Anata - Under a Stone With No Inscription

Country: Sweden | Genre: Melodic Technical Death Metal | Label: Wicked World

Anata’s third album marked their emergence as a death metal superpower, with an unparalleled sense of abstract harmony being their weapon of choice. All their albums are high quality, but the change of label and drummer gave them new impetus - better honed, more muscular, even more rhythmically taut and supremely elegant. The abundance of inimitable mouth-watering riffs, volatile transitions and dual guitar complexities are in equilibrium with infectiousness, climactic structures and thrifty application of creativity that ensures that songs are evolving but memorable and colourful but never saccharine. Arguably the following album is superior (if a little less brutal), but ‘The Conductor’s Departure’ owes its refinement to this album, whereas ‘Under a Stone With No Inscription’ created shockwaves at a time when (yet again) people were wondering whether death metal had run out of fresh ideas. (Mike)

Avzhia - The Key of Throne

Country: Mexico | Genre: Black Metal | Label: Old War Productions

Formed in Mexico City in the mid 90s, Avzhia is one of the few remaining great black metal bands from whom I eagerly await another full length. "The Key of Throne" is epic, haunting and filled with an ancient soul that does not conform to the realms of the merely mortal and seems to have escaped the grasp of the black metal musician in the 21st century. With songs clocking in at nine minutes on average, this is not easily accessible music but rather a conjoining of grand aesthetics, stretched riff patterns and melodic and harmonic complexity on a plane of ethereal beauty. By the end of opener "Fair Hour", your soul should be in a state of transformation. If not, it's entirely possible that you were born without one. The Emperor is dead. Long live Avzhia! (Hamano)

Brodequin - Methods of Execution

Country: USA | Genre: Brutal Death Metal | Label: Unmatched Brutality

For Brutal read Brodequin. On their previous albums Instruments of Torture and Festival of Death these Tennesseans had already established themselves as exponents of the nastiest Deathgrind doing the rounds, but with album number three, and armed with new drummer Jon Engman, the brothers Bailey went over the top and set levels of barbarity the likes of which have seldom been matched.

For a barbarous start the production is terrible by any sensible measure, but this is the basest Deathgrind and sensible measures were left at the end of the drive. A single guitar track with the filthiest, rawest, most brutal tone imaginable assaulting your ears like an oxidised circular saw coated in broken glass and razor blades, melds with the richest most unctuous inhaled vocals laying waste to your damned soul, and relentlessly pummelled by the fastest and most brutal of blasts. Aural filth like this is all too rarely found in Brutal Death Metal.

That captured sound is their weapon, while the songs themselves are the methods of the execution, from the barbed riffing of The Gridiron, to the ultra brutal apogee of Verdrinken (SOFUCKINGFASTANDBRUTAL!), and the final mood piece that is the title track, the mood being "I'm gonna hurt you so bad you're gonna beg to die" (sic). They literally don't make them like this any more. A lost art. (Ewan)

Corrupted - Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos

Country: Japan | Genre: Sludge | Label: H.G. Fact

Despite having already garnered a reputation for their down-tuned sludge obliteration, Corrupted in the mid 00s were still yet to reach the peaks to which their previous two full lengths had aspired. While the follow-up to Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos - El Mundo Frio - was to properly formalise the progressive elements the band had begun to delve into, Asesinos is yet another indicator of how Corrupted left the ranks of doom and became Corrupted. The album is neatly divided into three tracks, but stylistically into two halves, the first being an entirely acoustic piece while the remaining two tracks being arguably the most intense and crushing Corrupted have ever recorded. What makes this album perfect is its sense of balance – the brooding ‘Gekkou No Daichi’, sung in the band’s native Japanese as opposed to their preferred Spanish, is a seventeen minute lull before the squeal of feedback reveals the true nature of the band. While many argue that El Mundo Frio is the pinnacle of their work, Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos is just as significant to the band’s discography and the genre overall – its distinctly separated halves are far easier digested than El Mundo Frio’s whole, and it remains one of the very few albums of its kind that not only leaves a lasting impact on the listener, but retains longevity over the course of time. To put it simply, there is no doom – there is only Corrupted. (Berkay)

