Tom Valcanis

9 January 2025

Blog

The Best Metal Albums of 2024

Tom Valcanis

9 January 2025

Blog

Oh, lists. My mind works in lists, I think. I dream in lists. Lists form in my mind’s eye even when I don’t want them, let alone need them. 2024 seemed like a long year to me - this time last year feels like an eternity ago. If I ever cried poor at any point last year - it was because I spent a whole bunch of money on gigs and albums (about 90 of them combined) because I brace myself in quixotic defiance against Big Streaming who will never ever get a cent of my money.

I’m going to limit myself to ten albums - in no particular order - with a couple of honourable mentions to boot. As for what constitutes “metal” these days is a matter for keyboard warriors in comments sections. It is what it is.

Caligula’s Horse - Charcoal Grace

From my review at HysteriaMag.com:

The centrepiece of the album is the Rush by way of Dream Theater-esque Charcoal Grace suite, spanning four distinct movements. It opens with cinematic fret runs, leads into pensive piano, and finishes on guitar heroism worthy of the highest honours. Prey floats over the top of our senses, seguing effortlessly into A World Without, inspired by knotted technically ecstatic guitar as much as it is old school 70s prog-headedness like Camel or King Crimson…
Akin to the bombast and ceremony of their genre cousins in Wilderun or Scardust, Charcoal Grace marinates in sumptious grooves, a constant tension between the sublime and aggressive, and centrepiece instrumental and vocal performances. It all adds up to a cohesive, spellbinding whole. This is their landmark opus, the Caligula’s Horse album that will steal the crown from all that has come before. Progheads, rejoice!

High On Fire - Cometh the Storm

I couldn’t believe that the Shirtless One (Matt Pike) hadn’t released a High on Fire album for six years. I suppose Pike’s been preoccupied with Sleep. The band, not the nocturnal restorative. Cometh the Storm’s freaks and geeks gallery is rounded out by Coady Willis (Melvins, Big Business, et. al.) and as a result, it sounds massive. Summoning Motörheaded riffage belted on to Pike’s apocalytpic caterwauling makes for a fine outing by the river Styx in the title track, and there’s more artyfacts and nuggets hidden in this record than your cardigan-wearing Greens voter aunty’s granny flat. There really aren’t any lulls on this album. It’s burning at every end, and makes a case for a new genre: functional stoner metal - the kinda guy that can choke down two or three billys before clock on and still operate heavy machinery for eight hours straight. Woof.

Black Sites - The Promised Land?

Think of an American prog band. Is it Dream Theater? Of course it is. (Could be Symphony X or Fates Warning, if you’re super duper special.) Odd today almost no one mentions Queensryche. No, they don’t use eight-string basses and fourteen different keyboards in 22/7 time, but are (were?) as high-concept as any given Rush album with a hard rocking musicianship to match. Dry of guitar wank instead of say, Scenes from a Memory, The Promised Land? is one of the best American prog concept records since Operation: Mindcrime. Mark Sugar and co. effortlessly blend thrash headbangers (Descent) and proto-metal gallopers (World on Fire) with the confidence and bombast of a decades-seasoned stadium-filler act. Gideon eases off the gas, plunging depths of despair and turmoil evoking Mindcrime protagonist Nikki’s fall from grace at the hands of Sister Mary. Their dynamic twelve-minute title track culminates in the triumph of journeying - and perhaps never finding - that promised land. It’s an enthralling listen from beginning to end. If you sleep on this, you’re crazy.

Flaming Wrekage - Terra Inferna

From my review, again:

Each track could be considered its own mini-symphony, seguing between sections seamlessly and creating their own unique and urgent textures and moods. Paralysis catches one off guard since it begins like a standard riffy boi but halts midway to play around with a crunchy, solitary motif; drums and bass nowhere to be heard. Leadwork explodes like fireworks amid Enduring Decay, culminating in the 80s denim-and-leather throwback Our Own Blood, tremelos a-go-go and quick-time percussion smacking headlong into towering walls of guitar. There’s so many holy shit moments in this record upon first blush, one only wonders how many we’ll pick up during subsequent listens.
Terra Inferna is as much as a celebration of the rich chainmail tapestries metal can weave as it is a testament to their blossoming as an incredible death metal force not to be wreked with. There’s only one way to play this record: loud and on repeat.

Evergrey - Theories of Emptiness

This album blows me away every time I listen to it. Evergrey have achieved pop-prog apotheosis on Theories of Emptiness, right from bombastic opener Falling from the Sun, sadboi arena rocker Misfortune, and the duet we’ve all wanted (well, I have) since forever, Cold Dreams featuring Jonas Renkse (Katatonia). It lends off 80s power ballad vibes while maintaining an icy grip on bleak, barren soundscapes. Everything they approach, they nail; Queensryche-ian crunch, Pink Floyd-like leadwork, and soulful gospel choirs. It’s Evergrey done up to 11, much like their breakout Recreation Day. Outstanding work.

