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| Concrete Winds “Nerve Butcherer” is Metalenema’s album of the year! |
The hard-hitting second half of our best-of list! We tried like hell to add everything we could, we expanded the Top 10 to Top 12 and then at the eleventh hour ended up with a stunning new Funeral Mist album to include. Feast your ears below!
Notable stats from this year:
- Finland still continues to lead the pack, including two releases from their country gracing our Top 12!
- Quebec still rules, and we’re going to keep championing their bands until the sun burns out!
- Three bands from Texas made big strides, namely Black Jackal, Steel Bearing Hand, and the newly re-christened Apsu!
- Denmark had two of the absolute best death metal albums of the year. Keep up the good work, guys!
- The idea of Slim Goodbody is as ludicrous as it seemed 45 years ago.
Top 12(+1) of 2020
0. Funeral Mist, “Deiform” (NoEvDia) – Arioch continues to play by his own rules with another tangled and deadly outing that demands answers from the divine. Black metal par excellence.
1. Concrete Winds, “Nerve Butcherer” (Sepulchral Voice
Records) – Far more deranged and violent than it even needs to be, Concrete Winds takes the Necrovore formula and catapults it into brain-damaging territory.
2. Baxaxaxa, “Catacomb Cult” (The Sinister Flame) – Photographically remembering their origins, this German outfit proves that true black metal is a frame of mind, not a date on a calendar.
3. Cambion, “Conflagrate the Celestial Refugium” – Remember how you wished Angel Corpse had managed “Exterminate, Part 2”? Well, here it is. Go now!
4. Warmoon Lord “Battlespells” (Werewolf Records) – Epic and keyboard-laden in the best way possible, Warmoon Lord expands on their sound and gives classic Emperor a run for its money without heading into retread.
5. Force of Darkness “Twilight of Dark Illumination” (Iron
Pegasus) – The iron horse of the Chilean death metal movement returns with another edition of no-bullshit darkness and aggression.
6. Sijjin “Sumerian Promises” (Sepulchral Voice Records) – The competence of Necros Christos combined with the feral trappings of “Abominations of Desolation” make this new entry a winner.
7. Venefixion “A Sigh From Below” (Iron Bonehead) – death black from France that matches accuracy and ferocity with diabolical results.
8. Hak-Ed Damm “Destructio Purificalis” (War Productions) – Frontal assault black metal from Quebec that hails from the same blasted territory as “Panzer Division Marduk”.
9. Frightful “Spectral Creator” (Awakening Records) – Pounding Polish death metal that puts on no airs in the name of delivering the goods.
10. Phrenelith “Chimaera” (Nuclear Winter Records) – Hyperdontia put out a killer death metal album this year, and Phrenelith said, “Oh yeah?”
11. Proscriptor McGovern’s Apsû “Proscriptor McGovern’s
Apsû” (Agonia Records) – Texas’ own drum wizard extraordinaire returns with a new name, a revived line-up, and a Pandora’s box of maddened riffage.
12. Savage Deity “Decade of Savagery” (Inhuman Assault
Productions) – Thailand surprises with meat-and-potatoes evil death metal that sounds like a lost Scott Burns production.