That's right, nerds. My first year-end black metal list since 2019. Back at it. Back on my black metal shit. Back in the Habit. Return of the Mac. Return of the King. Return of the Living Dead. Judgement Day. Dream Warriors. Leprechaun 4: In Space.
I hope you get something out of this because as half-assed as it looks, these fucking lists take forever to put together. And don't ask for download links, you will not get them. Some of them are free on Bandcamp, anyway. Go buy some shit.
#20
Abhor
Sex Sex Sex (Ceremonia Daemonis Anticristi)
Abhor has been kicking around the Italian scene making practically zero above-ground impact since the mid-90s. Over the years, they've honed an old-school, keyboard-heavy sound and an aesthetic that draws heavily on the occult, often by way of the imagery and sounds of 70s Italo-horror. Sex Sex Sex is very much a continuation of these efforts: an aural Satanic rite, rife with funereal organ, eerie choral keys, demonic chants, black hexes, and riffs.
#19
Moonlight Sorcery
Piercing Through the Frozen Eternity
Melodic, keyboard-saturated, and played with an exceedingly high level of musicianship that's worthy of power metal. A near-perfect debut EP, Piercing Through the Frozen Eternity would surely be higher on this list if it were a full-length, allowing its scope to match its epic sound.
#18
Hyrgal
Hyrgal
Killer French black metal. Hyrgal leans towards the gnarlier, ass-kicking side of things, but with a crucial feel for atonality and atmosphere. It's a rare record that works just as effectively for both late-night headphone listening and mid-morning iron-pumping, but Hyrgal walks that line.
#17
Kluizenaer
Ein Abbild der Leere
Music for spelunking in a haunted cavern. Or, from my previous post about this record: "Reverberating drums, queazy guitars, and tortured howls emanating from a cavernous tomb, encased in a thick shroud of ectoplasmic dark ambience." I also mention a one-two beat on the second track that "makes me want to punch a cave ghost."
#16
Belphegor
The Devils
Easily my favorite Belphegor record since Pestapokalypse VI. Crushing hammer-blasts, thrash-y riffage, and burly mid-paced death-doom by way of big, borderline cinematic production. Probably the farthest they've strayed from their core sound, which really isn't that far, but still. If I were ranking these albums by the number of pushups that I did while listening to them this year, The Devils would be #1.
#15
Wampyrinacht
Night of the Desecration
Following an unlikely reunion and the 2017 release of their long-delayed debut full-length, Night of the Desecration represents the first newly-recorded material from the reformed Wampyrinacht. And it fully kicks ass. True second-wave occult black metal that somehow feels fresh in 2022, from an actual second-wave band.
#14
Saidan
Onryō II: Her Spirit Eternal
Melodic, catchy, but absolutely kickass, with a Japanese horror theme. There are traces of various disparate styles -- punk, melodeath, blackgaze, that one breakdown that sounds like Hatebreed -- but naming them individually almost feels misleading, because no matter how layered, uptempo, or dreamy they get, Saidan remain strongly rooted in black metal. I'm not on social media anymore, and most of my friends aren't as invested in this stuff as I am, so I'm not that plugged-in to the world of black metal nerdery -- aside from my own inner-world of nerdery, obviously -- but I bet wannabe elitists hate Saidan.
#13
Bríi
Corpos Transparentes
In which Bríi continues to take the genre as far from its center as a band can go while remaining unequivocally a black metal band. A lush, disorienting sound-world of synths, piano, harp, clean vocals, harsh vocals, angelic choirs, blastbeats, and breakbeats, featuring no guitars.
#12
Becrah
Βωμός μιας αλήθειας
From my post back in May: "The perfect mix of raw, almost punk-ish aggression and artful dissonance. There's a sort-of manifesto on their bandcamp in which the band takes a number of stances that I love -- they're anti-NS, anti-centrist, and pro-D.I.Y. -- and that's pretty hard to come by in the world of black metal, so fuck yeah, full support."
#11
Icare
Charogne
A 43-minute epic of passionate, vicious catharsis that continuously ebbs and flows between blast-and-tremolo-picking attacks and post-sludge breakdowns before eventually giving way to a massive, slow-building grand finale. Apparently based on the poem "Une Charogne" by Charles Baudelaire and recorded live in the studio, which is goddamn impressive.
#10
Ellende
Ellenbogengesellschaft
Emotive, post-rock indebted sounds from an Austrian solo project. For me, Ellende has been teetering on the edge of greatness for over a decade now, and with Ellenbogengesellschaft (which apparently translates to "Dog-Eat-Dog Society") everything finally fell into place. They're like the Insomnium of black metal: they have all these obvious post-rock elements, but they're integrated so fully and organically, it just ends up sounding like really beautiful, emotional metal.
#9
Luminous Vault
Animate the Emptiness
Imagine Godflesh rewired as a modern black metal band. Warped, chorus-drenched guitars, hoarse growls, serpentine riffs, and extremely synthetic drum machines that'll punch a hole in your chest. Bending leads and off-kilter rhythms balanced by riff-y industrial metal punishment and one prolonged moment of shimmering, depressive beauty.
