Suffice to say, 2026 has been an… eventful year. Wars, AI, wildfires – there’s been plenty dominating the headlines, but thankfully there’s also been a whole heap of brilliant new releases to sink our teeth into.
There’s still a little way to go until we hit the big end of year lists, but we’ve decided to look back on some of the best metal albums this year has gifted us so far. From cutting edge black metal (seriously, that genre is on a tear this year) to long-awaited comebacks from Warning, Poison The Well and Neurosis, we’ve looked at both the underground and the mainstream to offer up a selection of some of the finest things metal has to offer in 2026.
A.A. Williams – Solstice (Reigning Phoenix)
London’s Robert Smith-endorsed singer/songwriter loves to explore different shades of black. Where her 2020 debut, Forever Blue, was moody and dynamic, follow-up As The Moon Rests was explosive and heavy, and Solstice sat somewhere in the middle. On Little By Little, Williams’ gentle drums and keys were abruptly overwhelmed by blasts of electric guitar. Meanwhile, the lyrics were reliably bleak and introspective: ‘In the stillness I have become tormented by words unspoken,’ she sang on Hold It Together. A classy, dark and vulnerable exorcism. Matt Mills
A Forest Of Stars – Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface (Prophecy)
Stack overflow In Corpse Pile Interface just might be the most adventurous black metal album of 2026. The Yorkshire band’s sixth outing, A Forest Of Stars utilise everything from the elegiac violins of My Dying Bride to the despairing, towers-come-tumbling blasts of Trelldom into an epic 73-minutes that also touches on folk, prog and classical. It’s a gorgeous sonic journey that’ll leave you weary and itching to start all over again and well worth the eight-year wait. Rich Hobson
At The Gates – The Ghost Of A Future Dead (Century Media)
The melodeath luminaries’ eighth album was a mighty epitaph to late frontman Tomas Lindberg. Featuring vocals he recorded ahead of his cancer treatment – plus a title, cover art and tracklisting that he approved before his death – The Ghost Of A Future Dead was a reverent swansong, laden with cataclysmic yet catchy tracks. The Fever Mask and In Dark Distortion were top-shelf At The Gates achievements musically and lyrically, as Lindberg revisited his long-standing penchant for existential themes. It’s unclear whether this’ll be ATG’s final offering, but if it is, what a way to go. Matt Mills
Converge – Love Is Not Enough (Epitaph)
Converge’s first standalone album since 2017 clocked in at a svelte 31 minutes but contained all of the rage, excitement and despair associated with the metalcore greats. Where Distract And Divide and To Feel Something unloaded the pre-requisite hardcore beatdowns, We Were Never The Same was an adrenaline jolt thanks to its tapping guitar notes. The highlight, however, was Make Me Forget You, its latter half embittered and devastating thanks to Jacob Bannon’s wails and Kurt Ballou’s gnarled playing. Matt Mills
Cryptic Shift – Cryogenically Frozen (Metal Blade)
Oh, you thought last time was a lot? When Leeds’ Cryptic Shift debuted with 2020’s Visitations From Enceladus, the scene was bowled over by their winding and celestial approach to prog-thrash metal. Turns out, no one had seen anything yet. This February’s follow-up was almost twice as long and made good use of every second, containing more riffs than most bands make over the course of a career. The half-hour Stratocumulus Evergaol and 20-minute title track may have seemed self-indulgent on paper, but laced with their psychedelic interludes, each was an odyssey worth taking. Matt Mills
Dimmu Borgir – Grand Serpent Rising (Nuclear Blast)
Dimmu Borgir albums are so infrequent that the arrival of any new release is always worthy of mention. Hails to the depths then, that Grand Serpent Rising might well be the best thing the Norwegians have done in 20 years, focusing less on their symphonic overtures to create something explosive and apocalyptic without losing the grandeur that made them stand out so much in the first place. Rich Hobson
Dymna Lotva – Vyraj (Prophecy)
