PopMatters' 20 Best Metal Albums of 2021

“We wanted it to be bold. We didn’t want it to be an allusion to anything. We just wanted it to be what it is, like when you see a Renaissance painting called *Man Holding Fish at the Market While Other People Walk By*.” So says vocalist/guitarist Adam Vallely of The Armed about the title of the band’s fourth album, *Ultrapop*. The previously anonymous Detroit hardcore collective revealed their identities with the record’s announcement in early 2021—or so they’d have listeners believe. And while Vallely (if that’s his real name) certainly seems to be involved, along with folks named “Dan Greene,” “Cara Drolshagen,” and Urian Hackney (an actual person and drummer), one never knows. What seems almost certainly true is that *Ultrapop* features guest appearances from Mark Lanegan, Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age), Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe), and Kurt Ballou (Converge), who may or may not have produced the album. Below, Vallely discusses each track. **“Ultrapop”** “We wanted to open with a track that immediately made clear what our intentions were on this record. We wanted to throw you in the deep end. A big element aesthetically was trying to combine the most beautiful things with the most ugly things: There’s these really nice vocal arrangements that are pretty up-front, and then you have these power electronics and harsh noise accompanying it. So putting this song first is incredibly intentional. If you don\'t like this, you might as well get the fuck out right now.” **“All Futures”** “Whereas ‘Ultrapop’ is throwing you in the deep end, we wanted this to be like a distillation of all the various elements you hear on the album. We wanted it to be very catchy, very cleverly composed, and really good. The first guitar lead is very St. Vincent-influenced, then Jonni Randall’s lead in the chorus has a very Berlin-era Iggy sound. Lyrically, it’s an anti-edgelord anthem. It’s saying that just pointing out your distaste for things is not inherently a contribution. It’s okay to dislike things, but if you’re devoting all your energy to contrarianism, you’re just anti.” **“Masunaga Vapors”** “Keisuke Masunaga was one of the illustrators of the \[anime\] show *Dragon Ball Z*. He had a very distinct style with angularity and noses and eyes. But the song itself is based on Stéphane Breitwieser, who is a super notorious and prolific art thief from France who felt really connected to the pieces he would steal from museums. It’s a super chaotic but kind of uplifting song, and the whole thing is a confrontation about ownership and attribution in art and what belongs to who—and does any of it matter?” **“A Life So Wonderful”** “The title just seemed like a really not nihilistic, not metal, not hardcore thing to say, and it’s applied somewhat ironically to the lyrical content of the song. Dan Greene wrote about 90 percent of it. He always works in this MIDI program that sounds like an old Nintendo game and then we have to apply real instrumentation. Lyrically, it’s about the deterioration of truth as a societal construct and how dangerous that can be. I know, a real original theme for 2021, but that’s what it’s about—information warfare, destabilization, and the eventual numbness that can come from that.” **“An Iteration”** “This song was actually written almost in full during the *Only Love* sessions. But I think we all just felt that it was a bridge too far for that album, contextually—which was a real hard decision to make and made us feel like adult artists. But it’s one of my favorites on either of the records. Ben Chisholm really helped us nail this one and make it stronger. You can hear Nicole Estill from True Widow doubling my main vocal on everything, and then you can hear Jess Hall, who also sang on ‘Ultrapop,’ doing the hooks, because we wanted those to be real poppy.” **“Big Shell”** “Around 2016, we started doing these splinter groups where just a few of us would play in Detroit under different names. We would play material that we were not sure if it was Armed material. This is one of those songs, and we decided it was definitely a good song for The Armed. It’s probably the most rock-oriented track on the album, and it’s really satisfying. Cara wrote the lyrics, but I know she’s speaking about presenting your real self to the world and letting anyone who doesn’t like it deal with it on their own accord, which is sort of the spirit of *Ultrapop* throughout.” **“Average Death”** “This is the very first song we worked on with Ben Chisholm, and it really cemented the collaboration. It’s got this cool angular drum beat and this weird, lurching sort of groove throughout. Ben added a lot of gorgeous synths and the vocal break leading into the chorus. Urian did this undulating blastbeat that gives it these cool accents. But it’s a huge bummer lyrically—it’s about the abuses of actresses in 1930s Hollywood, that studio structure which is unfortunately a systemic issue that has not quite rooted itself out nearly a hundred years later.” **“Faith in Medication”** “The bassline is kinda crazy, and there\'s a guitar solo by Andy Pitcher towards the end. He’s channeling serious \'90s-era Reeves Gabrels—you can hear that the guitar doesn\'t have a headstock. Urian is absolutely beating the shit out of the drums with those cascading fills. Dan is obsessed with the visuals of \'80s and \'90s mecha-based anime where you see the fucking Gundams having some sort of dogfight in space. That\'s how he wanted the song to feel, and I think it absolutely feels like that.” **“Where Man Knows Want”** “The track opens very sparse, and then it quickly lets the normal The Armed reveal itself in the choruses. Not unlike ‘All Futures,’ the beginning clearly owes a lot to Annie Clark. Kurt Ballou is playing everything you hear at the end that sounds like a stringed instrument. He’s the king of playing those heavy chords punctuated by feedback. Lyrically, the song is talking about the creative curse, the obsession with having a new idea and executing it—and tricking yourself into thinking that when you finish this, you can rest. But it never quite works that way.” **“Real Folk Blues”** “Like ‘Masunaga Vapors,’ this song references a real person—Tony Colston-Hayter, who was this legendary acid-house rave promoter from the \'80s who then in the mid-2010s was arrested for hacking into bank accounts and stealing a million pounds. The reason we became obsessed with the story is because he was hacking into the accounts using this insane machine that was like a pitch-shifting pedal taped to something else that basically allowed him to alter the gender of his voice and play prerecorded bank messages that would trick the systems to get into what he needed to get into.” **“Bad Selection”** “This one was largely experimental as we were crafting it. We just wanted to break new ground with something, I think it’s very successful at doing that. Lyrically, it’s interesting because there’s a duality that presents the listener with a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of thing. With the chorus, is it about someone who’s keeping the faith in a better future, or is it about people being blinded by a violent faith in better days that had already gone by? One is really optimistic and one is very sinister, and they allude to real-world things.” **“The Music Becomes a Skull” (feat. Mark Lanegan)** “This takes an unexpected dark and dismal turn at the end of the sugar rush that is the rest of the record. Dan had a specific vision for the vocals that our immediate group of collaborators couldn’t really execute on. We were talking about it with Ben Chisholm and Dan said, ‘We need Mark Lanegan to sing on it.’ I think he meant we needed someone that sounds like that. We didn’t expect to actually get Mark Lanegan. But within 24 hours, we had vocals from Mark Lanegan. As inconvenient as a collaborative effort like The Armed can be, it can also lead to something like this. I mean, I’m singing with Mark Lanegan on this. It’s so fucking cool.”

