VaccZine #10: Wolf Rambatz's Top 50 of 2021
Top 50 favorites, bonus awards
Artwork by Wolf Rambatz. Original Butthole Chainsaw character design by Mike Teal
If we’re gonna year-end it up, let’s year-end it up right.
Obligatory extremely personal essay: Everything about 2021 sucked except the music.
Obligatory what-even-is-this existential quandary: What even is this? A best-of list? A time capsule? One last push for deserving bands to get some shine before press coverage vaporizes on January 1? A way to make myself seem important? Hell, it’s been so long since I’ve done one of these solo I don’t even know how or where to start. Do I kick this off with the clattering death metal chaos of Tumba de Carne? The Steve Dave-mastered swirling miasma of Labored Breath or the not-Steve-Dave-mastered Monte Penumbra? The wonderfully discordant Total Dissonance Worship label? The invigorating deathcore thud of Inhuman Architects? The brutal death metal butt demolition of Stabbing? The otherworldly atmospheres of Zeegang and Forgotten Heritage? The sturdy and inspiring trad jams of Tales of Medusa and Shadowland? The sludgy doomy doom bleakness of Body Void and Hellish Form? Do I just mention these deserving metallic gems in the intro to cover my ass? Does any decision actually mean anything as we all cruise towards our inevitable final forms as piles of mulch? WHAT EVEN IS THIS? Who knows. Let’s start at the start and go from there. I hope you find some tunes you like. And, if this pisses you off, I hope it pisses you off so goddamn badly.
Obligatory game-within-a-game bonus: Since my other year-end obligations take me a month to put together and I have extreme PTSD about that endless process, I’m going to write all of this in a day because nothing matters and no one reads this stuff anyway. Enjoy watching my brain melt the deeper you dive into this list. It’ll be like some deep sports nerdity for blurb freaks, the metal-writing equivalent of watching Russell Westbrook steal rebounds from teammates to secure a triple-double. Except this will cause me long-term mental damage. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
Cool? Cool. Let’s ride.
50. Ordo Vampyr Orientis: Bat Magic - Feast of Blood / Beastial Majesty - The Night of the Hunter
If you're old like me, you remember when USBM was a punchline. OVO, not to be confused with Drake's fashion house (*eyes widen* wait...a second…), debuted this year with two black metal demos bleeding true black metal feelings. Bat Magic was a throwback to the rehearsal tapes of yore, complete with a first-wavey, we-love-Mercyful-Fate vibe. Beastial Majesty was the brutish, warrish twin that I’m assuming is an ode to Bloodborne. A musician named the Impaler is the connective tissue between the two projects and I’m guessing has something to do with the OVO empire. To the Impaler: more please. Oh, by the way, Bat Magic's singer is named Vespertine Screech and isn't even the oddest-named entity within the sextet. What more do you need? That USBM is now this good on the reg never ceases to amaze me.
49. Yautja - The Lurch (Relapse Records)
Yautja continues to impress by flying the banner for chonky, BBTS-style metalcore in an era when most everyone else has moved on. Sure, it’s grind. Sure, it’s sludge. But it is very metalcore in the classic sense. A lot of The Lurch sounds like something you would’ve caught via a Turmoil tour package. What sets it apart is that Yautja has a modern understanding of what works and what doesn’t, upgrading the quality based on, what I’m assuming, is a couple decades of intense fandom. Like, you don’t make this unless you’re a big ol’ fan of metalcore. The Nashville trio has an absolute classic in them. This is a big lurch in that direction.
48. Every Band that Oscar Ortega Is In: Cystectomy - Deprive to Hollowness (Comatose Music) / Decortication - My Knife is Still in Good Order (Pathologically Explicit Recordings) / Engulfed in Repugnance - Consummation of Chthonic Remnants (PER) / Septycemia - Yersinia Pestis (PER) / Servants of the Sword - Execute the Enemies (Human Hunting) (PER) / Undeciphered - Beneath the Gentle Smile (Amputated Vein Records)
The only other people who could possibly lay claim to having a better year in brutal death metal are Polwach Beokhaimook (Biomorphic Engulfment, Cadavoracity, Cystgurgle, Theurgy, and Urged) and Nikhil Talwalkar (some of the band’s mentioned above, more on Talwalkar later). Already a big-ass weeping willow of BDM nastiness, Ortega grew the brutalitree even bigger this year. So, was this an excuse to post all of those bands? YOU KNOW ME TOO WELL! Am I going to cry myself to sleep tonight while humming the melody to the Time’s “Chili Sauce”? Jesus, you really do know me too well.
47. Zhmach - Euphoria Never Leaves (Grime Stone Records)
The title does not lie. This makes me so happy. The first thing you hear out of this Belarusian trio is a black metal screech and blast. Then you start to realize that it's playing rad-ass post-hardcore riffs. Parts of Euphoria Never Leaves are like black metal Revolution Summer and that rules so hard. Best thing Grime Stone has ever released.
46. Gloosh - Sylvan Coven (Drevo Music)
Russian George Gabrielyan’s solo project positions itself as one of the best newer Thoreau metallers, finally offering a (presumably) non-sketchy alternative to Windswept. If there was better walking-through-the-woods black metal made this year, I didn’t hear it. Sure, Sylvan Coven, Gloosh’s second album, has other applications, like sitting in your office and wishing you were in the woods or sitting in a subway car and wishing you were in the woods. Per a Encyclopaedia Metallum note, “The band name is Russian for ‘backwoods/wilderness.’” So, yeah, you know, some real wishing you were in the woods metal all the way around.
45. Рожь - Вечное (self-released)
When the Russian black metal/doom band Рожь (English: “Rye”) gets slow, it gets big. When it gets big, it gets grand. When it gets grand, it gets heartbreaking. “I bid farewell/ To my very own/ May the earth be gorged/ With my bones.” Relate. Вечное is technically Vladimir Frith’s full-length debut under this band name, though Рожь already has a pretty excellent discography of EPs. While it’s more atmo black in spots, Вечное flooded me with feels that I haven’t felt since early Cult of Luna. I spent many a lunch break walking around with Вечное in my ears, wondering what I was doing with my life. I think that probably suits Frith just fine.