Dymna Lotva have been through a lot. Decried as “extremists” in their home country of Belarus, the post-black metal group fled to Poland to continue the good fight without fear of being arrested. There is a clear sense of fury and liberation at the heart of Vyraj, the band still using Belarusian folklore and historical accounts as a means of personal expression, vocalist Nokt Aeon venting fury, despair and defiance in explosive whirlwinds. From black metal to folk and doom (including a guest appearance from former My Dying Bride frontman Aaron Stainthorpe), this record utilises an impressively diverse palette to craft something truly vivid and unique. Rich Hobson
Elder – Through Zero (Stickman)
Elder don’t make albums as much as they build universes. Through Zero was another absorbing work from the Massachusetts rockers, emphasising the riffier end of their repertoire across songs that either neared or broke the 10-minute mark. Sigil To Ruin was a masterclass in tension and release, not to mention a powerful launchpad for Nick DiSalvo’s clean vocals, before Capture/Release interrupted its spacy synths with a tumbling riff. By the time of acoustic closer Blighted Age, we weren’t ready to escape their heady cosmos. Matt Mills
Evanescence – Sanctuary (Columbia)
After staging something of a comeback with 2021’s The Bitter Pill – their first album of original material in a decade – Evanescence are reclaiming their crown as one of alt. metal’s brightest forces on Sanctuary. Teamed up with Jordan Fish, the ex-BMTH man brings a contemporary edge and sleek production flourishes that build on Evanescence’s best elements without feeling like a massive departure from who they are. The result is vibrant, punchy and, particularly in the likes of Who Will Will You Follow and Afterlife, properly anthemic, worthy of a band who can comfortably play arenas and are long overdue a Download Festival headline shot. Rich Hobson
Final Gasp – New Day Symptoms (Relapse)
Boisterous, muscular hardcore meets shimmering, emotive goth on the second record from Boston’s Final Gasp. More based in thuggish beatdowns than fellow goth-core mashers Unto Others, New Day Symptoms has some serious (vampire) fangs, its riffs at times teetering on the edge of extreme metal menace without ever running away from the gothic core, sounding powerful and dancable both. If you’ve ever wondered what The Crow would sound like as an album, this is it. Rich Hobson
Growth – Under The Under (Wild Thing)
Coming on like an army of mechanoids glitching to death in a sprawl of spasming limbs and crunched gears, Growth go right for the jugular on Under The Under. The Aussie tech death metallers’ second album, Under… takes the best things from Australia’s flourishing extreme and prog metal scenes and fuses them together into something wild and unpredictable, the band as likely to burst into angular, growling nastiness as they are to drop a surprise melody. Rich Hobson
Guilt Trip – Armour Of Angels (Roadrunner)
The ‘metalcore‘ tag has surely never applied more than on Guilt Trip’s third record. Fusing the hungry, squalling riffs of Burn My Eyes-era Machine Head with sweaty, violent hardcore (think Madball or Cro-Mags), sounding like a proper collision of the worlds without sacrificing either side’s best elements. It’s no major reinvention of the genre; rather, Armour Of Angels is a shining example of where metalcore first emerged from, turning its nose up on pop-baiting choruses or melodies to just go right for the throat. Rich Hobson
Hällas – Panorama (Aventyr)
For decades, bands who looked up to the bluster of 70s prog have been derided as silly. The difference between those other revivalists and Hällas is that Hällas know they’re silly – and, on Panorama, they do all they can to remind you of that. “I still remember the taste of apples,” singer/bassist Tommy Alexandersson declared with laughable seriousness on Above The Continuum. The songs were all loaded with over-the-top vocals and keys, but they were also as catchy as the flu in nursery school. Checkmate, naysayers! Matt Mills
Hulder – Verbolgen (Season Of Mist)
2026 has felt like a bumper year for black metal. The return of both Mayhem and Dimmu Borgir has served the old guard well, while this list is already resplendent with emerging BM talent. You can add Hulder to the list of newcomers you should most definitely check out if you’ve missed them thus far, the Washington duo somehow managing to balance dense ferocity and epic, warship-rowing melody with their third record, Verbolgen, sounding like they belong somewhere between a medieval torture chamber and a pagan sacrifice ritual. Rich Hobson
