The best metal albums of 2024 so far (2024)

After seventeen albums and almost 50 years, by this point you should know what you're going to get with Accept. Trad metal with a sense for the glitz and enormity of the 80s, Humanoid is everything that makes the German band so great, a true reflection of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. But more than that, Humanoid is also a really great album, up there with the Priests of the metal world when it comes to producing top-tier records in a band's twilight years.

Somewhere in their past, Amaranthe were categorised as a symphonic metal band. The Catalyst shows just how redundant trying to cram the band into a single box is. Their seventh album, The Catalyst embraces everything from explosive melodeath to disco sensibilities and power metal for a style-spanning showcase of just how brilliantly vibrant the Swedish band are.

Doom metal seldom comes as gorgeous, haunting and utterly transcendant as it does on A Chaos Of Flowers. But then, Big|Brave have been pushing boundaries since their 2014 debut Feral Verdure and their sixth full-length is no exception, as far from the template Black Sabbath et al set out as the likes of Gojira are from Deep Purple, finding their own unique niche with a mix of folk, sludge, drone and so much more.

With a cast of songwriters including members of Opeth, Apocalyptica, Entombed A.D. and Meshuggah, it was a fair bet that Bright & Black was always going to be something special. But the group's self-titlted debut proved to be more than the sum of its parts, the Baltic Sea Philharmonic orchestra tackling each composition with a vigour that offered a whole new take on symphonic metal.

Almost 20 years since his last solo release, Bruce DIckinson returned with a bold new vision on The Mandrake Project, a sprawling heavy metal epic so big it couldn't be contained on an album alone, its story also being told across a series of comics. That ambitious vision wouldn't mean much if the album didn't have great songs to match, however and thankfully on that front it delivers in spades, further proof that Bruce's status as a metal legend isn't linked solely to Iron Maiden.

After the more stripped back, folk stylings of 2019's Birth Of Violence, Chelsea Wolfe unveiled possibly her boldest vision yet on She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. A gorgeously dark and hypnotic record, it invoked some of the electro-industrial doom elements of her earlier releases while maintaining a sense of pensiveness that made it utterly enchanting.

Unsatisfied with the notion of being forced to make binary choices, Dool's third album is all about embracing the liminal. Perhaps that explains why their brand of doom is so transgressive and transcendent, shimmering notes of prog helping build a stunning, emotionally devastating listening experience.

For 25 years, DragonForce have presented an unabashed, utterly batshit vision of power metal with hyperspeed guitars and choruses that have carried them to massive venues around the world. Never ones to spoil a good thing, album nine is more of the same then - wacky, oftentimes goofy but always undeniably fun, Warp Speed Warriors is proof that DF are still one of metal's most gleefully brilliant bands.

Scottish prog metallers Dvne continued their exploration of the cosmos of Frank Herbert's Dune on new album Voidkind. Embracing sludge heft and nastiness but with a sense of wide-eyed prog adventurousness, the album showed there's more than one way to skin a gigantic space worm.

With the likes of Bring Me The Horizon, Architects and Parkway Drive all established as arena acts by this point, now all eyes are on who from the next generation of metalcore might make the leap. While the likes of Bad Omens and Spiritbox seem obvious front-runners, Alabama's Erra make a strong case of their own with their sixth studio album Cure, showcasing massive anthems without sacrificing any of the genre's most visceral elements.

Gorgeously bleak and suffocatingly oppressive, the fourth album from Faroese death-doom masters Hamferð draws upon a tale of a maritime disaster that befell their native Faroe Islands in 1915, claiming the lives of 14 fishermen. As a result, Men Guðs hond er sterk ('But Strong Is The Hand Of God') is an album built around tragic themes with a keen sense of drama throughout, its epic compositions lending a sense of scale that can so often escape the wider doom genre.

Although he has never fully turned his back on his pioneering black metal roots, Ihsahn's transformation into a prog metal maverick with his solo material is well established. His self-titled eighth studio album serves as the greatest bridge yet to his Emperor days, however, gorgeous symphonics set against dizzying prog-tinged instrumentals and blackened rasps in an epic and ambitious package that was so grandiose it had to be explored across both metal and fully orchestral versions of its parent album.

A decade since their last album, Job For A Cowboy came storming back on Moon Healer. Dizzyingly technical death metal with a sense of progressive brilliance, the Arizona band effectively picked up where they left off on 2014's Sun Eater, while the album's top 30 peak on the US Billboard 200 proved they quietly remain one of 21st Century death metal's biggest commercial hitters without acquiescing to anything resembling mainstream sensibilities.