Dark Tribe - In Jeraspunta - Die Rückkehr der Tollwütigen Bestie

Country: Germany | Genre: Black Metal | Label: Black Hate Productions

One of the most primal and dark recordings I have ever heard, In Jeraspunta is a spiralling descent into madness. These Germans have crafted a black metal experience that goes far beyond the boundaries of sanity, standing as a monument to dread beings from outside and their inevitable conquest of the physical world. Using pounding near-tribal drums, howling and chanting vocals and some of the most twisted guitar-progressions I have yet witnessed, In Jeraspunta manages to sound as glorious as it is terrifying. It is a listening experience so immersive it feels as if you are the subject of the music, going from a fear of the unknown to a full embrasure of the alien and wholly Other. Unlike some other bands producing albums around the same time Dark Tribe needs no overly pompous concept, thesaurus-happy lyrics and feigned obscurity to produce an album of such monolithic import. Needing nothing but strings, sticks and vocals, Dark Tribe lets the music speak for itself, pulling back the veils of the phenomenal world for just a glimpse into whatever lies beyond. (Alex)

Deathspell Omega - Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice

Country: France | Genre: Black Metal | Label: Norma Evangelium Diaboli

Before the hubris of Deathspell Omega reached critical mass and they became one of the great namedrops in the disingenuous black & white duality of artistic conservatism vs. experimentalism, there was Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, which represented real artistic progression in its chilling thematic unity and awareness of emotional context over technique. This is a rare instance of evolution from a band obsessed with something that could be better described as sudden, jarring transformation. Where once was a traditional screecher is now the voice of a creaking golem trying to sing; where once was competent but soso black metal is now ecstatic visions of decadence and ancient religious fear.

At almost 80 minutes, Si Monumentum... is pretty dense, but I wouldn't say overly-long because it's also all pretty great. It's unfortunate that the diversity of this album never really rubbed off on the orthodox black metal scene like its gravely literary, twisted theological aesthetics did. Unlikely rocking breaks lurking in long, deeply thematic dirges, agonized, minor key post-rock-esque instrumentals ("prayers"), surprising bass interplay; if it all seems like too much, take a break and actually absorb it. And then there's Carnal Malefactor, a beautiful, almost balladic yet riff-heavy epic with one of the most bleak, emotionally wrenching climaxes in black metal.

If you subscribe to the popular notion that this is overrated, you have SOUL CANCER. They'll never top this with any amount of music theory-hammering. (Travis)

Drudkh - Autumn Aurora

Country: Ukraine | Genre: Black Metal | Label: Supernal Music

Warm, nostalgic, slightly melancholy but still vigorously alive, Autumn Aurora is my favourite Drudkh album. It still has that ancient arboreal quality of the début, but injects that with a folk sensibility to add a much needed touch of humanity. While I still thoroughly enjoy the two albums following this one, I feel Autumn Aurora has the best balance between the meandering tranciness of Forgotten Legends and the more active and structured folk black metal of later Drudkh. Textured and almost fragile, each chord struck is like a stroke of paint being applied to a breathtaking still-life, a vision of natural landscapes given form through human artistry. Autumn Aurora is a life-affirming tribute to Man's place in Nature, which certainly makes it one of the more unique entrants in the black metal genre. (Alex)

Esoteric - Subconscious Dissolution into the Continuum

Country: United Kingdom | Genre: Doom Metal | Label: Season of Mist

What are the adjectives usually associated with doom metal? Crushing, Suffocating, Melancholic... Esoteric lends a considerably massive body of weight to these words and combines this with the hallucinatory experience of Syd Barrett on a particularly strange and intense acid trip. Perhaps you are familar with the 196 rules of doom metal? Well, those were in jest but not necessarily when the subject is Esoteric: if you find yourself smiling when you're dissolving into this monolithic wall of richly engraved, stunningly layered, diabolically patterned sound, it is probably a disturbingly deranged rictus and your mind is in a place most sentient beings keep under lock and key and decided not to enter long ago. And this is only half the length of their other releases. Go figure... And oh, approach with due caution. (Hamano)

Nav' - Halls of Death

Country: Russia | Genre: Black Metal | Label: Bizarre Leprous

They certainly know how to shred in Siberia if Nav' is anything to go by, a hybrid black/death/thrash (but mostly black) metal act that shares a line-up with Old Wainds. Unlike their more traditional brother band, Nav' tears shit up and pulls out all the stops in a wild, spectacular flurry of riffs, fucked up ice troll screeches, riffs, bludgeoning drums and more motherfucking riffs. The production makes it sound like it was recorded in a hailstorm, with chords cutting like jagged shards of ice and the drums sounding like someone taking two sledgehammers to a glacier. Think Master's Hammer's Ritual only wilder, colder and perhaps even more screwed up. (Alex)

