Revered within black metal circles for years by 2002, Norway’s Immortal leapt into the global metal spotlight with Sons of Northern Darkness. Immortal, Sons of Northern Darkness (2002) Behold the raging maniac in all his glory.ġ5. And while later releases would win earn the band countless accolades and eventually win Grammys, it was this battle cry from inside Matt Pike’s bruised shell that still rings through the previous two decades most intimidatingly. Packed with a perfect mixture of High On Fire’s hard-hitting stoner-thrash numbers and their melancholy hesher-doom brooders, the album gives listeners everything they want, all the time. The last twenty years are littered with absolutely incredible High On Fire albums, but De Vermis Mysteriis is the record which rises to the top. to look at its own fucked-up reflection again. That a record so game-changing for metal music coincided with an event that entirely rewrote American life as a whole smacks of cosmic poetry, as though the universe decided that enough was enough and it was time for the U.S. The album was a destructive return to form for Slayer, a moment where they seemed to throw caution to the wind and tell the world how they really felt. It feels strangely prophetic that God Hates Us All dropped on 9/11. In this way, God Forbid have written the most timeless album of the metalcore era, a record that is brilliantly affecting without ever feeling cliche or dated. And yet, unlike so many of their metalcore peers, the band never get sappy or emo on this album even their most heartfelt moments are without pretense, bellowed from a place of honest anger, grief, and resolve. New Jersey’s God Forbid fought tooth and nail to get where they were in 2004, and Gone Forever is a brilliant culmination of that emotional journey. This is the curse of the pharaohs right here. Throughout this storm of riffs and fills always exists a theatrical ancientness, a cinematic understanding of a time we can never fully comprehend. Carefully constructed but wily and unpredictable, Nile‘s second full-length record expresses both a brutality and a complexity that feel appropriately suited to match the nuanced historic world which it inhabits. While countless metal bands had written about or expressed interest in Ancient Egypt, it was Nile’s Black Seeds of Vengeance that officially gave the era its metal soul.
That you can dance your ass off to it almost feels like a bonus.ġ9.
Instead, the record elevates the emotions of a world we all live in, seeming to understand our daily tribulations without casting them as any less important for being commonplace. At no point during the 12 tracks on this record do Mutoid Man feel disingenuous or fantastical there’s no melodramatic breakup song here, much less a track about bringing down the system and cutting off someone’s head. What immediately set War Moans apart from most other album like it was its honesty. With just enough wily party riffs to make the whole thing seem unsettlingly fun, Pig Destroyer‘s full-length debut remains an album like no other. But those who did went on to shape the face of metal as a whole, and now the album stands as a hideous testament to that moment when death metal evolved into something chapped and perverse and truly upsetting. Not everyone jumped to buy Prowler In The Yard when it first came out, and for good reason - this record is the ultimate expression of Not For Everyone. Pig Destroyer, Prowler In The Yard (2001) Here are the 21 greatest metal albums of the last twenty-one years…Ģ1. And yet they have altered how we experience the art form, giving loud music for ugly people new life and a chance at cultural survival. Some are complete departures from the music that metalheads of yore loved some are returns to form with added elements of modernity some are pieces of art so extreme that your everyday Maiden fan wouldn’t even know what to do with them. The best albums of the post-2000 world have reflected this constant churn within the scene. We’re now learning exactly what metal can be. While this has at times been infuriating - there are only so many elemental Portland black metal songs one can hear before using their extra dollar to put “Round and Round” at the top of the jukebox queue - it has also been exciting and educational. Since the ball dropped on the ’90s, the genre has seen countless rises, falls, mutations, and reinventions, all in the name of kids wearing black and banging their heads. The past twenty-one years have been a period of unprecedented change for heavy metal music.
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