Farewell, 2024! It's been another massive 12 months in the heavy music world with new releases from everyone from Judas Priest and Opeth to Nightwish, Bring Me The Horizon and Poppy, but we're finally ready to put the year to bed.
There've been comebacks - Nails, Bruce Dickinson, Job For A Cowboy, Kerry King - ascendant new bands like Heriot and Lowen making their stunning debuts and an all-round bounty of all things extreme and interesting, but the time has come to rule which albums best represented the heavy music world in 2024.
That in mind, we asked Hammer's extensive pool of freelancers, staffers and contributors to submit their picks for the 20 best metal albums of 2024, and below you'll find the fruits of those labour as every vote has been tallied to create a comprehensive rundown of the finest 2024 had to offer. Don't recognise a name on the list? Stick 'em on! We'll see you for more brilliant new music in 2025.
50. Fever 333 - Darker White (Century Media/333 Wreck Chords)
Jason Aalon Butler certainly knows his way around a rap metal anthem. Only, with Fever 333 he hadn’t really shown it – until now. Rebuilding from scratch in 2022, the all-new and revitalised Fever took a massive leap towards the huge anthemia Jason had commanded in Letlive.
Singles Higher Power, No Hostages and Desert Rap stuck massive hooks to his soaring vocals and maximised the band’s funky, incendiary alt metal, resulting in a bouncy and galvanising record that went some way to realising the band’s potential.
49. Caligula's Horse - Charcoal Grace (Inside Out)
Before 2024, Caligula’s Horse made music on a pendulum, going back and forth between proggier and heavier albums. Charcoal Grace smashed that swing, presenting grand epics with bleak, brutal themes. The four-movement title track took the perspective of an abused child seething at their father, and represented the Aussie band at their biggest, darkest, and absolute best.
48. Hamferd - Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk (Metal Blade)
Sounding as bleak, powerful and starkly beautiful as the natural forces that batter their Faroe Islands home, Hamferð’s fourth fulll-ength turned death-doom’s propensity for disaster into a gorgeously affecting modern fable.
Conceptually based around a disaster that claimed the lives of 14 men on a whaling expedition, the record dredged up an ocean’s worth of low-end to subsume all in its wake, offering serenity only beneath its crushing waves.
READ MORE: "Hamferd probably has more crying than moshing."
47. Kati Rán - Sála (Svart)
Kati Rán put together an impressive crew for this voyage, with black metal legend Gaahl, Mitch Harris of Napalm Death and members of Heilung, Sígur Rós and more taking turns on the oars.
But this was very much Kati’s vision, as she navigated a journey of selfdiscovery through dark Nordic folk waters filled with oceanic swells of primal power and moments of calm introspection. Sála was mythic in scope yet deeply personal and stunning on all its many levels.
READ MORE: "It's been a long time in the making!" Dark folk enchantress Kati Ran is a songwriter like no other
46. While She Sleeps - Self Hell (Sleeps Brothers)
There’s the kitchen sink, and then there’s Self Hell. WSS’s sixth album felt like the end-of-level boss for everything Sheffield’s finest had been building to this point, slapping together their anthemic but gritty brand of metalcore with lashings of arena rock, EDM, hip hop and even alt pop, producing an album that leaked ambition from every pore. It was a headspinning ride, but for those willing to jump onboard, greatness awaited.
45. Undeath - More Insane (Prosthetic)
With the possible exception of Frozen Soul, nobody’s done more to sustain the rise of death metal’s new generation than Undeath. The New Yorkers’ third album fulfilled all the promise of their first two, widely acclaimed albums.
Bolstered by an absolutely crushing production, More Insane blended old-school incisiveness with contemporary levels of aggression. From the punishing entry point of Dead From Beyond to the bilious slurry of Bones Clattering In The Cave, it loudly confirmed that Undeath were serious heavyweights.
44. Satan - Songs In Crimson (Metal Blade)
What’s your da doing right now? Sitting on the couch, yelling at the latest Premier League debacle? What he’s not doing is continuing to rewrite proto-thrash metal and the NWOBHM with precision guitars, unrestrained drum galloping and cloud-poking vocal heights with the same wiry intensity of a hardly misspent youth.