44. LA’s Dystopic Dissonant Death Metal: Duhkha - Duhkha (self-released) / Our Place of Worship Is Silence - Disavowed, and Left Hopeless (Translation Loss Records) / Teeth - Finite (TLR)
Erol Ulug has something to do with all three, playing in Duhkha and Teeth and recording Our Place of Worship is Silence. Anyway, all of these bands put a disso/death spin on their respective base styles. Duhkha, which additionally features Eighteen Visions Keith Barney(!), did a raw take on sludgy metalcore. Teeth did a raw take on sludgy death metal. And Our Place of Worship is Silence, which I’m going to feature in the remainder of this blurb because it’s so damn good, did a feral and raw version of blackened beatdown. Disavowed, and Left Hopeless is just gross, a real I-gotta-take-a-shower record...and I love it. Its unfair advantage is that it unifies the walls-breathing horror of Portal with chonky, big chungus juds, the kind of riffs you’d hear at a Buried Alive reunion show before a misjudged headwalk puts you in the hospital. OPOWIS opened its last album with a sample of a bear growling over midpaced kill riffs, and that’s how I choose to think of the band forevermore. The duo is a hungry-ass bear that was accidentally awoken in winter and it takes its anger out on a guitar that it learned to play in the circus. IT’S HEADCANON. DON’T STOP ME.
43. Urthshroud - Eternal Forecast of Sorrow (Död Groda)
Colin Marston had a year, which is now the norm. Of all of his newly minted projects, Paroxysm Unit might be the one that I eventually become obsessed with. (Didn’t have enough time to review it for this list.) Urthshroud, though, got the most listens. Ostensibly “bedroom black metal” in all of its stretched-out, indulgent, untuned glory, Urthshroud is actually ridiculously catchy and ridiculously ridiculous, slathering on all kinds of weird Timeless Necrotears sounds. I actually pumped iron to this multiple times, some real serial murderer psycho shit to admit. This is not a gym album, but something about the constant buzz fit my post-set nihilism. Try it out. Stop me before I kill again.
42. Steel Bearing Hand - Slay in Hell (Carbonized Records)
The one album I recommended to normal people because it just ripped so damn hard that even shorthairs couldn’t deny it. The Texas four-piece is technically “death/thrash,” but uses the runtime of Slay in Hell to explore a ton of other styles. I particularly like the nod to classic Mercyful Fate and the 12-minute death/doom closer is so absurdly good that it could easily be a backdoor pilot for a death/doom-dedicated project.
41. Turris Eburnea - Turris Eburnea (Everlasting Spew Records)
I feel like this collabo between Nicholas McMaster and Gabriele Gramaglia got lost in the shuffle. Granted, it does take multiple listens to unlock precisely what Turris Eburnea is doing since its death metal experiments are armored by tricky tech wizardry. But, when you finally crack this nut, you get some seriously catchy songs.
40. Takafumi Matsubara - Mortalized (Poison EP) (Roman Numeral Records)
Grind’s leading guitarist proves his inspiring comeback wasn’t a one-off by dusting off these previously unfinished Mortalized compositions. What else can you really write about Matsubara at this point? The shred is impeccable, as catchy and innovative as always. The all-star cast of contributors also shows out, particularly Swarrrm’s Tsukasa Harakawa (there was a new Swarrrm this year! ...that I still haven’t listened to) and Jardim de Flores’s Hoonee Jo, a drummer to keep an eye on. Love Jo’s playing. Jo gonna go places.
39. Anatomia - Corporeal Torment (Dark Descent Records / Me Saco un Ojo Records / Noxious Ruin)
Slow, low, no bullshit. This death/doom duo from Japan does the Coffins that everyone wishes Coffins would do. When it stretches out, as it does on the 21-minute closer, it even nips at the heels of the slomo sludge gods Corrupted. However, a warning: you gotta love death and doom to hang with Corporeal Torment. This is that pure, uncut misery.
38. Cannibal Corpse - Violence Unimagined (Metal Blade Records)
Cannibal Corpse’s consistency can’t be undersold. That said, I thought recent dispatches from the death metal institution were starting to dip in quality. Enter Erik Rutan for the refresh after Pat O’Brien’s...legal issues. Violence Unimagined is unimaginably good. To wit, “Follow the Blood” is another “Scourge of Iron.” That a 33-year old death metal band can even do that is nothing short of amazing. Lesson: Do not underestimate Cannibal Corpse. Hopefully, Corpsegrinder has learned from the whole WoW thing and joined us in 2021.
37. Prava Kollektiv: Arkhtinn – 二度目の災害 / Voidsphere - To Overtake | To Overcome (Amor Fati Productions)
Kinda hoping the Prava Kollektiv acquires Mylingar for draft picks and a band to be named later so it can corner the market on wind tunnel metal. Seriously though, here’s two more whooshy bangers. Arkhtinn is the one with the SETI sounds, those should’ve-sent-a-poet bleeps and bloops that punch up the Mysticum rippage. Voidsphere is more earthbound, drilling through the ground with deafening earthmover trems. Either way, two great ways to lose your hearing.
36. Eremit - Bearer of Many Names (Transcending Obscurity Records)
The mark of a good doomer is whether it can keep its hooks sharp after it stretches them out. The lumbering Eremit’s hooks are sharp. Damn sharp. Lop your head off with one swing sharp. I’m still amused by what I wrote previously about the band, that it “swings slowly, like Conan’s ballsack,” because I am a child. But there is something swords-and-sandals epic about it, the kind of immersive odyssey you wish would never end.
