NO is the followup to last fall's LφVE & EVφL, a lengthy, meditative, psychedelic double album that was rolled out over a five-month period last year. In contrast, NO was announced the week before it came out, and it's exactly the kind of album that's meant to just fall into your lap out of nowhere and set your world on fire. Boris have written fast songs before, but NO makes a conscious move away from the band's trademark psych/noise/experimental side and is almost entirely punk-informed thrash and speed metal. Music like this just hits harder when the world is in a critical state, and Boris are such masters of so many different types of music that it's no surprise to hear how well they pull this off. And it's not just a genre exercise in thrash; it's still unmistakably Boris. They eschew generic thrash tones and play this stuff with the same thick sludge tones that are more typical of Boris, and they work in a handful of snail-paced sludge breakdowns too. Thrash and sludge have long gone hand in hand, and this album fuses them better than I've heard any band fuse them in a while. They also eschew generic thrash shouting patterns and instead they approach the genre as Boris. They bring their usual aggressive/melodic balance to the vocals, which results in really memorable songs and genre fusions that you don't hear everyday. NO can sound like a shoegaze band covering Slayer, but really it just sounds like Boris, and it's pretty remarkable how good they are at sounding like Boris, whether they're doing ambient drone or mile-a-minute thrash.

Late '80s / early '90s style death metal has been in the midst of a comeback for a few years now, and one of the most exciting current death metal scenes is the Bay Area scene, which is home to bands like Necrot, Vastum, and Ulthar, all of whom are like one degree of separation from the other and all of whom have a slightly different approach to OSDM. Early death metal and early black metal both came from thrash, which in turn came from hardcore, and Ulthar kinda exist somewhere in that venn diagram where black, death, thrash, and hardcore all cross paths. Providence is their second album, following their great 2018 debut Cosmovore, and this one's even better. It's at least as evil and brutal and pulverizing as the debut, but there's a greater clarity and a greater amount of precision to Providence that makes Ulthar's attack all the more intense.

With protests against racism, police brutality and other injustices happening all across the country this year, protest music has been hitting even harder than usual, and Little Rock, Arkansas band Terminal Nation's new album Holocene Extinction is 35 minutes of in-your-face, abrasive, cathartic, really fucking good protest music. They pull from early death and black metal as much as they pull from hardcore punk, and their songs exist within a thrilling middle ground that never fits neatly into any of those genres. It's a record that asks not for reform, but an entire dismantling of the system. It resonates especially strongly right now, and it will continue to until there's some real change. Terminal Nation vocalist Stan Liszewski also gave us a track-by-track breakdown of the whole album.

Oranssi Pazuzu are back with a followup to 2016's Värähtelijä, which we included in our list of the best albums of the 2010s and wrote: "Who made the best psychedelic rock album of the 2010s? King Gizzard? Tame Impala? It just might have been Finnish black metallers Oranssi Pazuzu." Unlike Hexvessel, Oranssi Pazuzu are actually a metal band, and if you don't think you like black metal vocals by a guy who sounds like he's gargling snake venom, you might not wanna listen to Mestarin kyns. But, instrumentally, this album warrants descriptors like "trippy" and "jammy" and other words more commonly associated with psych rock than black metal. It's hypnotic and intense in a way that's almost Swans-like, and like that band, Oranssi Pazuzu's songs are so easy to lose yourself in that they never feel as long as they are (the shortest song on this album is over seven minutes). Like its predecessor, Mestarin kyns is a complete fusion of the evilness of metal and the mind-bending, transportive feeling of psychedelia. Some of the other "psychedelic metal" bands to stir up buzz in recent years keep their psych parts and their metal parts separate, but not Oranssi Pazuzu. They stand out by being so good at doing both at exactly the same time.

