Though still brutal, progressive Long Island metal band Afterbirth have toned down the ‘slam’ they helped invent three decades ago before quickly breaking up and reforming 20 years later with vocalist Will Smith (of Artificial Brain and more) taking over for the late Matt Duncan. Now on their third full-length after releasing their first-ever in 2017, they continue to innovate within the space that they helped define in the first place. On In But Not Of, Smith (with help from guest vocalists Cory Peterson of Thaetas and John Collett of Nightmarer) carries on the band’s guttural vocal tradition while the rest of the band balances out the brutality with prog, psych, and ambient textures that take you on an atmospheric journey to outer space and back again. Keyboards and synths are courtesy of Krallice & Gorguts’ Colin Marston who also mixed and mastered the album. Parts Tool and Opeth with touches of black metal and the Blade Runner soundtrack, In But Not Of isn’t just some of the nastiest, gnarliest death metal of the year; it’s also a total head-trip.

The same year that brought us what might be the best Liturgy album to date and Deafheaven’s Sunbather 10th anniversary tour also brought us the debut album by Agriculture, who feel like the rightful heirs to those bands’ early 2010s thrones. They call themselves “ecstatic black metal” (a phrase Liturgy also used early on), and like both of those bands did, they take the piss out of black metal purism. Agriculture make black metal that feels both ferocious and bright, with elements of country and sadcore that sincerely add to the experience. They’re making heavy music on their own terms, and there’s something so hypnotic about them that we just keep coming back to.

Via Invisible Oranges: Oh, do I love Austere. I love them so much that I wrote a literal book on them. I missed this band a great deal, their last album (2009’s To Lay Like Old Ashes) remaining a steadfast inclusion in my listening habits in the years that followed their initial demise. Now back and, dare I say, more mature this time around, Austere’s desperate depression is more palatable and less unbridled. As Desolate and Sorrow have grown over the past fourteen years, so has their once-more-unified musical vision. Austere is “depressive black metal,” but in a more realistic and dismal sense rather than the self-destructive extremeness of the past. Corrosion of Hearts is still a stirring listen, however, and Austere pick up right where they left off. [Jon Rosenthal]

Via Invisible Oranges: Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts is not a delicate album. Right from the start with the opener “Rabid Funeral,” they make that clear. Autopsy is not in it for long build ups leading epic sections of ever-escalating melody, or long verses of flowery lyrics. It’s been decades since Autopsy started demoing out songs like “Mauled to Death” but their dedication to gross sickness is as strong as ever: we’re still getting ripping, fat riffs going back to back with sections of thrash beats, catchy choruses in singer/drummer Chris Reifert’s signature howls about pulling people apart, and deviations into groovy doom metal here. 

…After eight years with very little new material, we suddenly have two albums in subsequent years, both of them some of their best material since the 1990s… and maybe even better than some of the classic material, heresy as it is to say. [Read Brandon Corsair’s full review for more.]

After stirring up buzz in the black metal community with last year’s Blackbraid I, Blackbraid doubled down less than a year later with an album that says: believe the hype. Main member Sgah’gahsowáh offers up a mix of traditional black metal (Bathory cover included) and indigenous/acoustic instrumentation, injecting folk-tinged black metal with something that feels genuinely fresh. As far as harsh extreme metal goes, the riffs and shrieked vocal cadences are pretty damn catchy, and the acoustic instrumentation hits as hard as the metallic fury. Like this year’s Lamp of Murmuur album, it’s black metal with crossover potential that doesn’t forget where it came from.

Horror flicks and gore be damned, Body Void are a metal band who know there’s nothing scarier than real life. It’s not always easy to understand Willow Ryan’s caustic shrieks, but whenever you do make something out, you can tell that Willow is screaming about topics like police brutality and capitalism-fueled trauma. The record–produced, engineered, and mixed by fellow noise master Ben Greenberg of Uniform–also leans into Body Void’s noisier, more electronic influences like Wolf Eyes, Pharmakon, and Killing Joke, and and it sounds truly abrasive. Atrocity Machine is not an album that can fall into the background; it’s always gnawing at your senses, in the best and most antagonizing way.