35. Hate Inclination - Hate Inclination (self-released)
Hate Inclination should be big, at least as big as a brutal death metal band can get. (So…not big. Great work, Wolf.) Now with the wunderkind Nikhil Talwalkar playing drums, Caleb Liles’s brutal death metal songs have gotten even stronger and weirder. This is strange, seasick, Defeated Sanity-esque gunk, equally cosmic horror and body horror. If you need a song title to describe it, let it be “Smoldering Clump.” This is one smoldering clump of an EP.
34. Atvm - Famine, Putrid and Fucking Endless (self-released)
The story of the year is how goddamn good prog death was. Atvm was a big reason for that as the London quartet came out of nowhere and blew brains to bits with its clever riffs. As I wrote for RYM, it’s nice that Famine, Putrid and Fucking Endless, the ungainly title of an album that’s anything but, does its thing without really sounding like Death. Here’s a bigger chunk of the blurb: “It’s kind of like if Nomeansno turned into the Chasm or something. I also appreciate that Harry Bray doesn’t debrutalize the vocals, taking the original caveman-discovers-alien-technology style of demo-era Cynic and going even more guttural until it rubs shoulders with Appalling Spawn.” I hate to re-vomit copy, but I have 800 of these to write. 33 more to go. FML! GOING GREAT. BRAIN HASN'T TOTALLY MELTED.
33. Beastlor - Galaxies of Death (self-released)
Mick Barr’s other black metal band…that’s also his other other other other other other (okay, you get it) project. Still, Galaxies of Death was pretty unexpected, especially as the last Beastlor release dropped in 2015. Not to mention, 24 years in, welcome to the full-length club, Beastlor. Maybe these songs were workshopped for years, or perhaps Barr was pissed that he was relegated to swamp séance duty on the last Krallice and these riffs spilled out of him. Regardless, the riffs are great, strengthening classic black metal with a trad-y, Darkthrone-y thrust.
32. Pharaoh - The Powers That Be (Cruz del Sur Music)
I didn’t listen to a lot of heavy metal/power metal this year, but maybe that’s because Pharaoh ably met my needs. The Philly prog/power institution released its fifth album and first in nine years and didn’t miss a beat. In fact, I’d say this might even be its most accomplished work. Matt Johnsen’s knotty shred and Tim Aymar’s paint-peeling vocal hooks never failed to make me smile while inspiring me raise a fist to the sky.
31. Majestic Downfall - Aorta (Personal Records)
I think it’s tiresome to say stuff is slept on. I recognize that I do this often. People aren’t really “sleeping” on music. It’s more that there’s just too much goddamn music out there. So I understand why a band like Majestic Downfall doesn’t catch on. This Mexico-located quartet plays loooooooooong, slooooooooow songs and not everyone is going to have the time and patience to sit with those songs when they’re skipping around Bandcamp. That and Majestic Downfall is plain in a great way. I compared this favorably to the Peaceville Three when I blurbed it initially, but this is even more unadorned than those bands at their most austere. It’s just authentic in its downer doom feelings. That’s kind of what I wanted this year. I didn’t want these Dr. Moreau genre-splice experiments. I wanted the genuine article. This be that.
30. Metharoma - Pipe Dreams (Through the Alley) (New Standard Elite)
We’re hitting the psychedelic stretch when I black out, enter a fugue state, and write a bunch of nonsense that sounds like the Hiss in Control. So, uh, bet you didn’t see this coming in a metal best-of: Allen Toussaint wrote a song titled “Sneakin’s Sally Through the Alley,” and Metharoma’s album title always makes me think of that. Anyway, holy hell! This record. I get it that not everyone is down with my favored flavor of brutal death metal, that being blast-at-all-costs hideous goo music. Metharoma has elements of that, but it’s not totally that. Instead, this is like the super tech ‘00 stuff that could get a good, chonkier churn going. The bass playing on this is excellent because of course it is: it’s Jacob Schmidt of Defeated Sanity. My favorite part, though, is when Ben Kitchen lets loose a growled “FUCK” before a super-crunch part and the “FUCK" echoes around the track. So good.
29. Michel Anoia - Nervures (Total Dissonance Worship)
Hat tip to Twitter user Yoink Sax, we’re going to try calling this stuff omnicore and see how that fits. Michel Anoia is, or was if we believe the band’s Bandcamp messages, a French trio that does a techy take on a whole heap of genres, an amalgamation of many modern extreme styles. You’ve heard bands like Ulcerate and Convulsing evolve into something similar. And yet, Michel Anoia is unique for its breadth and how it weaves those styles together. There’s a certain songwriting mastery at play. Like, you’d have to examine these riffs under a subatomic microscope to really understand that, say, a section is derived from punk since it just sounds wholly and completely like Michel Anoia. I bet the woodshedding process to make Nervures sound so seamless must’ve been endless. Thank you for your 10,000-hour sacrifice.
28. Bridge Burner - Disempath (Hibernation Release)
Provided you were in high school for those late-’90s, early-’00s Relapse compilations, this will really do it for you. How so? How about a New Zealand five-piece that sounds like a modern update on Uphill Battle without all of the baggage? Put me in, coach. What are we moshing to? Grind, crust, metalcore. It’ll do the Men in Black neuralyzer on you and make you forget about that Converge record. What Converge record? Didn’t Converge break up after You Fail Me? Yeah, exactly.
27. Nephilim Grinder - Spiritual Torment (Unmatched Brutality Records)
If there’s an erroneous knock on Unmatched Brutality Records, it’s that it works with bands that all kind of sound the same. I think I’ve even written that. Anyway, correction: I don’t think that is fair since, like, Meathook isn’t that similar to Ingurgitating Oblivion. (Both of these bands are great, for the record.) Whatever, Nephilim Grinder is another ripper that proves that Unmatched Brutality can offer more than Brodequin br00ts. This is subtly progressive stuff for a super-fast brutal death metal record, working in some melodic respites that wouldn’t be out of place on an Edge of Sanity album. Still, you’re here for the br00ts. The br00ts are good. Obligatory brutalitrees: Marvin Ruiz is from Stabbing. Roman Tyutin is from a ton of Ortega bands and ByoNoiseGenerator. Also other bands. Of course, there are other bands. There’s so much music. How do these BDM dudes do it? How do they all find time to work with each other? It’s like the Illuminati for real. The goddamn Bilderblurgh Group.
