The Best Death Metal Album - Metal Storm Awards 2024

Eye Eater - Alienate

Well, it's nothing if not alienating – this is the mysterious debut of a mysterious ensemble that practices death metal like the occult, with halting, sickening drums that hit like an intestinal blockage and howling growls like the static of dead air in an otherworldly radio station. The riffs range from elastic smackdowns to desolate wastelands of unplaceable dread, and everything in between just hurts. Eye Eater have acheived the sound of Ulcerate slowly devouring Gojira and evolving into something from Stalker. If you're not careful, they'll take the rest of your face, too.

Full review

Gatecreeper - Dark Superstition

And now, time for a little FUN!! All caps, bold, and with two exclamation marks—that’s the absolute limit of emphasis allowed within the bounds of professionalism and seriousness (cough) that a Metal Storm Awards nomination entails, ensuring that no other nominee is unfairly overshadowed. And with that, the most important point has already been made: Gatecreeper earned their nomination not by allegedly reinventing OSDM on their third studio album but simply because of the sheer fun factor. You can hear how much fun they’re having as they pay homage to their old heroes—Entombed, Dismember, Bolt Thrower, and Grave—and it’s an absolute blast to listen to. Dark Superstition is more melodic than its predecessors, and where hardcore influences like d-beat rhythms and vocal stylings were once more pronounced, there’s now a noticeable shift towards Gothenburg metal. And that added catchiness? It's also, indeed, seriously fun.

Full review

Job For A Cowboy - Moon Healer

Job For A Cowboy were looking pretty Unemployed For A Cowboy for a while there. Fortunately, at some point they recognized that they couldn’t just leave the sun without a counterpart; thence grew Moon Healer. Eons ago, where once was deathcore emerged technical death metal on Demonocracy, and in Sun Eater its excessive extremities were tempered, and now in Moon Healer JFAC come into their most progressive incarnation yet: not quite so over-the-top in speed and heaviness, more balanced and attuned to melody, with a more musical production and some very sweet, limber bass the likes of which you find only in the best proggy death. A decade’s break wasn’t enough to slow that stored momentum; evidently the moon really does heal all suns, or whatever it is that they say.

Full review

Kvadrat - The Horrible Dissonance Of Oblivion

The Horrible Dissonance Of Oblivion is a 44-minute descent into the blackest depths of musical terror. Greek one-man band Kvadrat plays a dissonant mixture that combines the unforgiving heaviness of death metal and the chilling atmosphere of black metal. The vocals are delivered in a powerful, deep-throated way, sounding at times like a shaman summoning a Lovecraftian monster with sinister liturgies. Kvadrat straddle the line between cacophony and haunting beauty, producing a swirling vortex of disharmonious harmonies.

Full review

Mitochondrion - Vitriseptome

Vitriseptome is without a doubt the biggest and most unexpected return in death metal this year. Mitochondrion has come, has seen, and has conquered. It has been 13 years since the last full-length of these Canadians. But time is of no importance and this group, unbothered by current trends, aims to take occult death metal to new heights with this 85-minute monolith of hellish chaos music. But fear not, for every minute of Vitriseptome serves a purpose and Mitochondrion are making sure to crack skulls and set souls aflame from the first minute to the bitter end. These frightening, ultra-dense compositions are filled with maddening psychedelia, titanic drumming, and vortices of monstrous growls. The listener will be thrown down an abyss never to be seen again as they once were.

Full review

Sarcophagum - The Grand Arc Of Madness

Although on the surface this new band is effectively Golgothan Remains under a new name, Sarcophagum reveal themselves on debut album The Grand Arc Of Madness to have more to them than meets the eye. Initial inclinations to make comparisons to Ulcerate due to this album's multiple lengthy dissonant death metal tracks are betrayed by an unexpectedly hook-laden and melodic songwriting sensibility. That said, this album is just as technical, intense, and pulverizing as long-time fans of this death metal niche have come to expect, and it manages to deliver delicious aggression without compromising its more ambitious experiments.

Full review

Ulcerate - Cutting The Throat Of God

With Cutting The Throat Of God, the mighty trio from New Zealand does not present us with many surprises. But let's be honest: why should that be important, when no one is remotely close to sounding like Ulcerate anyway? Once again we are treated to an out-of-body experience of gargantuan proportions filled with wondrous but also terrifying landscapes. Taking a page from their previous opus, Ulcerate once again incorporate calmer and more pensive passages, which results in a perfect sense of dynamics within their dissonant "post-death" metal. With technical prowess that won't leave anyone indifferent, Ulcerate reel the listener in with masterful compositions only to make the poor soul jump headfirst into the apocalyptic sceneries crafted in this album.

Full review

Vanhelgd - Atropos Doctrina

Everybody knows the Swedes make good death metal. You can't add that chainsaw tone to your guitar without being accused of stealing from Sweden. But obviously not all bands follow the Swedeath formula, and Vanhelgd especially find unique ways to build upon it: making the death metal melodic without taking from the Gothenburg sound, making the death metal doomy without feeling like the death-doom revival sound, and making the death metal blackened by having the vocals be as hoarse and tortured as possible. Rarely does death metal feel as evocative as this just through how (gasp) gorgeous the guitars can sound.

Full review

Veilburner - The Duality Of Decapitation And Wisdom

Dear readers, we are not asking you to choose between decapitation and wisdom. We here at Metal Storm consider that the two are not dichotomous. We also consider that Veilburner really hit it with The Duality Of Decapitation And Wisdom, with its greatest strength being writing very quirky and uncompromising experimental extreme metal that somehow still feels very accessible. With a fixed structure of seven songs of seven minutes, the album is full of melodic hooks, its production makes it feel intoxicating, and its vocal performance drives the oddball factor to 11.

Full review

Vitriol - Suffer & Become

Delivering brutality in abundance without succumbing to the pitfalls of brutal death metal, Vitriol's Suffer & Become is a staggering assault of ballistic percussion, boggling complexity, and suffocating dissonance. However, at the same time, it's replete with blistering solos, several surprisingly melodic in nature, and it also features unexpected yet enhancing symphonic touches that add a hint of sophistication to the savage violence. Bludgeoning yet hook-laden, and unrelenting yet multi-dimensional, Suffer & Become is death metal at its most delightfully visceral.

Full review