Nobody embodies the indomitable spirit of heavy metal more than Judas Priest. 50 years on from their debut album, Invincible Shield finds the band still firing on all cylinders as an all-riffing, all-shrieking force of trad metal brilliance, galloping forth with a sense of vigour that would be impressive for a band half their age, Rob Halford reaffirming his Metal God status on each new track.

"I'm not finished!" So said Kerry King in Hammer's cover feature in May, and sure enough the thrash legend proved there was still miles of high-speed brilliance ahead to explore with From Hell I Rise, the debut album from his new band. With a cast of musicians including Mark Osegueda, Phil Demmel and long-time co-conspirator Paul Bostaph, King both embraced his Slayer roots and expanded his palette, adding a venomous, punky edge to the iconic thrash sound that was deemed by Dom Lawson to be his "best album since God Hates Us All".

Between Code Orange's Grammy nomination and Turnstile's takeover of the mainstream, hardcore has arguably not been so vital since, well, ever. With You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To, Kentucky's Knocked Loose proved they were well-deserving of A-lister status, producing an astonishingly brutal and powerful record that nonetheless has infiltrated the mainstream enough to get coverage from publications like The Guardian and earn the band attention from pop stars like Demi Lovato and Billie Eilish.

Now into their second decade as a band, occult rockers Lucifer present more irrefutable proof that the devil has the best tunes. The band's fifth - cannily titled Lucifer V - might have shades of Sabbath in the occasional monolithic riff, but in execution the band branch out into wider 70s rock party sensibilities, frontwoman Johanna Sadonis offering up insidiously catchy ear-worms and vocal melodies that prove there's more to piercing the veil of reality than mere doom and gloom.

Ministry might be preparing to ride off into the sunset (again), but before they go they're offering reminders of exactly how they became industrial metal legends in the first place. Like much of their 21st Century material, Hopiumforthemasses is a seething takedown of the ills of a world gone mad, taking on everything from incel culture (B.D.E.) to racism (Aryan Embarassment) and climate change (Just Stop Oil) with some of the catchiest, most bilious material since the anti-Bush trilogy of the mid-2000s.

Working with Devin Townsend as co-producer, China's OU expanded their prog metal sound to entirely new dimensions with their second album, II: Frailty. The result is an album that is progressive in every sense, capturing some of the bright maximalism of hevy devy's work with Strapping Young Lad whilst offering their own unique sonic imprint, vocalist Lynn Wu imbuing each song with a sense of playful quirkiness that helps truly set the band apart.

Formerly known as Gyze, the band now known as Ryujin celebrated their reinvention with an epic self-titled album that combined some of the virtuosic elements of melodeath with Japanese folk. With guest contributions from Trivium's Matt Heafy as a performer and producer, Ryujin captures the imagination with an air of grandiose maximalism, huge melodic vocal hooks suggesting some serious mainstream appeal for the group.

Coup De Grâce is an apt title for the third album from SeeYouSpaceCowboy, the San Diego band extricating themselves from their metalcore peers with a 12-song demonstration of quirky, unpredictable sonic tendencies. The mathy, technical elements of the band's sound are still displayed proudly, but the song structures twist and dance around vocal melodies that feel more at home in the realms of post-hardcore or mid-00s emo, elevating the band's "sasscore" into something truly boundary-pushing.

Having made waves with their 2022 EP Athames, Shooting Daggers realised their colossal potential on debut album Love & Rage. Using spiky hardcore punk as a foundation, the London band fly through nine tracks in a little over 21 minutes, but tracks like the shoegaze-heavy A Guilty Conscience Needs An Accuser and melodic title-track show there's much more to them than no muss, no fuss punk rock.

With 2020's Ummon, Slift began a shift from straight-up stoner rock to shimmering, otherworldly psych rock that they complete on ILION. Crashing, clattering post-metal meets melancholic prog metal and ultra-dense psych across the album's impressive 79-minute run-time, Slift crafting a sonic odyssey that is utterly exhilirating to behold.

C'mon then - who had "Unleash The Archers go 80s Rush" on their 2024 bingo-card? Okay, the Canadian band might have embraced the concept album and some synth-notes from their countrymen, but Phantoma still offers a heady dose of power metal bombast, Ph4/NT0mA and Buried In Code still galloping sing-alongs while Give It Up Or Give It All lets vocalist Brittney Slayes go full Doro. It's a thrilling mix, and makes Phantoma feel like a love letter to the very best elements of 80s metal.

Norwegian newcomers Witch Club Satan use the raw fury and viciousness of second wave black metal to explore themes of femininity and female rage. Released on March 8 - International Women's Day - their self-titled debut is a full-tilt rager spread across 12 tracks of bilious, shrieking black metal that would do their forebears proud, songs like Fresh Blood, Fresh Pussy and Wild Whores serving up provocative meditations on feminism.

Rich Hobson