Pitchfork's Best Metal Albums of 2018
Including records by YOB, Deafheaven, Skeletonwitch, and more
Published: December 19, 2018 06:00
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Black Viper anno 2018 is: Salvador Armijo - Vocals Arild M. Torp - Guitars Cato Stormoen - Drums Bass guitar and backing vocals on this album was performed by Christoffer Braathen Eternal hails and may the moon shine light on your future endavours! Recordings began in Bomberommet, Kolbotn (RIP) Fall 2016 and finished Spring 2018 at BSN Studios, Eidsvoll All music & lyrics by C. Stormoen except "Intro" by A. M. Torp, "Suspiria" - music by A. M. Torp & "Freedom`s Reign" - Music by C. Stormoen / A. M. Torp. Recorded by Black Viper with assistance from Tom Erik Hansen Mixed by Arild M. Torp Mastered by Patrick W. Engel Album art by H. Johansson Layout by RKV
The word tends to get abused, but the California metal innovators’ fourth album exists largely to make sure “epic” won’t lose its proper meaning—and not just because four of the seven tracks clock in at over 10 minutes, although that doesn’t hurt. It’s the familiar squall of guitars, rapid-fire drums, and George Clarke’s curdled screaming, combined with more mannered flourishes like piano, spoken word, and Chelsea Wolfe’s guest vocals (“Night People”) that feels huge and relentless and wholly unique, surpassing the scope of even 2013’s instant classic *Sunbather*.
HORRENDOUS explode out of the underground with their incredible new album 'Idol'. Drawing inspiration from both personal and national crises, 'Idol's' music is a methodical and unapologetic take on dynamic, progressive death metal. The highly anticipated new album sees HORRENDOUS at the highest echelon of their musical creativity to date. Thematically, the ambitious new album is an exploration of defeat, of the gods we build in our minds to escape the responsibility of action and change as we relinquish our agency. The music in 'Idol' mimics this act of deity building, with sprawling compositions that are imposing in scope and mirror the great turmoil of our times. Tracks such as "Soothsayer", "Golgothan Tongues" and the monumental "Obolus" position the band in a league of their own, as one of the death metal's leading new entities.
Horror-obsessed, underground cult ILSA weave together tales of depravity and devil worship on their Relapse debut Corpse Fortress. Recorded by Kevin Bernsten (Full of Hell, Code Orange, Magrudergrind, Integrity) in Baltimore, MD at Developing Nations, Corpse Fortress is nine tracks forged in filth with dense layers of emotionally draining sludge, murky, primordial doom and feedback-laden, crusty death metal. Corpse Fortress is easily the rawest, most abhorrent and nasty album in ILSA’s 10-year career and the perfect soundtrack for the initiated miscreants of this rapidly dying orb.
Led by Power Trip drummer Chris Ulsh on bass and vocals, Mammoth Grinder pound out thundering death metal with a feverish punk attitude. For the band\'s fourth album, Ulsh enlists the talents of Iron Reagan members Ryan Parrish (drums) and Mark Bronzino (guitars), who bring unbridled fury and ripping riffs to the likes of \"Grimmenstein,\" \"Blazing Burst,\" and \"Locust\'s Nest.\" The power trio slow things down—briefly—on the churning \"Human Is Obsolete\" and the doom-laden \"Mysticism\" before kicking back into maximum overdrive.
Underground extreme metal trio MAMMOTH GRINDER return after five long years with their fourth full-length Cosmic Crypt, a non-stop, meteoric force of aggression and mayhem. Self-recorded by the band at Trax East in South River, NJ, mixed by Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Sepultura, Inquisition) and mastered by Toxic Holocaust’s Joel Grind, Cosmic Crypt is an 11 track slab of primitive, punk-inflected death metal. Frontman Chris Ulsh (Power Trip, Impalers) recruited Mark Bronzino (Iron Reagan) and Ryan Parrish (Iron Reagan, ex-Darkest Hour) to take MAMMOTH GRINDER to new heights of misanthropic rage and blazing songcraft! Features stunning cover art from the legendary Joe Petagno (Motorhead, Autopsy, Angelcorpse, Pink Floyd).