If you read about metal on the internet, you've probably noticed that -- more so than most genres (besides maybe electronic music) -- fans, musicians, and critics tend to classify stuff into super specific subgenres (and fight about it a lot too). It's tempting to use those phrases to explain how something sounds -- because, you know, you gotta explain when something isn't death metal, it's brutal death metal -- but for some bands, it just doesn't work. New Zealand's Ulcerate are one of those bands. They're the square peg to just about every subgenre's round hole. Their sound has elements of various styles of death metal, but also the atmosphere of post-metal, the weight and pace of sludge, the song structures of prog, and so much more happening all at once. For Ulcerate, it's easier to talk about the mood they create than what genre they are. When I listen to Stare Into Death and Be Still, Ulcerate's great sixth album in an already-great discography, I'm not really thinking about other bands or specific styles of music -- I'm just thinking about how dark and intense and overwhelming it is. It sounds as ominous as the swirling blacks and greys on the album artwork look, and even if it didn't come with that visual accompaniment, it would paint a picture in your mind of total desolation. It's a long album that can be grueling to listen to, but if you let yourself, you can really get lost in it.

Underneath is the most accessible album Code Orange released yet, and it's one of their gnarliest and most experimental. There are parts that can sound like Slipknot or even Linkin Park, but much more so than "Bleeding In The Blur," Underneath obscures the clean-sung hooks or blends them with some of the most desolate, gruesome sounds Code Orange have made to date. It's Code Orange's most direct foray into industrial music, and it features programming by Chris Vrenna, who was in Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson's band, and the influence of those artists is not hard to spot at all (though programming was also handled by Code Orange's own Eric “Shade” Balderose, who also recently created the visualizer for Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park's remix of a Foxing song, but I digress). With that industrial influence, they're constantly toying with and manipulating all the sounds that the band first created live. One second you're banging your head to some vicious metalcore, and then twitchy, glitchy electronics start fucking with the song mid-verse. Read our full review here.

Huntsmen's 2018 debut album American Scrap is a killer mix of '70s-style hard rock, prog rock, and folk rock with modern-day sludge metal, which, if you trace it back far enough, has roots in all that stuff in the first place. For its new followup, Mandala of Fear -- a double album -- they're navigating the same terrain, but they're doing everything bigger and better. This time around, Aimee Bueno -- who sang guest vocals on American Scrap's closing track -- is a full time member, and her contributions give Huntsmen a lot more range, allowing them to work in more complex vocal harmonies and just pull off more stuff in general. The album is produced better (it was helmed by fellow Chicago musician Sanford Parker, who knows how to make bands sound gargantuan), and Huntsmen have just gotten better at everything they do. The heavy parts are heavier, the folky parts are prettier, the hooks are catchier, and the prog parts are more sprawling. You can feel like you're listening to a lost record by Yes or Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull at any given moment, and at the drop of a hat, you'll think your speaker glitched and started playing Mastodon or High On Fire. It's not actually that jarring though; Huntsmen combine all this stuff in a way that sounds natural. They aren't the first band to combine classic rock radio and more extreme strands of metal (and they probably won't be the last), but they do it very well and they have no trouble standing out in an often-crowded metal scene. And even more so than some of the other bands like this, Huntsmen really have the potential to win over rock fans who don't usually listen to metal. This is highly accessible music -- most of the '70s bands it sounds like are still popular and still on the radio today, and in a just world, Huntsmen would be that popular too.

In the time since Converge last released an album (2017's great The Dusk In Us), frontman J Bannon explored his softer side with Wear Your Wounds' excellent sophomore album Rust on the Gates of Heaven, and now he's taking the exact opposite approach with the debut album by his new band Umbra Vitae, the most punishingly heavy album he's released in years. "While working on the previous Wear Your Wounds album, my love for Death Metal was rekindled," J said, "likely [as] a reaction to working on non-aggressive music for such a concentrated period."

