Farewell, 2024! It has been one other huge 12 months within the heavy music world with new releases from everybody from Judas Priest and Opeth to Nightwish, Carry Me The Horizon and Poppy, however we’re lastly able to put the 12 months to mattress.
There’ve been comebacks – Nails, Bruce Dickinson, Job For A Cowboy, Kerry King – ascendant new bands like Heriot and Lowen making their beautiful debuts and an all-round bounty of all issues excessive and attention-grabbing, however the time has come to rule which albums finest represented the heavy music world in 2024.
That in thoughts, we requested Hammer‘s in depth pool of freelancers, staffers and contributors to submit their picks for the 20 finest metallic albums of 2024, and under you may discover the fruits of these labour as each vote has been tallied to create a complete rundown of the best 2024 needed to supply. Do not recognise a reputation on the listing? Stick ’em on! We’ll see you for extra good new music in 2025.
Jason Aalon Butler actually is aware of his means round a rap metallic anthem. Solely, with Fever 333 he hadn’t actually proven it – till now. Rebuilding from scratch in 2022, the all-new and revitalised Fever took a large leap in the direction of the massive anthemia Jason had commanded in Letlive.
Singles Larger Energy, No Hostages and Desert Rap caught huge hooks to his hovering vocals and maximised the band’s funky, incendiary alt metallic, leading to a bouncy and galvanising report that went some method to realising the band’s potential.
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49. Caligula’s Horse – Charcoal Grace (Inside Out)
Earlier than 2024, Caligula’s Horse made music on a pendulum, going forwards and backwards between proggier and heavier albums. Charcoal Grace smashed that swing, presenting grand epics with bleak, brutal themes. The four-movement title observe took the attitude of an abused little one seething at their father, and represented the Aussie band at their largest, darkest, and very best.
Sounding as bleak, highly effective and starkly lovely because the pure forces that batter their Faroe Islands residence, Hamferð’s fourth fulll-ength turned death-doom’s propensity for catastrophe right into a gorgeously affecting fashionable fable.
Conceptually primarily based round a catastrophe that claimed the lives of 14 males on a whaling expedition, the report dredged up an ocean’s value of low-end to subsume all in its wake, providing serenity solely beneath its crushing waves.
READ MORE: “Hamferd most likely has extra crying than moshing.”
47. Kati Rán – Sála (Svart)
Kati Rán put collectively a formidable crew for this voyage, with black metallic legend Gaahl, Mitch Harris of Napalm Demise and members of Heilung, Sígur Rós and extra taking activates the oars.
However this was very a lot Kati’s imaginative and prescient, as she navigated a journey of selfdiscovery by way of darkish Nordic folks waters crammed with oceanic swells of primal energy and moments of calm introspection. Sála was mythic in scope but deeply private and beautiful on all its many ranges.
46. Whereas She Sleeps – Self Hell (Sleeps Brothers)
There’s the kitchen sink, after which there’s Self Hell. WSS’s sixth album felt just like the end-of-level boss for every part Sheffield’s best had been constructing thus far, slapping collectively their anthemic however gritty model of metalcore with lashings of area rock, EDM, hip hop and even alt pop, producing an album that leaked ambition from each pore. It was a headspinning trip, however for these prepared to leap onboard, greatness awaited.
45. Undeath – Extra Insane (Prosthetic)
With the attainable exception of Frozen Soul, no person’s performed extra to maintain the rise of demise metallic’s new era than Undeath. The New Yorkers’ third album fulfilled all of the promise of their first two, broadly acclaimed albums.
Bolstered by a fully crushing manufacturing, Extra Insane blended old-school incisiveness with up to date ranges of aggression. From the punishing entry level of Lifeless From Past to the bilious slurry of Bones Clattering In The Cave, it loudly confirmed that Undeath have been severe heavyweights.
What’s your da doing proper now? Sitting on the sofa, yelling on the newest Premier League debacle? What he’s not doing is constant to rewrite proto-thrash metallic and the NWOBHM with precision guitars, unrestrained drum galloping and cloud-poking vocal heights with the identical wiry depth of a hardly misspent youth.
Forty-five years in the past Devil helped invent a sound and scene; Songs In Crimson helped to reshape that invention in 2024. All hail the outdated flesh!
43. Grand Magus – Sunraven (Nuclear Blast)
From the doomy blues of their early albums, Grand Magus have step by step distilled their sound to the essence of pure heavy metallic. Sunraven raised its burnished metal to the dwelling gods of Judas Priest and the departed nice one Dio, whereas weaving in epic threads that have been all of the Swedes’ personal making.
Sunraven was additionally the trio’s first foray into idea album territory, with a heroic however surprisingly nuanced lyrical tackle the Previous English poem Beowulf
42. Winterfylleth – The Imperious Horizon (Candlelight)
From the snowcovered peaks on the duvet to enlisting Primordial’s Alan Averill for the fantastic hymn In Silent Grace, every part about Winterfylleth’s eighth album noticed the epic dial turned up one other couple of notches.
Sustaining the savagery and craft that’s made them the UK’s most constant black metallic band of the final 15 years, the sheer presence of songs like The Rebel and the title observe ensured The Imperious Horizon could be carved into the mountains.
In each a left flip but some sort of ordained inevitability, Sweden’s masters of the paranormal went extra goth rock than ever on album six. Johannes Andersson flexed his clear, crooner muscle groups and shook up their sound with cuts of darkish Wild West Americana and slithering giallosoundtrack synth-prog.
There was nonetheless the metallic Tribulation and love, however as a part of essentially the most various report of their profession, as considered one of metallic’s Twenty first-century iconoclasts continued to tinker with their very own constructing blocks.
