When someone says they like black metal, do they mean just Norwegian second-wave, and by that, are they talking about Gorgoroth or Kvist? Does the dude with the undercut only listen to White Ward? Has he ever heard of Nagött? What does it imply if you only like Darkthrone post-2004? A consensus on what is and isn’t black metal exists, though pinning it down to a set of descriptors is a slippery ordeal, greasy fingers and stained shirts ensuing.
For instance, Neill Jameson recently ranked his favorite 100 black metal albums of all time, and they reflect his love for unpolished and skeletal black metal. To the Teeth’s equally fresh list included more albums from 2015 onwards than the 1990s. Both lists are phenomenal and highly recommended. Compare them and you’ll find two largely different ideals of black metal. That was the case when we polled our favorite black metal albums from this decade and ranked them against one another. The results were, if nothing else, diverse.
The upside of this is that, in its current form and through its disparate webs, black metal both upholds its past (to a religious degree) and ever so slowly marches forward. Our favorite black metal albums from the 2020s reveal our genre and location preferences, often shaped more by aesthetics and sound than identity with any particular place. Read our heraldry for the works that preserve black metal’s template and may codify its future.
–Colin Dempsey
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Transylvanian Hunger remains black metal’s tabula rasa upon which lesser acts etch their names, oftentimes without applying enough pressure to leave a mark on the tablet itself. Brad Sanders correctly states it as arguably the most influential vampyric black metal album, so Arnaut Pavle are in some ways breaking the mould by emulating a lesser-known Darkthrone record, A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Transylvanian Glare retools the soul-searching Darkthrone conducted in 1991 into a 2020’s-ready package; tighter songs, punchier riffs, and more punk influence, all in service of a more immediate dose of darkness. If Transylvanian Hunger worship is an act of aesthetic devotion, Transylvanian Glare reaffirms the staying power of black metal’s fundamentals.
–Colin Dempsey
With each release, Québécois quintet Spectral Wound seems to improve upon their craft, and 2021’s A Diabolic Thirst is a well-polished offering that can be thought of as their breakout record, as well as their first release through Profound Lore Records. Consider it a black metal miscellany, combining Nordic-inspired tremolo picking, frenetic blastbeats, and pervasive black ‘n roll melodies. Therein lies the key appeal of A Diabolic Thirst: the merging of influences across the Nordic and USBM scenes. It’s rare to be reminded of bands like Alghazanth and Uada all in one passage. A notable standout is Jonah Campbell’s vocals, which have come to form compared to previous releases. There’s some notable rage-twinged emotion on each track, and it’s clear there’s more confidence and risks he took in this performance, a sentiment felt through all of A Diabolic Thirst.
–KAOS_agent
Eyebrows were raised when Phil Tougas (of Chthe’ilist, First Fragment, Worm, Funebrarum, and others) announced that his latest project was going to be a galloping Hellenic black metal adventure. The only thing more surprising–and exciting–was that Tougas would be augmenting the pyrotechnic guitarwork for which he had become famous with “melodic, shredding bass solos”. Not simply content with letting the instrument languish as mere accompaniment, Tougas’ bass is right there on the frontlines alongside its six-stringed brethren, punching through the mix like a mace-wielding juggernaut. This adds extra heft to La grande hérésie’s most dazzling moments, emphasizing the melodies that flow from the album’s savage, chimaeric heart.
–Alex Chan
On Toda História pela Frente, Kaatayra clearly draws from the tradition of Cascadian black metal. The lengthy songs, folk influence, and lyrical focus on nature and spirituality are all here in spades. Where it breaks away from that sound, however, is in the song structures themselves. Rather than leaning on extended riffs and tremolo-picked chords for long sections, Toda História pela Frente features explosive moments of melody and heavy riffing intertwined with beautiful acoustic passages inspired by Brazilian musical traditions. Motifs shift gradually, becoming something new almost without the listener even noticing. In other moments, they violently change, pulling you out of a reverie and forcing you to take notice. Sorrow, joy, and frustration all bubble up throughout the runtime, creating a powerful and poetic elegy for a vanishing world.
