Richard Holmes2024 saw the new breed truly blossom. Whether they were reworking classic styles, or reimaging death metal entirely, this year’s crop proved the scene is in a healthy place in the mid-2020s.
Check out who made the cut, as we count down the top 10 best death metal albums of 2024…
10. Unearthly Rites – Ecdysis (Prosthetic Records)
Raging against ecocide and corporate greed, Unearthly Rites blend squat-spawned crust with filthy OSDM, and their debut album dragged us into a steaming, miasmic mire.
Autopsy, Bolt Thrower and Sacrilege all came to mind as the Finns’ heavy distortion wash, subterranean tones and grinding bass rippled through the air.
Indeed, the quintet clearly hadn’t come to play nice and had a whole bunch of extinction level tunes in their armoury: Deep Drilling Earth’s Crust bristled with bore hole barbarity, Capitalocenic Nightmare was total sonic slaughter and the title track sounded like an abyssal anti-anthem.
9. Upon Stone – Dead Mother Moon (Century Media)
You wouldn’t have expected 2024’s finest melodeath fix to emerge from the San Fernando Valley. It’s a hell of a long way from Gothenburg… and a lot warmer.
But raised on the likes of In Flames and At The Gates, Upon Stone nailed that classic sound on their debut, Death Mother Moon.
Ignited by scorching Scandiriffs, the likes of My Destiny: A Weapon and Onyx Through The Heart were urgent assaults, with deft turns of pace and incisive fretwork.
The record’s rough, abrasive quality made it all the more potent.
8. Oxygen Destroyer – Guardian of the Universe (Redefining Darkness Records)
Gojira (Japanese for Godzilla, if you didn’t know) stunned the world when they appeared at the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony. Kaiju-adjacent metal was suddenly rampaging on a global stage.
Let’s face it, Oxygen Destroyer are unlikely to be gifted a primetime slot, but when it comes to city-killing, irradiated death thrash, they’re a force to be reckoned with.
Guardian of the Universe certainly stomped all over its predecessor, Sinister Monstrosities Spawned by the Unfathomable Ignorance of Humankind. The quartet’s blastwaves hit that bit harder, aided by a much improved production job, and sharper, more muscular songcraft.
From the pinpoint Drawing Power From The Empathetic Priestess Of Tranquility, to the Vader-esque Banishing The Iris Of Sempiternal Tenebrosity, the nuclear fires raged… and the beast was unleashed.
Check out the full verdict on Guardian of the Universe here.
7. Stress Angel – Punished By Nemesis (Dying Victims Productions)
Born in the Brooklyn gutters, Stress Angel make primal, proto-DM that’s stripped back, ugly and raw. They do their thing very well indeed, as 2021’s Bursting Church demonstrated.
And death metal’s rotten roots were wrapped tightly around Punished By Nemesis.
Ritual Debt and Ancient Weakness were chock full of stinging, earworm riffs. And with just a few sick licks and a dose of reverb, Stress Angel dug up more murk than most of their contemporaries: just check out Jericho’s Trumpet if you want the evidence.
6. Ulcerate – Cutting the Throat of God (Debemur Morti Productions)
A journey into the heart of darkness. A nightmarish unreality. A cauldron of sonic anti-matter. Yep, Cutting the Throat of God was standard Ulcerate.
With their spectral melodies, dissonant dynamics and chilling atmospherics to the fore, the New Zealanders conjured a worthy successor to 2020’s Stare into Death and Be Still. You didn’t just ‘hear’ a song like Further Opening The Wounds, you felt its icy fingers around your soul.
Rounded off by the epic, all consuming title track, Cutting the Throat of God was a cut above.
5. Ripped To Shreds – Sanshi (Relapse Records)
Following up 劇變 (Jubian) was always going to be a tough ask. But Andrew Lee and co. managed to better it with Sanshi – a record inspired by death and the afterlife in Chinese folklore.
Tales of funeral rites and ancient elixirs were woven into quickfire lacerating blasts, as Ripped To Shreds blended Dutch-style, raging DM with the intricate axework that has long been their trademark.
Feast of the Deceased epitomised the Californians’ ruthless MO, as Bolt Throwing riffs collided with slick rhythmic twists. 孽鏡臺 (Visions of Sin, Mirror of Darkness) wasn’t too far behind. Sanshi just bled quality.
And as for those solos… if there’s a better guitar duo than Lee and Michael Chavez in modern death metal, we’ve yet to hear it.
4. Vitriol – Suffer & Become (Century Media)
Portland’s Vitriol (pictured top) redefined technical death metal when they unleashed To Bathe from the Throat of Cowardice in 2019.
No one else sounded quite like them.
And on Suffer & Become the Portland act took their dense, cyclonic DM into the stratosphere.
Matt Kilner’s inhuman kitwork powered the band’s mutating, blurring forays, and Kyle Rasmussen, Adam Roethlisberger and Stephen Ellis pushed their virtuoso musicianship to its lightspeed limits. From the dreamscape turned nightmare of Survival’s Careening Inertia, to the frantic blasts of Weaponized Loss, this was an overwhelming piece of work.
Rasmussen said he “plumbed the deaths of personal, psychological, and spiritual hell” while creating Suffer & Become. We certainly believe him.
3. Undeath – More Insane (Prosthetic Records)
Are Undeath unstoppable?
It seems that way.
The two-time Death Metal Album Of The Year winners dug deep yet again this year, and gifted us another modern classic.
Maturing as writers and flourishing as players, the Rochester, NY crew tapped straight into DM’s source code on More Insane, and the results were more often than not, outstanding.
Brandish The Blade gleamed, Cramped Caskets (Necrology) had the scent of prime Carcass, Surtured for War enthralled with Gothenburg riffery and the title track seethed with malevolence.
Frontman Alex Jones described Undeath as “straightforward meat and potatoes death metal” in our recent interview: this, however, was more of a gourmet dish.
Check out the full verdict on More Insane here.
2. 200 Stab Wounds – Manual Manic Procedures (Metal Blade Records)
200 Stab Wounds thrust straight into the scene with 2021’s Slave To The Scalpel – a record which featured in our Best Death Metal Albums round-up.
To say the Cleveland crew have taken a step up since then is an understatement.
We knew they’d birthed a monster as soon as opener Hands Of Eternity shifted from spooky to scorching, and Gross Abuse then pounded us into mush: this was a record of visceral, churning grooves and meathook riffs, rabid songs that cut deep and left you bleeding out.
Goresome stuff.
1. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)
Since 2011, Blood Incantation have been launching their astral death into the depths of the void… and we just know that any ETs receiving this transmission will be queuing up for longsleeves and praising the band’s remarkable talent.
Extreme metal heirs to Hawkwind, Pink Floyd from the darkest side of the moon, Blood Incantation excelled on Absolute Elsewhere: they set the controls for the heart of the sun as The Stargate (Tablet 1) opened up a progosphere of vortex riffs, space-faring dub and pulsing Krautrock.
The future and past collided, as the quartet glided on the winds of time. Retro-psych gave way to celestial leads on The Message (Tablet III). Hell, even Tangerine Dream came along for the ride on Stargate (Tablet 2).
Absolute Elsewhere = an absolute classic.
Enjoyed reading our Best Death Metal Albums of 2024? Check out our Best Thrash Metal Albums of 2024 here.