Metal Hammer's Top 50 Albums of 2024

Nineteen albums into their genre-defining career, heavy metal gods Judas Priest are still on top. *Invincible Shield* continues in the anthemic, fan-friendly tradition of 2018’s *Firepower* with songs inspired by internet-induced rage (“Panic Attack”), political charlatans (“Devil in Disguise”), and the Salem witch trials (“Trial by Fire”), among many other topics. “As the metal messenger of Priest, I\'m always looking for opportunities to touch on subjects and ideas that I haven\'t done before,” vocalist Rob Halford tells Apple Music. “You’re searching for something fresh, something new. It’s the same with all of us in Priest. I think this is so important in music—to be interesting, engaging, and entertaining. I think Priest have been doing that for 50 years. Otherwise, we\'d have been dissipated many decades ago.” Below, he comments on each song on *Invincible Shield*, plus the three bonus tracks included in the deluxe edition. **“Panic Attack”** “When you talk about topics and subjects and ideas and so forth, it\'s all been done. Let\'s face it. Whenever I do a title for a song, I search it, because I hate doing things that have been done before. But ‘Panic Attack,’ I just love that phrase. I used to have panic attacks before I got sober, and they’re very debilitating. In this case, it’s someone reacting to something they’ve seen on the internet.” **“The Serpent and the King”** “The devil is the serpent, and the king is God. Is the devil a deity? I don’t know. But I think the serpent came to me first, and then naturally my mind went to the king. And then I always try to use at least one word in a Priest album that I\'ve never used before, like ‘sulfur.’ We know what sulfur is, we know what it smells like. So, we’ve got the devil and God in conflict. Good and evil, positive and negative, black and white. It’s a constant battle.” **“Invincible Shield”** “This is resilience, determination, protection. As I was sitting there with a blank piece of paper and pencil, what came into my head was the invincibility of who we are as people in all aspects of life and living, and the shield that we defend ourselves with. It’s about standing up for yourself within our world of heavy metal.” **“Devil in Disguise”** “I\'m a news hound. Like most old people, you start to engage in politics more as you age. When you\'re a younger person, for the most part, you don\'t give a fuck about politics. But as you get older, you start thinking, \'Why do I want to do an Elvis—pull out my gun and shoot the TV?\' So, this song came from just thinking about the political spectrum, but also thinking about the snake oil salesmen of this world. In the old westerns, the snake oil guy would come into town saying, ‘This potion will cure baldness. This one will make the horse eat.’ We’re not far removed from that, are we?” **“Gates of Hell”** “There are some deep, dark moments on this record, and this one goes to purgatory. You get there if you ride with me. It\'s that unity aspect of this beautiful metal community that we\'ve got. Sign on the line, let the Priest sell your soul. I was thinking of the PMRC, and I was thinking about devil music, and the people that used to come and stand outside the venues with placards: \'Judas Priest is the devil,\' and all that fun stuff. This is kind of throwing it back in their faces.” **“Crown of Horns”** “It\'s about finding love. I think if you can find love, it makes you complete. And it\'s a very deep song for me, spiritually. It\'s about finding Christ, really, but I wrap it up in that beautiful sphere of love. Love is all that matters. Love beats hate worldwide no matter where you\'re from. It\'s what keeps us all together.” **“As God Is My Witness”** “I think what\'s happening with me here is there\'s a lot of mortality going in my mind. Life can be a battle. I mean, it can be a battle trying to get the particular brand of bread that you want—‘they’re out of the bread!’ Originally, we were going to call this song ‘Hell to Pay,’ but ‘As God Is My Witness’ felt better. It’s something people actually say, like, ‘You’ve got another thing coming,’ or ‘Breaking the law.’ These phrases are out in the world, and they’re fun to utilize.” **“Trial by Fire”** “I saw something on Netflix about the Salem witch trials. The horrific way all those women were treated was out of pure superstition. The power of religion is profound in the way it affects humanity, and some of that is trauma. That was kind of the spark for this, but it’s also a bit of a reference to the way the public, when they get a story or an incident—and this is human nature—become the judge, the jury, and the executioner. We are so fast to create our opinions.” **“Escape From Reality”** “The bulk of that song comes from \[guitarist\] Glenn \[Tipton\]. He has these riff vaults. The thing about a riff is that it doesn’t matter if he wrote it in 1970 or 2023. Within *Invincible Shield*, it’s an affirmation of the heaviness of Judas Priest in this slow-tempo context. I think it’s the only one on the album with that kind of groove. Some of the messages on this album are quite personal, and ‘Escape From Reality’ is one of those. It’s about wishing you could go back in time to fix certain things, whatever they might be. It could be as simple as an argument in a relationship, or something big and traumatic.” **“Sons of Thunder”** “When you sit astride a Harley or whatever it is, it epitomizes freedom. The bike represents so many things with Judas Priest, and we\'re the only heavy metal band that\'s utilized the bike consistently. Those things that are attached to the bike—it\'s loud, it smells, it pisses people off—that\'s metal. I just wanted to have a bit of fun with that. And it\'s a little bit of a nod to *Sons of Anarchy*, because that free spirit, that part of Americana, is with us.” **“Giants in the Sky”** “The touchstones for this were Ronnie \[James Dio\] and Lemmy, two of my dear friends. Originally it was going to be called ‘The Mighty Have Fallen,’ but I thought that just sounds too bleak. Let\'s give it some lift. Let\'s give it some transcendence. I was also thinking about rock ’n’ roll radio. When I was growing up in England, we had one station. The first time I came to America, I couldn’t believe how many stations there were. And right now, as you and I are speaking, somebody in the world is playing Ronnie or Lemmy over the radio. They’re the giants in the sky.” **“Fight of Your Life”** “This is a bonus track. I really wanted it in the main track listing, but I didn’t get my way. I’m not a fan of brutal sports, but I do understand the athleticism and the skill of MMA and boxing, and even the fun stuff like wrestling. And you are fighting for your life. It’s a struggle and you’re pushing through. But I love this song. To me, it’s like, ‘Can we please put this song up for the NFL or NBA?’” **“Vicious Circle”** “Sometimes relationships can be in a vicious circle. ‘With the wicked schemes, cut deep the way that you can try/It makes me wonder how you sleep.’ So, again, we\'re in the political arena, aren\'t we? ‘I stand against you as you rage. My fate has struck your gilded cage.’ It\'s about the way personal relationships can sometimes get into a vicious circle, but it\'s also addressing the political spectrum.” **“The Lodger”** “Bob Halligan Jr. wrote this. He wrote ‘Some Heads Are Gonna Roll’ and ‘(Take These) Chains.’ He came to a show a few years ago, just to see the band. It was so great to see him, and I love what he’d done with those two tracks, so I said, ‘If you’ve got anything, send it to me.’ Maybe a month later, he sends me this. It’s about a guy who kills his wife and then his sister. It’s like a mini-movie about revenge and justice. Bob has a great talent for words and imagery, and I really love the dark and mysterious atmosphere of this song.”