Texas hardcore-infused death metallers Creeping Death made their new album with Killswitch Engage guitarist and veteran metalcore producer Adam Dutkiewicz, who the band says challenged and pushed them more than anyone had before, and they also made it a point to honor more of their Texas hardcore influences on this LP, inspired by the passings of Power Trip’s Riley Gale and Iron Age/Mammoth Grinder’s Wade Allison. You can definitely hear the impact of both of those things; the album’s still death metal enough to nab a guest vocal spot from Corpsegrinder of Cannibal Corpse, but you can really feel the firm, to-the-point, directness of hardcore and Adam D helped make this the most crisp-sounding Creeping Death release yet. They’ve emerged from the murkiness of their earlier releases, and they only sound even more powerful.

Pick up our exclusive red & black vinyl variant.

To quote Evan Mester’s recent feature for Invisible Oranges, “Obsidian Refractions builds atop the foundation laid by Charnel Passages, with Cruciamentum pushing its cocktail of unrelenting aggression and sinister ambiance to hellish new extremes. More dense and dissonant than its predecessor, Obsidian Refractions retains Cruciamentum’s uncompromising brutality while, in the same breath, embracing further experimentation rather than resting on its laurels.” That feature includes a lengthy interview, and you can read the whole thing for more.

For three decades, Maryland death metal trailblazers Dying Fetus have been lifers (death-ers?) that never quit and never go out of style, and in our current age of hardcore/death metal crossover, they’re an influence on both sides of that coin, and still making great music themselves. Callous Daoboys bassist Jackie Buckalew said, “For a death metal band 30+ years into their career, Dying Fetus just seems to get better and heavier. They’ve rightfully earned their spot in the Death Metal Hall Of Fame because this album is perfect. Robotically precise and relentlessly brutal.” Never Ending Game — who made one our favorite heavy hardcore albums of the year — called them “the greatest extreme metal band of all time” on their year-end list. Kaonashi guitarist Sidney Williams said, “The new Dying Fetus record is absolutely perfect front to back. This band is how my brain envisions death metal and I cannot get over how good the production is.” We’re living in the house that Dying Fetus built, and they’re still one brutal step ahead.

Forget about what other bands you know these musicians from; at this point, END is just one of the best bands that they’ve all played in. For a refresher, END’s members are/were also in Counterparts, Fit For An Autopsy, Better Lovers, Misery Signals, Shai Hulud, The Acacia Strain, and more, but END stands out from all of those projects. On The Sin of Human Frailty, guest vocalists J.R. Hayes of Pig Destroyer, Debbie Gough of Heriot, and Dylan Walker of Full of Hell add to the madness, and band member Will Putney’s sleek production only makes the band sound even heavier than they did on their debut.

SEE ALSO: The two great and very different albums The Acacia Strain put out this year too.

Via Invisible Oranges: Fleshvessel’s debut full length takes sinuous prog death to operatic new heights, and the result is both disorienting and compelling. The Chicago four piece dangle hunks of focused death metal into a stew of viola, harp, trumpet, and glockenspiel parts, and the key to making it work is in coherence: there is no feeling of a band switching between type A and B playing, the arrangements support one another, coexist, and carve out a vast musical world map that makes a fitting stage for the philosophical and social struggles behind the album’s concept. [Luke Jackson]

The coldest band in death metal is back! Glacial Domination doubles down on everything that made the Fort Worth band’s debut LP Crypt of Ice such a blast, and it might be even better. The production is bigger (it was co-produced by Matt Heafy of Trivium), it brings in John Carpenter-inspired synth interludes, and it delivers in-your-face, old school-style death metal without just sounding like a carbon copy of actual old school bands. Subject matter ranges from absurdist gore to personal experience with loss and grief. Guest vocalists John Gallagher of Dying Fetus and Reese Alavi of Creeping Death and guest guitarist Blake Ibanez of Power Trip and Fugitive add to the madness. To quote the band: Raise your head and prepare to die, revenge never-ending is best served cold.

Of all the bands toeing the line between hardcore and death metal, Fuming Mouth stand out as one of the hardest to pigeonhole, and one of the heaviest. Their Kurt Ballou-assisted sophomore album is not only an aural assault of ass-beating riffs and rhythms, it’s also lead barker Mark Whelan’s most devastatingly personal record yet. He rewrote portions of the album after recovering from a nine-month journey with cancer, and he calls the album a “concept-reality hybrid” that was largely influenced by his brush with death. It’s a reminder that nothing is more brutal than real life, and it’s not just a kickass record; it’s also the sound of resilience.