For their second full-length, doom outfit King Woman unfurls a concept album loosely based on John Milton’s *Paradise Lost*, a 17th-century epic about Lucifer’s temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. “I was raised Christian, but I’m not Christian anymore,” vocalist Kris Esfandiari tells Apple Music. “There’s a lot of Christian mythology going on in here—stories about some of the major characters from the Bible, like Christ, Adam and Eve, Lilith and Lucifer.” Before she had the album’s concept, Esfandiari had already written the song “Morning Star” about the fallen angel Lucifer. Then a fan gave her an old copy of *Paradise Lost* at a show. “I’d been working on the record, but that was the missing piece of the puzzle,” she says. “It was like an epiphany. So I just went down that road, and here we are. I hope I did it justice.” Below, she discusses each track on *Celestial Blues*. **“Celestial Blues”** “The poem at the beginning comes from these blackout periods I had when I was younger—I guess they were seizures. I had one in the shower, and I woke up screaming and making these crazy noises. My mom ran into the shower fully clothed and started praying in tongues while water was just pouring on both of us. She was trying to cast the spirit of death out of me. But the song itself is about frustration—gender dysphoria and being stuck on this planet of suffering and pain.” **“Morning Star”** “This is partially about Lucifer. To me, they’re kind of an androgynous, Joker type of character who has been scapegoated—and I wanted Lucifer to tell their side of the story. But it’s also about personal experiences where I felt I was a scapegoat in a situation. And that feeling you’ve lost your mind and gone to hell, basically, and come out on the other side a little deranged or crooked and at the same time magnificent. You don’t recognize yourself, but you’ve become this kind of Joker-esque character because of everything you went through.” **“Boghz”** “There are a few translations for this word, but in Arabic it means ‘hatred.’ I’m Iranian, so in Farsi you could translate it as like the lump in your throat before you’re about to cry—or the feeling of pushing it down, like, ‘I’m not going to cry.’ For me, it’s more of a feeling, so I like that it has a few meanings. The song is about a relationship that I tried to make work, but the other person just kept beating me down and being so sadistic. I never really gave up, but I definitely had to walk away in order to survive. A lot of this record is about that relationship, in a way.” **“Golgotha** “This means ‘the place of the skull,’ and it’s where Christ was crucified. That was almost the album title, actually—I have it tattooed on my arm—but I just felt like *Celestial Blues* was more appropriate. The song is about karmic cycles. There’s a lyric in there that says, ‘The snake eats its tail, we return again to this hell,’ which is about how we repeat the same things over and over again and have a hard time learning our lessons. It’s also about the death and resurrection of myself, so there’s a lot to unpack there.” **“Coil”** “This is a continuation of ‘Golgotha’—it’s about the resurrection. To me, it’s like a hardcore gospel song or something. I’ve dealt with a lot of people in the past few years that really tested my patience and my faith in myself, people who made my life difficult and tried to tell me I couldn’t accomplish my dreams—people who insisted that I give all my magic away to them. All those people have since apologized to me, but the song is my declaration that I’m unstoppable. It’s the song of the warrior.” **“Entwined”** “This is a love song about surrendering to emotional availability and commitment. It’s kind of a confession of undying love. It’s about someone from my past. One of their parents passed away from cancer while we were seeing each other, and they kind of disappeared suddenly from my life because of that. So this is my parting gift to them.” **“Psychic Wound”** “We did a video for this one that’s kind of a vampire orgy. In the intro, it’s like I have this clear reflection of myself and then I get involved with these vampires. They start to approach me, it’s a vampire orgy, and then I have a psychotic break. At the end, I snap out of it and I’m returned to my original reflection. There’s a few meanings, but it’s basically about how we all have these wounds from our past, and sometimes vampiric people can sniff those wounds and take advantage of your pain. It’s also about having sex with the devil, so, you know—side note.” **“Ruse”** “This is a song about getting cheated on and taking your revenge. When you get cheated on, you might want to hurt the person who hurt you and feel like you never really knew who they were. There’s a line that says, ‘I’ll wait up for you tonight, you’ll forfeit our love.’ So it’s just about finding out some information that you’re shocked about, and then taking your revenge.” **“Paradise Lost”** “I relate this one back to the Garden of Eden, Lilith, Lucifer, Adam, Eve, God, forbidden fruit, impossible love and betrayal. I feel like this one is about the complexity of relationships and how sometimes they don’t always work out. But it’s also the story that’s been told since the beginning of time—the Garden of Eden.”