Forty-five years ago Satan helped invent a sound and scene; Songs In Crimson helped to reshape that invention in 2024. All hail the old flesh!
43. Grand Magus - Sunraven (Nuclear Blast)
From the doomy blues of their early albums, Grand Magus have gradually distilled their sound to the essence of pure heavy metal. Sunraven raised its burnished steel to the living gods of Judas Priest and the departed great one Dio, while weaving in epic threads that were all the Swedes’ own making.
Sunraven was also the trio’s first foray into concept album territory, with a heroic but surprisingly nuanced lyrical take on the Old English poem Beowulf
42. Winterfylleth - The Imperious Horizon (Candlelight)
From the snowcovered peaks on the cover to enlisting Primordial’s Alan Averill for the glorious hymn In Silent Grace, everything about Winterfylleth’s eighth album saw the epic dial turned up another couple of notches.
Maintaining the savagery and craft that’s made them the UK’s most consistent black metal band of the last 15 years, the sheer presence of songs like The Insurrection and the title track ensured The Imperious Horizon would be carved into the mountains.
41. Tribulation - Sub Rosa In Æternum (Century Media)
In both a left turn yet some kind of ordained inevitability, Sweden’s masters of the mystical went more goth rock than ever on album six. Johannes Andersson flexed his clean, crooner muscles and shook up their sound with cuts of dark Wild West Americana and slithering giallosoundtrack synth-prog.
There was still the metallic Tribulation you know and love, but as part of the most diverse record of their career, as one of metal’s 21st-century iconoclasts continued to tinker with their own building blocks.
40. Kalandra - A Frame Of Mind (By Norse Music)
On the follow-up to sublime 2020 debut The Line, Kalandra mixed Nordic folk and contemporary rock even more skilfully. Early standout The State Of The World bridged those realms both musically and thematically, classical strings scoring vocalist Katrine Stenbekk’s lamentations about humanity’s current callousness.
Meanwhile, Bardaginn attempted the opposite, seeing Katrine chant in Old Norse atop modern, anthemic prog. Countless acts, from Wardruna to Heilung, have reappropriated Scandinavian tradition for modern times, but Kalandra’s approach to it still proved distinct.
39. Pijn - From Low Beams Of Hope (Floodlit Recordings)
Fans of Pijn had to wait nearly six years for a follow-up to 2018’s excellent debut album, Loss, but it took less than a single spin of From Low Beams Of Hope to show that every second spent in anticipation was worth it.
Across four songs and 45 minutes, the Manchester post-metal sextet delivered an encapsulating, exceptional body of work that soared seamlessly between elation and melancholy, and took listeners on an instrumental journey of sheer beauty and wonderment.
Job For A Cowboy - Moon Healer (Metal Blade)
Arizona’s tech-death titans vanished without a trace after 2014’s seminal Sun Eater. A decade later, they returned in blistering form. Moon Healer was the perfect sequel to the labyrinthine savagery of its adored predecessor.
Smart, intricate and full of inspired melodic touches, songs like Etched In Oblivion and The Agony Seeping Storm fulfilled fans’ high expectations and ensured that JFAC’s relaunch was an unequivocal success. When it comes to refined, neck-threatening virtuosity, nobody did it better this year.
37. Melt-Banana - 3 + 5 (A-Zap)
Nothing on Earth is like Melt-Banana. The Japanese duo’s ninth album and first in 11 years, 3+5, offered a jubilant reminder.
Yasuko Onuki’s idiosyncratic yelps zipped across grinding hardcore, blissed-out noise-pop and everything between; Ichiro Agata’s wild musicianship zapped along 24 minutes of neon abandon, heavier than every other album this year but always catchy, forever fishing a hook or 12 from his back pocket. Mind-melting and completely bananas, 3+5 was the sound of a migraine made flesh.
36. The Obsessed - Gilded Sorrow (Ripple Music)
Scott ‘Wino’ Weinrich is perhaps the most totemic figurehead in doom outside of Signor Iommi himself. After stints with multiple scene leaders (including Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan and Shrinebuilder), his contribution to the world of slow’n’low is incalculable.