D.C. grindcore titans Pig Destroyer—like Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the enigmatic troupe with whom they’ve shared multiple members over the years—have always excelled at finding beauty in brutality. *Head Cage*, their multilayered, ambitious sixth album, keeps in that vein—J.R. Hayes’ dark lyrics, set against aggressive, off-kilter riffs and thunderous blast beats, use poetry as a weapon. This LP is also a more of a collaborative effort than usual: ANb bassist John Jarvis makes his recorded debut with the band (resulting in the first bass to feature on a Pig Destroyer album), and significantly thickens the overall sound. Additionally, ANb vocalists Richard Johnson and Kat Katz show up (on the pummeling hardcore anthem “Army of Cops” and the short, nasty blast “Terminal Itch,” respectively), while Jason Hodges (Suppression, Brown Piss, Bermuda Triangles) joins in on the thrashy, self-explanatory “The Adventures of Jason and Jr.”
After six long, harsh years of absence, the mighty PIG DESTROYER have reassembled to eradicate eardrums and split skulls with their highly anticipated sixth full-length opus, entitled Head Cage (named after a grisly medieval torture device). A visceral vortex of animalistic rage and extreme sonic brilliance, Head Cage is a true work of extreme metal art, that with the addition of a bass player, is hands down their most dynamic and heaviest recording to date. Across twelve tracks, PIG DESTROYER weave together harrowing tales of philosophical dualities, touching on mortality and depression, fear and violence, and the darkest complexities of the human condition, all told through the distorted lens of delightfully transgressive vocalist/lyricist JR Hayes. Musically, the band continues to push the boundaries of metal, grindcore, noise and punk, ramping up the intensity and leaving you bludgeoned in a state of utter shock, all in less than 33 minutes. Head Cage was recorded by guitarist Scott Hull at Visceral Sound Studios, mixed and mastered by Will Putney (Exhumed, Every Time I Die, Body Count) and features striking artwork by Mark McCoy (Full of Hell, Nothing) along with guest vocal appearances by Agoraphobic Nosebleed's Richard Johnson and Kat Katz plus Full Of Hell's Dylan Walker. PLAY AT MAXIMUM VOLUME!
Since they hit the scene in 2003, Athens, Ohio\'s Skeletonwitch have always been more than just a thrash band—whether they were snapping necks with their breakout 2007 album, *Beyond the Permafrost*, or branching out on 2013’s melodic *Serpents Unleashed*. Their sixth LP (and first without vocalist Adam Clemans after he joined the band), *Devouring Radiant Light* showcases a seasoned, adventurous version of Skeletonwitch—one that’s more interested in exploring gloomy, dark corners than crushing beer cans and kicking up circle pits. The record still shreds while embracing genre agnosticism: On songs like the magisterial title track or the icy closer, “Sacred Seal,” shards of gothic doom, death metal, and proggy bombast jab at the band\'s more familiar thrash template.
Sleep’s *The Sciences* begins with a three-minute warm-up of the same name. As though revving a long-dormant engine of feedback and distortion, it’s a fitting start to the legendary doom trio’s first album in almost two decades (released on 4/20, no less). Unlike their hour-plus stoner meditation, *Dopesmoker*, *The Sciences* is divided into six colossal tracks, anchored by the comforting familiarity of sludgy riffs and rumbling percussion. Throughout, you’ll find some of their greatest guitar solos (“Marijuanaut’s Theme”) and lyrics (“Giza Butler,” an homage to Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler), while stunning, reflective closer “The Botanist” is among the best songs in their genre-defining career.
