Farewell, 2024! It has been one other huge 12 months within the heavy music world with new releases from everybody from Judas Priest and Opeth to Nightwish, Deliver Me The Horizon and Poppy, however we’re lastly able to put the yr to mattress.
There’ve been comebacks – Nails, Bruce Dickinson, Job For A Cowboy, Kerry King – ascendant new bands like Heriot and Lowen making their beautiful debuts and an all-round bounty of all issues excessive and attention-grabbing, however the time has come to rule which albums finest represented the heavy music world in 2024.
That in thoughts, we requested Hammer‘s in depth pool of freelancers, staffers and contributors to submit their picks for the 20 finest metallic albums of 2024, and beneath you will discover the fruits of these labour as each vote has been tallied to create a complete rundown of the best 2024 needed to provide. Do not recognise a reputation on the record? Stick ’em on! We’ll see you for extra sensible new music in 2025.
Jason Aalon Butler definitely is aware of his method round a rap metallic anthem. Solely, with Fever 333 he hadn’t actually proven it – till now. Rebuilding from scratch in 2022, the all-new and revitalised Fever took an enormous leap in direction of the large anthemia Jason had commanded in Letlive.
Singles Greater Energy, No Hostages and Desert Rap caught huge hooks to his hovering vocals and maximised the band’s funky, incendiary alt metallic, leading to a bouncy and galvanising document that went some method to realising the band’s potential.
![FEVER 333 - HIGHER POWER [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/gAuuUHpKPmk/maxresdefault.jpg)
49. Caligula’s Horse – Charcoal Grace (Inside Out)
Earlier than 2024, Caligula’s Horse made music on a pendulum, going backwards and forwards between proggier and heavier albums. Charcoal Grace smashed that swing, presenting grand epics with bleak, brutal themes. The four-movement title observe took the attitude of an abused youngster seething at their father, and represented the Aussie band at their greatest, darkest, and best possible.
Sounding as bleak, highly effective and starkly lovely because the pure forces that batter their Faroe Islands house, Hamferð’s fourth fulll-ength turned death-doom’s propensity for catastrophe right into a gorgeously affecting trendy fable.
Conceptually based mostly round a catastrophe that claimed the lives of 14 males on a whaling expedition, the document dredged up an ocean’s price of low-end to subsume all in its wake, providing serenity solely beneath its crushing waves.
READ MORE: “Hamferd in all probability has extra crying than moshing.”
47. Kati Rán – Sála (Svart)
Kati Rán put collectively a formidable crew for this voyage, with black metallic legend Gaahl, Mitch Harris of Napalm Dying and members of Heilung, Sígur Rós and extra taking activates the oars.
However this was very a lot Kati’s imaginative and prescient, as she navigated a journey of selfdiscovery by darkish Nordic people waters crammed with oceanic swells of primal energy and moments of calm introspection. Sála was mythic in scope but deeply private and beautiful on all its many ranges.
46. Whereas She Sleeps – Self Hell (Sleeps Brothers)
There’s the kitchen sink, after which there’s Self Hell. WSS’s sixth album felt just like the end-of-level boss for every little thing Sheffield’s best had been constructing so far, slapping collectively their anthemic however gritty model of metalcore with lashings of enviornment rock, EDM, hip hop and even alt pop, producing an album that leaked ambition from each pore. It was a headspinning journey, however for these prepared to leap onboard, greatness awaited.
45. Undeath – Extra Insane (Prosthetic)
With the doable exception of Frozen Soul, no person’s carried out extra to maintain the rise of dying metallic’s new technology than Undeath. The New Yorkers’ third album fulfilled all of the promise of their first two, broadly acclaimed albums.
Bolstered by a fully crushing manufacturing, Extra Insane blended old-school incisiveness with modern ranges of aggression. From the punishing entry level of Useless From Past to the bilious slurry of Bones Clattering In The Cave, it loudly confirmed that Undeath have been critical heavyweights.
What’s your da doing proper now? Sitting on the sofa, yelling on the newest Premier League debacle? What he’s not doing is continuous to rewrite proto-thrash metallic and the NWOBHM with precision guitars, unrestrained drum galloping and cloud-poking vocal heights with the identical wiry depth of a hardly misspent youth.
Forty-five years in the past Devil helped invent a sound and scene; Songs In Crimson helped to reshape that invention in 2024. All hail the outdated flesh!
43. Grand Magus – Sunraven (Nuclear Blast)
From the doomy blues of their early albums, Grand Magus have progressively distilled their sound to the essence of pure heavy metallic. Sunraven raised its burnished metal to the residing gods of Judas Priest and the departed nice one Dio, whereas weaving in epic threads that have been all of the Swedes’ personal making.
Sunraven was additionally the trio’s first foray into idea album territory, with a heroic however surprisingly nuanced lyrical tackle the Previous English poem Beowulf
42. Winterfylleth – The Imperious Horizon (Candlelight)
From the snowcovered peaks on the quilt to enlisting Primordial’s Alan Averill for the fantastic hymn In Silent Grace, every little thing about Winterfylleth’s eighth album noticed the epic dial turned up one other couple of notches.
Sustaining the savagery and craft that’s made them the UK’s most constant black metallic band of the final 15 years, the sheer presence of songs like The Rebel and the title observe ensured The Imperious Horizon could be carved into the mountains.
In each a left flip but some form of ordained inevitability, Sweden’s masters of the magical went extra goth rock than ever on album six. Johannes Andersson flexed his clear, crooner muscle tissue and shook up their sound with cuts of darkish Wild West Americana and slithering giallosoundtrack synth-prog.
There was nonetheless the metallic Tribulation you realize and love, however as a part of probably the most numerous document of their profession, as one among metallic’s Twenty first-century iconoclasts continued to tinker with their very own constructing blocks.