With their sophomore full-length, "Har", Romania's DORDEDUH have created a rare and unique metal record that defies easy categorisation, pushes boundaries, and offers something new and previously unheard. Guitarists and founders Edmond "Hupogrammos" Karban and Sol Faur aka Cristian Popescu were expected to deliver an album oscillating in the musical space between dark folk and black metal. And, while they did indeed draw from those sources, they also fearlessly incorporated electronic, gothic, rock, psychedelic, prog, and even pop elements without prejudice. It is not the first time that Hupogrammos and Sol Faur have been involved in creating an iconic album. Both had leading roles in composing of NEGURĂ BUNGET's masterpiece "Om", which essentially put Romania onto the map of heavy music. After splitting, the duo from the city of Timișoara founded DORDEDUH and delighted critics and fans alike with the EP "Valea omului" (2010) and debut full-length "Dar de duh" (2012). Beyond the obvious point of lyrics in the musical Romanian language, the native element also hides in DORDEDUH’s melodies and rhythms as well as in subtle touches of traditional instrumentation. DORDEDUH entrusted mixing and mastering to celebrated producer Jens Bogren, renowned for his singular approach and impact on the work of major artists including OPETH, DIMMU BORGIR, KATATONIA, MOONSPELL, DEVIN TOWNSEND, and IHSAHN. The Swede proved to be an excellent choice, and he brought this dark diamond to perfect brilliance. “Har” is a milestone – and not just for Romanian metal. DORDEDUH have taken an artistic quantum leap that promises to be recognized as one of the finest metal albums of the year. Buy at our shop here: worldwide: en.prophecy.de/artists/dordeduh/dordeduh-har.html US/Canada: us.prophecy.de/artists/dordeduh/dordeduh-har.html