Returning in his 60s to the band he formed as a teen, Gilded Sorrow really tugged the heartstrings; the weight of soul and grizzled lifer wisdom that Wino brings to any party was multiplied tenfold on these classy biker grooves.
35. Big|Brave - A Chaos Of Flowers (Thrill Jockey)
A companion piece of sorts to last year’s Nature Morte, A Chaos Of Flowers found Big | Brave taking their avant-garde yet emotionally ravaging take on post-metal into sparser but no less crushing places, summoning both the delicate, plaintive folk of their earliest material and the chasmic drone of early Earth.
Woven around Emily Dickinson and less remembered female poets, this was a clarion call for repressed voices from the most precarious of precipices.
34. Zetra - Zetra (Nuclear Blast)
For those who wished to exist in an alternate universe where The Human League dressed as Immortal and collaborated with The Jesus And Mary Chain on songs for the Lost Boys soundtrack, Halloween came early when London duo Zetra released their debut album.
Their mix of classic, icy, goth melodrama, late 80s Creation Records roster worship and early synth-pop cool was brilliantly realised on the sublimely catchy, yet delightfully evil-sounding likes of Suffer Eternally and Gaia.
33. Thou - Umbilical (Sacred Bones)
Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based sludge swamp monsters Thou have historically been recognised as premium purveyors of sonic anguish and psych-ward despondency through the medium of sound.
Umbilical absolutely didn’t scrimp on the gloom, but what the band did to make their sixth album uniquely special was add engaging layers of melody and, dare it be said, hooks to the mix that spun a purgatorial web where frowning doom metal was forced to crack a smile and tap a toe.
32. Kerry King - From Hell I Rise (Reigning Phoenix)
As Angel Of Death would put it, “He’s baaaaaeughhhhhhck!” Unsatisfied with Slayer’s decision to go into retirement, and with vast reserves of hellfire still to expel, six-string legend Kerry King instead assembled an all-star force of thrashers to create his debut solo record.
With Mark Osegueda up front and an engine of Paul Bostaph, Phil Demmel and Kyle Sanders, Kerry got back to business in the fiercest way possible. Top grade thrash metal, pure and simple.
READ MORE: Inside the rebirth of thrash metal titan Kerry King
31. Dodsrit - Nocturnal Will (Wolves Of Hades)
Dödsrit’s shtick was always an easy sell: foe-vanquishing, epic black metal riposting gutter-worthy crust-punk. The Swedes’ fourth album made that pitch even simpler, paddocking the d-beats into one track and leaving the rest to flourish in a fashion most grandiose.
Nocturnal Will was a supreme display of melody amid muck; Lamp Of Murmuur’s M. even turned up for a church-kindling solo. A record so throat-squashingly vital, you forget half of it was instrumental.
30. Touché Amoré - Spiral In A Straight Line (Rise)
Touché Amoré’s Stage Four was beloved upon its 2016 release, inspired by the loss of vocalist Jeremy Bolm’s mother to cancer. Where 2020’s Lament felt like it was processing that contrast of tragedy and applause, Spiral In A Straight Line marked a new era, “grieving in a forward direction” to paraphrase Jeremy on opening track Nobody’s.
There was a sense of rejuvenation to their spirited post-hardcore, raw and playful in delivery, full of surprising twists and their biggest choruses to date.
29. High On Fire - Cometh The Storm (MNRK Heavy)
Solidifying High On Fire’s status as sonic pioneers, Cometh The Storm blended their brutality with probing psychedelic nuance. Fans revelled in Matt Pike’s timeless, riff-driven fury, while critics lauded the album’s rich textures and gutsy ambition.
From the primal aggression of Lambsbread to the sprawling, doom-laden Darker Fleece, their latest collection showcased a band at the peak of their creative powers, loudly reaffirming that HOF could be as audacious as they were relentless, marking it as a career-defining release.