Umbra Vitae shares a couple other members with Wear Your Wounds -- Mike McKenzie (also of The Red Chord) and Sean Martin (also ex-Hatebreed) -- and it also features Greg Weeks (The Red Chord, Labor Hex, etc) and Jon Rice (ex-Job for a Cowboy, Uncle Acid, etc). So it may be a new band, but it's familiar faces all around, many of whom are already frequent collaborators. And J may have said that death metal inspired this album, but he isn't just hopping on the new death metal bandwagon. If anything, Umbra Vitae reminds you that death metal has been in J's musical DNA since the early Converge days, and the way he interprets the genre in Umbra Vitae isn't a million miles away from the more chaotic moments of Converge. If you like "Concubine," you'll like this.

These two albums are Old Man Gloom's first releases since their bassist Caleb Scofield sadly passed away, and Caleb's Cave In bandmate Stephen Brodsky has stepped up to the plate to fill in for him. As on last year's Cave In album, Caleb is actually credited on both of these albums, so presumably they had started recording them while Caleb was still alive. Still, his death is felt on these powerful albums -- "Death Rhymes" from Darkness of Being, a Brodsky-led acoustic song, is almost definitely a direct tribute to him. Brodsky does his old friend justice, he fits right in alongside his bandmates -- Aaron Turner (Isis, Sumac), Santos Montano (Zozobra), and Nate Newton (Converge, and who took Caleb’s place in Cave In) -- and he brings something new to the table too. As is always the case with Old Man Gloom, both albums are stunning showcases of sludge, noise, psychedelia, and more, but it also feels like there’s an extra hop in the band’s step on these LPs, a little more of a faster hardcore/punk side than they had last time. It’s not easy to move forward in the wake of tragedy, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it, but Old Man Gloom are doing it by hitting harder than ever.

One of the year's very best black/death metal fusions is the debut album by Denver's Black Curse, who may have only just released their first LP but who have been around for a while and feature some very familiar faces. They're fronted by Gravetorn, who also fronts Spectral Voice (and is the only SV member not also in Blood Incantation), and the lineup also includes Spectral Voice/Blood Incantation's Morris Kolontyrsky, Khemmis' Antinom, and Primitive Man's Jonathan Campos. They formed back in 2015 as Maliblis (and released a demo under that name in 2017), but then this project took a backseat as members focused on other bands. Thankfully they returned to it, though, because Endless Wound rivals even the most ultra-hyped albums these guys' other bands have put out.

Death metal has been all the rage lately thanks to a crop of new bands who are taking cues from the genre's earliest days in the late '80s and finding ways to bring it into the now (like Blood Incantation, Tomb Mold, and Horrendous). But a few years before those bands released the critically acclaimed albums that brought this new wave of death metal to prominence, Sweden’s Morbus Chron were paving the way for just about all of them. Their second and final album, 2014's Sweven, is a landmark of modern death metal, and it's mix of prog, psych, black, and death metal is a clear predecessor to the current scene (and to the recent material by fellow Swedes Tribulation). Morbus Chron sadly aren't around anymore to benefit from all the hype the genre is getting, but fortunately frontman/founder/songwriter/guitarist Robert Andersson now has a new band named after that 2014 album, Sweven, and their own debut album The Eternal Resonance is very, very good.

Morbus Chron fans will probably be very excited about how this album sounds, but it does more than just pick up where Morbus Chron left off. Sweven the band goes even further down the genre-blurring rabbit hole than Sweven the album did. It's almost a disservice to talk about this album in terms of "death metal" or any other subgenre for that matter. It's still a harsh album, vocally, but instrumentally it's even more prog/psych than Morbus Chron was. For the uninitiated, Tribulation remains a good reference point because that band also continues to be more of a prog/psych band than a metal band, save for the black/death-inspired vocals, but Sweven are also a very different band than Tribulation. Tribulation ultimately write really evil versions of pop songs, and The Eternal Resonance can be closer in spirit to Pink Floyd or post-rock, with long, sprawling, dreamlike passages that are about sucking you in to the overall experience. It requires a bit of patience, but it doesn't take very long to realize it's very worth it.

