My 40 Favorite Black Metal Records of 2016

Welp, once more 'round the sun we have gone. One year closer to the grave and, in a larger sense, total annihilation. It really has been an incredibly shitty year, hasn't it?

In that spirit, I've opted to focus on black metal for this, my much-anticipated (haha get it? cause no one actually cares) year-end list. I did make an all-genre list for my job, but something about it feels redundant. For one, it was highly populated by albums from legacy artists (David Bowie, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey) that I'm guessing most people don't need me to tell them about. But more importantly, I felt like I was forcing myself to make room for non-black metal albums, at the expense of listing some incredible fucking records.

So I figure, before we get started, I'll just say this: there were plenty of truly great, non-black metal albums released this year, including those by Moor Mother, Yves Tumor, LUH, HÆLOS, Clipping, MMOTHS, Adrian Younge, PARTYNEXTDOOR, dvsn, Anderson .Paak, Clipping, Solange, and Rome. And David Bowie's Blackstar was far and away my favorite release of the year. Probably of the decade. 

Okey-dokey. Break out the corpsepaint, fuckers.

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40. Cultus - Gezeteld in Zegeruïnen

Netherlands

Epic and sorrowful, with barebones but full, punchy production. Black metal in its purest form.

Previously:
A Seat in Valhalla (2004)
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39. Black Candle - Lost Light of the North
Luxembourg

Raw and ritualistic, filled out intermittently with creepy keyboards, and laced with a queasy undercurrent of sludgy doom.
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38. Sol Sistere - Unfading Incorporeal Vacuum
Chile

Excellent, melodic guitar work and a vast, almost cinematic sound.
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37. Arkaik Excruciation - Cursed Blood of Doom
Spain

Crushing bestial black/death with a few highly effective excursions into the murky waters of dark ambient and drone.

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36. El-Ahrairah - El-Ahrairah
United States

Posted this back in June, from that post: "Simple, downstroked riffs and pogo beats, in service of a (relatively) melodic, melancholic sound."
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35. Black Vice - Rituals of the Anti-Cosmic Doctrine
United States

Harsh, blown-out misanthropy. From the post I did on this last month: "Ugly riffs, simplistic drumming, and disgusted rasps."
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34. Temple Nightside - The Hecatomb
Australia

Esoteric, reverb-saturated black/death.

Previously:
Prophecies of Malevolence (2011)
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33. Plebeian Grandstand - False Highs, True Lows
France

Damn, I already did a post on this, too: "The dissonant, warped guitar style and enveloping, darkly dramatic overall sound for which the French black metal scene is known, channeled through a rhythmically complex approach that harkens to late 90s chaotic hardcore, and performed with unassailable musicianship that's worthy of the tightest of tech-death."
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32. Wildernessking - Mystical Future
South Africa

Hypnotic, sprawling, possibly Cascadian-inspired sounds.
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31. Darkthrone - Arctic Thunder

Norway

My favorite Darkthrone in over a decade. Sounds like mid-era Darkthrone shot up with a syringe full of first-wave black metal.
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30. Nordjevel - Nordjevel
Norway

True Norwegian black metal. Nothing more, nothing less.
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29. Ancestors Blood - Hyperborea
Finland

Posted this a couple months back. From that post: "Epic, passionate, mostly midpaced songs, with a lush, keyboard-heavy sound that's counteracted by an ample amount of dissonance and vicious vocals."
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28. Occult Burial - Hideous Obscure
Canada

Blackened thrash. Occult Burial blaze precisely zero new territory because they're too busy burning cities to the ground with mosh-ready riffs and nonsensical guitar solos.

Previously:
Occult Burial (2013) + Promo MMXV (2015)
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27. Trasig - Jammer og Nød
Norway

Eerie and depressive in the inscrutable, horror-savvy tradition of Striborg, albeit in slightly more accessible form.
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26. Mons Veneris - Sibilando com o Mestre Negro
Portugal

In which Portugal's finest purveyor of esoteric, LLN-inspired black metal almost (he eventually gets there) completely abandons black metal in favor of an ugly, dissonant mass of strings, keyboards, and moaning, quasi-choral clean vocals.

Previously:
Inferno (2005)
To Rape the Nazarene (2006) + Abismo a Céu Aberto (2006)

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25. Oath - Mustan Liekin Veljeskunta
Finland

Traditional black metal, perfected. Mournful, tremolo-picked leads float in the aether alongside ghostly, ethereal keyboards. Mesmerizes from beginning to end.

Previously:
Light of the Black Dawn (2013) + Antichrist Reign (2014)
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24. Sheidim - Shrines of the Void
Spain

Modern black/death with a huge, enveloping sound.
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23. Unhuman Disease - De Templi Autem Veteris Serpentis
United States

Raw, lysergic musical rituals. Unhuman Disease are one of the most underrated bands in the country, and this is their most accomplished work yet.

Previously:
Black Creations of Satan (2009)
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22. Countess - Fires of Destiny
Netherlands

Pagan, folk-leaning sounds. Keyboards are the glue that holds this thing together -- they're permanently on the "choir" setting, but sound oddly small and isolated instead of epic, which, when combined with simplistic guitar work and raw, hoarse vocals,  makes for a surprisingly unique, fresh sound.