–Kevin Zecchel
Contemporary cadre Lamp of Murmuur have been mainstays of year-end lists since they dropped their debut LP, Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism, in 2020. As if to flaunt how firmly rooted in black metal’s second wave it is, the ambitious 10+ minute opener “Of Infernal Passion and Aberrations” builds on tremendous tremolo-picked riffs and lo-fi production for a bleak and cold atmosphere. “Bathing In Cascades of Caustic Hypnotism” continues the long-form black metal with waves of warfare. Now four albums deep and far removed from Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism’s devotion to necrotic black metal, fans’ love affair with Lamp of Murmuur hasn’t waned.
–Tom Campagna
French medieval meloblack maestros Darkenhold unleashed Arcanes & Sortileges back in 2020, and the record still feels just as fresh and exciting today. Darkenhold take cues from the stylings of Windir, Emperor, and early Dimmu Borgir, bringing the whole concoction back to the coolest castle in France, going back in time about 600 years, and blending it all into Arcanes & Sortileges. The French black metal scene may not be the most “squeaky clean” group out there, but Darkenhold come across as a bunch of dudes who are just here to have a good time, play evil wizard riffs, and party like it’s 1399. Through varying tempos, a slew of earworm riffs, snarling vocals, and spellbinding atmosphere all adorned with guitar solos whose quality lands somewhere between Ihsahn’s and Yngwie Malmsteen’s best rippers, Darkenhold’s Arcanes & Sortileges is a tome from which all who aspire to pursue medieval black metal should study.
–Eric Wing
Within the first minute of hearing Úpal, I audibly exclaimed, “What the hell am I listening to?” You would think a combination of raspy Czech vocals, obscure Ottoman influences, atonal harmonies, and just straight-up fun riffing from this… Minneapolis-based band would make for a challenging listen. Somehow, it comes together for an enthralling and fascinating experience. Úpal attracts the ears in a way where you don’t understand what to expect as each song is unfolding. It certainly defies convention; there are plenty of bands that infuse their own cultural musical influences into metal in a straightforward manner, but Kostnatění has drawn from a variety of sources to achieve a sort of black metal syncretism. The decade isn’t over yet, but this is one of the definitive avant-garde black metal releases thus far.
–KAOS_agent
Two key features that black metal relies heavily on are coldness and inhumanity. Normally, these manifest as a form of nature obsession, primitive and primordial. However, on Mestarin Kynsi, Oranssi Pazuzu takes those ideas in a different direction: a surreal, psychedelic world full of inscrutable, nightmarish machinery. It could almost function as a soundtrack to the classic silent German expressionist film Metropolis.
Mestarin Kynsi whirls around you, guitars providing a buzzing wall of psychosis while dissonant leads, courtesy of both guitar and synthesizer, pierce the haze. For example, the album’s centerpiece, “Uusi teknokratia”, is a stunning surrealist mosaic and “Kuulen ääniä maan alta” teleports you to an abandoned vessel drifting in deep space. The band’s vision for black metal has always been psychedelic–many of the members have played in other prog and psychedelic rock groups–and Mestarin Kynsi feels like their crowning achievement.
–Kevin Zecchel
Earnest usage of the word “epic” has died down since the 2010’s, as was probably for the best. However, few other adjectives capture the grandiosity of Havukruunu’s 2021 album Uinuos syömein sota. The a capella opening, in which vocalist Stefan engages his bandmates in a gruff yet passionate call-and-response, remains one of the most memorable moments in the band’s discography. Then, the album explodes into a raucous, sword-rattling charge through snow-covered battlefields, ancient ruins, and misty forests. There are moments of placid beauty, such as the clean guitars and birdcalls that grace the bridge of “Kunnes varjot saa” as well as the triumphant flurries of notes throughout “Kuin öinen meri” that arrive like hoofbeats of much-needed reinforcements in the thick of battle. It might be uncool to call this album “epic,” but we’ll do it anyway. The Allfather hates a quitter.