26. Conjureth - Majestic Dissolve (Memento Mori / Rotted Life Records)
To Conjureth, I’m sorry I wrote that your band name sounds like a toothless magician trying to explain their day job to a blind date. I was on deadline. These things happen. What I’m not sorry about is gushing about how much ass this whips. Once Conjureth gets going, it doesn’t stop, speeding through the kind of ludicrous death metal that early Floridians could only manage while plumbing the depths of meth psychosis. Ugly, brutish, old. Basically my Tinder profile.
HALFTIME!
25. Abhorration - After Winter Comes War (Invictus Productions)
Just wrote about this in the last VaccZine, so read that. tl;dr: 1. This is ex-Condor. 2. It rips so dang hard. Anyway, going in depth about this Norwegian trio’s debut feels so wrong because After Winter Comes War is a classic underground thrash demo to listen to, not read about. Hell, this should kick off a new version of the old tape trade. Jam it, dupe it, send it to a friend in Brazil. Just like old times with 1,000% higher shipping costs.
24. Palsied - Certain Death Austerities (Lifeless Chasm Records)
A feast of shred courtesy of Rick Legitimate, a guitar string destroyer out of New Jersey. I stand by my previously proposed what-if: WHAT IF tech thrash evolved into death metal around 1996? This that. Palsied is Mekong Delta but Cryptopsy. Some of the playing is jaw-dropping – and the turbo-riffing style really blows the cover of “Rick Legitimate” – but it’s all in service of sick riffs. The pandemic has been horrific, but we probably don’t get this without the pandemic. Reality is complicated.
23. Portal - Avow / Hagbulbia (Profound Lore Records)
There are now a lot of bands that pull from Portal, but no one sounds like Portal. A step down from Ion, Avow is still very good, offering perhaps the best-produced and most Portalian experience of any of its albums. Uncomfortably weird riffs? Check. The gasping murmurs of a haunted grandfather clock? Check. Powerfully abstract rhythms? Check. Hagbulbia was the icing on the cake shaped like an elder god, and, in some respects, the better record, turning up the noise to make the atmosphere more suffocating. (I think someone said it was a Times of Grace dealio, which it sure isn’t. If you found a way to line these two albums up, lemme know. I couldn’t figure it out because they don’t fit together.) Buy direct from the band.
22. Dead and Dripping - Miasmic Eulogies Predicating an Eternal Nocturne (self-released)
In less than a year, Evan Daniele rolled two rumbling, tumbling death metal boulders down a hill and destroyed all of the lesser ‘90s rememberers. Instead of another bite of the Incantation/Demilich apple, Miasmic Eulogies Predicating an Eternal Nocturne recalls Morbid Angel, Immolation, Cryptopsy, and other slime merchants at their grimiest. This is death metal that you don’t play anywhere else but a basement. Start a pit with some silverfish.
21. Buried - Oculus Rot (Brutal Mind Productions)
SO MANY RIFFS. Buried unburied Pyaemia and churned out this riff-beast that will surely put Anata back into hibernation for fear of not being able to match it. (Anata, release the goddamn album.) 33 minutes, 33,000 riffs. Riffs of all sorts. Death metal grooves. Death metal blasts. Death metal burnouts. I’m not gonna Bubba Gump Shrimp this blurb, you know the deal. A lot of this year-end list is writing that things are crazy to me. Well, it’s extra crazy to me that in the span of two years, we got albums by Arsebreed, Disavowed, and this Pyaemia revivification...and all of them crush. This is death metal for real ones that don’t believe that messageboard nonsense that the genre sucked in the early ‘00s.
20. Anal Stabwound - The Visceral Sovereign (Inherited Suffering Records) / Abstraction Bathes in Sunlight (New Standard Elite)
The one who was promised. Nikhil Talwalkar, teenager. Possessor of more talent than all of my reincarnated past selves combined. You could hook me up to the Matrix and download a terabyte of death metal playthroughs into my skull and I still couldn’t do what this kid has accomplished in their 16 trips around the sun. Absurd. And the band is named ANAL STABWOUND. God, I love it. Anyway, the Visceral Sovereign set the table, the infinitely more Defeated Sanity-esque Abstraction Bathes in Sunlight pulled out the tablecloth and then whipped your ass endlessly with it.
19. Meshum - Enigmatic Existential Essence (New Standard Elite)
To steal a line from the old jazz blog, an orgy of rhythms. Erkin Öztürk, the sole proprietor of this brutal death metal pounder, plays drums like a guitarist. His blasts sound like lead guitar lines, which give these 13 unceasingly blasting tracks a unique feel and uncommon depth for a BDM album. If you only listen to this once, you’re missing a lot of it. Run it back and Enigmatic Existential Essence expands like one of those capsule sponge toys. Someone take E to this album and tell me how that goes.
18. Siderean - Lost on Void's Horizon (Edged Circle Productions)
I hope Opeth hears this. What this Slovenian quintet is doing on its first LP since changing its name from Teleport is such a breath of fresh air for progressive blackened death metal. It presents a path that a certain Swedish band could travel down to reclaim its power without rehashing past achievements. But, to be clear, Siderean is its own thing. Definitely indebted to modern practitioners like Morbus Chron, but its own thing. Its ideas are celestial, the kind of space dust that Arcturus used to dream about. But its riffs are so gutsy and earthy. Hell of a mix.