28. Orange Goblin - Science, Not Fiction (Peaceville)
Continuing to fly the flag for heavy metal’s real, old-school deal, Orange Goblin went bolder and deeper for their 10th full-length, as proggy detours and huge melodic refrains elevated every song to potential new classic status.
Ben Ward had never sounded more powerful or authoritative, and the arrival of new bassist Harry Armstrong induced a renewed sense of urgency. Science, Not Fiction rocked like an absolute bastard, and may just be the band’s finest album to date. OFG, baby!
27. Oceans Of Slumber - Where Gods Fear To Speak (Season Of Mist)
With a point to prove and a new label following the muted reaction to the more dulcet Starlight & Ash, the Texans came out all guns blazing and hearts clearly tattooed on sleeves.
Combining all the elements that have made OOS such a cerebral, magical force over their previous five albums, Where Gods Fear To Speak was an unashamed emotional and visceral statement of intent, with the likes of The Impermanence Of Fate acting as cathartic, captivating calls to new fans.
26. Slift - Ilion (Sub Pop)
An intergalactic odyssey powered by unlimited fissile material, Slift’s third album proper maintained a whiteknuckle, synapse-frying intensity across 80 minutes and stretches of space vaster than the human mind can safely comprehend.
From the off, riffs dazzled like sparks flying from a Catherine wheel, grooves pumped as if pushing magma up from an alien planet’s core, and the Toulouse trio redefined stoner/ psych as Sleep in inverse: frazzled, but wide-eyed and staring directly into the blazing heart of the cosmos.
25. Nails - Every Bridge Burning (Nuclear Blast)
As the clock ticked towards eight years since cult powerviolence crew Nails’ last album, and with frontman Todd Jones the only remaining member, surely few people expected much, if anything, from the band ever again.
For Every Bridge Burning to exist at all felt like a win. For it to showcase Nails being as brutal, spiteful, viscous, manic and panic-inducing as they always were, in a mere 17 minutes over 10 tracks, was unquestionably one of 2024’s greatest comeback stories.
24. Solstafir - Hin Helga Kvöl (Century Media)
On their eighth album, snow-blasted postrockers Sólstafir split the difference between Sigur Rós and Slayer. Hin Helga Kvöl offered a series of deep contrasts: where the heads-down title track and Nú Mun Ljósið Deyja’s blizzard-roar called back to the Icelanders’ extreme metal past, the slow-burning Sálumessa and Kumi’s tribal-goth chants and ghostly sax offered something more evocative and enigmatic.
But its disorientating brilliance was embodied by the R’n’B style female backing vocals dropped in Vor Ás – proof that few bands today match Sólstafir for sheer inventiveness.
23. Devin Townsend - PowerNerd (InsideOut)
Intense Devin? Mad Devin? Devin With His Hand Up A Puppet’s Arse? It’s anyone’s guess which Devin Townsend we’ll get with any given album. But here we got Accessible But Epic Devin.
His 22nd solo album found this habitual over-thinker giving himself just two weeks to write it. The result was uncharacteristically direct; heavy on great, sweeping melodies and massive choruses. There was still some soul-searching, but tracks like Gratitude and Younger Lover sugared the pill brilliantly. And not a fucking puppet in sight.
22. Zeal & Ardor - Greif (Redacted)
Nearly a decade into the project, Zeal & Ardor mastermind Manuel Gagneux shows no signs of letting the restlessly creative spirit of his band diminish. Greif was another superbly unique and idiosyncratic release from the bluesy black metallers.
This time, though, there was far more in the mix than just those two unlikely genre bedfellows, as progressive song structures, tech rhythms and massive hard rock hooks all congealed together. It meant that Greif was paradoxically both Zeal & Ardor’s most challenging and complex record, yet also their most instantaneous.
21. Leprous - Melodies Of Atonement (InsideOut)
After years of tempering their guitars with symphonic textures, Leprous brought the riffs back. Melodies Of Atonement was a response to frontman Einar Solberg’s largely un-heavy 2023 solo album, with Silently Walking Alone and Like A Sunken Ship exploding from the speakers with blasts of metal.