The Chasm - The Spell of Retribution

Country: USA | Genre: Death Metal | Label: Wicked World Records

Alright! Before this ‘counsel’ of ours dangerously escalates into total Taiwanese style/form of ethics enforcement .. let’sss just (for the sake of playful argument..) forget for a fleeting moment that The Chasm in particular remain sorely if not criminally underrated! Yes, I can already spidey-sense the nostrils flaring laboriously harder than Mel Gibson at my possibly ‘botching’ up what’s supposed to be an epic testimony to a band that well.. should have received epic-Nile induced praise back when this particular ‘spectacle’ magically surfaced back in ’04. In other and most basic terms, a metal ‘public’ heavily weaned on Behemoth, Dying Fetus, Suffocation, and the like (during that period) was far too mired in the comfy confines of ‘convenience’ to give something more ‘abstract’ in evolutionary thought a good try. I bring to you.. The Spell of Retribution.

Simply put, this was the musical ‘journey’ that well.. (yes, you guessed right.. ) should have rightly elevated The Chasm’s status from ‘band’ to ‘entity’. It was just too bad that the gratuitous label of “death metal” sorta hindered all that. Well, without delving so analytically hard like MSNBC’s Kris Hansen often does on the matter, let’s just that given the over arching, cross pollination of ‘sounds’, ‘textures’, moods, atmospheres, etc., etc. The Chasm proudly exhibits on this one, it’s then safe to say that they are to actual ‘death metal’ as to what say, Voivod was to well.. ‘thrash.’ Henceforth what say, Sigh or perhaps, Negura Bunget are to ‘black metal.’ Too grandiose and sophisticated in ‘thought’ and ‘reasoning’ too ahead of our time to merely categorize the way we do with canned goods in a Wal-mart. Surely, you could just say that all it really is, is just another take on Dissection’s beautifying the musicality of the genre (for the appeasing of ‘critics’ sake) and therefore wanting to be ‘scene’ as a musical philosopher of sorts. Yet somehow it just ‘does’ for death metal what passionately articulate writers like Lovecraft and Poe have done for the guttural horror genre. And that’s because aside from perhaps rehearsing so many painstaking hours along to a lot of early Mercyful Fate, Candlemass, Celtic Frost, and Coroner records during his youth (hence the fluid grace and poise in performance), founder/guitarist/vocalist Daniel Corchado manages to tap into an arcane mysticism that appears so grandiose that not even the great Indiana Jones could tap into it and fully elaborate on what it all signifies to the ‘underground’ as a whole. Though if you want my take on it, the intricate yet elegant sense of melody, subtle yet meticulously placed progressive arrangements, and tension building dissonance as whole it all seems like an ancient tribal passion play ritual ushering in the inevitable arrival of Tiamat to bleed this earth into a blackened barren wasteland only to make it a haven for ‘spectral’ beings of which rivals any sort of purgatory the human mind could ever conceive. Just a densely pitch black ‘mass’ with the occasional ‘contortioning’ of grey floating mist communicating its own ‘language.’ That’s all I could really say about it. You either ‘get it’ or you don’t.

Well, having ‘said’ all that.. there’s a good reason this remains to be as obscure as Howie Mandel’s career. The obscure, or rather apparent elusiveness of this entity only breeds more mystery and therefore generates more suspense than a Stephen King novel. Furthermore, let’s face it.. had Century Media or Nuclear Blast get their hands on this then you damn well would have known ‘the end’ was nigh, as urban street corner prophets often dramatically emphasize. Further the frustration wouldn’t keep the fire under Daniel’s ass constantly lit to outdo himself which he eventually did with ‘09’s Farseeing the Paranormal Abysm. Nuff said. (Rob)

Ufomammut - Snailking

Country: Italy | Genre: Doom Metal | Label: Music Cartel

Ufomammut was (and still is) a most strange doombeast and Snailking was a most strange doom album. While tormentingly heavy and possessing a guitar tone that would make Anderson and O'Malley jealous-check out "Hopscotch" or "Odio," it's most notable for its decidedly experimental bent and its futuristic feel in a genre that knows no limits to atavism. This is the dirty, stoned doom of Electric Wizard played by acid-tripping Pink Floyd fanatics. Awash in synths and soundbites, it's obvious Snailking is not an album of singular purpose: it might be approaching Dopethrone heaviness, but it's doing so with a serious pysch-rock attitude. The combination of those two separate aesthetics makes this a truly unique piece of extreme doom metal. Many other doom bands have taken the same interstellar flight since Snailking lumbered in from the farthest reaches of ancient space a half dozen years ago, but none have come close to equaling its brilliance or scope. (Tim)