The 10 Best Metal Albums of 2021

During the 40 gripping minutes of Celestial Blues, the second album by King Woman, singer-songwriter Kristina Esfandiari wields a mighty array of voices: On the title track, she speaks her words breathily; on “Golgotha,” she slips into a smoky, hypnotic croon; on “Boghz” (a Farsi word that Esfandiari has described as “a longing, or a pain in you that’s beyond words”), she adopts a ragged, distressed howl; and on “Psychic Wound,” she unleashes a full-blown shriek. It’s a testament to the record’s impressive range — from shadowy goth-cabaret to apocalyptically heavy doom — that each of these approaches feels absolutely necessary. Esfandiari has said that the album was her way of finally making peace with an oppressive Christian upbringing, where heaven and hell felt terrifyingly real. Experiencing the valleys and peaks of sorrow, rage, and ultimately acceptance on this draining yet exhilarating art-metal opus, you feel every step along that journey. H.S.

In the center of the Venn diagram between last rites and damnation lies Skepticism. For the past three decades, the pioneering “funeral doom” group has conjured the raw essence of eternal torment with punishingly slow tempos, fugue-like church organ, and vomited vocals. When these Finns do it right, such as on their sixth album, Companion, the results are both captivating and transcendent. Eero Pöyry’s organ playing serves as beacon on the LP, giving songs like “Calla,” “The Inevitable,” and the surprisingly avant-garde “Passage” just enough hope for the rest of the band to crush with cenotaphic guitar riffs and demon proclamations. The sound culminates on final track “The Swan and the Raven,” which contains all the shadows and fleeting glimmers of hope that define the band’s best dirges. Dying never sounded so good. K.G.

Extreme experimental-metal outfit Portal may hail from Australia, but their sixth studio album sounds like it was recorded in one of the most grim and repellent pits of hell. On blistering onslaughts like “Catafalque,” “Eye,” and “Drain,” chainsaw guitars vie for the opportunity to flay your skin, drums pound like the footsteps of giant demons bearing down on newly arrived souls, and you can practically smell the infernal offal as vocalist the Curator spews forth one malignant incantation after another. And if your face hasn’t been sufficiently melted by Avow’s end, check out Hagbulbia, the ambient-noise companion album Portal released simultaneously with this one. D.E.

Mysterious, malevolent, and thrillingly cinematic, the fifth studio full-length from these Swedish death-prog-psych-metal wizards further amps up the gothic grandeur of 2018’s Down Below, while also demonstrating an increasingly arena-scaled songwriting sensibility. Dark and dramatic anthems like “Hour of the Wolf,” “Leviathans,” and “Daughter of the Djinn” are clearly designed to reach the back rows, yet still manage to retain the fetid whiff of the charnel house. Where the band will go without founding guitarist-songwriter Jonathan Hultén (who left following the album’s release) remains to be seen, but Where the Gloom Becomes Sound certainly ends this chapter of Tribulation on a triumphant note. D.E.

In the works since 2016, this stunning collaboration between hardcore legends Converge, gothic-folk priestess Chelsea Wolfe, her musical partner Ben Chisholm, and Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky was more than worth the wait. There’s none of the compromises or watered-down ideas that so often mark “supergroup”-style projects; everyone brings their A game here, their respective visions and talents blending to create a remarkably haunting post-metal song cycle that’s as brutal and bracing as it is melodic and atmospheric — and which proudly stands among the best work that any of the participants have produced. Will there be a Bloodmoon: 2? We should only be so lucky. D.E.

On their 2013 reunion LP, Surgical Steel, Liverpool extreme-metal institution Carcass effectively rewrote history, combining the breakneck blurt that defined their earliest years with the polished rock & roll swagger they’d honed by the time of their ’96 breakup. On Torn Arteries, the second album of their second chapter, they finally sound liberated to forge ahead. It’s the most surprising set of songs they’ve released yet, ranging from playfully elaborate suites like the 10-minute “Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment Limited” to hard-grooving midtempo workouts like “Eleanor Rigor Mortis,” with a few familiar death-thrash ragers mixed in. As they expand their musical blueprint, Jeff Walker’s still-scathing growl (and enduring love of a vicious pun) and guitarist Bill Steer’s impeccable riffsmanship add that unmistakable touch of Carcass class. H.S.

There are moments on Fortitude when noise overwhelms the melody — sparkly guitar harmonics, screeching feedback that bends in pitch, lost souls hollering — and when it happens, it’s beautiful. On Gojira’s seventh studio album, the French bruisers balance the walloping guitar riffs they’re known for with moments of euphoric melody, and in between, they’ve hidden all sorts of ear candy that makes you want to keep listening. It’s rare for metal, a genre known for its directness and purity of sound, to support so many textures. Even better, guitarist-vocalist Joe Duplantier uses these tableaus to rail against social inequity — deforestation (“Amazonia”), avarice (“Born for One Thing”), totalitarianism (“Into the Storm”) — making the record as heady as it is heavy. K.G.

Mastodon’s last few albums sounded like dispatches from a mid-career comfort zone. Having streamlined their maximal prog-metal on 2011’s The Hunter, they made only minor tweaks to that radio-ready formula up through 2017’s Emperor of Sand. But Hushed and Grim makes bold new demands on the listener, and rewards them handsomely. It’s not only the longest Mastodon album to date, clocking in just shy of 90 minutes, it’s also the moodiest, befitting its title. Some tracks, like “Had It All,” plunge headfirst into somber ballad territory, while others, like “The Beast,” conjure R&B-like pathos. Elsewhere, we get everything from some of the band’s hookiest rockers to date (“Teardrinker,” “Pushing the Tides”) to some of their most awe-inspiring epics (“More Than I Could Chew,” “Gobblers of Dregs”). Once the album’s full scope sinks in, it’s clear that this a feast to file with your favorite Seventies gatefold classics. H.S.

As much as Maiden fans may wish the band would rehash warhorses like “Run to the Hills” or “The Trooper,” the long-running headbangers have never looked back. Senjutsu, their 17th album, is their most progressive masterstroke yet. They still play the sort of hypnotic, vaguely Celtic riffs that made them famous, and frontman Bruce Dickinson could still win a John Henry–like battle with an air-raid siren, but as on 2015’s The Book of Souls, they’ve elevated their songwriting with more intricate structures and smarter lyrics than when they started out 40 years ago. Senjutsu’s longer epics (“Hell on Earth,” “The Time Machine”) are the best here — the group gets lost in the journey and brings listeners along with them — proving Iron Maiden are still innovators as much as they are legends. K.G.