For their third album, Kentucky hardcore troupe Knocked Loose chose a title that resonated deeply with vocalist Bryan Garris. During an airplane takeoff that triggered Garris’ fear of flying, the woman seated next to him offered the comforting words, “You won’t go before you’re supposed to.” “The line struck him so strongly that it immediately occurred to him that it should be the title,” Knocked Loose guitarist Isaac Hale tells Apple Music. “It also became a lyric in the last song, ‘Sit & Mourn.’ Like the rest of our records, this is a collection of stuff from Bryan’s personal struggles dealing with anger and loss and depression and sadness. It’s a reminder to him—and all of us—that we’re still here. We made it through all the hardships that came with the past four years of writing this.” Musically speaking, Knocked Loose entered the writing sessions for *You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To* with a very different mindset than the one that drove their 2019 breakthrough *A Different Shade of Blue* and revered 2021 concept EP *A Tear in the Fabric of Life*. “There was just way more pressure, and we had way more experience,” Hale says. “Some people view the third album as a make-or-break record. We had pressure from the fans and the outside world, but more so pressure from ourselves. We thought, ‘How can we possibly outdo what we’ve done before?’ It was tough, but I think we were able to come up with a record where every song accomplishes something unique.” Below, he discusses each track. **“Thirst”** “This was written in the first session that we ever had for this record. It was written before *A Tear in the Fabric of Life* even came out. It came from a jam session we were having where we wanted to create a really difficult song on drums to challenge our drummer Pacsun. We wanted something super short, super intense, and we just made it as complex as we could. And to start the record, it’s something we’ve never done before—a super in-your-face jump scare.” **“Piece by Piece”** “This was our attempt at doing kind of a Hatebreed-esque banger. It has a hook to it, but the hook is one of the mosh parts in the song, akin to \[Hatebreed’s\] ‘Perseverance.’ One of the things we wanted to accomplish on this record was to create stuff that was hooky and catchy, but at the same time crazy heavy. In many ways, I think that it’s the most hardcore song on the record, and that’s what we love about it. It’s our version of a catchy hardcore track that can really connect with people.” **“Suffocate” (feat. Poppy)** “We wrote this song after we thought we had a finished record. Before we went to record, Poppy slid into Bryan’s DMs asking if we would be interested in collaborating on some music. Me and Bryan are huge Poppy fans, so of course we said yes automatically. That same day, Bryan called me like, ‘Hey, man—I’m coming over. We need to write another song.’ We wrote the track the next day, and it was one of the smoothest writing experiences on the record because we wrote it knowing Poppy was going to be a part of it. And because of that, we were able to do some sassy parts that maybe we wouldn’t put on a normal Knocked Loose song but that really work with her voice. I think it’s one of the most special songs we’ve ever written.” **“Don’t Reach for Me”** “This was our attempt at writing a song with a more rock- or pop-oriented structure. It’s different from stuff that we\'ve done before because it has a slightly melodic chorus with a hook. It has a soft bridge with a jam part and some cleaner guitar. And a lot of it is midtempo, besides the very beginning. It only gets fast very briefly. That’s very new for us. There’s like seven mosh parts, so we needed to balance those. It took a long time to figure out, but I think the final product really succeeds in that juxtaposition.” **“Moss Covers All”** “This was written in the second writing session that we did for this record, up in Michigan. We woke up one morning, started jamming, and we were just not coming up with a lot of stuff we liked. We were pretty much just throwing paint at the wall and getting aggravated. When we took a break, I had an idea and basically wrote this entire song in my head in about a minute. I voice memo’d it briefly on my phone and then immediately started putting it down without telling the guys. When they came back, I played it for them—and what I played is pretty much exactly what’s on the record. It’s short, sweet, and super heavy, with a breakdown and a spooky lead that goes directly into the next song.” **“Take Me Home”** “‘Moss Covers All’ and ‘Take Me Home’ are very much connected songs. ‘Moss Covers All’ was written first, but then we really felt the need to have a song on here that’s meant to scare you. We didn’t worry about a mosh part or any sort of heaviness. We just wanted a scary track that’s uncomfortable and throws the listener off guard. When we were thinking about what shape that could take, I immediately thought of that spooky lead from ‘Moss Covers All,’ which we ended up looping as the blueprint for this track.” **“Slaughterhouse 2” (feat. Chris Motionless)** “This song started as an inside joke because Motionless in White was kind enough to reach out to Bryan and have him collaborate on one of their songs, ’Slaughterhouse,’ a very heavy, politically charged track. We’re all huge Motionless in White fans, so of course he accepted. And then we were able to tour with them. As soon as Bryan did that track, we were joking that we should do a song called ‘Slaughterhouse 2.’ We were just kind of laughing about it for a while, but then we thought we were kind of shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn’t do it. Chris was down from the beginning, and his voice is amazing on this. It was a challenge to match the theme and vibe of the original song, but I think we were able to create something that’s not just a great sequel, but that really stands on its own as a highlight of the record.” **“The Calm That Keeps You Awake”** “The funny thing about this one is that the song totally revolves around the huge breakdown at the end. That part was written first, as part of another thing that was written before *A Tear in the Fabric* had even come out. So, like four years ago, we needed to write new parts because the rest of the song we’d written wasn’t up to par, but that breakdown was super necessary. In doing so, we created this really cool, Meshuggah-esque, kind of Sepultura-auxiliary-percussion vibe that’s one of the most unique parts of the record.” **“Blinding Faith”** “We definitely have some jabs at religious hypocrisy throughout the Knocked Loose discography, and this is just kind of an update on that situation. We hadn\'t done one in a while, and it was something that was feeling close to home for Bryan at the time. To me, this sounds like a mix of some of our greatest riffs that we’d written over the course of a year—it’s kind of a riff-salad song. In some ways, it’s one of the heaviest and scariest songs on the record, so we put it out as a single to say, ‘If you thought we were going to get any softer, absolutely not. And here’s proof.’” **“Sit & Mourn”** “This one revolves around the melodic lead and the kind of ambient post-rock breakdown at the end. We wrote that in the first writing session in Joshua Tree, and it took us a while to come up with more parts that we felt were that good. But the song is very, very anthemic. It sounds very dark and melancholic, but at the same time, the lyrics are positive in a way. Thematically, it’s kind of a title track in the way that the lyrics relate to the name of the record. I know it was a very cathartic song for Bryan. In many ways, it’s the saddest song on the record, but in other ways it’s the most positive. And it’s mentally exhausting from start to finish. It ends with a sound clip that I won’t disclose, but it’ll take you by surprise.”

