REAPER'S DIGEST: The Best Albums of 2024

Here are the metal albums I listened to the most this year, and found to be the most interesting, compelling, or irresistible.

Kim Kelly

31 Dec 2024 • 8 min read

Glacier tongue on Svalbard, August 2024 / photo by KK

Well, we made it. At the stoke of midnight, 2024 will be over, and a new year will be upon us. The passage of time is an amorphous and unforgiving thing; it does not care whether this year was good or bad. It simply was. Now that it's over, you can reflect or reminisce if you like, clap yourself on the back for surviving whatever the universe threw your way, and steel your gaze to whatever's coming next.

It will probably be tough, because that is the kind of world we have built. I wish that were not the case, but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride–and these days, most of us can barely afford a saddle.

You will certainly need a good soundtrack for the coming months, and there, at least, I can help. At the height of my career as a full-time music journalist, I was churning out up to seven (!) different year-end lists for various other magazines and sites, on top of participating in best-of-2024 coverage for my day job at Noisey/VICE. Even as a voracious music listener, it got to be a little much—and now that I don't have to expend a glut of annual energy endlessly ranking and weighing releases against one another, I can just share a shorter list of albums I really, really liked. (I also contributed to Rolling Stone's 20 Best Metal Albums of 2024, which was a bit of fun as always).

Are they the best of the year? Perhaps; I may be a simple country scribbler, but I've spent over two decades now sifting the metallic wheat from the chaff, and—to utilize the most technical terms—I know what slaps and what honks. Regular readers of Salvo will recognize a lot of names on the below list, too, for another elementary reason: this is where I write about the bands I like! There are no ads, no pressure, no orders from higher-ups to include this or that mainstream stinker —just the metal albums I listened to the most this year, and found to be the most interesting, compelling, or irresistible, with handy streaming links attached.

Thanks for coming along on this journey so far—I'm excited to keep building up Salvo, and continuing to shine a light on the metal world's most valuable hidden gems. (While you're here, do me a favor and subscribe, okay?)

Without further ado, here are Salvo's Best Albums of 2024!

Crypt Sermon - The Stygian Rose (For the epic doom heads and heavy metal traditionalists)

Thou - Umbilical (For the misanthropic utopians who like it heavy and hopeless)

Skagos - Chariot Sun Blazing (For lovers of nature vibes and ravishing grimness)

Tribulation - Sub Rosa In Aeturnum (For slinky goths and Nosferatu babes)

Coffins - Sinister Oath (For purveyors of foul, rotted death metal grooves)

Vemod - The Deepening (For lovers of majestic, melancholic black metal art)

Darkestrah - Nomad (For fans of epic black metal and Central Asian melodies)

Unholy Altar - Veil of Death! Shroud of Nite (For the grimy black metal girlies)

Tzompantli - Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force (For death 'heads and dancing on colonizers' graves)

Mnajdra - In the Name of the Goddess (For menacing, esoteric black metal vibes)

Uprising - III (For the antifascist black metal hooligans)

Lust Hag - Lust Hag (For fans of raw, raging ice-cold black metal_

Glacial Tomb - Lightless Expanse (For drowning fascists in oozing, toxic sludge)

40 Watt Sun - Little Weight (For yearners and the hopelessly heartbroken)

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja (For the real mind-melted freakazoids)

Paysage D’Hiver - Die Berge (For whispering winds and crumbling mountains)

Witch Vomit - Funeral Sanctum (For those who like their death black and gross)

Vafurlogi - Í vökulli áþján (For those who dream as dark as the polar night)

Prehistoric War Cult - Barbaric Metal (For those who like it so raw it's bloody)

Corrupted - Pray for the Hollow Sun (For those who like to suffer slowly)

Cowardice - Atavist (For the heavy-hearted and funeral doomed)

Xwîn - Xwîn Bi Xwînê Tê Şûştin (For lovers of wild and relentless brutality)

Sun Worship - Upon the Hills of Divination (For cave-dwelling shades of death)

Terminal Nation - Echoes of the Devil's Den (For pit demons South of heaven)

Bongripper - Empty (For clearing your head and filling it back up with riffs)

Wintersun - Time II (For those who like their folk metal big and bombastic)

SIG: AR: TYR: - Citadel of Stars (For the Vikings and star-crossed voyagers)

Pest Control - Year of the Pest EP (For opening this goddamn circle pit up)

Riffs for Palestine Compilation (For those who dream of liberation)

See you on the other side! Our next feature is a doozy—don't forget to subscribe to Salvo to support independent lefty metal journalism.

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