In a world of heavy music that’s full of hyper-specific subgenres and countless bands that fit neatly into them, Horrendous refuse to play by anyone else’s rules. On their wildest, weirdest album yet, death metal is not the destination but the starting point. From there, Horrendous weave in elements that range from punk to prog to jazz fusion, from technical dissonance to ethereal beauty. It’s a journey, and not many albums in 2023 took us on a ride the way this one did.

A lot of modern metalcore gets talked about within the context of its relation to the late ’90s / early 2000s, but Jesus Piece’s new LP …So Unknown sounds like the future. Produced by Randy Leboeuf (Every Time I Die, The Acacia Strain, etc), it’s got a sleek exterior with elements of industrial and noise, and Jesus Piece’s bludgeoning chugs and throat-shattering screams only sound even heavier amidst all the atmosphere. If …So Unknown‘s not the most menacing metalcore album of 2023–and it might be–it’s certainly the most bleak.

In an era where regional scenes tend to have less of an identity than ever, there’s still no place like Texas, where the metal and punk scenes are one and the same. That’s reflected in so many heavy bands from The Lone Star State, especially the latest Judiciary album. It’s one of the most monstrous thrash albums of the year and also one of the most fiery hardcore punk albums. It’s obviously a line that’s been toed before, but Judiciary toe it in a way that takes me by surprise every time, with songs that will rip your heart out.

The worlds of death metal and hardcore continue to meld, and Tokyo’s Kruelty are one of the heaviest bands doing it. With bits of black metal, doom, thrash, and other extremities worked in, Untopia is pure evil, and it also has the blunt force of a band who can still play hardcore shows. It’s also their last album with vocalist Tatami (guitarist Zuma since took over on vocals), so–though we can’t wait to see what kind of terror Kruelty bring in the future–Untopia is also kind of an end of an era.

Lamp of Murmuur emerged from the swamp this year. After several acclaimed lo-fi releases, the Olympia, WA black metal act played its first-ever full-band live shows in 2022, and that was followed by this year’s Saturnian Bloodstorm, the project’s most-welcoming (and most widely-available) album yet. It’s still black metal, but the band’s core member (who goes simply as “M.”) cites Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Dio, and Black Sabbath as influences on this album, and you can really feel those triumphant, classic heavy metal tendencies coming through amidst all the blackened evil. It’s a rare album that feels fully immersed in the world of harsh, extreme, underground metal, and also transcends it.

Dying of Everything, Obituary’s 11th album, comes five years after their last, and in the time since then, we’ve found ourselves in the midst of a serious death metal renaissance, fueled by an exciting crop of bands who wouldn’t exist without Obituary. Obituary and their equally influential Florida peers like Death and Morbid Angel helped pioneer death metal by pushing thrash metal to its most evil conclusion, and making it even more evil from there. And Obituary never abandoned their thrash influences as they went on, making records whose influence echoes throughout a vast array of today’s death metal, thrash metal, and metallic hardcore bands. They’ve also never stopped writing great records, and that includes Dying of Everything, an album that comes 34 years after Obituary’s debut and still has the same hunger and urgency as the genre’s new blood.

In a sea of death metal bands regurgitating the same ’80s and ’90s influences, Douglassville, Pennsylvania’s Outer Heaven continue to stand out. Their second album (and first in five years) knows no bounds, moving from fast-paced death metal fury to slower death-doom-leaning stuff to the grindy tech-death of album closer “From Nothingness To Eternity.” Some moments lean punk/hardcore, like the breakdown in “Pillars of Dust” and the chugs in “Fragmented Suspension”; some moments lean trippy and ethereal, like Tabitha Rudy‘s airy clean vocals on “Unspeakable Aura” and the psychedelic interlude on “Rotting Stone / D.M.T.”; and some moments lean classic heavy metal, like the many shredded solos throughout. Not that you can really understand Austin Haines’ subterranean growls, or those of the guest vocalists from Morbid Angel, Pig Destroyer, and Undeath (nor is Death Metal English easy to interpret), but themes reportedly range from societal collapse to hallucinogens, and this music is the perfect backdrop for that exact venn diagram.

