There is something deeply spiritually uplifting about unrefined rock ‘n’ roll. There is something incredibly absorbing about watching the generations beneath us discover the sumptuous beauty of this organic and primal music. They may exist through the prism of the many aspects of extreme metal, but really when it comes down to it, Dool play heavy rock.

This is a wondrously authentic rock record. It is brim full of ideas and youthful exuberance. It captures beautifully the energy, excitement and escapism that can only be achieved by young people with nothing to lose playing rock ‘n’ roll. The whole record crackles with that elemental energy of pure creativity.

It bridges the many gaps between genres by deftly identifying where the joining factor is. Quite simply it is that uplifting and affirming spark that comes from concocting music. There is a naïve adrenaline here that puts all of us cynics to shame. It is an album that once again makes us fall in love with rock music and makes us realise that for all the different genre classifications it is simply about songs that shine a light into the drab monotony of usual existence.

Those who have indulged in this list before will be aware of my fascination with and fondness for Blackgaze. This is the apocryphal marriage of black metal and late 80s oddity shoegaze. It was always meant to be a short-lived collision of opposing styles and most of the main protagonists (Deafheaven etc) have wandered off to try other things. Imagine my surprise then when I came across this, an absolutely stunning and distinctly modern take on Blackgaze.

It is an ambient expansive epic of an album that manages to do new things with a subgenre that most had written off as being overexploited and unredeemable. “Sacrifice” is exquisite in its majestic magic. Sumptuously cinematic, it simmers in its atmospheric wonder. Whilst the sound is dense, there is a euphoric lightness of touch that stops it from becoming bogged down its own introverted nature. Instead, it is an album that soars in its melancholy ambience. Yes it’s  long (86 minutes) but it never drags. Instead, it feels indulgent and luxurious in the way that the songs are allowed to glacially unfurl. An astonishing and unexpected pleasure that breathes life into a genre that many felt had run its path.

I do have a real thing for a well-made goth album. This is superb. It is sumptuously atmospheric but also packed full of that immediate dark pop sensibilities that made Goth such an enticing commodity. For many years Tribulation have been metamorphosing from a black metal band into something entirely different. This is the culmination of that transformation as “Sub Rosa In Æternum” has very little left in his DNA that would identify it as metal.

What we are left with then is an exquisite record full of high-quality dense passionate anthems laced with the romantic melancholy that we associate with goth. It is brilliantly done and perfect music to sip a pint of snakebite and black to.

The sludge prog maestro’s Mastodon routinely produce a new album every three years. However, 2024 has proved to be a fallow year, allowing Cobra the Impaler to slip in and produce the best album Mastodon have made since the revolutionary “Crack the Skye”.

This is modern prog metal and is its absolute zenith. It is an astoundingly good record that is over-spilling with interesting and often anarchic ideas. It enjoys playing fast and loose with metal’s many conventions and cohesions, whilst still resolutely remaining a heavy metal record.

It fantastically combines aggression with slick melody and stunning songcraft. It just sounds absolutely amazing in the way that it mixes different styles to create and concoct something very different but very awesome.

Zetra have been cofounding the listening public for quite a while now. Since Covid pandemic abated they seem to have been the support of choice for left-of-field metal acts, ably splitting the room between those that get them and those who don’t. Visually they have the air of a Gothic S&M party; adorned in corpse paint, leather, lace and fetish gear. They look like they have escaped from an early black metal cosplay convention.

Musically however, there are wonderfully refined and refrained synth pop. They scream early eighties dream-pop with a side order of shoegaze. This is their debut album and is finally an opportunity to revel in their wonderfully minimal style without having your head turned by their distinctly juxtapositional look.

There is a heaviness here, but it is deep down in the mix and very much detained in the foundations of their sound. The heaviness is used to create a solid underlay that they then build their slight and wavering pop upon. It is dark and atmospheric, full of moody melody and haunting harmonies. The sound swirls in waves of highly accessible ethereal refrains. It is fragile but also gloriously commercial. A superb celebration of minimalistic quirky pop.