Proggier entries, such as the vocal harmony-stacked Self-Satisfied Lullaby, showed the Norwegians were still forward-thinkers: not regressing, but reviving their earlier aggression as they push forward.
20. Rotting Christ - Pro Xristou (Season Of Mist)
Greece’s premier extreme metal exports have undergone one of the most impressive and enjoyable evolutions in the game over the past two decades, and it reached new heights with this year’s magnificent 14th studio album.
Striving further towards the arena-ready sonics the band have flirted with for some time, Pro Xristou managed to produce hooks that stayed embedded in your cranium for days without sacrificing an inch of the metallic might that has driven this band ever forward. Epic stuff.
19. Lucifer - V (Nuclear Blast)
The fifth full-length from these Stockholm-based throwbacks saw them perfect their fusion of doom, occult and 70s shock rock. Led by Johanna Platow Andersson and featuring husband Nicke Andersson Platow of Hellacopters fame, Lucifer V was littered with deliciously creepy, darkly comic sermons about sin, wickedness and forbidden love affairs.
Dialling everything up to 13, the likes of the anthemic At The Mortuary and irresistible power ballad Slow Dance In A Crypt had hooks sharper than Old Scratch’s trident.
18. Dvne - Voidkind (Metal Blade)
Punchier and more direct than Dvne’s hypnotic 2021 breakthrough Etemen Ænka, Voidkind concertedly advanced the Scottish quintet’s post-metallic prog-sludge magick to a more immediate, accessible level, adding meatier hooks and craftier riffs while maintaining the chemical flow of jam-toned interplay.
Dvne’s precociously expert blending of light and shade dynamics reached a rolling boil during this hour-long odyssey, heightening the album’s dramatic intensity and bringing a satisfying sense of emotional completeness to the organic and immersive whole.
17. Bring Me The Horizon - Post Human: Nex Gen (Sony)
After multiple delays, Bring Me The Horizon’s seventh album finally arrived in a blaze of glorious technicolour. A playful, genreagnostic romp through metal, hyper pop, R’n’B and breakcore, and even a Deftones-ian crawl on Limousine, was delivered with head-spinning energy.
Meanwhile, a cheeky nod to pop punk on anthems Lost and Top 10 Statues That Cried Blood ensured BMTH kept a finger on the zeitgeist, while looking resolutely forwards. Post Human: Nex Gen was everything we’ve come to expect from the alt metal innovators.
16. Nightwish - Yesterwynde (Nuclear Blast)
After 2020’s sprawling Human. :II: Nature., Yesterwynde emerged as a rebirth, returning to the band’s heavier roots while blending intricate storytelling and powerful orchestration with bombastic blasts of metal.
From the epic An Ocean Of Strange Islands to the iron-clad The Antikythera Mechanism and immersive Perfume Of The Timeless, each track exuded symphonic grandeur, driven by Floor Jansen’s dynamic operatic prowess, cementing Nightwish as one of metal’s most accomplished exponents and Yesterwynde as one of their most invigorating releases in years.
READ MORE: How death, cancer and a pandemic couldn't stop Nightwish making their most positive album yet
15. Julie Christmas - Ridiculous And Full Of Blood (Red CRK)
To be reductive, Julie Christmas’s second solo album was Björk by way of ArcTanGent Festival. To be accurate, Ridiculous And Full Of Blood was an emotionally wrought, uncanny plunge into post-metal, hardcore, glistening pop and sundry other subgenres.
Tracks such as Supernatural detonated with chorusminded precision, while Julie’s dextrous wails parried Cult Of Luna’s Johannes Persson, guttural as per, through End Of The World. Much like eternal enemies Robert Smith and Morrissey, Julie proved possessed of a voice that never weathers. Magic.
14. Ulcerate - Cutting The Throat Of God (Debemur Morti Productions)
These Kiwis had been twisting death metal into increasingly unforgiving and avant-garde shapes since the early 00s, but no one saw their embrace of melody in the 20s coming.
Here they were more unique and hypnotising than ever, their dissonant death metal now reflecting a dark night of the soul with intimate, tragic atmospheres and raw emotional textures. All the more impressive for being a trio, the horrifying scale of their labyrinthine cacophony cast the listener as a speck of insignificant cosmic dust.