Via: Invisible Oranges: In a complete 180 from the previous entry, we have long-running USBM champion Austin Lunn and his groundbreaking project Panopticon. I remember checking out Panopticon’s self-titled debut right after it hit local Louisville record stores on May Day 2008, and it has been a treat to see the project slowly evolve into its most maximal form, which The Rime of Memory supplies in its synthesis of all of Panopticon’s past iterations. I’ve heard this project emerge from raw crust black metal into Bathory-esque early Viking metal into the first Appalachian (as opposed to Cascadian) black metal project, to its current blend of Scandinavian and American folk music traditions with what I can only describe as atmoblack played with the precision of techdeath. Joined by an impressive cadre of session musicians who bring their best elements to the table, whether they are violin, Hardanger fiddle, or choral vocals, Panopticon has bested itself once more in the pursuit of the transcendental. Best listened to on a cold winter’s night, outside, huddled around an open fire. [Rhys Williams]

Chicago legends Racetraitor’s new album is as much a black metal album as it is a hardcore album, so, black-metalcore? For the purposes of this list, sure why not. Whatever you call it, this thing is tremendous. Musically, it’s the heaviest and most extreme thing this band has done since forming nearly 30 years ago, and thematically, it’s just as unflinchingly political as Racetraitor have always been in an even grander sense. It’s a concept album where each song is about a different societal struggle in different locations around the world–the band calls it “a sorta geographic autobiography of Racetraitor”–fleshed out by guest vocals by Dennis Lyxzen (Refused), Tim Kinsella (Joan of Arc, Cap’n Jazz), Stan Liszewaki (Terminal Nation), Sanket Lama (Chepang), and Patrick Hassan (xRepentancex).

If you’re unfamiliar with Olympia/Oakland duo Ragana, consider that they hold Mount Eerie and Wolves in the Throne Room in equal regard (and have opened for both of them), and you’ll start to get an idea of what to expect from them. They’ve been around for over a decade, but Desolation’s Flower has been a breakthrough and all the new attention they’re getting is deserved. Over a backdrop that blurs the lines between slowcore, black metal, and DIY punk, Ragana celebrate queer and trans ancestors, mourn the death of a friend, and call for the death of America. It’s music that’s heavy, raw, and delicate all at once, and rawest of all is the emotion in Maria and Nicole’s voices. Music that’s this real and this honest just can’t go unnoticed.

As you can see from song titles like “Testicular Rot” and “Hungry For Your Insides,” the Sanguisugabogg of LP2 are taking themselves a lot more seriously. No, but, actually they kind of are. The music and production is their hardest-hitting yet, and the lyrics dive more into Cronenbergian body horror than the previous LP’s “dick and fart jokes” (their words). It’s tighter, heavier, and more intense than their debut, and some of the most delightfully gruesome gore released all year.

via Invisible Oranges: A band that have to be seen live to really be understood, Spirit Possession are the result of one maniac master musician, Steve Peacock, possibly the only guy in the entire black metal scene talented enough to pull off one man black metal with LIVE DRUMS at a gig (JUST LOOK AT THIS FUCKING CRAZY SHIT)–apparently deciding that his other bands didn’t adequately showcase his devotion to old school black metal. 

Of the Sign…, the band’s second record, showcases the same affection for Negative Plane and for frenetic fingerpicked guitar (that’s right, motherfuckers, Steve doesn’t need a pick to shred- seriously, catch them live if you can, it’s mesmerizing) as the debut but rather than leaning as far into the more aggressive side of his influences, he hits something a bit more heroic, adding in more bits of psychedelia and heavy metal to make something truly unique. [Brandon Corsair]

Via Invisivle Oranges: Listen, black metal dudes can be reactionary and traditionalist. They can shake their fists at globalism and commercialism and then promote the idea that the only life worth living is in a cabin in the woods with your head tucked between your legs. It’s passe, so thank god for Thantifaxath. Hive Mind Narcosis is black metal for the hyper-commercial age, an album that contends with sensory overload, subconscious drives, addiction, and escapism. It’s a shapeshifter that reflects and distorts how market forces contort us and vice versa, often through inscrutable means. Albums such as this, ones that encapsulate your own lofty ideals of what music can and should do, need to be cherished. [Colin Dempsey]

Thin’s formula–a mix of screamo and mathgrind that fits nicely next to bands like Converge and Portrayal of Guilt–is even tighter, more punishing, and more concise on Dusk than it was on their 2020 debut LP Dawn, and the record sounds better too, thanks in part to engineer/mixer Colin Marston. Like its predecessor, it’s got 14 songs that clock in at around 15 minutes, and one of them is an instrumental track of blues guitar. It also finds time to explore slower, more dissonant territory without ever softening the blow of their high-speed chaos. Its runtime may be brief, but Thin get a lot done with these intense, complex songs, and nobody can ever accuse them of overstaying their welcome.