This is by beyond doubt the best death metal album I have heard in a long long time. It is quite hard to put your finger on what makes this so good. In many ways, death metal is a cacophony of contrasting ingredients. Good Death Metal is about getting those juxtaposing components in just the right quantity. With “Manual Manic Procedures”, the constituent parts are imparted in a perfectly balanced manner.

It is aggressive, brutal and full of abrasive energy. But it doesn’t succumb to the usual pitfall of believing that the easiest way of accomplishing that corrosive viciousness is simply to play fast. It realises that even nasty fierce songs need to be well-written and full of enough melodic content to ensure that they are catchy. What you get is a death metal album that is horrendously heavy but has songs that are memorable and serve more functions than just being titillatingly awful. An absolutely brilliant example of extremity at its best.

Even more non-metal and this is not even a band that I have loved forever who I am forlornly clinging to as I slip below the metallic waves. Last Dinner Party are brand-spanking new, even if their sound is really rather retro. This is the return of chamber pop but infused with Goth sensibilities. Imagine Siouxsie Sioux fronting Fleetwood Mac and you’re part of the way there.

This (together with another record even higher up the totem) have reaffirmed and reinvigorated my love of quaint, quirky “bedwetting” indie. This is an album that realises that idiosyncratic and eccentric doesn’t need to mean slight and underwhelming. Instead, it takes the high tempo and self-affirming nerd-power of Pulp and feeds it into a wonderfully reconstituted version of 70’s AOR.

For the first time in ages, I am not worried about where youth are taking music. This is a brilliant smash-and-grab across multiple genres. It plays completely into my theory that Spotify has completely altered the process of being influenced, as everything ever is available to everyone. “Prelude to Ecstasy” is the sound of five incredibly talented, and creatively literate, young people playing pick and mix with the entire history of pop. What they have created is astonishing. Indie pop lives to fight another day.

A fantastically dreamy album from Los Angeles. If the woefully underrated Beach House decided to make a metal album it would sound like this. It exists in a netherworld between authentic shoegaze and its, already discussed, bastardised sibling Blackgaze. With exact phrase seems to be dream metal. There are plenty of light and ethereal flourishes alongside a dependable heaviness that grounds the whole thing.

It brims with angst and emotion, but in a shimmering and frequently smooth way. Central to its brilliance is Michelle Malley's stunningly evocative voice. It is a tentpole that the music wraps itself around, creating an infinitely flowing envelope of intoxicating sound.

Can this man do no wrong? Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds seem incapable of making a bad record. This is album number eighteen in a 40-year run of astoundingly good form. Considering his tragic family circumstances the last few albums have veered on the side of maudlin, But “Wild God” sees a return to the joyous that was last witnessed on 2008’s “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!”. This is a euphoric gospel album, but still with tinges of darkness and melancholy. It is beautifully postured and illustrates how Nick Cave has positively grown into his position of elder statesman and national treasure. The amazing thing is that he has transcended into the mainstream without losing an ounce of his street credibility or outsider bile.

This entry represents more jiggery-pokery with the form and function of black metal. Schammasch hail from Switzerland and are anonymously shrouded in beautifully adorned ceremonial robes. They have already made for themselves quite an impression carving out atmospheric and distinctly avant-garde soundscapes.

“The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean” is their first studio album in five years. While it doesn’t see any major shifts from their musical template, their ability to be innovative and inventive seems to have developed greatly. This record is full of instruments usually shunned by metal’s conservative fraternities. There are accordions and full-on classical orchestration aplenty. There are also distinctly creepy industrial soundscapes and sultry spoken word interludes.

Its brilliance is in the way that it marries the off-putting with the melodic. It is a distinctly musically accessible album, but it works hard to simultaneously challenge with that accessibility. It continually morphs and shape-shifts as it bounces through its sprawling four tracks. There is a pulsating monolithic rhythm at the heart of it, which becomes the album’s integral heartbeat. Strange but also fantastic.

Weather Systems is what Daniel Cavanagh and David Cardoso, of the late lamented Liverpudlian progsters Anathema, did next. In many ways, Weather Systems is a direct continuation of their former outfit. Most of the tracks come from the aborted sessions for Anathema’s never recorded twelfth album and even their new outfits moniker is a direct lift from the title of the 2012 masterpiece.