Immolation – Descent (Nuclear Blast)
Sometimes reliability can be a crutch. As gratifying as a consistent run of albums can be, there’s always a danger that some bands will languish in their own ruts, where it becomes difficult to differentiate the highs – or lows – of a given record. Then there’s Immolation. Now onto their twelfth studio album, the New Yorkers aren’t reinventing any wheels on Descent, but also aren’t being left to rot, crafting ten tracks of exemplar old school death metal. If it ain’t broke… Rich Hobson
Karnivool – In Verses (Cymatic)
Plenty can change over the course of 13 years, but on In Verses, Karnivool proved that they were still the tip of the Aussie prog metal spear. Singles Drone and Aozora were the kind of dense, knotty anthems that made them standouts during the late 2000s, and Ghost flaunted Ian Kenny’s ever-elegant vocal talents. The band also lent even harder on their emotional side, starting with Conversations and Reanimation (featuring guitar great Guthrie Govan) and culminating with bagpipe skyscraper Salva. Overall, another masterstroke. Matt Mills
Khemmis – Khemmis (Nuclear Blast)
It’s great when metal breaks the mould, but sometimes, it’s just as fun to see a band revel in the genre as it is and invite the listener to do the same. That’s what Khemmis did on their self-titled album. Rather than stay set in their doom metal ways, the Americans explored the best of doom, power, death and black metal, delivering a compelling combo. Invocation Of The Dreamer, Beneath The Scythe and Carrion King were the kind of songs you’d put on while suiting up to save a village from a fire-spewing dragon. Matt Mills
Lamb Of God – Into Oblivion (Epic/Century Media)
Lamb Of God’s last two albums were good-but-not-great displays, suggesting that their muscular take on groove metal was beginning to atrophy. But then Into Oblivion landed like a 10-count knockout. Opening with the symphonic melodrama of the title track, it announced that the Virginians had found focus anew, and the rest of the tracklist refused to let up. From the industrial-tinged Sepsis to thrash metal rager St Catherine’s Wheel, this was their best stuff in at least a decade – and possibly way, way longer than that. Matt Mills
Loathe – A Stranger To You (SharpTone)
If there’s one thing Loathe can never be accused of, it’s rushing things. The Liverpudlians meticulously self-produced their third album across five years and, along the way, cancelled tours so that they could be in the studio. Expectations were sky-high but A Stranger To You still excelled, expanding on their non-conformist approach to metalcore. Even though we could highlight individual tracks – Fortress Down, Revenant and Gifted Every Strength all rule – it was best consumed as a whole, weaving between shoegaze, metal and electronica with a rare level of skill. Matt Mills
Mallavora – What If Better Never Comes? (Church Road)
On the most promising debut album of 2026 so far, Bristol unit Mallavora introduced an alt-metal sound somewhere between System Of A Down, Lowen and Spiritbox. Songs such as Lilith & Esther and Sick were quickly arresting, enhanced by their fresh lyrical perspective on society. Two of the band’s members, including singer Jess Douek, live with chronic illnesses, so they used that as a lens to examine both their own experiences and the sicknesses they perceived in the world around them. Essential stuff. Matt Mills
Neurosis – An Undying Love For A Burning World (Neurot)
March 20 was the best day of the year for post-metal fans. Not only did genre innovators Neurosis return after a seven-year hiatus, but they announced they’d replaced abusive ex-singer Scott Kelly with Isis’ Aaron Turner and surprise-released their 12th album. That An Undying Love… was fucking incredible was the icing on the cake. The band both resurrected their distinct, widescreen sludge and added new layers, such as the metronome-breaking thrash of Untethered. A decade on from their previous record, they hadn’t missed a step. Matt Mills
Papangu – Celestial (Deck)
One of the most eclectic new bands in the game, Papangu blend the folk genres of their native South America (ciranda, forró, bossa nova) with prog rock, metal and funk. Their third album was their smoothest brew yet, endlessly listenable as it snaked between artsy rhythms and vibrant keyboards. To make it even better, the band recorded, mixed and mastered the whole thing without a computer to take a stand against AI’s presence in music. Excellent music with an excellent goal. Matt Mills