13. Dool - The Shape Of Fluidity (Prophecy)
Rarely had an album title been so apt. The Shape Of Fluidity was not only informed by vocalist Raven van Dorst’s exploration of their intersex identity, it was driven by wave upon wave of sinuous musical forms that defied genre without losing cohesion.
There were hints of progenitor outfit The Devil’s Blood’s slick occult rock, but there were also broad progressive and psychedelic strokes along with crashes of classic and gothic metal. Style, substance and wonderful songs bled together in shadowy perfection.
READ MORE: How Dool are challenging gender-norms with The Shape Of Fluidity
12. Gatecreeper - Dark Superstition (Nuclear Blast)
Arizona ragers Gatecreeper have been steadily but assuredly expanding their modernised Swedish death metal template for a decade now, but with third studio full-length Dark Superstition they scaled nefarious new heights.
Never a band to shy away from drawing on their influences, this was the album where the five-piece let some of their more extracurricular inspirations run wild, resulting in not just their most convincing and diverse offering so far, but one of the essential extreme metal albums of 2024.
From obvious touch points like Bolt Thrower, Dismember and early In Flames to more surprising (but welcome) tips of their grotty cap to Paradise Lost, Black Sabbath, Kyuss and Cradle Of Filth, Gatecreeper and producer Kurt Ballou crafted a record that sounded colossal, modern and invigorating while rooted in underground metal’s murkiest traditions.
From the searing gothic metal of The Black Curtain to the swaying melodeath of Caught In The Treads to the straight-up heavy metal majesty of Tears Fall From The Sky, Dark Superstition is like a bulletproof guide to making modern extreme metal that will still appeal to old-school diehards.
11. Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja (Nuclear Blast)
Oranssi Pazuzu’s= sixth album was their most nightmarish trip yet. If 2020’s Nuclear Blast debut, Mestarin Kynsi, was a distilled entry point for the Finns’ blackened, reality-warping rites, here they plunged into ever deeper, lightless realms of human consciousness, where only the most exotic of monsters reside.
From the jarring countdown intro through Jupiter-force sonic storms; primordial, instruction-relaying lizard chants and cavernous expanses, Muuntautuja instilled awe and unease in vast and equal measure, boldly venturing where no band had gone before.
10. Unto Others - Never, Neverland (Century Media)
Unto Others made an instant impact (then as Idle Hands) with 2019 debut Mana, seamlessly fusing trad metal and goth rock with a thrilling razor’s edge. As with 2021’s Strength, Never Neverland replaced that initial urgency with stadium-filling grandiosity, while refusing to be a nostalgia-baiting throwback.
Gabriel Franco’s plaintive baritone and stellar songwriting prowess were possessed with a rare verve and wit. Here they aimed to further distinguish a sound already distinctive among their peers in 2024, playing with an expanded sonic palette covering everything from riffing madness and pealing solos to wistful romance, pitch-black gallows humour and radio-friendly rock. The sound of a band with huge ambitions and the charisma to deliver.
9. Lowen - Do Not Go To War With The Demons Of Mazandaran (Church Road)
Drawing on the ethereal power of prog metal, apocalyptic dread of doom and a very healthy dose of singer Nina Saeidi’s Iranian heritage in their songcraft, melodies and subject matter, Lowen stepped forth as an emerging force in British metal in 2024.
In truth, Do Not Go To War… continued a sonic journey started on their 2018 debut EP, A Crypt In The Stars, albeit with a laser-focus that highlighted the sheer potency the band could harness, while a sleek production ensured an undeniably cinematic scope that made the album a sonic monument to their burgeoning, towering talent.
Nina’s sublime vocal patterns showcased her as a powerhouse talent, each soaring note tinged with both liberating empowerment and sadness at a culture she is cruelly restricted from.
READ MORE: Meet Lowen, 2024's breakout prog metal sensation.
8. Ihsahn - Ihsahn (Candelight)
Ihsahn had long mastered the art of blending classical instrumentation with the intensity of extreme metal, but never had he achieved it with such unparalleled sophistication.