For his seventh solo outing, Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson almost made a concept album. Instead, he made an album with a concept. Some of the songs on *The Mandrake Project* detail episodes from a 12-issue comic series (also called *The Mandrake Project*) created by Dickinson, scripted by Tony Lee, and illustrated by Staz Johnson. “It was never intended to be this big,” Dickinson tells Apple Music. “At first, I had an idea about doing one comic only, like a little bit of extra vibe around the album. I was already thinking in the comic world, because originally the title of the album was taken from a Doctor Strange episode called ‘If Eternity Should Fail!’ I came up with these two characters, Dr. Necropolis and Professor Lazarus, and it’s a really dark story. It\'s not a superhero story. It’s more like a *Watchmen*-style comic in 12 episodes.” With longtime producer and guitarist Roy Z, Dickinson wrote songs that tie in with the comic storyline, like “Afterglow of Ragnarok” and “Resurrection Men,” and others that are completely unrelated, like “Many Doors to Hell,” about a female vampire, and “Fingers in the Wounds,” which imagines Jesus resurrected as a social media influencer. And then there’s “Eternity Has Failed,” an earlier version of which was nicked by Iron Maiden for their 2015 album, *The Book of Souls*. Below, the singer details each track. **“Afterglow of Ragnarok”** “This is meant to be like a hallucination from mandrake juice. Dr. Necropolis is a brilliant scientist, and an orphan. He’s interested in bringing back his brother who died at birth. He’s wondering why he survived and his brother died. And he’s tortured by this voice in his head, which he assumes is his brother. The voice just says, ‘Save me,’ over and over. It hits Necropolis like a depression. He gets into drugs and sex magic and the occult to try and contact his brother and try to figure out a way to bring him back. That’s what drives him and propels him through the story.” **“Many Doors to Hell”** “This is about a female vampire who wants to be human again. She wants to feel what it\'s like to not just bite people in the neck, but to maybe kiss them or make love. Instead of the weird vampire orgasm of drinking blood and stuff, she wants to feel what it\'s like to be a woman again. She\'s fed up with living forever with dead people. So she\'s waiting for the moment when she can step outside. And that moment is when there\'s an eclipse. During the eclipse, she can go out and she can be human. And maybe there\'s a way back for her to be human permanently.” **“Rain on the Graves”** “The title is a phrase I’d written down 10 years before I actually wrote the song. I was in a part of England called the Lake District, a very beautiful area that lots of poets and artists lived in. William Wordsworth had a cottage there and wrote a lot of his best poetry there. He’s buried in the local church, which is where this wedding was that I was invited to, and I decided to find his grave. It was raining and really atmospheric, and I sat there for about 40 minutes just thinking about what an incredible creative mind he had. Years later, Roy and I decided to write this song, which is kind of like ‘Cross Road Blues’ by Robert Johnson, where he meets the devil, but instead of at a crossroads it takes place in a graveyard.” **“Resurrection Men”** “This one is related to the comic. The Resurrection Men are Professor Lazarus and Dr. Necropolis. While I was doing the beginning bit with these open guitar chords, I noticed the tremolo button on the amp. I went, ‘Hang on, what does this button do?’ It was the full-on Dick Dale surf sound, so I thought, ‘What would a Tarantino heavy metal opening sound like?’ So I played that on guitar. I thought Roy would redo it, but he decided to keep mine. And then I put the bongos on it later, because if you’ve got a Tarantino thing, you’ve got to have bongos on it as well.” **“Fingers in the Wounds”** “The fingers in the wounds are the stigmata of Christ. I think it was St. Francis who had the stigmata appear, which proved that he was holy. The song is about the wonderful world of influencers, but with a twist: What if Jesus came back as an influencer? Like, ‘Put your fingers in your iPhones, put your fingers in my wounds, I’ll sell you a piece of my cloth. I can sell pearls to oysters, feed them to swine.’ It’s the way that everything on the internet now is just degraded by trolls and idiots and fake news and all that stuff. And all these influencers are just worthless, fake people. What have they done in their lives to justify all these people following them around like little dogs? I hate all that. That’s why I’m not part of it.” **“Eternity Has Failed”** “Originally, it was entitled ‘If Eternity Should Fail.’ The title comes from a Doctor Strange episode. It was going to be the title track to the record, but then Maiden co-opted it onto their record. By the time I returned to it, I\'d already got this idea for the comic series pretty well developed, so I thought I\'d just tweak a couple of the words to make it reflect the story more. So we did that, and then stuck a few more bits on, like the flutes and percussion at the beginning that give it that spaghetti western type of feel. The last bit of spoken word is the last slide of episode one of the comic.” **“Mistress of Mercy”** “Who is the mistress of mercy? It’s music. I wrote this on acoustic guitar, but the middle bit, the funny little Jeff Beck-type guitar riff, I wrote on a keyboard. And then Roy played it on guitar. I wanted a mashup of something that was really thrashing, like some garage band going apeshit, along with the acoustic feel. The idea is that the music is the dominatrix. She holds you, pins you down, but you can’t help but adore her and love her. The ecstasy, the harmony, the melody drives you absolutely crazy. That’s what the song is about.” **“Face in the Mirror”** “This is a melancholy tune. It\'s about alcoholism, but also it\'s about the way people judge other people and judge themselves. It\'s sung from the point of view of somebody who is a drunk, but he\'s turning around and saying, ‘You\'re laughing at me because I\'m lying on the ground, but when I hold my glass up, I can see right through you. I can see all your bullshit. I can see all your lies. You’re going to judge me because I’m an alcoholic, but take a look in my mirror, because you might see yourself as well.’” **“Shadow of the Gods”** “This one goes back to just after *Tyranny of Souls*. This and the title track from that album were written as a pair for a project that never happened called The Three Tremors, which was supposed to be three metal singers, like The Three Tenors in classical music. It was going to be me, Rob Halford, and Ronnie James Dio. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because Ronnie passed away. So I recorded ‘A Tyranny of Souls’ for myself and then kept this one. When I revisited it, I put a couple references to the comic in it. There’s a part two-thirds of the way through that sounds very reminiscent of Judas Priest because that’s who was supposed to sing it.” **“Sonata (Immortal Beloved)”** “This is the oldest song on the record. It’s almost 25 years old. There’s a sample of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ running underneath the drum machine, so Roy and I were just calling it ‘Sonata’ for a while. Roy later told me it was inspired by the film *Immortal Beloved*. He went to the movies, came home, and pulled an all-nighter, layering keyboards and guitars just for the hell of it. When he sent it to me, I didn’t have any ideas, but I just gave it a try and what came out was about 80% of the vocal, including the spoken word. I just did it freestyle, with no notes or anything. I don’t think that’s happened to me ever again in that way, with that level of detail.”