Previously:
The Shining Swords of Hate (2000)
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21. Negativa - Untitled 1
Spain

Huge-sounding, reverb-drenched, pitch-black depression. Untitled 1 is technically a compilation, but it plays like an album, and it's the shit, so I'm counting it.
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20. Void Omnia - Dying Light
United States

Elite-tier first LP from the best, truest Norwegian-influenced US black metal band currently in existence.
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19. Darkestrah - Turan
Germany

Yet another masterful set of folk-infused Pagan metal from these underground titans. Darkestrah have never produced anything that's short of spectacular, and after almost two decades, they're still progressing.

Previously:
Манас (2013)

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18. Sun Worship - Pale Dawn
Germany

A darkly euphoric haze of unrelenting blastbeats, tremolo-picking, and lupine howls.

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17. Elffor - Malkhedant
Spain

Four passionate, folk- and Viking-tinged epics from this longstanding solo project. Though Elffor's evolution from dark ambient to black metal began over a decade ago, Malkhedant represents his most confident, complete departure from the project's early, synth-based sound, and is his most cohesive, and overall best work yet.

Previously:
Into the Dark Forest... (1998)
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16. Nebrus - Exta Malorvm
Italy

Cavernous, doom-laden aural conjurings.

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15. Battle Dagorath - I - Dark Dragons of the Cosmos
Switzerland / United States

Icy, densely layered, atmospheric perfection.

Previously:
Eternal Throne (2008)
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14. Ast - Fraktale
Germany

An aggressive, extremely advanced fusion of sounds. It's as if pg. 99 or Majority Rule decided to be a black metal band -- heavy and harsh, with a great deal of tricky time signature changes, but underlined by a subtle but heartbreaking sense of beauty. "Nekrolog Pt. 1" in particular represents, to me at least, an almost entirely new approach to black metal.

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13. Lathspell - Torn Cold Void
Finland

The grand, nocturnal majesty of black metal distilled into four feral parts. Unlike the previous entry, there's nothing particularly new at work here, but that doesn't stop Torn Cold Void from sounding fresh, or kicking ass.

Previously:
Fascination of Deviltry (2005)

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12. Profanatica - The Curling Flame of Destiny
United States

Disgustingly heavy black/death. If played loud enough, this record is capable of opening a pit through which winged demons can drag angels down to the fiery abyss, as pictured above.

Previously:
The Enemy of Virtue (2006)

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11. Alignak - Triptych Vision 1
United States

Dynamic, trance-inducing, psychedelic sounds from one of the most unfairly overlooked black metal bands in the world. Here's the post I did on this album back in September.

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10. Inquisition - Bloodshed Across the Empyrean Altar Beyond the Celestial Zenith
United States

Haters can pretend that this is hipster nonsense, but the truth is that Inquisition are way fucking truer and, more importantly, better than 99% of the competition.
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9. Cantique Lépreux - Cendres Célestes
Canada

Technically proficient, and relentlessly vicious yet beautiful. Like blood-spattered snow.

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8. A Diadem of Dead Stars - Kingdoms Bathed in Golden Light
Greece

Sorrowful, nature-oriented, neofolk-informed atmospheric mastery.

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7. Saor - Guardians
Scotland

One of the most breaktakingly beautiful black metal records I've ever heard. If there are other black metal bands out there who use traditional Scottish instruments (esp. bagpipes) as part of their core sound, someone please let me know.

Previously:
Roots (2013)
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6. Skaphe - Skáphe²
United States

From the post I did on this album back in May: "Cavernous, cacophonous, impenetrably dense US black metal. Reverberating howls and dissonant, chiming guitars explode like a bullet-ridden skull over a muddy but airtight rhythm section."

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5. Oranssi Pazuzu - Värähtelijä
Finland

Deeply layered, blackened krautrock. Once again, Oranssi Pazuzu has raised the bar -- for themselves, and for the subgenre at large.

Previously:
Kosmonument (2011)

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4. Black Funeral - Ankou and the Death Fire
United States

After over a decade of (quite successful IMO) experimentation, the masters of esoteric, occult US black metal return to the pure, raw, Transilvanian Hunger-worshipping sound of their first few records.

Previously:
Ordog (2006)
Az-I-Dahak (2004) + Waters of Weeping (2007)

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3. Belenos - Kornôg
France

Mind-blowing, intricately orchestrated mini-epics. The songs on Kornôg rarely settle into a groove for very long, instead opting for a jagged, linear approach. How in the fuck is this a solo record?

Previously:
Errances Oniriques (2001)

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2. Cultes des Ghoules - Coven, or Evil Ways Instead of Love
Poland

Sounds like blackened Amebix, only waaaay more ambitious. Satan.

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1. Schammasch - Triangle
Switzerland

A musical vision of decay spanning three discs. First disc is blistering orthodox BM, second disc slows things down and ups the bombast, third disc is all murky dark ambient and thunderous percussion. Though there are plenty of bands pushing black metal in new and exciting directions, few bands have the audacity to try something this ambitious, and even fewer have the skills to back it up. A truly remarkable achievement.

Previously:
Sic Lvceat Lvx (2010)