The Emperor mastermind’s eighth solo album, released as two versions including a standalone classical arrangement of the same songs, was a towering achievement, with tracks like The Promethean Spark and Twice Born epitomising his bold integration of black metal, progressive structures and cinematic textures.
With a deepening reliance on orchestral elements marking a significant evolution for Ihsahn, his compositions were pushed to new heights while At The Heart Of All Things Broken elevated listeners to his new spiritual plane, marking this eponymous release as one of the sharpest fusions of Ihsahn’s finest skills.
READ MORE: How Ihsahn went from black metal icon to prog metal master
7. Heriot - Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell (Century Media)
2024 was the year everything fell into place for Heriot. The Swindon/Birmingham quartet were one of the most talked-about bands in metal long before the release of their debut, Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell, and the album delivered on that early promise.
Taking their dynamic and experimental brand of metalcore, industrial and hardcore to even greater heights, while Harm Sequence and Siege Lord were unfathomably heavy, tracks like Opaline and Visage blew their ambient, shoegazey tendencies – only hinted at in the past – up to full scale.
It was the sound of a band in control, aware of when to temper their heaviness and when to let it run rampant. We’re only beginning to see what Heriot are truly capable of.
READ MORE: How Heriot became the UK's hottest underground metal band.
6. Opeth - The Last Will And Testament (Regining Phoenix)
Five years on from the acclaimed In Cauda Venenum, Opeth took a new and intriguing path on their 14th studio album. The Last Will And Testament was the Swedes’ second bona fide concept record, and one of the most adventurous and subversive things they had recorded to date.
A spiky, sardonic tale of family betrayal and shocking revelations, its eight chapters represented some of the most complex and challenging music in Opeth history. And yes, Mikael Åkerfeldt’s peerless death metal growls returned. But this was no cynical return to the band’s earlier sound. Instead, it amounted to another grand leap forward for prog metal’s most creative crew, and their heaviest record in decades. Prog on.
READ MORE: Opeth spill the tea on The Last Will & Testament.
5. Bruce Dickinson - The Mandrake Project (BMG)
Iron Maiden’s unstoppable frontman took his sweet time to make his seventh solo album, but the wait was more than worth it. The Mandrake Project was a sprawling, prog-tinged, doom-laden heavy metal masterpiece, full of dark, ingenious songs that showcased the unerring strength of Bruce’s voice and the enduring vitality of his long-term partnership with guitarist Roy Z.
A concept piece focusing on notions of power, abuse and identity, its tumultuous battles between science and the occult ensured that the legendary singer’s return looked, sounded and felt like a momentous event. Songs like the doom-driven opener Afterglow Of Ragnarok and closing epic Sonata (Immortal Beloved) were heavier and more immersive than anything in Bruce’s already magnificent solo catalogue. Comeback of the year.
READ MORE: 50 years in, Bruce Dickinson is making some of his most ambitious music ever
4. Knocked Loose - You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To (Pure Noise)
Knocked Loose were already one of the biggest bands operating in a vibrant and overflowing hardcore scene, but You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To turned them into one of the biggest heavy bands on the planet, period.
Following sets at Coachella and shoutouts from pop stars like Billie Eilish and Demi Lovato, the Kentucky quintet well and truly smashed their way into mainstream consciousness – a feat made all the more mind-boggling by the fact their third album was their most uncompromisingly, terrifyingly heavy record yet.
Every track here showed off their multi-faceted brilliance, from the sheer power and panic of Piece By Piece to the surging, tar-thick breakdowns of Sit & Mourn, while the reggaeton switch-up of Suffocate was one of the year’s finest musical moments. A masterpiece.
3. Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She (Loma Vista)
Following 2017’s Hiss Spun and 2019’s Birth Of Violence, Chelsea continued her excellent run of releases with She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. Inspired by the singer’s newfound sobriety and the phases of the moon, her seventh studio album was dense with witchy, emotional energy, exploring her touchstones of goth, folk and otherworldly doom.
