Of all the death metal albums that came out this year, this one resonated with me the most. It’s thoroughly devastating, and I love the echoey vocal style that sounds like it's reverberating off a dank cave wall. There are also plenty of “oughs!” to accentuate groovy breakdowns. More than anything, this record just seethes with menacing darkness. Lots of death metal albums aspire to do that, but Decrepit Flesh Relic genuinely makes good on it.

Longtime stoner rock label Ripple has branched out with a second label called Rebel Waves, and put forth this release. It's a heady stew of soulful psych rock with beguiling twists (surf guitar!), some retro Sabbath stylings, and a super strong Black Angels vibe. There’s just a hint of gloomy 16 Horsepower Americana swagger too. Every song is great, and the title track is absolutely superb.

It’s always a bewildering thing to see a band’s name around for years and years, never hear them, then realize when you DO hear them that you’ve been missing out the whole time. Finally The Flight of Sleipnir’s path has crossed mine, and I am stunned. It’s an interesting time to cross paths, too, as they’ve strayed from their doomy ways into what can be described as blackened, doomy post-metal, with a pleasant dose of folksy Americana. Genres aside, what matters is that the formula is incredibly successful. The emotional weight here is palpable.

Sometimes a band will make a significant departure from their previous sound, and once the initial shock wears off, it becomes apparent the change was not just for the better, but that they've hit upon something magical. Doctor Smoke have had a long time to make that change, with seven years having elapsed since their debut The Witching Hour. That album was very solid and enjoyable stoner doom, and Dreamers and the Dead finds them lightening their sound a bit. The trade-off is that they appear to have made a deal with the devil for insane hooks. The way these songs move and groove is a wonder to behold. Stylistically, they sound a whole lot like traditional heavy metallers Haunt now, but far fresher than that overly prolific band has been in years. There are shades of Cloak/Tribulation as well, two bands that are catchy in their own right. The amazing “Vexed” sounds like it was lifted straight from a Coheed and Cambria record. A highly addictive album that delivers a fix again and again.

Top entry in the “weird-ass name, cool-ass album” category. Crumbling, blown-out, stoner fuzz with gritty vocals hewn from whisky and cigarettes. Sometimes burns bright with fiery blues riffs, sometimes smolders with glowing, buzzing embers of melancholy. Always rules.The opener sounds like Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats if they were to ditch their growing-ever-shittier production values and ape some Truckfighters riffs, and the heavy-as-fuck title track sneers through a dark haze. Stoner doom release of the year..

Wow, it does not seem like five years passed between Tardigrada’s previous album, the excellent Emotionale Ödnis, and this one. I was late to the party on the prior, so could not include it in that year’s list, and truthfully I didn’t do a deep dive into it for that very reason. How badly I missed out remains in question, but what is unquestionable is that this sophomore release is positively mind blowing. Traditionally performed atmospheric black metal just does not get much better than this. At its most breathtaking moments, the hypnotic melodies remind of Mgła in their prime. It has a more ethereal touch than that overall, but that’s a fitting comparison for the ecstasy-inducing “Trugschluss Vertraue” in particular. The atmospheric black metal realm is beyond saturated at this point, but this Swiss trio has dropped an entry into it that can contend with some of the best releases ever created there. Goosebump-inducing stuff for sure.

Heavy metal, thy name is Herzel. Around since 2013, but only now releasing their debut full-length, these Frenchmen have put forth the finest slab of classic metallic glory I’ve heard in several years. Part Thin Lizzy and part Iron Maiden, the air-raid-siren vocal highs fall firmly in the latter camp. Occasional moments of trilling, Gods Tower-style guitar add another layer of delight, as do folksy Celtic passages. This thing has riffs for days and the songwriting is superb. It’s like stumbling into some lost early ‘80s gem. If you don’t love this stuff, you don’t love metal.

Mix Swedish doom/psych band Witchcraft with Antony & the Johnsons and you'd more or less arrive at this utterly enchanting (also Swedish) band and album. Who ever heard of depressive psych rock? In a nutshell, that's what Sleep Moscow have achieved with this debut, and I could not stop spinning it. Achingly beautiful in its best moments.

I had completely blown off this band and their boring “cosmic” black metal, but the inclusion of this album on someone else’s list made me take another shot. Much to my surprise, I was completely awestruck. Solar Paroxysm is nothing like its predecessors, except perhaps in subject matter. There’s no droning, murky, aimless nonsense here –it’s vivid, dripping with melodic ecstasy, and razor-sharp. This is the kind of grandiose, weighty, pagan black metal you would find on labels such as Bindrune or Eisenwald, with enough technicality thrown in to make the first Krallice record an apt reference as well. Utterly enthralling and on-point. I’ll look at this band’s future releases in a completely different way.

Takes black metal into the future with a hefty dose of slow-building ambience and danceable electronics, but pulls it off impressively. Two songs, titled simply “A” and “B,” each exactly 28:12 long. When it really digs into the black metal passages, they swirl in a dazzling miasma of melodies that boggle the mind. The artistry and technicality on display here are matched only by the emotional power of it all. The individual behind the project is almost too prolific, releasing two other albums from two other projects in 2021 alone, but “Sem Propósito” is his most engrossing and impressive work.

Alda's first release in six years. I very closely considered its predecessor, Passage, for that year's list, but there was always something about the production or the atmosphere that didn't sit right. I've no such complaints here, obviously. Some of that could be due to the fact that I saw them open for Panopticon several years ago and they blew me away, transforming my view of them. They do still make curious production choices, with the resulting sound being sort of dry, papery, and warm, but it works for them. What works even more is their impeccable sense of melody. Every track here delivers riffs and tremolo picking that are beyond reproach. Yes, a lot of it sounds like Agalloch because that is still largely Alda's stock in trade, but they're just so fucking good at it. More than that, rather than sounding like the umpteen-thousandth such black metal album ever made, it seems instead to honor those roots in a special way. A Distant Fire feels like a coalescence of all that is great, and all that I dearly love, about pagan black metal. It sounds timeless, ancient, pure, and perfectly authentic.