIP), and Deliriant Nerve, among others, Goetia released their first EP last year, exhibiting a potent blend of equally blackened, death, and grind elements, and Tomb Essence picks up the promise with 4 more excellent tracks.
Ninth Realm – Infernal Spite
Independent
Easily recognizable as Ninth Realm, but stretching their legs with a harder edge than A Fate Unbroken‘s excellent NWOBHM-meets-thrash-but-death-metal.