Tracks Everything Turns Blue and Tunnel Lights built a sense of drama that was both majestic and nightmarish, while The Liminal, peppered with Depeche Mode and NIN-inspired industrial electronics, felt like a natural evolution. Closing with the darkly hopeful Dusk, and the lyric ‘held anew and whole again’, this was a bewitching journey out of darkness and into the light.
READ MORE: We visited LA's weirdest and most wonderful book store with Chelsea Wolfe
2. Judas Priest - Invincible Shield (Sony)
Judas Priest’s 19th studio campaign was not just a latecareer victory, it was a reaffirmation of their towering legacy. Across 11 marauding tracks, Invincible Shield harnessed the relentless energy that defined 2018’s Firepower and amplified it into a deafening proclamation that silenced any whispers of retirement.
With Rob Halford’s vocal power on full display and the unbridled force of Richie Faulkner and Glenn Tipton’s twin-guitar assault, bangers like Panic Attack and The Serpent And The King proved Priest could still raise the stakes in a genre they helped define. Fans and critics united in hailing Invincible Shield as a fist-pumping testament to heavy metal’s staying power, cementing the album as one of the year’s most essential releases. Judas Priest had, once again, shown the world how it’s done.
READ MORE: Rob Halford talks Judas Priest, Dolly Parton... and kittens.
1. Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)
Reactions to Absolute Elsewhere crash-landing into Hammer’s Album Of The Year beacon will probably be split into two responses: “What the fuck is this?” and “Didn’t see that coming, but yeah, of course.” Both are entirely appropriate. The record felt simultaneously like a piece of alien technology fallen from the heavens and an excavated artefact central to human and heavy metal civilisation.
Blood Incantation made their name as a forward-thinking death metal act with 2016 debut Starspawn and 2019’s landmark, gloriously maximalist The Hidden History Of The Human Race, but Absolute Elsewhere saw them set a course for a place where genre strictures were nonexistent.
Their molten death metal riffing flattened skulls, but it was the foregrounding of their prog, psych, krautrock and ambient sensibilities that really twisted heads from shoulders. While these elements had played a part in the band’s sound since day one and were let of the leash for 2022’s instrumental synthscape, Timewave Zero, every element now felt fully synthesised and folded into a greater whole, as though the band had emerged from a strange, sticky pupa and evolved into an entirely new state of being.
Huge riffs and searing harmonics interwove with woozy bass emanations, craggy, cracked-meteorite roars and, at the album’s close, one of the year’s most breathlessly thrilling black metal climaxes. These moments, however, were laced with Eastern melodies, unexpected bongos, dashes of dappled acoustic prettiness and Mellotron workouts from members of Hällas and Tangerine Dream.
Just as they filtered different sounds, the quartet threaded together multiple philosophies, mythologies, histories and lines of scientific inquiry to form an immersive worldview. This grand vision elevated their metal and imbued it with a galactic scale, speaking to an insatiable hunger for cosmic truth that placed them within a lineage of far-sighted metal mystics that ran from Cynic and Morbid Angel to Nile and to Oranssi Pazuzu.
A yearning soulfulness at the core of the album made the unquantifiable vastness Blood Incantation explored thrilling rather than terrifying. While dazzling in scope and delivery, there was also a sense of togetherness that was capable of satisfying our primal need to feel part of something bigger and meaningful. After all, community and belonging are fundamental to life as a metal fan: the ritual of the moshpit; the camaraderie of a festival crowd; the subtle nod to a stranger on the street whose band shirt you recognise.
With Absolute Elsewhere, this experience was writ large and magnetic – a glowing orb on the landscape drawing everyone towards its radiance. 2024 was Blood Incantation’s year, from proving the signature draw at Roadburn, as metalheads, hipsters and more nearly burst a 3,000-capacity venue for their ambient and death metal sets, to finding themselves trending on X when the album was released.
Coming in at 45 points above the nearest competition, whether its prime placing was a deus ex machina anomaly or preordained, Absolute Elsewhere was a landmark album whose mysteries and repercussions we’ll be picking apart for years to come.
READ MORE: How Blood Incantation made the most essential album of 2024.