This is lush evocative prog, wholesome in its warmth and its geniality. It rejects the cold technicality of other variants of the genre and instead it sculpts glorious soundscapes that are full of life and human endeavour. It is magnificent in its scale it is nuanced enough not to forget the little touches and flourishes. For all its widescreen pretences it is actually a very grounded and close to the earth record. Instead of wandering off into flights of fantasy, it deals with everyday life and the realities of keeping relationships alive. A beautifully contoured record that exquisitely uses a restrained formation of prog to explore the human condition.

Another album where it is quite hard to describe and actualise what this band is doing. It flirts across infinite genres, never feeling able to commit wholesale to any. It successfully blurs between the different forms of extremity and heaviness. There are passages where you would swear this is black metal but then it instantaneously morphs into something more melodic and fragile. Then we are swept into fammoths of post-hardcore, full of lingering regret and desolate longing. And then explodes in a frantic exposition of blistering screamo, full of molten angst and anger. And then it wanders off again to find yet another musical form to fearlessly poke with its blunt stick.

Put simply what Frail Body are doing is both fearless and peerless. It pushes boundaries like I have never seen before. It twists and contorts convention with conviction and a confident stride. Bolstered by brave bravado, this is an album that doesn’t just contravene the rules, it brazenly ignores they even exist.

I delayed the start of this list so I could include this album. It is the Swedish prog-lords 14th studio album, their first in five years and in my very humble opinion the best thing they have released since the landmark “Blackwater Park”. In fact if this album had arrived it on its proposed release date of early October then I have no doubt it would be happily nestled in the top 10 if not making a serious charge for the summit of this list.

It is brilliant. It deftly marries their classic death metal style with the newer rich prog variation of their ever evolving musical constitution. Mikael Åkerfeldt’s death growls are back and you realise just how much you missed them. It gives the music a whole new dimension of gruffness and provides an eloquent contrast to the swirling operatic prog.

It is also fantastically constructed in its concept. Opeth have dallied with the continuous storyline across an album before. Both “My Arms, Your Hearse” and “Still Life” had flowing narratives across their duration. But something feels different and much more engaging about the storytelling within the “Last Will & Testament.” The world-building is immaculately intricate and the chronicle the album accounts is accessible and beautifully rendered.

For all this hyperbole its relatively conservative placing comes from one cursory listen. I am absolutely convinced that if I had managed to spin it more than once it would have got much higher and I would have been spouting even more superlatives. This is the album that may well go on to define them and certainly illustrates why they are held in such lofty esteem.

Okay! I promised you entries in the upper reaches of this list for records that exist outside of the metal fraternity. Here is one and it won’t be the last. You are probably thinking, “Beth Gibbons I know that name” and you’ll be right. She was and still is the voice of Bristolian auteurs Portishead, a band who (admittedly for a short time in the early 90’s) changed music forever. They stopped everyone in their tracks when they emerged playing an evocative mismatch of hip-hop, indie and ethereal goth entitled Trip-Hop. Debut record “Dummy” was everywhere and soundtracked everything.

Portishead still exist and sporadically play shows, though they haven’t released an album since 2008. Beth herself has become rather a recluse appearing every now and again as a special guest on other people’s albums. What has now become clear is that for the last decade she has been working on this, her first original composition solo album in her own name. It is an utterly remarkable album that fills an untapped void for honest record about growing old. It tackles directly the existential inward struggle of facing 60 when you still feel 16 and according to Beth its key influences are "motherhood, anxiety, menopause, and mortality".

It is a rugged and distinctly real album that brims with rustic reality. There is no sugarcoating here, instead we get a blisteringly bleak summary of the mundane nature of ageing. It borders on folk in many places but folk in its tragic storytelling form. These are lamenting torch songs, wistfully reminiscing and painfully regretting decisions not made and paths not taken. It is a thing of utter beauty, dark unforgiving and at times challenging, in the end, it is an unsurpassable treaty on the simple act of living life.

As you can guess from the name, Norway’s Funeral is one of the principal architects of funeral doom. Funeral doom is essentially normal Doom but played MUCH slower. Now I can hear you cry, Stewart from the way you describe it, normal Doom is already slow and plodding. Yes, it is, but Funeral Doom is even more lethargic, a glacially paced musical form where the notes are dispense in an unhurried and protracted manner.