For their 14th album, Swedish prog wizards Opeth created a concept record around the reading of a will. Partly inspired by a talk-show segment and partly by the massively popular TV show *Succession*, Opeth guitarist/vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt decided to write about an inheritance with a twist. “I stumbled upon the idea of putting the whole story as it would’ve been written in a legal document, like a proper old piece of paper with paragraphs like, ‘My daughter will get the country house,’ and things like that,” he tells Apple Music. “But it’s more like a confession of sorts, where the patriarch reveals secrets about himself, his paranoia, and his regrets. And some of these secrets will immediately affect his children in an existential kind of way.” *The Last Will and Testament* also marks Åkerfeldt’s return to the death-metal vocal style of Opeth’s early days. “I wanted to bring back the screaming vocal, but at first, I felt a bit like a fraud because I wasn’t listening to brutal music,” he explains. “I’m listening to Dexter Gordon and David Crosby. But after I finished two songs with that kind of vocal, I thought it was fucking awesome.” Add guest appearances from Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson (on flute and narration) and Europe vocalist Joey Tempest, and you’ve got another fascinating installment in Opeth’s catalog. Below, Åkerfeldt comments on each track. **“§1”** “This was the first song written for the album. It’s when I dipped my toe in the water, so to speak, to see where I was on a musical level. At the time, I didn’t really have the lyrics ready, but I wanted to try out that screaming vocal. So, this song is kind of the guinea pig for that. And usually, when I start writing for a record, I come out all guns blazing. So, it’s kind of heavy, evil, fast, and a bit insane. Lyrically, the kids are being summoned to attend the reading of their late father’s last will and testament. There’s also a couple of solicitors in place. The reading starts, and he’s explaining that there’s going to be prizes. But they might not be what you wanted.” **“§2”** “I can hear that I was quite comfortable with whatever I was doing musically here. And that kind of stands out because it has two guests on there. On ‘Paragraph One’ you have a voice-over thing by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, and he’s heavily featured in ‘Paragraph Two’ as well. And so is Joey Tempest, from Europe. For some reason, he loves Opeth, which is awesome for me because I grew up with Europe. The song itself is pretty adventurous, I think. It’s probably one of the songs that will take a long time to sink in with the listener. There’s also a calm section that I kind of nicked from Paul Simon’s ‘Still Crazy After All These Years.’” **“§3”** “This is more of a classic heavy metal song, I would say. The opening was inspired by a theme you often hear in jazz music, like Django Reinhardt, but also some classical music and fusion-rock bands. And the musical *Chess*, believe it or not, which was written by Benny and Björn from ABBA. From there, it kind of becomes a normal heavy metal song, but with more emotions than your basic Iron Maiden song. I’m not saying Iron Maiden doesn’t have emotions, but this is kind of a sad song—to me at least. Lyrically, there’s some explanation about infidelity that happened and what that led to.” **“§4”** “This is an interesting tune because it’s almost like a couple of different songs in one, which is not so uncommon for Opeth. I started off trying to write something called 12-note music, which is an experimental classical thing where you have 12 notes in an octave, and you can’t play the same note twice—meaning it’s going to be fucked up. So, the beginning of the song is hard to sing along to. It’s a bit Zappa-esque. That leads into kind of a metal-y call-and-response with death metal vocals and clean vocals, and then it stops and goes into a harp section. I actually found the harp player from an article in a Swedish newspaper, which is weird. That leads to the next section, which is Ian Anderson playing the flute. Then it builds into the most vicious, evil-sounding music on the record.” **“§5”** “This is maybe the last song I wrote for the record, or one of the last. You can tell that I’m comfortable in my songwriting here because it’s quite experimental. There’s not a lot of acoustic guitars on this record, but this song is built around an acoustic lick and clean vocals, and all of it gradually becomes heavier. In some parts, maybe the heaviest sections on the record. And really good death-metal vocals on that track, if I do say so myself. There’s also a Middle Eastern-sounding midsection, which I never dared to do before. If you just hear the song once, you probably won’t know what the fuck is happening. You need some time with it.” **“§6”** “During the recording, everybody feared this song because it’s so difficult. It doesn’t sound difficult, but for some reason, it’s really, *really* difficult. I’m not really a good guitar player or a good musician, but for some reason I have a knack for writing really complex music. And this song, it’s almost like it spirals out of control in a way, like you’re losing control of the horse and it just stampedes. I’ve never done cocaine in my life, but it sounds like what I imagine a cocaine rush is. I think that’s got something to do with me not tampering with the tempo of the song, which resulted in us almost not being able to play the fucking thing.” **“§7”** “This always felt like the ending song of a record, even if there’s one after. But it’s still the end of the testament, as it were. It’s more of a groovy song. I don’t really like that word, but sometimes it’s the only word that applies. It’s slower than the other songs, and less crazy. It’s also the first song in our history where every band member sings. There’s a multipart harmony vocal that happens a couple of times, and everyone is on it. I can tell you there were people who had never been in front of a microphone before, which was quite fun.” **“A Story Never Told”** “At this point, the testament is done. But everything that’s been said in the testament doesn’t really apply because here comes the twist to the story. The inheritance has been settled, a few years have passed, and a letter arrives, revealing a secret. The song itself is a ballad, and I’m a sucker for ballads. I wanted to write a beautiful ballad, not just because I love ballads, but because the seven songs prior to ‘A Story Never Told’ are so intense that there’s no room for breath, really. And this song feels like a good ending, with a beautiful Gilmour/Blackmore-esque solo by \[Opeth guitarist\] Fredrik \[Åkesson\] at the finish.”