Poison The Well – Peace In Place (SharpTone)
One of metalcore’s early innovators, Poison The Well hadn’t released anything in 17 years before Peace In Place arrived in March. Rather than trying to catch up with the kids, the Floridian mob came out with something left-field and classic, chucking up comparisons to Cave In or Dillinger Escape Plan as they twisted the metalcore sound into something anthemic without ever feeling polished. Rich Hobson
Protest The Hero – Within (Self-Released)
Protest The Hero have one gear and it’s FUCKING GO! On the follow-up to 2020’s Palimpsest, the Canadians broke into another stampede of hyper-technical guitar work and lightspeed post-hardcore. Frontman Rody Walker remained in unhinged form, especially as he dished out his death growls on opener Mouthpiece. It was the shortest album of the band’s career, clocking in at just 35 minutes, but it may not be the end of the story. If some fans are to be believed, a second half is going to drop sooner rather than later. Whether or not that happens, Within remains a complete and scorching piece of work. Matt Mills
Skindred – You Got This (Earache)
After over 20 years as one of Britain’s best-loved – if often underappreciated – cult bands, Skindred finally got their dues with You Got This. The band’s first number one record – though predecessor Smile came close – it captures everything that’s so infectiously brilliant about the Welsh ragga-metallers, with massive party-starters (You Got This, Can I Get A) and ragers (This Is The Sound, Born Fe Dis) alike to prove there’s no one quite like them – and definitely nobody who does it better. Rich Hobson
Slift – Fantasia (Sub Pop)
Gone were the 12-minute compositions and extended synth sections. For album four, Toulouse’s space rockers penned material designed to cement their status as one of the best live bands on the circuit. Fantasia’s songs were heavy and immediate, as felt through the Mastodon-like athletics of Day Of Execution and the hulking grooves of the title track. The trio will headline their biggest-ever European tour at the end of the year; given the absolute intensity on display here, we’d recommend some earplugs! Matt Mills
Spirit Adrift – Infinite Illumination (20 Buck Spin)
By the start of this year, Spirit Adrift leader, singer and guitarist Nate Garrett had grown sick of the music industry, especially touring, so he decided to end his career on his own terms. Infinite Illumination was surprise-released in April, offering fans one last fix of doom metal majesty. The opening title track, which rose from acoustic guitars to NWOBHM-like leads, and the booming I Am Sustained were career highlights, hammering home just what we’re going to miss about this Arizona band. Matt Mills
Urne – Setting Fire To The Sky (Spinefarm)
Across each of their three albums to date, Urne have evolved in sound and scope. From the massive, Metallica riffs of 2021’s Serpent & Spirit, to 2023’s proggier A Feast On Sorrow, they’ve once again redrawn their own boundaries with Setting Fire To The Sky, finding renewed extremity whilst also introducing stronger vocal melodies than ever before.R Resolutely in their own lane, Urne combine influences into something entirely new, echoes of bands like Mastodon – with Troy Sanders even guesting on Harken The Waves – not overshadowing the fact this is one of Britain’s best-kept secrets. Rich Hobson
Warning – Rituals Of Shame (Relapse)
Neurosis might’ve swept the board for 2026’s most surprising comeback record, but Warning put up a good fight. 20 years since the release of their doom-defining Watching From A Distance, Patrick Walker and co. have reconvened over some of the most beautiful, heartbreaking songs ever put to record. So basicaly, Warning doing what they do best. Rich Hobson
Worm – Necropalace (Century Media)
Worm might have originated in Florida, but their sound feels decidedly indebted to the mouldering castles of Europe. The black metal band’s first album for Century Media, Necropalace is a step up in just about every way, atmospheric and sweepingly powerful, it feels as close to black metal’s Transylvania and undeath-obssesed roots as anything that’s come in the past 40 years, cinematic in scope and utterly annihilating to the senses. Rich Hobson