Suldusk - Anthesis

After being blown away by their set prior to Katatonia this year (was it this year?) and sacrificing a meal or two to buy their prior album Lunar Falls, these Aussies knock it out of the gloomy moor with Anthesis. Plucking bits of the darker end of metal, neo-folk, and atmospherics, carried on the back of vocalist (and multi-instrumentalist) Emily Highfield’s sublime voice. It’s like the reincarnation of The Gathering rinsed in black, a majestic and ethereal follow-up to Green Carnation’s Light of Day, Day of Darkness in tone and musicianship. Album of the year contender, for sure.

And here it is!

Devenial Verdict - Blessing of Despair

This album begins with a big gulp of air, as if vocalist Riku Saressalo is about to plunge into fathomless icy depths - and it’s kind of the feeling one gets spinning up Blessing of Despair, blasting along spidery crawls of guitar and guttural lamentations that all seems to luminescence around the fringes. That’s just in first track I Have Become the Sun. This furious melancholy slithers through the entire album, sewn up with ear-melting musicianship, engineered to shift moods on a whim through the slightest suggestion. You’ll hear dervish-like Arabesques (The Quietus), bloodthirsty death marches (Solus), mouthwatering lashings of groove (Garden of Eyes), and epic dissonant takes on the genre that give (and gave) Ulcerate a run for their jandals (Moon-Starved). Death metal rarely has “it all” - but this disc definitely does.

Amiensus - Reclamation Parts I and II

Progressive black metal (if that’s what we’re calling it) over these two ambitious discs is for want of a better word, beautiful. Yeah, it’s brutal as fuck at times but Reclamation Parts I and II (which should be taken as a whole) feels vibrant, resplendent, triumphant. Just like Wilderun or Disillusion before them, it’s a grand opus that takes in the wondrous spectrum of human emotion while retaining an overwhelming joy. It’s a joy evoked by the simple pleasure of listening to these sounds, as a haze between one’s internal world and the external settles in. A crowning achievement in the genre as it spans so many - folk, neo-classical, thrash, prog - because it will leave you in pure awe.

Unto Others - Never, Neverland

From the hard yet jangly chords of opener Butterfly, Gabe Franco’s baritone croon, rich with metaphor comparing a difficult lover to a butterfly (I could win your heart with a melody / I could comfort you with a sweet serenade (I made) / Or I could lash my tongue in a criticism, yeah / Or put you down and pray for the tears in your eyes / I want you to die) you can just feel that this is album is dark magic pressed into thin perspex. It shifts from goth to crossover Suicidal Tendencies thrash (Momma Likes the Door Closed) to ironic post-punk meets Steinman pop (Angel of the Night) with such self-assuredness it’s almost criminal. This all occurs over three consecutive tracks, by the way. What’s even more incredible is that some of these mouthwatering cuts clock in at 7” 45 lengths: a punchy Fame, a punky Flatline, or a satisfying morsel of Blue Oyster Cult worship Hoops. It all feels like Lt. Tuck Pendleton’s bittersweet lament in Innerspace: “When things are at their darkest pal, it’s a brave man who can kick back and party.” So Unto Others did. And we reaped the benefits.

Cemetery Skyline - Nordic Gothic

In a way, it was inevitable. We should be grateful for its inevitability. Spearheaded by Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity, Grand Cadaver, The Halo Effect) and featuring members of Insomnium, The Man-Eating Tree, Dimmu Borgir, and Amorphis both past and present, this is like the Nordic (and gothic) Power Station, featuring Robert Palmer plus Chic and Duran Duran members in. Ever since 1999’s Projector, Dark Tranquillity embraced goth wholesale via Martin Brandstrom’s Depeche Mode electronics. Freed from shackles of melodic death, Nordic Gothic is pure pale light reflected in nightime clouds electro-goth beating with a blue and yellow Scandinavian heart. A yearning despondence throbs through this disc, whether it’s inviting absent-minded swaying about chessboard dancefloors (Torn Away) or whiskey-and-regret drowned metal and synthpop after midnight (Violent Storm). Thanks to hindsight and maturity, cribbing bits of a-ha (yeah, they were kinda goth) and Lacrimosa and varnishing it all over with an unmistakeable 1980s Scandi-pop sheen (c.f. Never Look Back) sounds fresh, moody, and forever enticing. If you’re even goth-curious, it’s a must listen.