Black metal trailblazer Ihsahn likes his self-titled solo album so much that he recorded it twice. *Ihsahn* is available in both metal and orchestral versions, two styles that the Norwegian composer and multi-instrumentalist has been combining since the early ’90s with black metal pioneers Emperor. “To me, black metal is an abstract feeling, an atmosphere,” he tells Apple Music. “It doesn’t rely on any specific sound. Jerry Goldsmith’s score for *The Omen* can sound as black metal as Bathory.” The metal and orchestral versions of *Ihsahn*, his eighth solo outing, operate as two parts of a concept album with overlapping storylines. “I wrote them side by side as one piece,” he explains. “The orchestral version is really just a condensed instrumental version of the metal album. To put it bluntly, I tried to write a simulated soundtrack within the context of the full metal arrangement. So, to me, the orchestral version is just a different version of the same music, but it follows a slightly different story with a similar story arc. It’s all very interconnected.” As for the storylines themselves? They’re based on the classic hero’s journey found in traditional mythology, but beyond that, Ihsahn would rather not say. “I\'m always trying to not give away my story, because it\'s not that interesting for people to have me superimpose my thoughts on them,” he explains. “People can read the lyrics and kind of piece it together for themselves. I think that is a better value for everybody.” Below, he discusses each track. **“Cervus Venator”** “This is a purely orchestral piece, like an introduction, and the title roughly translates to ‘Deer Hunter.’ And, of course, you see the antlers in the artwork and the videos, so this is kind of a hint to the secondary story that follows the narrative of the orchestral album. In that respect it\'s the real beginning of our protagonist\'s trajectory, a dreamlike state before the first track kicks in.” **“The Promethean Spark”** “We are at the start of the story, and the Promethean thing of course hints to Greek mythology. There’s a lot of Greek references with Dionysus and Apollo throughout the album. The story of Prometheus is something akin to the story of Lucifer or the outsider element that gives you a new perspective. It opens your eyes to something more. This is the starting point for the protagonist of this story.” **“Pilgrimage to Oblivion”** “I\'d say this is the most intense and hard song on the album. It’s full of hubris and determination. As the title implies, this is where our protagonist is very decisively starting his journey. It’s a very conscious decision to get out there and challenge yourself, so we’ve got a kind of a violent, challenging approach to this song.” **“Twice Born”** “Musically, ‘Twice Born’ is also on the harder side. With all the runs and everything, it’s kind of a revolt. There’s a sense of chaos involved in the lyrics. There’s a hint in the title again, this idea of being born again in the sense of discovering yourself anew when exposed to more things in your perceived existence. Like all traditional stories, there’s the potential reward of the journey, but also the danger and pitfalls of such a journey.” **“A Taste of the Ambrosia”** “This is the first reflective piece, and for the most part a much slower approach given the perspective. As the title implies, this is when you’ve had a taste of something more. It’s the realization that you can’t go back to where you started. It’s a loss of innocence, in a way, but also an experience of value. It’s like with nice cognac or wine, or coffee, for that matter—it’s hard to go back when one has had the good stuff.” **“Anima Extraneae”** “This is an interlude that also hints at the secondary story. It bleeds in with the orchestral side of things. As you see, the intro and outro and this interlude are all Latin titles, hence separating them from the main storyline. But, of course, the two stories bleed into each other. ‘Anima Extraneae’ translates to something like ‘a strange soul.’ The interlude follows the reflection of the last song. You’ve walked away from something and become estranged from what you were and the life you had prior to this. Musically, there’s a romantic sense of peace about it.” **“Blood Trails to Love”** “Again, there\'s a small hint in the title. You are exposed to danger; you\'re exposed to the unpredictable, and suddenly along the way in a typical story like this—and hopefully in our separate lives in general—we experience love. For someone in our protagonist’s position, are they capable of being loved? Have they come too far? Are they too estranged to be loved or even to be connected? There are some dilemmas there.” **“Hubris and Blue Devils”** “This song is of a more rebellious nature. ‘Blue Devils’ is referenced almost like a hangover, with all the hints of Dionysus and intoxication. There’s this feeling of hubris, like, ‘Fuck it. I’ll go all in, whatever the stakes.’ It reflects also to ‘Twice Born’ in the lyrics, so it’s something like giving up or giving in. There’s this sense of reigniting the same kind of willpower and determination as in ‘Pilgrimage to Oblivion’ in terms of accepting that this is the journey and the path you took.” **“The Distance Between Us”** “We’re getting into more of a reflective perspective again here. It\'s like the entire album, both in musical form and the lyrics, has this duality between balance and chaos; the safe, conformed, predictable existence versus the less predictable and more adventurous. ‘The Distance Between Us’ is the more reflective part of creating that distance in this kind of journey. Of course, this is not necessarily a physical journey. You are perhaps distancing yourself from things and people that you would not like to distance yourself from. Every journey has reward and sacrifice.” **“At the Heart of All Things Broken”** “This is the end of the journey. In my head, this is looking back on having returned and reflecting on the rewards and sacrifices made along the way. The lyrics are in present tense, in contrast to the rest of the record. I am very pleased with the title because it also has this kind of ambiguity to it. There’s ambition and tragedy and hope and loss and love in all of our lives. In the end, you will have to reflect on if you find your existence meaningful. None of us are spared tragedy, I think, but there are really no steps you could have skipped on your journey.” **“Sonata Profana”** “The title is a direct hint to the actual story that goes into the orchestral piece. Musically, it doesn’t imply a specifically happy ending.”