MSW already makes raw blackened doom as Hell and ambient piano music as Cloud, and for his first album under his own name, Obliviosus, he pulls from both of those worlds and beyond. There's no lack of harsh shrieks and extreme, abrasive parts, but there's also a lot of beauty and melancholy on the album. "This album is dedicated to my brother R.A.W. and his struggle with addiction and how it has affected the rest of our family for over a decade now. These songs were written over a course of five years or so. The struggle is never ending," writes MSW in the liner notes. There are ethereal clean vocals by Karli Mcnutt with Jess Carroll, violin by Weeping Sores' Gina Eygenhuysen, and post-metal crescendos that would fit alongside Neurosis or Jesu or Boris. With its loud-quiet-loud formula and its interest in both post-rock and extreme metal, Obliviosus is some of MSW's most dynamic work. Even with over a decade of numerous albums and splits (including with Thou, Primitive Man, and Mizmor) that are very worth hearing, it's clear from Obliviosus that MSW is not only not losing steam, but continuing to push forward.

How can you not love a band who names themselves Vile Creature, made that their album artwork (look up), gave their album a name that Godspeed You! Black Emperor probably wish they thought of already, and who write 10-minute metal songs that give a voice to marginalized communities and fight fascism and oppression? Vile Creature do all of those things, and their third album (and first for Prosthetic Records) is perhaps their most intense statement yet. At the very least, it's their best-sounding record, and the cleaner production really brings out the best in Vile Creature's music, which is like a more blackened version of Neurosis' post-sludge metal. Black, sludge, and post-metal have crossed paths before, but Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! puts a new spin on it, especially on the epic, two-part, 14-minute title track. "This song is the most cathartic, personally satisfying song I have ever written from start to finish," KW recently told us. They wrote it with guest vocalist Laurel Minnes, who adds a classic 4AD-style goth element to VC's usual racket, and it takes their sound to a whole new level. It's quite possibly the best song Vile Creature have ever written, but the rest of this album really isn't far behind.

Paradise Lost are a legendary band who have been making music for over 30 years and who have released some life-changing classics, and Obsidian is the sixteenth album in this band's storied career. I feel like I should admit that I'm not necessarily an expert on all 15 of the previous ones, but I know the short version of their story is that they helped pioneer death-doom and gothic metal in the early '90s, and then basically became a synthpop band before eventually returning to metal, and that their last two albums -- 2015's The Plague Within and 2017's Medusa -- are especially seen as successful returns to form. I also know that Obsidian is a damn good record. Obsidian was made with the same producer as the last two albums (Jaime Gomez Arellano), and in guitarist Greg Mackintosh's own words, "One or two tracks maybe carry on from where Medusa left off, but for the most part this is quite a different album. It is much more varied and diverse. I’d say that it’s one part Medusa, one part Draconian Times/Icon, one part Gothic and one part totally new sounds." That's a pretty spot-on way to put it, and this album sounds as good as Greg makes it sound on paper. It's got plenty of the band's classic death-doom and gothic metal type stuff, but it's also got 4AD-style goth, Sisters of Mercy-style post-punk, eerie dark folk, and more. It's the Paradise Lost you know and love, mixed with some new stuff, and that's a pretty great place to be three decades into your career.

The two hours which comprise Im Wald are a cumulation of everything visionary musician Wintherr has learned over his many releases -- the clean vocals which herald "Stimmen im Wald" reflect the ambiance found within Das Tor, the violins on "Le rêve lucide" recall the self-titled demo, the coldness: Kristall & Isa. It's all there, everything on which Wintherr has meditated since 1997, and it truly is perfect.

This is the best black metal album you will ever hear if you have the patience for it, and it can only be listened to in its entirety. Do not skip through this adventure through the Alps from whence this project was born. Read more about Wintherr's philosophy and the greater meaning of Paysage d'Hiver in the interview I conducted with him throughout 2017. [Jon Rosenthal]