I'm gonna be totally honest with the five of you: 2024 was a shit year for ol' DEAR_SPIRIT. Between my friend dying, my cat dying, and the general states of culture, economics, politics, and society, it's been a truly disheartening soul-fuck of a year, and I have fucking hated every second of it. These year-end lists of mine always start with some kind of glib pronouncement about how awful everything is, but this year, I truly, truly mean it. Fuck this fucking year.
Of course, the near-constant mix of anger, sorrow, dejection, alienation, shame, disgust, and misanthropy I've been feeling can only mean one thing: that my love for black metal has never been stronger! As with last year, this easily could have been a top 50 if I had more time, but I don't, so 20 will have to do. Spoiler alert: Paysage d'Hiver is not on here. I liked that record a lot, just not as much as you do, probably.
To anyone who's left out there: thanks for sticking around to witness the final gasps of a dying mp3 blog. It's had a great/OK/passable run, and I'm not sure if I'm ever going to 'officially' put this thing to bed, but every post I make feels like it might be the last. To be clear, I'm not PLANNING for this post to be the last one -- I'm just saying, it might be, who the fuck knows. So if this is the last time you hear from me on here: you better listen to every single album I've ever posted from front to back, or I will find you and kill you.
#20
Dead Flesh Stigma
Necrocosmic Death Ritual
Industrial-infused madness courtesy of V-KhaoZ, an extremely prolific Fin with a bunch of other solo projects. Necrocosmic Death Ritual harkens back to a time -- the 90s -- when industrial black metal didn't have to be all cyber-future-digital-cyborg-dystopian, and could just be Satanic black metal with EBM-type drum machines and synths.
#19
Eschatologia
Transcendence
Queasy, dissonant sounds that have plenty in common with Moon, I Shalt Become, Velvet Cacoon, Xasthur, etc. There's a bit more spring in Eschatologia's step than those bands, but they're hovering around in the same tormented, spectral space.
#18
Nimbifer
Der böse Geist
German raw black metal that, for all its ferocity, maintains a sense of fragility and sorrow throughout. This is in no small part due to the recurring presence of ethereal, hovering guitar feedback. Unlike most raw BM, which typically has the feel of being shackled and whipped in a dripping dungeon, Der böse Geist sounds like it's constantly being pulled heavenward.
#17
Horn
Daudswiärk
Topnotch pagan black metal from a German institution. Runs the gamut of mid-paced, Nordland-esque atmosphere, blasting ferocity, and even what sounds to me like a bit of post-punk -- see the chiming guitar refrain of "Broth" -- but ultimately, you're just looking at majestic, melodic, folk-infused pagan BM at its finest.
#16
Solbrud
IIII
A double album of sprawling, earthy atmospheric BM that has unfortunately turned out to be the swansong from this excellent, underrated Danish band. In retrospect, the writing was on the wall: the central conceit of IIII is that it is divided into four parts, each representing a different element of nature, and each solely composed by one of the band's four members. However, this somewhat fractured approach resulted in the band's most diverse set -- see the unexpected pivot into glacial, Floydian psychedelia on "Sjælskrig" -- and as definitive a closing statement as one could have hoped for.
Previously:
#15
Howl
Drought
Beastly caveman solo BM from Estonia of all places. Gnarly power-chord riffs, echoing rasps, and dive bombing solos, all encased in tastefully cavernous production. Great promo pic, too.
#14
Gråt Strigoi
The Prophetic Silence
Probably the best explicitly anti-fascist black metal I've ever heard -- maybe I'm forgetting something. Furious, heavy, and raw, with under/overtones of DSBM, dissonant post-sludge, and harsh noise-drone, the latter of which practically subsumes monolithic album closer "For the Blood Made Ruins".
#13
Leprous Vortex Sun
Шум небытия
A gnarled, dissonant, nightmare-ish cacophony with no light and, save for a few pockets of rumbling dark ambience, no respite. Upping the chaos ante is the band's tendency to start songs at full-tilt -- almost in media res -- then ending them just as abruptly. There is little to no space between tracks, and often the only discernible shifts are textural or tonal. An excellent entry in the Deathspell Omega/Portal pantheon.
#12
Black Curse
Burning in Celestial Poison
Unrelenting black-death madness from a formidable lineup. Every time it seems like they're gonna take a second to breathe, it's as if they get injected with Bane juice and start raging all over again. A top-to-bottom kick in the teeth.
#11
Possessive
Res Ipsa Loquitur
Punishing, heavy, and straight-up cruel sludge/black/death. Res Ipsa Loquitur absolutely fucking hates you. It's honestly barely black metal, but close enough.
#10
Austere
Beneath the Threshold
Having returned last year with arguably their best album yet, Austere kept the miserable momentum going in 2024 by charging headlong into the melodic, mid-paced kingdoms of Katatonia and early Anathema. Their knack for beautifully downcast, simple yet memorable melodic themes remains, and provides a through-line to their droning DSBM past.