For the title of his fourth album under the Zeal & Ardor banner, avant-garde metal musician Manuel Gagneux turned to ancient legend. The greif, or griffin, is a mythological creature—part lion, part eagle—that appears in many of the oldest cultures. In Gagneux’s hometown of Basel, Switzerland, the griffin figures prominently in the annual Vogel Gryff procession. “It’s basically a guy in a big old bird costume that reveals its backside to the rich part of town,” he tells Apple Music. “It’s like an 800-year-old tradition. It’s so endearing, I thought it was worth sharing with the world.” *GREIF* is also the first Zeal & Ardor album to feature Gagneux’s live band. “By now, people know us more from our live performances,” he says. “So, it’s more representative of what it is that I associate with Zeal & Ardor. Doing the opposite would’ve been weirder to me at this point. It felt very organic to have them involved. Just like the greif is an amalgam of animals, everyone doing their part on this record is an amalgam of us. And it’s our most eclectic record, I think, so it feels quite fitting.” Below, he comments on each track. **“The Bird, the Lion and the Wildkin”** “Yeah, wildkin. In all honesty, I might’ve made up that word. But as that procession happens with the greif, it’s accompanied by piccolos and snare drums. So, that’s what I tried to emulate with the whistling and the drums there. Also, it’s a melody that will return later in the record, and I thought it kind of a nice little booming opening to welcome this weird, strange world of *GREIF*.” **“Fend You Off”** “It’s the first, or one of the few times, that I use the ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ in a Zeal & Ardor song. It’s quite a personal-struggle song, not in a specific thing that happened to me, but it’s about self-preservation. Sometimes we take steps that hurt ourselves just to make way for others. So, it’s about yielding, basically, and how not good of an idea that sometimes is.” **“Kilonova”** “The word ‘kilonova’ is a fairly new term about two supernovas colliding, which is objectively cool. It’s also about how our spirits and our weird ideas, or our weird playing, collides on this record. It’s one of the more occult songs on the record, with references to old, old books. And it’s one I hold really dear to my heart. It started as a funk song, and then I started distorting guitars. It kind of has reminiscing factors to another band that were not planned, but they are there. I’m not going to name names, but there’s some utensils at play.” **“are you the only one now?”** “It was an intentional decision to make the title all lowercase. It’s about these minichapters of the record, and basically these few \[lowercase\] songs prefacing what is coming after them, in a thematic sense. This is another personal one. It’s about solitude and finding peace in solitude, because there’s a huge difference between loneliness and solitude. It’s about embracing being alone, and that even time perceptively wasted being alone is still time that was spent working on oneself. I’m very much a person that enjoys being alone and kind of revels in solitude. It sounds very, very mopey, but I think I’m quite happy when I’m alone.” **“Go home my friend”** “This is a callback, musically, to the things we did prior to this record. It’s a taste of, ‘Oh, remember this?’ I think it conveys the idea of what it wants to be quite well, and there’s no need to expand on it. It’s just, ‘OK, this is it.’ It goes exactly where it should go, and then it ends without being ruined. And I quite like that.” **“Clawing Out”** “I think, in many ways, it’s the most aggressive song we’ve put out, or the most intense. Because it has these mean tempo ramps that just fuel anxiety, I think. And I really love that. It all culminates in these aggressive, hardcore electro kicks, which I find so, so nice. And it kind of blends well with the metal aesthetic in a weird way. I’m very happy with this one. It’s a new flavor of heavy.” **“Disease”** “That’s basically about how good intentions can have bad results. Because I think I’ve hurt a lot of people just by trying to help them, and I’ve been hurt by people who’ve tried to help me. It’s not about the intent, but sometimes a helping hand is just something in the way. That sounds very cynical, but I think there’s truth to that. It kind of needs to be spoken to.” **“369”** “This is a reference to a Tom Waits song called ‘Clap Hands,’ which itself is a reference to a Shirley Ellis song called ‘The Clapping \[Song\],’ which starts out ‘Three, six, nine, the \[goose\] drank wine.’ So, it’s a cover of a cover. Or a theft of a theft. I kind of wanted to pay my dues, although it’s so obscure no one will ever know unless I explain it. So, I don’t know if my dues are really paid.” **“Thrill”** “This is basically one of the newer emotions that we try to convey with this record. It’s not imposing, it’s not dark and brooding or ominous. It’s basically still aggressive, but most of all excited. I think that’s an emotion that I’ve always wanted to convey with this band, and I think I finally got to do it on this record. I wouldn’t even say it’s a metal song. I’d say it’s more like a rock song.” **“une ville vide”** “I go on long walks at night. And the town I live in is quite sleepy, so it’s empty a lot of the time, which I find one of the nicest feelings. I wanted to convey that feeling of being in between these looming buildings, and you kind of feel like a little mouse in a huge, strange world. There’s freedom to that, and that’s what I wanted to convey with this instrumental. Also, it’s kind of a palate cleanser between songs.” **“Sugarcoat”** “That’s another fun one. It’s such a simple song, and it almost veers into the goofy. There’re no solos, there’s no, ‘What is that rhythm structure?’ It’s kind of just a banger. It’s silly, and it’s supposed to be that. It’s one of those songs, when I wrote it, I giggled to myself and said, ‘This is going to be so much fun live.’ And the times we’ve played it live, by the last part of it, people are just singing that little theme thing. That just makes me almost burst with glee.” **“Solace”** “In many ways, this is the saddest song I’ve ever written. I honestly wasn’t sure if it would make it onto this record because I thought it was too much of a whiplash moment. But now I think of it as kind of a necessity to balance things out. And it took me a really long time to write this one. I just wanted to get everything right, and I’m really happy with the result. It’s inspired by a lot of Portishead and this song The Book of Knots did with Mike Patton called ‘Planemo.’ I just wanted to replicate that absolute dire, heart-wrenching situation. I’m not sure if I can do that one live because I might cry.” **“Hide in Shade”** “That’s basically vintage Zeal & Ardor because it’s the only song that’s older. It’s not only a callback—it’s actually from that time. It just never really got a home on an album until this one because I had to arrange it properly. So, it’s been brewing and stewing for a while. It’s just kind of a reminder of where we come from.” **“to my ilk”** “Another not-so-heavy track. I think this is the softest record we put out thus far, and I’m really happy with it in terms of how the three voices that we have are featured on it. It’s very distinct. It’s not too far from what people expect of us, but it kind of veers in a distinct direction. I mean, we could be blamed for selling out or whatever because it’s such a poppy track. But I think it still has this emotionality that is very much us. That can’t be denied. It’s not the best track to get the party started, but it’s still a good one.”