Revered in the circles that revere this sort of thing but ignored practically everywhere else, Funeral have been diligently concocting this sort of thing for over 30 years. There have been the odd change in personnel (especially on vocals) but in the main it is the same group people plodding away after all this time. “Gospel of Bones” is magnificent and by a long stretch the best thing they have produced in decades. It is an expansively atmospheric endeavour that is rich with texture and musical differentiation.

One of the keys to its magnificence is Sindre Nedland bombastic vocal style. He is positively operatic and of grandeur in its style, which marvelously mingles with the maudlin nature of the music. Big but also slight, this is a fantastic record full of haunting refrains and large swaths of opulence.

I have mentioned already Blackgaze and my worries that there is nothing left to do with it. Well this takes its euphoric skyscrapping nature and does exactly that, something different. This is black psychedelia or psychgaze (take your pick). Its an expansive record that reaches for the cosmos with each and every note. It is transcendental in the way that it soars. It takes a foundation of post metal and just builds in an upward trajectory. The tracks are expansive and exhilarating.  A beautiful example of just how tender and interplanetary metal can be.

Ahh Borknagar, the one band that keeps eluding me. You see I adore Borknagar. In many ways, they are the black metal equivalent of Opeth. They take a musical form that is in its raw state brittle and serrated, and then sculpt it into something quite eloquent and beautiful. On numerous occasions, I have been on the cusp of witnessing them live and on each of those occasions, fate, pandemics and life in general have got in the way. They remain just out of reach, tantalisingly close but simultaneously infuriatingly far.

They have been a going concern for close to 3 decades, but the last 15 years has been a particularly purple patch for them, pumping out a stellar run of five (including this one) quite incredible albums. “Fall” continues their penchant for creating widescreen cinematic metal that entices black metal’s anthemic qualities to the front.

Simply put this album sounds amazing, it is sumptuously produced and the soundscapes it creates are lush. It perfectly balances the harsh with deep textured melody and it just pulsates with intricate flourishes and in-depth ideas. It provides yet more proof to the argument that Borknagar are one of metal’s most impressive hidden treasures and all I hope now is they decide to visit the UK to promote this record.

After bemoaning the state of or more accurately the deterioration of the Blackgaze scene, here is yet another stunningly good album that proficiently builds upon its legacy. This is an immaculate example of strident, modern songwriting. It’s an album that streams with elemental power and just feels utterly alive with both potential and ambition. There is so much going on, so many ideas and so much inventive innovation.

You think everything has been done with guitar music and then you hear this. Yes squealing guitars are leading us on but in a way that feel remarkably different to what we are used to. Everything leaps out at you, in a three-dimensional multilayered way. Short, sharp and ballistically incisive. This is a wonderful evolution of heavy music.

“Little Weight” is actually a really accurate description of his album. It is a slight and tender record that takes great care to be as minimal and as unassuming as possible. It originates in metal but actually this is doom with its heaviness and abrasion removed. It is a slow, ponderous piece of work that laboriously but also beautifully reveals itself in minimal leisurely fashion.

40 Watt Sun are the current incarnation of Patrick Walker, the man behind Warning and most importantly “Watching from a Distance”, the finest doom metal album ever recorded. Patrick has a superhuman power that is to take the enormity of metal and turn it into an emotive heartbreaking force. “Little Weight” is a genius piece of heartrending songwriting. It tells its tale in a passionate and soulful way. An remarkable album from a remarkable man.

It is almost a tradition now for this list to have at least one high-scoring young Norwegian prog outfit. Well this year’s incumbent of the wonderfully androgynous Sykofant. Hailing from Oslo they have created an absolutely decadent mix of tempo and textures. This is modern prog at his absolute best. It exists in simultaneous Time zones, mining from the past but also unafraid to look to the future.

It unfurls in a beautifully unobtrusive way. It is happy to experiment but comfortable in its commerciality and accessibility. It beautifully weaves together melody and harmony to create a gorgeous cacophony of ever-shifting tempos. It is a lush, expansive record that just gets lost in his own creativity. Extraordinary.