–Alex Chan
The Italian masters of black metal, whose style is rooted in heavy metal and bass lines that would make Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris blush, have been around for a long time. Black Mirror is their sixth album and only their second in the last 20 years, but it’s a real doozy. There’s just no other band that sounds like them. Black metal’s dark elements are prominent in the slowed sections of songs like “Restless Death,” which then transitions into Mortuary Drape’s signature upfront wobbly bass on “The Secret Lost.” Those looking for ominous and evil rudimentary black metal will not find it here, but The Drape are a superb cross-section of structure and songwriting. This isn’t black metal recorded in your bedroom.
–Tom Campagna
After the carefully-planned release of the De doden hebben het goed trilogy last decade, Belgium-based Wiegedood had high expectations to match, and managed to do so with 2022’s There’s Always Blood at the End of the Road. What has always impressed me about the Church of Ra triumvirate’s output is the balance and power of everyone’s instrumentation. Make no mistake, this is a modern black metal album. The crystal-clear production squares the focus on technical acuity. Wim Sreppoc’s drumming is best described as “staccato blastbeats,” with each hit driving and interweaving with Levy Seynaeve and Gilles Demolder’s almost drone-ish guitars in a hypnotic and complementary way. Indeed, There’s Always Blood at the End of the Road is a bit self-contained when it comes to riff variety, but that actually adds to its full narrative, as the progression of each song gradually illustrates a descent into madness.
–KAOS_agent
If you miss the symphonic black metal’s golden era, Silent Millenia will satisfy every craving you could possibly have. The project masterfully weaves ice-cold synthesizers with frigid black metal on their second album, piercing through you like a cosmic dagger straight to the heart. Cosmic and wretched, Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Scarlet Veil was conjured from the ether and forged in the stars. Fans of Limbonic Art or Obtained Enslavement need look no farther, your newest obsession is here.
–Caylen Darling
Is it still worth debating whether or not Blut aus Nord are black metal? If they are, then “atmospheric black metal” is about as accurate as you’re gonna get. And the atmosphere of the French band’s fourteenth album, Disharmonium – Undreamable Abysses, is somewhere around “perpetual sense of surrealist dread.” (Yeah, I s’pose that applies to a large chunk of their catalog.) As such, Undreamable Abysses is 46 minutes of deeply unsettling music. There’s a vantablack darkness swirling around it that ensures you’re never sure where you are, within the album or in reality. Indeed, not even drummer W.D. Feld allows you to get more than a momentary foothold anywhere. And the truly sinister part is that it’s all somehow hypnotically inviting. You feel violently seasick throughout, but you don’t want the ride to stop, either. That’s a helluva (black) magic trick.
–Steve Lampiris
Wintherr retconned all his previous albums as “demos” in the lead-up to Im wald to denote his 2020 work as the culmination of two decades of labor. The gamble paid off as Im wald feels like an endpoint for black metal, if not a certain strain of it, due to its maximalist expression of what the subgenre encapsulates: loneliness, inertia, and meditation. By defying good taste (the fucking thing is two hours long and most of the tracks run longer than 10 minutes, in addition to the repetitive fuzz and noise that constitutes Wintherr’s idea of black metal), it forces one to shift their mindset and accept the daunting excursion. As such, Im wald is necessarily impenetrable without juvenile pretense.
–Colin Dempsey
Ecstasies of Never Ending Night crashes like lightning, crafting a maelstrom of black magic and cadaverous camp. There’s something to be said for the way Devil Master captures the energy of a weeknight hole-in-the-wall bar gig on their second album. It exudes frantic rock ‘n roll energy, condensed to a blackened punk miasma, sounding like leather and grave dirt. Chaotic cemetery symphonies that burn the embers of an October flame; listen to them, the Children of the Night. What music they make!