For the follow-up to their 2018 Grammy-winning *Electric Messiah*, stoner-metal trio High on Fire enlisted Big Business’ Coady Willis to replace longtime drummer Des Kensel. “Coady is one of our favorite drummers, and it just seemed like it would make sense musically,” bassist Jeff Matz tells Apple Music. “Once we started jamming with him, it became apparent that it was going to work out really well. He has his own style, but he understands the High on Fire aesthetic.” Despite winning the Grammy for Best Metal Performance for their last album, High on Fire felt no pressure in writing *Cometh the Storm* with a new member. “I don’t really think like that,” vocalist/guitarist Matt Pike says. “It was nice to be appreciated by our peers and such, but we didn’t really get to take full advantage of it because the world shut down not long after we won. I think we got exposed to a lot of people who hadn’t heard us prior to that, but that’s probably it. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be weird to win another one?” Below, Pike and Matz discuss each track on *Cometh the Storm*. **“Lambsbread”** Pike: “Well, I always have a song about weed. It’s basically a description of a bong hit working in a higher mental element, like what pot does to a meditative state, I guess. I don’t know how to word that correctly, but that’s just what pot does to you.” Matz: “The music for the chorus has been kicking around since probably 2010, and it reflects my obsession with Middle Eastern folk music, so we added some acoustic baglama to that part. The intro and outro just popped into my head when I was driving around, so I scat-sang it into my phone. It’s so Beavis and Butt-Head.” **“Burning Down”** Pike: “That’s more of a serious one, and it’s a tiny bit political. I’m calling out people like the World Economic Forum and the billionaires who fly around in jets and tell us if we give them a billion more dollars, they’re going to fucking fix the world for us. Who the fuck are these people?” Matz: “Musically, that was one that Matt and Coady were working on when I arrived at practice one day. That riff’s got old-school High on Fire vibes. It definitely harkens back to the early albums, but it’s got some really interesting little timing changes.” **“Trismegistus”** Pike: “The title means ‘thrice great,’ which comes from Hermes, who I always thought was an interesting character in mythology because he combined the wisdom of the material and the spiritual worlds. The music sounds kind of Egyptian, so in the lyrics, I’m talking about Osiris and Duat and Anubis. I’ve always been into esoteric mythology, but I’ve never really done one on Egypt.” Matz: “The verse riff came from when I was jamming with Coady down in LA. It reminded me of Lucifer’s Friend or something, like a weird classic-rock riff, but I tried to make it a little more like Voivod with some discordant intervals. The chorus uses a Middle Eastern scale, so I think that’s what set Matt off in that Egyptian lyrical direction.” **“Cometh the Storm”** Pike: “This is basically about nuclear war and how foolish it is. It’s kind of an elaboration of ‘Burning Down,’ how we’re just starting wars and talking about nuclear war like it’s normal.” Matz: “The track started out of a little thing I started playing at practice, just tapping on the bass, and Matt just started coming up with a vocal right on the spot. I really like the vocal melody, and it’s probably my favorite vocal performance on the whole album.” **“Karanlık Yol”** Matz: “I’ve been studying Turkish folk music pretty intensely since just before the pandemic. I’ve been studying the Turkish folk lute, the baglama, and just learning how to play different folk tunes and different styles with different teachers in Türkiye and the Philippines. So, I basically wanted to try to write something in the style of a Turkish folk dance because I think those types of sounds blend really well with the particular kind of heavy music that we play.” **“Sol’s Golden Curse”** Pike: “That’s the first song I wrote with Coady when I flew down to LA so we could feel each other out. I took something out of our riff vault, which is just hours and hours of music that me and Jeff have compiled over the years, and started working on it with Coady. Lyrically, it has more weird, esoteric shit about the Sethians and Abraxas.” **“The Beating”** Pike: “That’s our D-beat song. I’ve always been into the martial arts world, especially MMA and boxing, but I don’t do too many songs about it. This one’s pretty much about ring fighting. It seemed to take the right shape. It’s a ripper and definitely one of the faster-paced ones on the album. And I’ve got to put a \[Jeff\] Hanneman solo on every album, so this is the song.” **“Tough Guy”** Pike: “We’ve played with many hardcore bands in the past, so we were being smart-asses and wrote this hardcore breakdown about 10 years ago. It turned out really good, even though we were just joking around. But it’s got more of a metal mentality to it, just fighting and moshing, but it’s also about rebuilding our band from scratch. It’s truly violent sounding, so I went with that theme for the lyrics.” **“Lightning Beard”** Pike: “The title was kind of an inside joke between me and Jeff. I took this picture of him when he was posing all crazy with his bass, and I had this camera app, so I put all these lightning bolts all up in his beard and on his fretboard. We called it ‘Lightning Beard,’ which just sounded cool. But the song is about my El Camino. During COVID, I got it going really fast and was doing doughnuts in front of all the street racers, and they were cheering me on, so I made lyrics out of that.” Matz: “That’s another ripper that we came up with at practice. It’s got a pretty crazy freak-out section during the solo where the bass just completely goes nuts. It’s pretty fun.” **“Hunting Shadows”** Pike: “That one has some deep lyrics to me. I was just having a hard time with depression and my alcohol recovery and all sorts of stuff. I wrote that song not thinking about it, but really, I was trying to heal myself. I ate a bag of shrooms to try to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. I thought I was singing those lyrics to someone else, but I was singing them to myself, so I had this crazy conundrum. But it’s about self-reflection.” Matz: “Musically, that one’s really interesting. It’s got more of a positive, hopeful energy to it that’s definitely a little bit different for us.” **“Darker Fleece”** Pike: “Once we started writing the new record, I went over to Jeff’s to put some ideas together. I had this riff, but it was so long and complicated. Then we made it more complicated by adding subdivisions. It’s almost a lesson in timing, how you can cut up a whole note into quarter notes and 32nd notes. Lyrically, it’s just about life and war—it’s very much a war march. I’m part Scottish, and Coady’s dad plays the bagpipes, so I put a bagpipe-style guitar solo on it.” Matz: The direction that Coady took with the drums on this song really changed the character of it and made it a lot heavier and beefier sounding. It’s definitely one of my favorites on the album. With the intro and outro, it seemed like the perfect closer track.”