Dedicated to trans people everywhere Proceeds go to The Coalition for Black Trans Economic Liberation cbtel.org in Philadelphia ------------ CW: graphic violence, blood . . . . . . rejoice, sister; rejoice, sibling tonight my knife shall drink the blood of God I will stain my teeth on His entrails and wear his flesh as the cloak of eternity, so our children may know the paths of the stars eat lightly; when the Pretender's angel comes to feast on the children of Gomorrah, our blood will boil from his insides and he will know eternal and untold suffering He wars against the people of the light : He sends armies to burn our cities His Empire is vast and touches all galaxies when our corpses fill the void, crushing the stars themselves, only then will he know blood and gravity, and weep. ------------ CW: fascist propaganda, military stuff, war, genocide An excerpt from the Book of Desertion: Your body is not yours. All matter must fall into the Singularity that is power; acceptance of this truth is wisdom. On wisdom is built Strength. On Strength do we build our Empire. This is the holy physics of the citizenship we now confer on you: Serve, and live forever. When I was 15 I was drafted into the division of Cataclysms. I remember being made to chant a litany for war: The true soldier fires not bullets but the Truth, kills not, but only brings into the Light The true soldier aims with his heart he does not seek glory, only the good of all. His rifle is blessed and his enemies will thank him with their final breath. and then our battalion fell on the salt mines in Tethys. It was slaughter. I fought with the conviction of a zealot - and I waited, safe in my virtue, for the blessing that was my due. I killed, and I waited. I waited, and I killed. I received no grace. When finally my scope found my own Sergeant's head, when with a sense of completeness I pulled the trigger, spilling his brains into the foxholes, when I wrested the standard from his hands and shouted our retreat: It was not because I had learned to see our victims as people. It was only because I had waited, and waited, and waited - and finally come to realize that God had forsaken me. I was arrested and tried. Were you there when they took my manhood? Were you there when I stood before the General? Were you there when they confiscated my rifle? He said unto me, "Deserter. A man is not born. A man is forged by the State and continues by the grace of God. As the State giveth, it may take away. We can no longer judge you, who hath no rifle. Go in peace."

Presenting our 4th Full Length LP “Mountain Fever” Completely new 54 minutes long Epos , comprised of African and Balkan brass sections, Arab violins, extended vocal techniques and guest appearances by colleagues from bands such as Orphaned Land and Melechesh. Recorded between Golan Heights to Fascination Street Studio (engineered by David Castillo) and mixed by Jens Bogren (Leprous, Katatonia, Opeth), featuring a stunning artwork by Costin Chioreanu. Track List: Snake Charmer Dispora My Love Mountain Fever Inwards Somewhere I sadly Belong The Stillnox Oratory Ascend Ya Shema Evyonecha For The Leader, With Strings Music Mångata

Physical copies here : www.sepulchralproductions.com/collections/sepulchralprod A new Montréal outfit, Oriflamme brings its very own offering to the Québec Black Metal altar with the release of a very promising first album. While offering a Black Metal approach inspired by the early Norwegian and French scenes, the group is no stranger to nuances, and it does not hesitate to switch gears between furious assaults and slower, more atmospheric moods, complimented by an excellent production courtesy of Tehom Productions. Fans of the Québec scene take heed, this is a first release you will not want to miss… Tapes are also available at Les Productions Hérétiques: www.lesproductionsheretiques.com/lph