17. Sigil - Nether (self-released)
“Compounds” is my second favorite song of the year. It’s like Castevet got into heart-pulping screamo chords. I can’t stop listening to it and marveling at how kinetic it is. A lot of that is thanks to David Horrocks, who drums so damn hard for this Canadian four-piece. Horrocks loves a fill and I love that Horrocks loves ‘em. That’s not to say that the other Sigilers are slouches. All of this just flat out rips, recalling Haunter, another band that lets the power of skramz put Krallicean blackened death into overdrive.
16. Starcave Nebula - When the Ego Succumbs to Death… (Food for Dogs Productions)
And this is my favorite song of the year. I started writing this newsletter partly because I didn’t think Starcave Nebula was getting enough pub. If you want more info about this Canadian duo, I suggest reading the interview that kicked off VaccZine #2. Anyway, not much more I can write about this beyond that Weakling fans should take notice.
15. The California Extremely Hard Bop Scene: Effluence - Ballistic Bloodspray (Dense(s) Record) / Psychocephalic Spawning (P2) / Meticulous Butchery - Induced Serotonergic Despoliation (self-released) / Steve Matthews Trio - Ego Death: Live at Headlands Coffeehouse (self-released) / Tantric Bile - Seminal Baptism (self-released)
One of the old reviewer crutches is writing about the “future of music.” Bro. BRO! This is the future of music, man! That kind of horseshit. I can’t tell you that these California bands are the future of music because, I mean, listen to them: Effluence is like an even further gone Encenathrakh, pure blasting mayhem; Meticulous Butchery is its neon-glowing cousin; Steve Matthews Trio is a rollicking free jazz assault; and Tantric Bile is all of the above rolled into one album. Like, so few are going to heed this call and start playing brutal free jazz. But, damn, do I ever want this to be the future of music. One of my measures of great creative music is whether the music makes me want to create myself. Listening to all of this makes me want to make rash decisions, drop out of life, and fire up the guitar lessons again.
14. Serpent Column - Katartisis (Mystískaos)
It’s a testament to Serpent Column’s energy and ingenuity that the “stripped-down” EP is still this wild. Already pretty Portraits of Past, Katartisis is even more Portraits of Past, giving Theophonos a frame to fire off bolts of riffs that arc wildly like chain lightning. Invigorating, stirring. Fills the void in my soul by holding my hand as we gaze deeply into the void together.
13. Carcinoma - Labascation (self-released)
This UK trio takes the Portal-y horrorscapes of Abyssal and wrings out the excess, leaving behind an album that’s just pure riffs. This is like the post-hardcore version of that sound in that it’s awesomely austere. Because it can’t hide a paucity of ideas behind atmospheric murk, Carcinoma is forced to write engaging material. And, holy hell, does it ever engage. This is what I wish war metal would sound like but never does. Unsettling. Awesome.
12. Replicant - Malignant Reality (Transcending Obscurity Records)
Hails, Negativa I can deadlift to. This New Jersey three-piece is obviously more than that, but playing it in THE IRON CHURCH, BROTHER helped it finally click with me. Malignant Reality is just a fun-ass album, doing to dissonant death metal what Our Place of Worship is Silence does for its mosh pit touchstones. Once the Disembodied riff lands during the opener “Caverns Of Insipid Reflection,” it’s like, Oh, okay. This. This is exactly what I wanted. It’s the kind of clever tech you can turn your brain off to. That’s a harder feat to pull off than it sounds. Replicant sure pulled it off, though. Thanks for all of the leg days, Malignant Reality.
11. Krallice - Demonic Wealth (P2)
It’s crazy that we’re to the point where it’s like, “Oh yeah, Krallice released that weird-ass album of ensorcelled keyboards and Mick Barr recorded his vocals in a car by a swamp. I remember that one.” The New York band has been on such a run, it’s possible to take such absolute stunners like this one for granted. What the hell even sounds like this? It’s like Stilla on ketamine. It’s like Manes read too much PK Dick and then fell asleep in a busy subway car. For other bands, this would be a career-defining new path to drag an entire genre down. For Krallice, it’s the album it released in 2021.
10. Hooded Menace - The Tritonus Bell (Season of Mist)
Artwork by Wes Benscoter
Unlike years past when we’d get a ton of good albums but not many great ones, 2021 gifted us with quite the bountiful harvest of potential classics. As such, this top 10 could be in any order. Really, you could hit shuffle and whatever order a player decides to spit out, I’d be fine with it. And yet, among those potential classics, nothing sounded as classically classic as Hooded Menace’s The Tritonus Bell. Always blessed with a knack for nailing morosely catchy leads, it felt like the Finnish death/doom quartet became its true form on this one. Maybe it’s because it tapped Andy LaRocque to man the boards, a person who knows their way around some catchy shred. But I don’t think that fully captures just how indelible these riffs are. The logline I’ve been using to sell this to people is “imagine how big Paradise Lost would be if it released this in 1992.” In a fairer present, Hooded Menace would capture that kind of attention today. Buy direct from the band.
9. Cerebral Effusion - Ominous Flesh Discipline (New Standard Elite)
Artwork by Lordigan
Cerebral Effusion makes brutal death metal for people who like brutal death metal. Now, to be clear, Ominous Flesh Discipline won’t get you into brutal death metal if you think you might like brutal death metal. The Spanish quartet’s sound is way too brutal death metal to onboard outsiders. By that I mean the production is raw and the playing is uncompromising. But in the same way that real baseball sickos lose their shit for a pitchers’ duel, Cerebral Effusion’s stripped-down approach sounds all the better to brutal death metal obsessives. This is for the people who think Dying Fetus peaked on Destroy the Opposition and argue that Disgorge lost something after Matti Way.