Previously:
#9
Ildganger
For Hver Tanke Mister Sjælen Atter Farve
Raw, ghostly atmospheric BM. There's a lot of intermingling of seemingly opposed elements here -- clean and distorted guitars, dissonant and melodic guitar lines, blasting ice-storms bumping up against still, minimal sorrow -- that really spoke to me in the aftermath of losing my friend, and that's the kind of emotional resonance that tends to stick with you. Two albums in, Ildganger's batting 100.
Previously:
#8
Hässlig
Apex Predator
Hateful, nasty-ass Ildjarn-core for crushing and consuming the weak. I feel a weird kinship with this band because they sound not at all unlike my old band, just way more dialed in, and obviously, that also means that their sound is just way, way up my alley. If this list was ordered by how much iron I've pumped while listening to them, Apex Predator would be at #1 by a comfortable margin.
#7
Astral Lore
Astral Lore
Three beautiful, sprawling pieces of black metal majesty from a band that seemingly sprung from out of nowhere, fully formed. Riffs often recall the droning fury of Ukranian BM, while the leads tend to have a more forlorn, funereal quality. In spite of the somewhat lo-fi, ‘live' (read: not individually tracked) recording, Astral Lore clearly have given a lot of thought to composition here, as each track tells its own story -- even with quite limited sonic ingredients. Fans of early Paysage d'Hiver, Drudkh, and maybe even Weakling should check in.
#6
Verberis
The Apophatic Wilderness
Two years removed from the creative breakthrough of Adumbration of the Veiled Logos, Verberis have reemerged both leaner and more cerebral. The guitars are cleaner and the writing is knottier -- at times bordering on math-y -- and the end result is shimmering, thematically esoteric, and utterly enthralling.
Previously:
#5
Scarcity
The Promise of Rain
Eventually, for a time, The Promise of Rain settles down a bit. But it starts with, without a doubt, some of the most batshit insane guitars I have ever heard on what's ostensibly a black metal record. Just utterly dissonant and ugly, but with this chiming, minimal, almost playful approach. Truly unhinged. Almost sounds like Drive Like Jehu tried their hand at black metal. It reminds me of the first time I heard "Pseudo" by Cephalic Carnage and I kept thinking about the guitarist showing up at band practice like, "Guys, check out this awesome riff I wrote!", then proceeding to play the most unintelligible sequence of garbled nonsense imaginable while looking at them expectantly.
Previously:
#4
Thy Woe
To Soothe the Torment Etched on Thy Solemn Face
Based on the cover, I was definitely expecting this to be dungeon synth-y raw BM for creeping through the shadows with a candelabra in your hand. (Or maybe amateurish DSBM.) And while that assessment wasn't completely off, it greatly undersells what's arguably the platonic ideal of second-wave black metal in 2024. You can headbang to it, you can cut yourself to it, you can worship Satan to it -- often all at once. Plus, from Bathory to Tragedy, I've always been a huge proponent of a well-placed bell chime, and Thy Woe's contribution to this storied lineage, "Cruel Fate's Design", is more than worthy.
#3
Oranssi Pazuzu
Muuntautuja
Oranssi Pazuzu have almost completely left black metal behind at this point. Muuntautuja is a chaotic, dense amalgamation of horror soundtracks, drone rock, and trip-hop -- at least two songs on here made me think of Subliminal Sandwich -- all twisted, beaten, burnt, sliced, stretched, and finessed into the band's skewed vision for the genre.
Previously:
#2
Akhlys
House of the Black Geminus
House of the Black Geminus hits like a fucking pitch-black tsunami. It's dense, impossibly heavy, and awe-inspiringly massive. Played at even moderate volumes, it feels like it takes on a psychical presence in the room. And that's just the sonics of it. Musically, this is the stuff of nightmares, with echoing guitar lines and thick-ass synths that sound like something John Carpenter and Alan Howarth might've come up with in their prime, compositions that start at a 10 on the anxiety scale then somehow build up from there, and unrelenting viciousness and brutality.
Previously:
#1
Givre
Le Cloître
It starts with a whisper -- a graceful, descending guitar figure. A second guitar comes in, initially mirroring the first, then dropping lower to tap into an unexpected clashing of chords. It feels like foreshadowing -- the listener is immersed in this gentle, chiming guitar, but with periodic glimpses of dissonance that suggest that this tranquility is too fragile to last.
Le Cloître is a concept album, with each of its six tracks discussing the story of a different female Catholic saint. (Givre may or may not be Catholic themselves -- they're a bit elusive in interviews.) It covers a lot of terrain -- queasy orthodox BM, churning post-metal, atmos-sludge, and more traditional, epic BM -- but it all feels like it's flowing from the same sorrowful, tormented, blood-red river. It's the kind of emotional, singular listening experience that I've always found difficult to describe -- that's what music is for, right? But I can say, definitively, that Le Cloître is one of my favorite black metal records in existence.