The Best Melodeath / Extreme Power / Gothenburg Metal Album - Metal Storm Awards 2024

As The Sun Falls - Kaamos

No new Insomnium album out to nominate this year, but Kaamos by As The Sun Falls is about the next best thing. The Finns play a very Finnish style of melodeath, full of sorrowful melodies gliding across frozen landscapes. Riffs and leads from the guitars deliver sharp hooks and lush melody in equal measure, and a captivating guest appearance from Aeonian Sorrow's Gogo Melone adds an extra charm to the album's already wondrous sounds.

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Dark Oath - Ages Of Man

There's no hint of subtlety when it comes to Dark Oath's Ages Of Man; ancient Greek myths are told against a backdrop of symphonic folk melodeath that is as bombastic and grandiose as one might expect from that combination of genres. However, said bombast does not come at the expense of strong writing; the underlying riffs are strong as iron, and the songs they fill deliver instant dopamine hits with their stirring arrangements. Ages Of Man is rousing enough to inspire people to climb mountains as daunting as the one depicted on its cover.

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Eternal Storm - A Giant Bound To Fall

Eternal Storm have pulled out all the stops on A Giant Bound To Fall; fitting that name, this sophomore album is nearly 70 minutes long, with two tracks breaking the 10-minute barrier. The band's progressive inclinations slot perfectly into their delectable melancholic melodeath sound, although as much as Eternal Storm are excellent at stirring the sadder emotions, they can also be outright uplifting or fiercely aggressive. The ability to get heads banging to sharp-edged riffs and then immediately transport them to stunning sonic vistas is remarkable, much like acts such as Omnium Gatherum or An Abstract Illusion, and across just two albums, Eternal Storm have made it abundantly clear that they are very much the real deal.

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Hand Of Kalliach - Corryvreckan

Hand Of Kalliach comprises husband-and-wife duo John and Sophie Fraser, and that fact by itself is cute enough that you should check out Corryvreckan right now. But if you’re in the Melodeath category because you like big, burly Vikings or something instead of romantic recording studio dates, then maybe the sounds of the great whirlpool will convince you. The Gulf of Corryvreckan is a strait in the Inner Hebrides that is home to such vortexes and also the inspiration for several local legends, which suits the folk-tinged death metal of this album very nicely; the pummeling, bass-heavy chugging that drives Corryvreckan often sounds quite like crashing waves pulling you to a watery grave, and Sophie’s light, ghostly voice blurring into the Celtic-flavored melodies conveys a feeling of something old beyond measure. Perhaps the most unexpected element of Hand Of Kalliach is the heavy inspiration taken from Fallujah’s atmospheric tech death: an unusual pursuit for a band otherwise primarily melodeath, but expertly applied to this excellent album of landscapes and legends.

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Nyktophobia - To The Stars

Thinking of melodic death metal, Sweden and Finland are probably the first countries that come to mind, and it takes a while before a German band's name finally appears on the list of the genre’s most well-known and successful representatives. Nyktophobia was founded in 2015 in the northernmost corner of the Ruhr area to challenge this status quo, and their fourth full-length album impressively proves that they are on the right path. To The Stars is where the voyage is headed, and this is not a randomly chosen title, as the cosmic theme runs through all nine tracks, both lyrically and musically. It’s an epic journey with many atmospheric synth interludes, and while the band's latest addition, Michiel van der Plicht (Pestilence, ex-God Dethroned), sets the pace behind the drum kit, the other four seasoned crew members play their instruments so skillfully and in sync that their mothership reduces the lead of the Fennoscandian star fleet to an absolute minimum in just 39 minutes—without even constantly pushing to the edge of light speed.

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Ryujin - Ryujin

Self-titled albums from bands that have been around for a while can raise eyebrows, but in the case of Ryujin, the album marks a rebrand after a dozen years for Japan's Gyze. Despite the name change, however, Ryujin continue to unleash delightful extreme power metal dialled up to 11 on all fronts, with rapid songs, dazzling lead guitar, and sumptuous melodic hooks, many of which are delivered using traditional Japanese instruments such as shamisen and erhu. The album is also notable for several guest vocal appearances from Trivium's Matt Heafy (who is now both the band's manager and album's producer), and Heafy's work on the mic and behind the recording desk works wonders for the group.

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Slaughter The Giant - Abomination

While some melodeath can be - and has been - referred to as melodic metal with growls on top, Slaughter The Giant are unequivocally a death metal band, and one with a blackened and occasionally almost brutal edge. Still, while performed with savagery, the riffs on Abomination are irresistibly hooky with their subtle melodicism, and that's not even getting onto the show-stealing solos and the restrained-yet-effective use of symphonic elements and touches. At just shy of 30 minutes, Abomination is a lean listen that will leave you hungry for more and reaching for the replay button when it's finished.

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The Crown - Crown Of Thorns

For most of the '90s, this band was known as Crown Of Thorns before deciding to leave the constituent material vague and shorten themselves to The Crown (it was less painful that way). They've had a successful career under this name, dishing out cold, cruel, and cobra speed venomous death metal for a quarter-century, and now it’s time to revisit those prickling roots. The Crown have certainly developed a greater affinity for melody over the decades, but when you get right down to it, “back to the basics” doesn’t change things a whole lot, since they’ve never had any trouble remembering what things were like in the bad old days – their incredible speed and brutality haven’t wavered a bit. This semi-self-titled album demonstrates once again why this band deserves the trappings of Swedeath royalty.

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Upon Stone - Dead Mother Moon

Do you ever wish that melodic death metal, even if it did sound like the Gothenburg sound, would instead have that Swedeath buzzsaw tone for it guitars? Well, the answer to that pertinent wish doesn't even come from Sweden. Hailing from California, Upon Stone debut with Dead Mother Moon, and they make sure to put a lot of weight on both the "melodic" and the "death metal" parts, with jush a dash of hardcore in the vocals and black metal in the riffing, and a harsh production to match.

Wintersun - Time II

Listen, we're as surprised as you are. No one could have seen this coming, not even the non-Jari members of Wintersun. But here we are. Now, what anyone could have predicted is that Time II is an epic of epics. Its orchestrations are incredibly dense, spanning vast depths of sound and filled with rich detail. The performances are virtuosic, mesmerizing in their complexity and just as impressive for their radiant emotion. The songs are anchored by the vaunted choruses of power metal, underpinned by the crushing tides of melodic death metal, shot through with the infinitely diverse textures of symphony, redolent of old folk traditions. This is pure Wintersun: the grandest sounds of metal given cinematic dimension. Time II used to be the album we would never see; now it is an album impossible to ignore.

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