8. Charnel Grounds - Molecular Entropy Examined in the Bowels of a Great One / Hermetic Wisdom (self-released)
This Florida...group? Person? I don’t know! But this I-don’t-know from Florida came out of nowhere and chewed me to bits with its sixteenth six-tooth technical death metal that’s pulled out of whatever portal Artificial Brain opened. Given the location, immensity of the sound, and technical chops, I’ve joked that this is secretly Torche. Why not? Rick Smith is Caveman Cult, and I remember most of that band better as Capsule and Shitstorm. (I don’t honestly believe that it’s Torche, but, like how James Randi used to write the date on a scrap of paper and put it in his pocket just in case he died that day, I want to get this on the record jussssst in case.) Anyway! The fact that two demos and one wild Youth of Today cover was enough to crack my top 10 should be enough to sell this one. If not, Charnel Ground’s collected works sound like a companion of the Doctor got spooked by some Lovecraftian heebie-jeebies, ran out of the Tardis mid-flight, and got sucked into a black hole. Eat shit, Adric.
7. Concrete Winds - Nerve Butcherer (Sepulchral Voice Records)
The consequence of waiting so long to write this list is that I feel like I’ve written about a bunch of these albums a thousand times by now. I don’t think I’ve spilled more digital ink than for Concrete Winds. Look, you’re either going to love this thrashy blast of ancient death metal or you’re not. The Finnish duo has even owned up in interviews to making decisions purely to antagonize weaker listeners. If you’re in, welcome to the club. If not, I want a divorce. You can have my Manilla Road albums on weekends.
6. Diskord - Degenerations (Transcending Obscurity Records)
Artwork by Sindre Foss Skancke
Within a bugfuck discography of what-if-Voivod-but-more-demented bizarro bangers, Degenerations is the bugfuck jewel for this Norwegian three-piece. This is like someone left Coroner on the counter too long, a version of Carbonized that rolled behind the fridge. Degenerations is an older strain of batshit, not far removed from thrash and death metal’s beginnings. Still, it sounds utterly bizarre, the kind of music that must fill the heads of Disharmonic Orchestra at its most sleep-deprived. Part of the fun of Degenerations is re-listening to it, hearing all of the things you missed. Because, really, this has an approach to riffs that’s like Airplane!’s approach to jokes. I’ve actually had this on repeat and didn’t realize it flipped back to the beginning.
5. Cenotaph - Precognition to Eradicate (New Standard Elite)
Artwork by Delic Saike
After 2017’s speedy Perverse Dehumanized Dysfunctions, this long-running Turkish entity retooled and rebooted for Precognition to Eradicate. Lone constant Batu Çetin has a whole new crew that includes up-and-coming drum god Florent Duployer. This album, then, trades in some of the gore-choked wetness of previous works for a precise, mechanistic assault, not unlike a Wormed-ier, Defeated Sanity-esque update to Çetin own Drain of Impurity. The number of brutal death elements and rhythms happening at any one time is incredible in the “oh shit, those sure are a lot of snakes coiling together in that barrel that I’m being lowered into” nightmare sense. In that way, this is a thinky kind of brutal. But, the reason why Precognition to Eradicate works so well is because it’s a brutal kind of brutal, too. Based purely on death metal density, this is probably the heaviest album in that style this year.
4. Jute Gyte - Mitrealität (Jeshimoth Entertainment)
Artwork by Arnold Schoenberg - Denken
Much like Krallice, it’s insane that Jute Gyte has constructed such an incredible discography that it normalizes bonkers albums like this one. It’s like, Oh, there Adam Kalmbach goes, making the most accessible inaccessible album I’ve ever heard. Mitrealität is the peak of this iteration of Jute Gyte, turning incredibly rich dissonances into something that’s almost catchy. The production is perfection, giving these weird-ass tracks a kind of aural purity that I’d expect more from an ECM release. And I just can’t get over how detailed these songs are. Kalmbach writes in such a way, with so much attention to detail and flow, that even his weirdest turns, like the 18-minute title track, make sense. That said, forget the complex stuff. Mitrealität closes with a minimalist masterpiece, “Pentalpha,” which is the prettiest thing I heard this year.
3. Plebeian Grandstand - Rien ne suffit (Debemur Morti Productions)
We’re hitting the ‘no-other’ stretch of this list. In this case, no other album summed up my day-to-day like this one. I’ve poured my guts out about this album elsewhere, so I’ll keep it short here. Rien ne suffit pulses with a real power. It’s music, but it’s life. By turning up the noise and industrial elements, it’s like France’s Plebeian Grandstand is mirroring the debilitating, attention-dominating, near-omnipresent din that pervades so much of reality now. I connected with that deeply. This album often blasted and screamed feelings I wish I could express. That Plebeian Grandstand’s omnicore is also so excellently played and structured is a bonus. Some real next-level stuff from a band that was already a few levels ahead.
2. Seputus - Phantom Indigo (Willowtip Records)
Artwork by Alex Eckman Lawn
We did a whole podcast on Seputus, so listen to that if you want a breakdown on the inner workings of Phantom Indigo.
From a personal perspective, I listened to Phantom Indigo a lot in preparation of that podcast and I still listen to it a lot now. In fact, there was no other album that I listened to or thought about more than this one this year, which, you know, is the mark of a good album! Phantom Indigo passes the replay test because there’s so much going on within its walls and it’s just waiting for you to discover all of its secrets.
As a disclosure, Doug Moore is a bud, so maybe I wouldn’t have spent so much time unlocking Phantom Indigo’s pleasures if we weren’t tight. And yet, I don’t know! Much like Plebeian Grandstand, I feel like I’ve lived and died to this album this year. Stephen Schwegler’s masterpiece is something that I keep returning to, good times or bad, because it just...helps me unlock something intangible and indescribable about existence. It’s like hanging out and commiserating with a friend at this point. Whatever this has, it has it.