Love is what makes us human. It guides our decisions, shapes our worldview, and defines our experiences. Its absence equates to tragedy while its presence gives our lives meaning. “Love has been well worn theme throughout a lot of rock music, but most commonly in terms of love-lost, overly romanticized versions of new love, or as a veil for sexual conquest,” says SUMAC guitarist and vocalist Aaron Turner (Old Man Gloom, Mamiffer, ISIS). “It is rarely addressed in its more spiritual and vulnerable aspects.” Those less-traversed territories of humankind’s connective bond became the central theme SUMAC’s third full-length album, Love In Shadow, though their explorations of that motif are a far cry from traditional manifestations of love in the realm of art. Across four protracted songs, Turner and his cohorts—Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists, Erosion) on drums and Brian Cook (Russian Circles) on bass—interlace and mangle sounds from their instruments in a sonic homage to both the innate warmth of human magnetism and the cold realities of corrupted love—jealousy, obsession, perversion, addiction. Listeners who followed the Northwest trio down the tangled briar of mathematical riffs and hypnotic battery on The Deal or through the unfettered eruptions and methodical dissonance of What One Becomes are aware that SUMAC eschews the conventional balladry typically associated with odes to our spiritual connectedness. Saccharine sweetness or fatalistic tales of unrequited affection are nowhere to be found on Love In Shadow. Over the album’s hour-plus length, the band employs minimal tools to achieve a maximum overview of visceral passions. Yet while popular music puts an emphasis on conveying moods through well-tread tropes, cultural signifiers, and deeply ingrained associations between tempo, texture, melody and their respective emotional resonance, SUMAC approach their music with the tactile immediacy of abstract expressionists. The beauty is not in the content, but in the form. Love In Shadow comes crashing out of the gate with "The Task." SUMAC wastes no time churning out the meticulous bombardment of knotty riffage and dexterous drumming that drew cerebral metalheads to their early records, but at the moment when most bands would wrap up their song, the band pushes forward and the razor sharp delivery and dense polyrhythmic weave of instrumentation begins to crumble. Turner’s signature bellow escalates into a primal howl. Everything falls apart, and suddenly we’re left alone with a warped melody played on a broken guitar. The band locks back into a lurching, megalith groove, and then retreats into a tense, minimalist palm-muted rhythmic pattern while a fragmented stream-of-conscious guitar line slithers across the open space. The entire song, and indeed the entire record, grapples with a duality of intricately composed arrangements juxtaposed against unbridled improvisations. The freeform abstractions of Love In Shadow were hinted at on early songs like “Hollow King” and “Image of Control”, but SUMAC’s recent collaborations with esteemed Japanese artist Keiji Haino pushed the band completely into the realm of spontaneous composition. “Incorporating a lot of free and open space within the borders of our songs has been an ongoing goal for us,” Turner says. “While all of this material was written before our recording session with Haino, that experience further bolstered our confidence to travel further into territories free of preconceived structure and melody. Immediacy, intuition, and risk have become an increasingly important aspect of our music making.” Whether it’s the protracted guitar solos underpinned by a malleable rhythm section on “Attis’ Blade”, the woozy drones of bending guitar strings and feedback on “Arcing Silver”, or the intermissions of distorted amplifier groans and Eastern guitar trills on “Ecstasy of Unbecoming”, these adventurous sojourns add a new dimension to SUMAC’s ongoing explorations of dynamics. The polarized approaches of calculated composition and untethered expression now reside with fluctuations between space and density, complexity and brute force, and shrill noise and rumbling thunder in the trio’s arsenal of contrasts. Kurt Ballou recorded the album live with the goal of minimal overdubs or fixes over five days at Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline, WA. The result is an album that sounds more alive and human than the common computer grid-built mechanically perfect metal record. “Since many of the surface level aspects of our being are often used as divisive tools to separate and alienate us from one another, the intent with Love In Shadow is to reveal that all humans desire and need to be loved and accepted for who they are, for just being,” Turner says in closing. “The album also serves to highlight what some of the repercussions are for love that is scorned, suppressed or socially discouraged—we lash out against one another, our love turns to fear, we disparage ourselves, we try to fulfill the need for love through unhealthy means—and on a more destructive level, those in positions of power are compelled to annihilate and oppress others.” Love can be beautiful. Love can be ugly. But at its core, it’s alive, unpredictable, and volatile. On Love In Shadow, SUMAC captures that passion in the most primal and unfettered manner possible.
