By any standard measure, this isn’t a pop album. The droning sludge duo of Chip King and Lee Buford have been making some pretty gross (and pretty spectacular) noise metal for years, so it’s not entirely unexpected that they translate that approach into a record they billed as the “grossest pop album of all-time.” Mission accomplished: No One Deserves Happiness, one of two records released by The Body this year (along with a Full of Hell collaboration), backs up their piercing drones and low-end bowel obstructions with electronic beats, some gorgeous vocals courtesy of Maralie Armstrong, and a surprising amount of hooks. In execution, it’s in a category of its own. In concept, For This We Fought the Battle of Ages is part of a long legacy in metal. Chilling, indeed, though this particularly dark vision is rendered powerfully and beautifully in SubRosa’s hands, delivering not only their most colossal sounding album yet, but one that features their most intricate and gorgeously arranged compositions, most of which extend well beyond the 10-minute mark. The Salt Lake City doom metal quintet’s concept-driven fifth album, inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 novel We, paints an abstract portrait of a society crumbling into dystopia as a worldwide rise in white nationalism and political movements driven by prejudice and hate threaten to create a very similar dystopic vision in the real world. presidential election wasn’t coincidental. The timing of the release of SubRosa’s new album just months before the November U.S. SubRosa – For This We Fought the Battle of Ages

Honorable mentions: Alcest, Anicon, Astronoid, Blood Incantation, Cobalt, Eerie, Graves At Sea, Helms Alee, Kvelertak, Lycus, Nails, Tombs, Oathbreaker, Sumac, Take Over and Destroy, True Widow, Vektor and Wode. So here they are: My picks for the 10 best metal albums of 2016. I narrowed it down to my 10 favorites-the records that I not only couldn’t take out of rotation this year but probably will be frequent spins well into future. So when it came time to whittle the list down to my 10 favorites, that got sort of tricky. What made it more bearable was music, and metal in particular gave me endless hours of exploration and discovery and, yes, catharsis. I think we all had a lot of that in 2016, and it’s not going away anytime soon. But metal provides catharsis, and a healthy outlet for frustrations and angst. It’s loud and angry and dark and intense, and by all accounts probably is more likely to set many listeners on edge than provide a sense of comfort. To non-metal listeners, that might come across as kind of strange. If an artist appears multiple times, that means multiple albums by that artist are forthcoming.I find metal comforting. These albums do not yet have a firm release date, but are in various stages of development.

Release dates are subject to change, and often do.ĭragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

Upcoming metal albums 2016