1. Succumb - XXI (The Flenser / Caligari Records)
Artwork by Stefan Thanneur
Look, I want to be clear. Succumb nabbing the number one spot has nothing to do with this...but this helped:
I don’t really have any grand pronouncements or Clarence Darrow-style closing arguments regarding why Succumb’s XXI rules. Good albums, authentically good albums, tend to make that argument just fine by themselves. What I will write is that, the more I listen to this album, the more I realize that, when I think back to 2021, I’m going to think of Succumb’s XXI first. It’ll be how I orient myself in time, similar to how I’m like, “1995? The year when Suffocation released the perennial album of the year, Pierced from Within?” That said, there is something timeless about XXI. Its energy, ferocity, and foaming, wild-eyed brutality are death metal ideals. And, because it’s so no-bullshit and punky with its approach, it’s free of the modern, trendy artifice that some bands wear like a battle vest. This is the first #1 I’ve settled on in a loooooong tiiiiiiiime that doesn’t feel like it’s going to instantly date my best-of list. And, yeah, I’ve written about this album so damn much that I’m sure everyone is tired of me flapping my gums about it. So, congrats, Succumb. That’s all there is to say, really.
AWARDS
OUT OF STEP
Awarded to my favorite punk record that I couldn’t shoehorn into a list.
Tenue - Territorios (Alerta Antifascista / The Plague of Man Records / Pifia Records / Long Legs Long Arms / Crust Or Die / Zegema Beach Records)
The Spanish trio poured its pandemic ideas into a near-30 minute track and it’s so goddamn excellent, delivering an emotional, cathartic, hooky blast of raw energy that, at its best, is like Daïtro never left. Kidcrash’s Jokes is my measuring stick for post-Funeral Diner skramz and I’ve been waiting for its successor for 14 years. Is this it? Might be. It’s at least sitting at the same awards table as La Luna.
Past winners:
2020: Subdued - Over the Hills and Far Away (La Vida Es Un Mus Discos / Roachleg Records)
2019: Protocol - Bloodsport (Dynastic Yellow Star Label / 11 PM Records)
2018: Great Falls - A Sense of Rest (Corpse Flower Records / Throatruiner Records)
THE FALSE
Awarded to my favorite non-metal album that could conceivably be enjoyed by metalheads.
Dorotheo - Como Es (Halfshell Records)
Been a great year for prog and psych of all temperatures. Mainliner is the one that runs red hot. Malady is the one that’s warm like a cabin fire. Motorpsycho is oh-so-cool. The Flying Luttenbachers is, I don’t know, some kind of extradimensional dark matter that we can’t even measure. But nothing captured my attention like Dorotheo’s debut Como Es. This Mexican duo created something singular. (And a plug! Read more about this one on Your Least Favorite Lupine.) So, what’s in it for metalheads? Como Es isn’t particularly heavy or loud or noisy, but it just does something to your soul that I think more adventurous metalnauts will appreciate. It recodes your DNA and makes you vibrate on its same wavelength. Once you’re now the new you, you get chills whenever that voice mixes with that guitar. And that’s kinda it. Metalheads and Dorotheo can agree: It’s rad when a riff takes over your body.
Past winners:
2020: Kairon; IRSE! - Polysomn (Svart Records)
2019: Helium Horse Fly - Hollowed (Dipole Experiment Records)
2018: Madder Mortem - Marrow (Dark Essence Records)
GAINZZZ
Awarded to the best album for the gym.
Last Light - We Were Never Here (self-released)
The best one-liner I wrote this year was “have a circle pit atop a parapet,” so let’s squeeze the juice out of that album-sticker sentiment one last time. I listened to a lot of moshy stuff this year, but Last Light was the one I kept running back. This is mosh, but mosh with black metal aesthetics, like getting punched by a bat at twilight. It would make Euronymous real sad. Good. Fuck him. (For the record, Urged came real close to holding this trophy above its head, BUT THERE ARE NO TIES IN THE AWARDS SECTION. ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE.)
Past winners:
2020: Focal Dystonia - Descending (In)human Flesh (Comatose Records)
2019: Pool – Pool (Skeletal Lightning)
2018: Internal Bleeding - Corrupting Influence (Unique Leader)
SON OF A
Awarded to the best album that I found in 2021 that wasn’t released this year.
Evilyn - Inside Shells (self-released)
Drummer extraordinaire Lee Fisher is the bait, so start nibbling Commit Suicide fans. Once you’re hooked, you get a really neat EP of avant-garde progressive death. Inside Shells came to life when Jeanne Artemis Strieder of Coma Cluster Void and Anthony Lipari of Thoren wanted to “create an old school style death metal record with more dissonance than you usually hear.” Indeed. While those two’s day-jobs are futuristic, Evilyn sounds like someone gave alien technology to ‘80s Immolation, turning that band into a mutated, lurching mess of sour riffs. Before recording, Strieder had to bail, so Fisher and Jim Hildebrandt finished up the sessions. I hope this wasn’t Evilyn’s first and last recording. It’s so damn promising.
Past winners:
2020: Self Deconstruction - Wounds (Break the Records / F.O.A.D.)
2019: Voice Coils - Heaven’s Sense (Shatter Your Leaves)
2018: Butcher ABC - North of Hell (Selfmadegod)
I’LL HOLD YOUR BEER
Awarded to the biggest swing for the fences.
Tantric Bile - Seminal Baptism (self-released)
I was tempted to give this to Fawn Limbs’ Darwin Falls, a record I was endlessly fascinated by because I hated it on such a primal, visceral level. You have to be doing something right to make me hate your album that much. (Also, uh, hi again, Lee Fisher who plays drums on that one and does the voiceovers. Sorry! I hate it.) But, I mean, given the criteria of this award, it had to be Tantric Bile, right? Yeah. Head back to the last VaccZine for more.
Past winners:
2020: Potion - Cemetary (self-released)
2019: !T.O.O.H.! - Komouš (self-released)
2018: Entropia - Vacuum (Arachnophobia Records)
SHOWER BEER
Awarded to the best album to throw on during the weekend.
