The 20 Best Metal Albums of 2024 According To Rolling Stone
Prestigious Rolling Stone recently issued their Top 20 Metal Albums Of 2024 which takes a much-expected deep dive into the rock genre. The list features Judas Priest, Kerry King, Body Count, High on Fire, Chat Pile and many more. We’ve compiled an abridged version of the albums’ descriptions as they were conceived by the reputable magazine’s contributors:
20. Body Count – ‘Merciless’: produced by Will Putney, Body Count’s eighth album features cameos from metal luminaries such as Max Cavalera, Howard Jones and Corpsegrinder.
19. Tzompantli – ‘Beating The Drums Of Ancestral Force’: labeled as dark and ominous, Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force redefines American folk metal with maximum brutality.
18. Battlesnake – ‘The Rise And Demise Of The Motorsteeple’: Aussie headbangers Battlesnake resurrect fantasy metal with this album, described as a short but hard-hitting eight-song record full of chainsaw guitars and outsize vocals.
17. Darkthrone – ‘It Beckons Us All…’: the album artfully combines the serrated edge of black metal with the primitive chug of doom and other primordial styles.
16. Gouge Away – ‘Deep Sage’: the band deploys a heavy-light duality brilliantly throughout Deep Sage.
15. Whores. – ‘War.’: the Atlanta-based trio’s easily tightest, toughest and most satisfying album to date.
14. Unholy Altar – ‘Veil Of Death! Shroud Of Nite’: represents an unabashed throwback to black metal’s primeval early days and exhibits a brilliant grasp of what makes the genre so great.
13. Knocked Loose – ‘You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To’: tight, brutal and expertly produced.
12. Sumac – ‘The Healer’: an exemplary art metal, a monolith of uneasy listening that doesn’t skimp on either heaviness or true musical risk.
11. Paysage d’Hiver – ‘Die Berge’: hypnotic, an ode to the raw desolation of winter in a rapidly warming world.
10. Thou – ‘Umbilical’: although much of Thou’s recent work has veered toward the grandiose or gothic, Umbilical harkens back to a more primordial version of the band, Nineties grunge and Eighties hardcore.
9. Chat Pile – ‘Cool World’: contains everything people have come to love about Chat Pile, including nu-metal chugging, technical syncopation or post-punk warbles.
8. Huntsmen – ‘The Dry Land’: the third album from Chicago’s Huntsmen finds the quintet perfecting their unique blend of prog-sludge, stoner doom and Americana.
7. Judas Priest – ‘Invincible Shield’: offers ready-made anthems built around the precision riffing of guitarist Richie Faulkner and longtime member Glenn Tipton.
6. Blood Incantation – ‘Absolute Elsewhere’: this adventurous album seamlessly interweaves bludgeoning blast beats and technically precise metallic assaults with spacey synth excursions.
5. Bruce Dickinson – ‘The Mandrake Project’: a testament to the continued potency of Dickinson’s long-running collaboration with guitarist-songwriter-producer Roy Z.
4. High on Fire – ‘Cometh The Storm’: delivers exactly what fans have come to expect from the band, from rocketing along at hardcore-punk speed to digging into a craggy stoner-metal groove.
3. Crypt Sermon – ‘The Stygian Rose’: awash in muscular, deftly executed riffs that stomp between brooding doom and traditional heavy metal.
2. Opeth – ‘The Last Will And Testament’: a concept album about dark family secrets unspooling in the wake of a rich nobleman’s death, The Last Will and Testament is as moodily cinematic as it is musically dexterous.
1. Kerry King – ‘From Hell I Rise’: the first solo album from former Slayer guitarist Kerry King, basically the “Still D.R.E.” of thrash metal.
Sources:
Rollingstone.com - The 20 Best Metal Albums of 2024, December 20, 2024
Metalinjection.net - Rolling Stone's Top 20 Metal Albums Of 2024 Is Pretty Good, December 21, 2024