–Caylen Darling
It’s hard to be an active black metal fan and be oblivious of Malokarpatan at this point. They’ve delivered album after album of incredible ancient black metal that draws equally from old heavy metal (how many bands are there out there playing black metal with Judas Priest solos?) as from the pre-Norwegian black metal scene, and Krupinské ohne is a high point in an excellent run of releases. The songs are long and epic, yet the record distinguishes itself from Malokarpatan’s other works with Viking-era Bathory influence and a full conceptual storyline that gives it a sense of stately seriousness. Malokarpatan treats black metal as an artistic canvas rather than a dogmatic genre, one that is almost entirely based in pre-1990 influences, making Krupinské ohne an incredibly important album.
–Brandon Corsair
Negative Plane is, for my money, the single greatest American black metal band ever. As more time passed after their monumental sophomore album Stained Glass Revelations (2011), I began to doubt we’d ever get more from them, let alone that it could possibly capture the heights of their old material. Fortunately, after a more than 10-year gap, we got The Pact…, which is as gloriously ambitious as it is disgustingly killer. This album is not just black metal, but art music in a way that you need to hear to believe. A huge influx of heavy metal influence and chiller, more expansive songwriting differentiate it from their previous albums, and the end result stands out not only from the rest of the perfect Negative Plane discography but also from later bands who take influence from them. Black metal doesn’t get much better than this.
–Brandon Corsair
The first entry in Austin Lunn’s “Laurentian Trilogy,” 2021’s …And Again into the Light is a monolith of emotional and vulnerable atmospheric black metal with production quality as gargantuan and enveloping as Lake Superior. Despite the lyrics remaining unpublished, Austin has said the album chronicles his “recognition of a need to change, grow and to atone for failures.” Musically, this is the Panopticon you know and love, but features the first contributions from master violinist (and absolute sweetheart) Charlie Anderson, whose addition was and continues to be an incredibly rewarding move. Austin and Charlie’s respective compositional styles complement each other perfectly. …And Again into the Light is a masterpiece in Austin’s phenomenal catalog, and a portion of the album’s sales are being put towards mental health assistance. Don’t let the fire burn out.
–Eric Wing
With Yellow Eyes, every release feels absolutely critical, not just as a successor to what came before but as a stepping stone towards the works that follow. The ritualistic psychedelia of 2023’s Master’s Murmur was divisive to say the least, but Confusion Gate recontextualized that album and its predecessors in a way that paradoxically made the entire discography richer in hindsight. You can hear the continuity on tracks like “Suspension Moon,” whose astral guitar canons recall the bell-like arpeggios of Immersion Trench Reveries, or on the appropriately titled “I Fear the Master’s Murmur,” which confronts the original 2023 track’s icy folk-horror by dragging it out of the shadow realm and into the light. Confusion Gate emerged as the quintessential Yellow Eyes album: a perfect starting point from which to work backwards, the culmination of an entire career thus far, and yet another summit on the band’s upward journey through the mists.
–Alex Chan
Tales of Othertime is what a metal album should be. It rends the splendour, scope, and power of heavy metal into a black metal framework out of honor for the latter genre. Which is to say, this is a sermon rather than a subversion. Stormkeep are selective with their black metal influences, pulling heavily from the melodic Swedish strain that better spins epic yarns than it does isolate a grim visage. But also, Blind Guardian and Nevermore existed at the same time as melodic 90s black metal, as was dungeon synth, so Stormkeep draw them all into their kitschy amalgamation. What is kvlt and trve now holds plastic pitchforks on album covers, gives interviews to every media promotion under the sun, and opens art exhibits–the ship has sailed. However, its magic remains, to be revered by those who came after it and see its historical context alongside other seminal works. Tales of Othertime reintegrates black metal with 90s metal as a whole, when the old guard suffered an identity crisis and overzealotry ruled critical spaces, and glowingly reflects the genre’s age.
–Colin Dempsey