TEN HONOURABLE MENTIONS 2024

Iotunn - Kinship

Hamferð - Men Guðs hond er sterk

Vale of Pnath - Between The Worlds Of Life And Death

Sworn - A Journey Told Through Fire

Carnosus - Wormtales

Gaerea - Coma

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere

Oficium Triste - Hortus Veneum

Oceans of Slumber - Where Gods Fear to Speak

In Vain - Solemn

Tom Valcanis

26 February 2024

Journalism

Caligula's Horse - From The Still and Grey (Hysteria)

Tom Valcanis

26 February 2024

Journalism

About ten or so years ago, Caligula’s Horse were a plucky young prog metal band from Brisbane, sharing the stage with equally obscure names: Voyager, for example. Now, six albums down they’ve been around the world and back and ready to set loose their latest and greatest body of work to date: Charcoal Grace.

Read the interview here // Read the review

Tom Valcanis

21 July 2023

Blog

The Six Stacker - No Quarter Given

Tom Valcanis

21 July 2023

Blog

Once upon a time, album sales were the main source of income for a band so they could make even more on merch: now the merch is where money is made with album sales (or plays) coming a distant second. In fact, album sales has become merch - if you want physical media you have to pay 20x the going price for renting it on Spotify (per month, on average). Represses and reprints are the reserve of the boomer-beloved; Rod Stewart, Steely Dan, Dire Straits. If a band issues 100 copies of a digipak on Bandcamp and you find out through a mate’s blog a year after the fact, those copies are resting inside homes from Mumbai to Melbourne and all places in between and not yours. You missed out, son.

In fact, some people buy the LP or CD just to have - not as a useful conveyance for music playback. A friend I worked with on a project said he only “buys the CD to have in his collection” and never even plays it. CDs and LPs have become a curio more than a necessity. A piece of bragging rights to climb higher atop their peers on the mountain of cool. Me? Well, I’m just stubborn. That, and I just love holding something that’s intangible. It makes more sense in my head.

Dav Dralleon - Kthullu

Is there any wonder metalheads love synthwave? In the mid-2000s when extreme power metal band DragonForce burst on to the scene, it wasn’t uncommon to see their albums on ravers and EDM-heads (is that a thing?) iPods. If both camps gathered together protest style, we’d both be chanting: What do we want? Processed sounds! When do we want it? All the time!

Though metalheads and ravers seem like natural enemies, they’ve got way more in common than not. During that brief mid-2000s crossover, metalheads wouldn’t be out of place at a Venetian Snares or Infected Mushroom gig. Fast beats, twisted melodies, and large looming riffs - it’s what’s for dinner at both households.

The rise of the New Retro Wave of 80s synthpop has also led to a mini-revival of darker, metal-inspired EDM and psytrance referred to as “darksynth” or “metalsynth.” One of the original purveyors, Klayton of Celldweller fame is still producing great albums in this vein under new moniker Scandroid as well as releasing music by fellow travellers under his FiXT label.

Now comes French solo artist Dav Dralleon on second album Kthullu which is cybernetically augmented metal; as if people with robotic arms and legs were playing this hard and fast in a studio on the moon, to get even more hits in thanks to relaxed gravity. That’s exactly what we get: planet-sized riffs, glitched out robot synth lines, and blast beats big enough to wipe out the sun. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Wachenfeldt - The Interpreter

Dr. Thomas von Wachenfeldt, Ph.D is an associate professor of musiciology at Umea University and part-time registered metal badass. Lucky for Tommy, his last name is more metal that mine could ever hope to be. Every riff and lick has a sense of polish; nothing out of place, everything balanced in perfect measure. Opener Spirits of the Dead is flailing drums and double-time riffs carved up by tasty, flowing leads as if Thor himself was loosing his blonde locks to the winds of Midgard.

Dr. Wachenfeldt is a master of deception - everything feels straightforward enough but like a serene duck atop a pond, the legs underneath are paddling like fury. As for his “interpretation” of black metal, it sits somewhere between Behemoth before Nergal did it for the ‘gram and Dimmu Borgir just went…well, weird. It’s creative, too Ut opens with a skull-crushing bass solo (gasp!) and drips in antipathy like blood does from ceilings. After someone has EXPLODED. Probably. It’s kind of like the prelude to Megadeth’s Rust in Peace…Polaris except the foreboding never really stops. If you like the extreme end of metal, give this one a spin. You won’t be disappointed. If only every music snob made music this good…

Insomnium - Anno 1696

Insomnium may not have invented Scandinavian sadboi melodeath, but they sure perfected it. Some ungenerous folk might say it hit a peak on 2005’s Above the Weeping World. Sloughing off their In Flames meets Children of Bodom by way of Sentenced tag around that time, their sombre, introspective brand of melodic death survived the 2010s wilderness and beyond with some solid yet middling albums. I mean, shit, I still bought them. Don’t listen to them much, though.