On their sixth album, Swedish metal conjurers Tribulation allow the goth side of their personality to overshadow their death-metal roots. *Sub Rosa in Aeternum* sees vocalist/bassist Johannes Andersson mostly ditching his demonic growl for a clean, stentorian delivery akin to that of Sisters of Mercy’s Andrew Eldritch. “We wanted to do something new,” guitarist Adam Zaars tells Apple Music. “I was looking back at the previous three albums, and they’re each very much their own thing, but still similar enough for me to be craving something else. At first, we didn’t really know what that new thing would be.” Then Andersson, who hadn’t written a Tribulation song in nearly 20 years, presented his demo for what would become *Sub Rosa*’s closer, “Poison Pages.” “Obviously, the biggest change is the clean vocals,” Zaars says. “But we didn’t know if it was going to work. We’d been talking about it, but just using it as another instrument, like background harmonies or maybe a cool chorus on some song. When Johannes showed us ‘Poison Pages,’ it felt liberating—and a lot of fun to explore new ground.” *Sub Rosa* is also the first album Tribulation wrote without guitarist Jonathan Hultén, who left the band before the release of 2021’s *Where the Gloom Becomes Sound*. As a result, new guitarist Joseph Tholl contributed quite a bit of material here. “The overall sound on the album absolutely has to do with Joseph being in the band,” Zaars says. “He wrote more songs than I did. With Joseph being another type of songwriter, another type of guitar player, it feels like the beginning of a new era.” Below, Zaars comments on each track. **“The Unrelenting Choir”** “Johannes wrote this song. He hasn’t written a song since our first demo, so this was something very new for everyone. And he did great, I would say. The original version was actually longer. Where it stops now, it went into this very cool Death SS-sounding part that we might use in the future. But we needed an intro, we felt, and Johannes did this one. It has a very ‘welcome to the show’ kind of feel. He got the idea for the bass at the beginning from some podcast he listens to. He won’t tell us which one.” **“Tainted Skies”** “That’s a Joseph song sounding very much like Tribulation, but in his own special way. This is one of the things that he brought to the table that really challenged us, daring us to try new things out. The lyrics are about reincarnation, I guess, but more specifically about the in-between stage—the bardo, as the Buddhists call it. Dying and being reborn has been a Tribulation theme since forever.” **“Saturn Coming Down”** “What made me write this song with that weird intro riff was, I wanted a guitar sound that was something different, where it almost feeds back, where it’s chaotic in a way. I don’t even remember how I did it because I’m far, far from being a sound gear guy. I want to be, but I have no interest. So, it was just sheer luck that I found this strange, almost surf-guitar sound that’s a little bit Dead Kennedys. The song is about Saturn, obviously, but when I write lyrics for Tribulation, it’s like a game of association. It’s Saturn from every possible direction, so people shouldn’t be looking for a coherent theme. Well, not too coherent at least.” **“Hungry Waters”** “This is another Joseph song. It’s not as Tribulation as ‘Tainted Skies.’ The first time he showed this to me, I loved it, but I didn\'t think it could be on the album. I think that was before we decided to have a bunch of clean vocals on the album. That really was a catalyst for a few of these songs that would probably never have happened if we hadn\'t made that decision. It’s something fresh and new for us. The mid-section with the solos is very Tribulation, very Italian horror-soundtrack sounding. I was almost surprised by how well Joseph knew the sound. I’m still amazed by him writing this song.” **“Drink the Love of God”** “What the fuck is the love of God and how do you drink it? I know the answer, but I don’t want to be transparent. But I can say this: It’s the second song that was written specifically from that guitar sound from ‘Saturn Coming Down.’ It’s very rare for me to write songs quickly, but I did for this. The only other one I can remember like that is ‘The Motherhood of God’ from *The Children of the Night*. It was our producer Tom Dalgety’s idea to add the key change after the solo. Being European, I think it’s a very schlager way of writing a song. But he was right, and I was wrong, I’m happy to say.” **“Murder in Red”** “This is probably my baby on the album. Most of it wasn’t very difficult to write, but it was difficult to finish. I made a demo of this that sounded almost industrial, but Johannes took it in a completely different direction with his vocals. That was very cool, almost like a Chris Isaak song to some extent. We were pushing our boundaries in a very satisfying way. Lyrically, I’ve been into gialli and violent Italian cinema since I was 13, when I bought *Cannibal Holocaust* on VHS. Since then, I’ve been hooked. Early Tribulation lyrics were oriented more towards zombie cannibal flicks, but this is more like earlier Argento and Mario Bava.” **“Time & the Vivid Ore”** “This is a song by Joseph that’s as much a part of something old as it is of something new. It almost sounds as though it could be from *Where the Gloom Becomes Sound*, but since it’s written by Joseph, it has its own distinct *Sub Rosa* flavor to it. It’s got one of the coolest solo sections on the album, displaying both mine and Joseph’s style of guitar playing and how they, in our opinion, complement each other. It’s also the only song with exclusively growling vocals!” **“Reaping Song”** “It’s one of the songs on the album that’s quite out there in comparison with our old material—somber, melancholic, romantic, haunting, and beautiful. It wasn’t supposed to be a Nick Cave homage to begin with, and I didn’t even think of it before Tom started talking about it. Then, of course, Joseph wanted it to be called ‘Reaping Song,’ which is an obvious reference to Nick Cave. But I know it wasn’t, at first, written to be that—it just happened to sound somewhat like Nick Cave. The ‘Reaping Song’ is a song within a song, as that is what the protagonist of the story sings every year when the harvest season is upon us. Death meta.” **“Poison Pages”** “This is the song that really settled the new direction with the clean vocals. Johannes wrote it, and in the demo, he was singing. It wasn’t a decision that happened instantaneously, but after listening to it a lot, I think we all realized that this could be something to pursue. It’s a very goth-rock kind of song about *The Name of the Rose*, specifically the movie. Umberto Eco’s book, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s movie, and the soundtrack by James Horner have all been a huge source of inspiration for the band for a very long time, but this is the first time we’re this explicit about it. There’s so much in there that is just a very good fit for Tribulation. The beast is among us!”