Blood Sport - Hot Blood and Cold Steel (Gates of Hell Records) / Witch Cross - Angel of Death (High Roller Records)
A tie??? What is this, hockey?
Finland’s Blood Sport, a new band, has an approach to speed metal that I appreciate: Write a cool-ass riff, play it as fast as possible, and repeat it until it gets stuck in the listener’s head. If you have a thing for Acid or Avenger, this is now your thing. Hell of a way to start a weekend.
On the other hand, Witch Cross are old dogs that haven’t learned a new trick. This is here because someone needs to recognize that Angel of Death, the second comeback album for the nearly 40-year-old cult heavy metal band, is so much fun. I guess that person is me and I take my chosen status seriously. Catchier than it needs to be, these Danes double down on a rockin’ heavy metal throwback and make...maybe the album of its career? I love Fit for Fight, too, but if I still cracked beers, I’d crack a beer to this one sooner.
Past winners:
2020: Hecatomb - Horrid Invocations (self-released)
2019: Smoulder - Times of Obscene Evil (Cruz del Sur Music)
2018: Deathhammer - Chained to Hell (Hells Headbangers Records)
SWING AND A MISS
Band I doomed to obscurity by predicting it would be huge and it’s not going to be huge, obviously.
Plain Cheese Pizza - Plain Cheese Pizza (self-released)
My reign of terror continues. Did I learn from Laktating Yak? NOPE. I’m not sure why, but I expected Plain Cheese Pizza to blow up. Here’s what I wrote for Your Least Favorite Lupine:
Plain Cheese Pizza is a septet from Vancouver unifying noise rock, RIO, and Gentle Giant's Rabelais-inspired kitchen-sinkness in a way you didn't think you needed from a band with a many-toothed mutant dollar slice on the album cover. At its best, it's like if Henry Cow heard US Maple. King Crimson is also a touchstone, but this is pretty bonkers, more Yezda Urfa bugfuckery than something I'd associate with Fripp even if guitarists Wylie Ferguson and Thomas Hoeller have a spiky Fripperness to their playing.
I thought that was a good sales pitch! Like, normal people would read that and write me thank you emails that opened with, “Oh, yeah, Yezda Urfa. Give me some of that.”
Anyway, I actually pitched this to a coworker...and they stopped talking to me. I’m not kidding. They won’t even say “hi” now. They just wave when I walk by their office and then they stare intently at their computer screen. I’m sure it’s in my HR file. I’m not fit to exist in gen pop.
Whatever, I love this. It should be big! Transport me to the alternate Earth where this is big!
Past winner:
2020: Relic Point - Self Punishment (self-released)
SKETCH WATCH
Bands that turned out to be sketchy after I covered them.
Reliably, every year, I’ll go to bat for bands and then find out that I didn’t check my facts and there’s a whole bunch of “sketchy stuff” — the chosen euphemistic metal catch-all for racism, fascism, etc. — festering under the surface. While the endless purity testing that some segments of the scene engage in is tiring and ineffective, I believe that, from a consumer rights perspective, you should have all of the information possible to make an informed decision regarding your purchases. That is to say, I don’t want to lead you astray by unintentionally omitting information. If you don’t want to support stuff that isn’t consistent with your ideals, you should have that information! This isn’t controversial!
Anyway, in that light, don’t call this a call out. It’s also not some weird shame game exhibition. Listen to whatever you want, I don’t care. (To that end, I still think these albums are good. I wouldn’t be writing about them otherwise, although I held them off of the year-end list until I can get more information.) This section simply exists to hold me accountable.
As always, my email is wide open. If you ever see me cover something and you’re like, “Why is Wolf covering that,” lemme know and I’ll look into it.
StarGazer
Thanks to Nuclear War Now! being in bed with bands like Goatpenis, I need to vet everything on the label super hard. Did I research StarGazer thoroughly when I wrote about Psychic Secretions for the RYM list? Apparently not. In 2001, StarGazer released a split with mega-racists Arghoslent. Interviews from around that time suggest that the core StarGazer duo was, at best, extremely edgelord, too, namechecking the aforementioned sleazebags along with Grand Belial’s Key and Australian Nazi occultists Spear of Longinus. True, the early metal internet tried to launder all of those bands for but-the-riffs reasons, so I’m not exactly shocked that a band in the rep-building phase would say that stuff in the early ‘00s. Still, not great. When I wrote about it, this was worth a disclaimer, but I just flat-out missed it. No excuses.
Cambion
Cambion has a member who is in Pyre, a Texan black metal band that released 2006’s Totalitarian on Desastrious Records. Desastrious had an extensive history releasing NSBM and white nationalist garbage, though, to be fair, not with the same frequency when it worked with Pyre. That said, Totalitarian ends with a cover of Spear of Longinus and has artwork that...uh...wasn’t used for the tape edition. Again, this was worth a disclaimer when I wrote about Conflagrate the Celestial Refugium. I whiffed.
Mefitis
This one is tougher. There’s been a lot of chatter about Mefitis, enough to merit inclusion here. However, I’m still in the process of substantiating allegations and I want to give the band a chance to respond before publishing anything more about the situation. More on this in the future. This is just noting that Offscourings was a year-end shoe in and its absence will be questioned since I wrote so glowingly about it.
THE PLAGUEIES
Awarded to the podcast and post that did the best and chastizing the post that did the worst.
BEST POST: VaccZine #3
My obit for L-G Petrov. RIP.
BEST POD: Plague Rages Podcast #3: Interview w/ Seputus
Wasn’t even close. Blew everything else away in terms of plays.
WORST POST: Lupine’s Lament Liner Notes #2
I’m so chronically bad at doing self PR that I don’t think anyone knows this section exists. It exists. This takes me way too long to write and I should stop doing it, but it exists.
Alright, that’s it. 2021 can go fuck itself.
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