Anno 1696 is a concept about the black death, Christianity, and paganism and they play it like an epic musical, to a point. Opening with twinkling folk guitars, they segue into their trademark low-to-high note before blasting us in the face with blastbeats and fiery vocal attack. They’re trying to capture moods here, and they pretty much nail it. Bringing in throat-shredder Sakis Tolis (Rotting Christ, Thou Art Lord) for centrepiece death march White Christ is sort of like letting the devil off his leash to menace the track. Then heavenly voices decend from on high through a guitar hero-led Godforsaken; it’s all rather dramatic and engrossing.

Tracks like Lilian and Starless Paths are classic Insomnium fare; hard riffing led along by melancholy leads, lamenting loss and what could have been. Since In Flames have long vacated the acoustic crown, Insomnium more than fill out the rump on the beginning of Witch Hunter and “ballad” (of sorts) The Unrest which treads that Opeth line without going over into full 70s paisley and shag hair carpet territory (there’s a mellotron, though!) Nine albums down, they’re still making compelling melodeath. Only a handful of bands can lay claim to that.

LEIÞA - Reue

Avantgarde Music/Noisebringer Records (2023)

Yes friends - that’s not a “P” (or an R, in cyrillic…this is getting confusing) that’s a Þ - the long-forgotten Old English by way of Norse “thorn” pronounced “th”. So it’s not LEE-pah, it’s more like LEE-tha. You know, like the mythic river of forgetfulness. The sweet balm of blessing. Wait, that’s the wrong band. Anyway…

Leiþa makes vocal noises that occasionally resemble German, which automatically makes everything sound 1000% more evil. Sitting in the pocket of the PR-invented genre “atmo-black” (atmospheric black metal) which is supposed to signal more Agalloch than Anaal Nathrakh, so what the fuck would I know. It has its fair share of blast beats and guitars filling the fringes of the soundscape in a sweeping, epic vein, though it sounds way more “traditional” than ambient or whatever. Songs like Abgang and a waltz-like 3/4 time catch the ear way more often. Though it doesn’t pick up bear skins and torches like your average Saor or Primordial yet they don’t slip into neon-trimmed techno-suits ala Shade Empire or …And Oceans. It’s a constant tension between organic and technological elements, which makes the listen all the more intriguing.

Warcrab - Damned In Endless Night

India’s fastest growing extreme metal label has one secret of success: they don’t sign shit bands. Nearly every TO band on their roster have been one of quality; and the generous free downloads they give out with every physical release just means you get even more music to fall in love with. Oh, and their crazy UV gloss digipacks look fucking incredible. Their vinyl even more so. Also, label owner Kanal Choksi runs a stray animal shelter out of the TO offices. What a guy!

Back to UK’s Warcrab. A band that has a badass/dumbass name depending on how you look at it. Though on flrst blush these UK gloomsters are pure Sabbath worshippers, especially with languid Iommi-like leads scuzzing through monster tracks like In The Arms of Armageddon; but there’s more than meets your sacred ears. First proper track Halo of Flies looms large with a sturdy death n’ roll sound not too far removed from Edge of Sanity or Entombed, then they’ll slow it right down like we’re sloshing through a bayou on Abyssal Mausoleum, which fits into that cross-eyed, pickle-brained Eyehategod or Crowbar mould. Freewheeling jams are even thrown in (Unfurling Wings of Damnation) and it doesn’t take much to imagine thick reeds of green smoke curling around fretboards. With three guitarists in the mix, there’s new sonic nuggets to be unearthed on every listen. A monumental effort - can’t wait for their new album to drop within the month.

Sermon - Of Golden Verse

“Cinematic” - I suppose that word is overused in the same way “epic” is - but what is it about cinematic that people actually mean? Adam Sandler movies are released in a cinema. There they are, all flat lighting and boring locations. What I think people are trying to convey is the overwhelming force a cinematic experience can bring - expansive views, the translation of a titanic vision into moving pictures three times the size of our bodies. We are engulfed, immersed, mesmerised. Of Golden Verse is possessed of those qualities, even as drums march through Royal, dervish like as it pulses and speeds towards a near-carnal explosion of rage and melody. That’s hard to do in heavy metal; make it erotic insofar it touches at the core of our subliminal urges instead of our conscious desires. There are cues from all over prog and metaldom here, songs like Senescence’s minimal synths and yearning vocals recalling Agent Fresco, jazz-like riffs abounding like Soen by way of Katatonia. It hangs on with claws in your skin and refuses to let go, like any masterful album should. If you’re sleeping on these guys, wake the fuck up.