#8
Verberis
Adumbration of the Veiled Logos
Massive, labyrinthine, death-laced black metal emanating from an all-consuming void. Echoing, warped arpeggios waver over dissonant destruction and foreboding, mid-paced chasms, intensified by a phenomenal performance from drummer Jamie Saint Merat, who you might know from his other band, the mighty Ulcerate.
#7
Melancholie
The Blade Which Cuts the Roots Has Two Sides
Lo-fi DSBM from Dutch musician R.v.A. Dude has put out a ton of music this year, including stuff from at least 5 other solo projects, an additional Melancholie album, and the much-hyped latest from Faceless Entity, for whom he does guitar and vocals. Out of all that, The Blade Which Cuts the Roots Has Two Sides hit hardest for me. I was having a particularly anxious/depressive few weeks when I first heard it, and its enveloping black haze proved to be an unlikely balm, so that obviously helped. But in the end, I think it's down to composition and riffs. As can be expected from DSBM, there's a lot of glacial progressions that repeat into infinity, but they're broken up by these awesome, razor-like riffs and leads that make everything momentarily snap into focus -- like brief flashes of clarity in an otherwise bleary downward spiral.
#6
Medieval Demon
Black Coven
It's been a great year for reformed Hellenic 90s occult black metal bands (see Wampyrinacht.) It's like that meme: If I had a nickel for every excellent album put out by a reformed Hellenic 90s occult black metal band in 2022... well, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Anyway, Medieval Demon 2.0 is beefier, more precise, more atmospheric, more adventurous, and straight-up just way better than their first iteration. I haven't seen the latest season of Stranger Things but I am aware of the Kate Bush/Max levitation scene because of the internet, and the sax solo in the title track makes me feel like that.
#5
Bâ'a
Egrégore
Bâa's high-minded yet punishing sound simply could not have originated anywhere else but France. They're forward-thinking without resorting to genre splicing, evil without the overt Satanic goofiness, psychedelic without the aimlessness, cerebral without the overly complicated arrangements, and tight without losing touch of the lurking chaos that guides all great black metal. Their second full-length, Egrégore distills all of these strengths into their most dynamic, focused material to date, and confirms Bâ'a as worthy torch-bearers for the French scene.
#4
Scarcity
Aveilut
So often, the implicit elevator pitch for a record just doesn't match the reality of its sound. Take, for instance, the Scott Walker/Sunn O))) collaboration. Obviously, it's a great record, and a worthy swan-song for Walker. But I certainly wasn't the only nerd who, when the album was announced, imagined an album-length orgasm of Scott Walker's haunted croon reverberating over Sunn O)))'s tectonic guitar drone, and felt an initial tinge of disappointment when it turned out that that's not the record they made. With that in mind, I was a bit apprehensive when I caught wind of Scarcity, the black metal project of Brendon Randall-Myers, conductor of the Glenn Branca Ensemble. I immediately started picturing black metal as reimagined in the mesmerizing style of Glenn Branca, and braced for a let-down. However, in this case, my imagination was spot-on, as that's exactly how it sounds: towering compositions built on patient repetition, thoughtful dynamic shifts, and expertly-executed, long-form catharsis, but with blastbeats and black metal vocals.
#3
Wiegedood
There's Always Blood at the End of the Road
Razor-sharp, panic-wracked songs played with unrelenting, savage intensity and a vocalist whose distorted screams sound alternately like he is either stabbing someone to death or being stabbed to death. As the album progresses, a mournful, epic tone begins to blossom like the widening gulf of a laceration, then they tear it all apart and bleed on the remains. Also, throat-singing over total drone-blasting cacophony. The fourth and best album by a band with an already formidable discography.
#2
Glemsel
Forfader
Stunning, vicious beauty from Copenhagen. While their songs are long and ever-changing, there's a deceptive sense of stillness to Glemsel's writing. The riffs are often completely intertwined with the melodies, and each evolves so slowly and naturally that the listener might not even notice that they're evolving. But that doesn't necessarily matter, as, whether they're exploring heavenly, Cascadian-esque repetition ("Savn") or the desolated lands of riffage ("Møntens Prædikant"), they have undeniable, immediate, visceral impact. Probably the first record I heard this year that I instantly knew was an AOTY contender.
#1
Pure Wrath
Hymn to the Woeful Hearts
As passionate, sorrowful, and beautiful a black metal record as you're likely to hear, written and performed entirely by one Indonesian dude. Epic, melodic majesty over and through furious, blasting peaks and spacious, mid-paced valleys, fleshed out by deftly layered guitars, ethereal keyboards, and reverberating clean vocals. Speed-picked melodies draw a line to the wandering, contemplative nature of folk metal, while the lush atmosphere points to post-rock/shoegaze, but it's all in service of pure, true black metal. An all-timer.