With each release, the duo of Lee Buford and Chip King continue to defy the constraints of what it means to be a “heavy” band, seamlessly combining composition or production approaches from hip hop, pop, classical, as well as rock and electronica resulting in a rich and utterly singular sound. Equally at home on festival stages, art spaces, or in DIY basements, they transcend musical boundaries. Their ambitious creativity shapes their bleak worldview into propulsive, affecting, and even danceable music often drenched in distortion. On I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer The Body challenged themselves again by turning their compositional approach on its head, choosing to build the record on their own samples rather than recording the basic tracks of drums and guitars and processing those. The results carry the listener towards the brink of emotional and musical extremes. I Have Fought Against It… conjures the sublime from an unexpected and incomparable variety of sounds. The Body are known for their intense, abrasive live shows, whose waves of dissonance create an abiding dread or an overwhelming sense of terror. They create a volume of sound almost unfathomable from a duo and are unaffected by instrument choice: guitar and drums, or keyboard and synthesizers. Inventive producers, the duo expand their recorded sound palate with regular contributions from the likes of Chrissy Wolpert (Assembly of Light Choir), and Ben Eberle (Sandworm), arranged with help of longtime engineers Seth Manchester and Keith Souza (Machines With Magnets). Wolpert’s ethereal calls and Eberle’s vicious growl are augmented by Lingua Ignota’s Kristin Hayter, whose impassioned voice features on the viscerally emotional “Nothing Stirs.” On “Sickly Heart Of Sand,” vocal tradeoffs between King and Hayter’s are punctuated with the howls of Uniform’s Michael Berdan. With The Body’s keen sense of balance, the ferociousness of these extreme performances are underpinned by the elegance of string swells and pensive, even melodies from a lone piano. For The Body, any source of inspiration is fair game to achieve their distinct atmosphere of unbearable dread, pain, and sadness. “Partly Alive” places rolling drum figures, commonly found in pop, and transforms them with a backdrop of horns, skittering synthetic hi hats, and pitched feedback. The oppressive groove of “An Urn” pulls beat arrangement and melodic ideas from disparate electronic influences. Their eclectic sampling choices are both musical and literary from singjay star Eek-A-Mouse to a reading of Bohumil Hrabal to the Clarice Lispector quote on the album’s artwork and beyond. The album title, an excerpt of Virginia Woolf’s suicide letter, is an apt moniker for the pervasive themes of loss, desperation and loneliness throughout. Carefully selected samples and literary references bolster the album’s emotional heft. I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer proves how truly adventurous and diverse a creative force The Body has become. The Body continue to push the boundaries and definition of what is heavy music, their ingenuity unparalleled.
From tragedy to triumph, YOB’s incredible 8th full-length recording was conceived amidst dire circumstances that nearly left frontman Mike Scheidt dead. Suffering from an extremely painful and potentially fatal intestinal disease, Scheidt miraculously recovered and reinvigorated the Oregon trio with a new sense of purpose for Our Raw Heart, an album informed by the will to survive. More exposed than ever both physically and emotionally, YOB bleed out seven riveting tracks of enormous volume and pensive, transcendental beauty across 75 minutes of ultimate doom. A brilliant musical progression in the YOB continuum, Our Raw Heart is the band at their most aggressive, impassioned and eclectic. The riffs are massive, the vocals captivating and the songwriting sublime. Existing in its own organic universe, Our Raw Heart is truly the band’s finest work to date and the apex achievement of what heavy music can accomplish. Our Raw Heart was co-produced by the band and longtime collaborator Billy Barnett at Gung Ho Studio in Eugene, Ore., with mastering handled by Heba Kadry (The Mars Volta, Diamanda Galas, Slowdive).