It’s been 13 years since the last album from electronic-metal experimentalists Genghis Tron. Though much of that time was an extended hiatus, founding duo Hamilton Jordan and Michael Sochynsky have completely revamped their lineup with new vocalist Tony Wolski and the band’s first-ever live drummer, Nick Yacyshyn (also of extreme-metal favorites Sumac and Baptists). The result is *Dream Weapon*, a decidedly more spacious and hypnotic album than the band’s frenzied, critically acclaimed 2008 opus *Board Up the House*. “We wanted the instruments and arrangements to have a little more breathing room so the listener could hear all the details,” Jordan tells Apple Music. “Having Nick and Tony involved really helped us arrive at a more cohesive, streamlined set of songs that really flow together. They really elevated everything.” Below, Jordan discusses each track on *Dream Weapon*. **Exit Perfect Mind** “We knew we wanted an intro track on the album, and we knew we wanted an interlude. At some point about halfway through the mixing process, Michael stayed up late one night and put together the core components of what would become ‘Exit Perfect Mind.’ He had the idea to pull the same melodies that conclude the last track on the album, ‘Great Mother,’ and use them to start the record. So that was a cool way to bookend the album, by starting and ending with a similar vibe.” **Pyrocene** “Many of our songs—and not just on this album—start with drums, and this is one of those songs. ‘Pyrocene’ started when I was visiting my wife’s family in the Arizona desert and I just wrote this funky little drumbeat that I really liked. I sent it to Michael and he added some more synthetic-sounding samples on top and a deep, heavy bass synth stab. Then we just kind of tricked it out over a two- or three-week period. It was exciting writing this song because it was our first full demo for this album—the first real song we wrote in, at that point, 12 years. It’s also the song we used to entice Nick into playing with us.” **Dream Weapon** “This is the first song we started writing, but the last one we finished. I wrote about half of the guitar parts on this song in the summer of 2008, a couple of months after *Board Up the House* came out. It was also a couple of weeks after my dad died, and this was the first thing I’d written since his death. But I really liked those riffs, so we held on to them for a long time. We always knew that if we were going to do another album that it would show up in some form. Fast-forward 12 years and we had a lot of ideas over that time that didn’t age well, but this is one of the few that Michael and I still really loved.” **Desert Stairs** “This was based on something that Michael had written a while before we entered the studio, but we were having trouble coming up with tones that really worked. When we were at GodCity with \[producer\] Kurt Ballou, he busted out a guitar and a metal slide and recorded some really nice guitar ambience where he was moving the slide over the neck and getting harmonics. Then Michael chopped them up and made these samples that sounded more like a synth pad. They really brought track together and made it sound warmer.” **Alone in the Heart of the Light** “My wife and I drove to visit Michael in upstate New York, and we were staying in a motel in Virginia the night before. I had a little MIDI controller with me, and I came up with this arpeggiated melody that I really liked. We ended up with like a 20-chord progression that you can’t really follow, but it doesn’t matter. You can just lose yourself in it. This is also the first song we sent our new vocalist, Tony, when we were in the exploratory phases of working with him. What he came up with really subverted our expectations, and we knew we had to work with him.” **Ritual Circle** “I have a super vivid memory of this song, because my wife and I were staying in Colorado for a family funeral when I woke up one morning to this idea that Michael had sent. It ended up being one of the more challenging songs to write because we didn’t know what that idea needed around it. So there were a lot of different versions of this song before the one you’re hearing. Our goal was to keep the listener engaged, because you\'re hearing new melodies and textures and sounds, but you\'re still in that same driving rhythm. Hopefully you get lost in it.” **Single Black Point** “This is another one that started with a drumbeat. And it\'s another song, kind of like ‘Ritual Circle,’ that has a very distinct part A and part B. The second half of the song is all Michael, and to me it’s more of a classic Genghis Tron electronic jam-out.” **Great Mother** “This is another one that has some really old elements in it. I think the opening pulsating synth and some of the other synth melodies toward the end of the song, before the last loud chorus comes in, came from a demo that Michael wrote in 2011 or 2012. But we had trouble turning it into a song until I came up with the main guitar riff and started sketching out a new arrangement. So I kind of stripped his old demo for parts and rolled it into something new. At first we felt maybe this had too many parts, but then Tony came into the picture and his vocals were the glue that brought the song together.”

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To misquote Allen Ginsburg "the DODECAHEDRON is broken. But with death comes rebirth." AUTARKH takes a radical approach to their musical assault, consuming the listener with dizzying maelstroms of chaos. ‘Form In Motion’ embodies the word “extreme,” putting forth an intrusive battery of blistering guitars, pummeling drums, spastic math metal salvos and cacophanous electronics that culminates in one of the most robust and daring debut records metal has seen yet.

CD/2xLP Pre-Orders mid June. VOUNA is the project of multi-instrumentalist and composer Yianna Bekris. With her second full-length album “Atropos”, she unveils a towering and singular doom metal wonder in a unique visioning reminiscent of My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, and Evoken. Upon the thick foundation of doom, multiple musical textures intertwine into her sound: atmospheric black metal, dungeon synth, darkwave, film scores, and rebetiko. It is through these woven sonic tapestries that Bekris creates vivid atmospheres expressing the myriad emotions surrounding death, mourning, and suicidal ideation. “Atropos”, named for the Greek fate who cut the thread of life thus determining the final fate for mortals, not only conveys the inevitability of death, but also explores its contrasting and dynamic nature through immersive compositions representing despair, loneliness, anxiety, peace, and dignity. VOUNA’s debut was recorded at the Owl Lodge in Olympia, WA in 2017 and subsequently released by Artemisia Records in 2018. Though her debut was synth-focused, “Atropos” gives the guitars more weight and space while retaining an abundance of vintage '90s synthesizers, and additionally utilizes analog synths and folk and orchestral instrumentation for dramatic effect. “Atropos” sees her further expand VOUNA’s sound through the collaboration with several guest musicians, including Nathan Weaver (Wolves in the Throne Room) on vocals, Asia Kindred Moore (Sangre de Muerdago, Solace) on the harp, Entrail on violin, and members of the VOUNA live lineup playing synth and electric lap steel.