2024 Metal Academy Awards Discussion - The Horde Edition
It's that time of year again i.e. the time when we start to think about which releases will be crowned as the pinnacle of their clans for the previous calendar year. I've opened this thread to house the discussions around our The Horde Clan Release of the 2024.
These are the 2024 releases that have gained the most attention from our members:
Ulcerate - "Cutting the Throat of God"
Civerous - "Maze Envy"
Hemotoxin - "When Time Becomes Loss"
Blood Incantation - "Absolute Elsewhere"
Job for a Cowboy - "Moon Healer"
What other releases should our members be checking out?
Ulcerate and Blood Incantation are sitting as my #1 and #3 releases of 2024 currently, so I would wholeheartedly support those two.
I'm always a sucker for a Nile album and their latest, "The Underworld Awaits Us All" marked a bit of a return to form as far as I was concerned.
Elsewhere, Diabolic Oath, Abhorration and Invocation put out very good albums.
Cannot say that I disagree with any of the albums included here Daniel.
Full of Hell's Coagulated Bliss was the type of grindcore album that moved me with its density and heavy songwriting focus; one of the best grindcore albums in years.
Black Dahlia Murder released a solid melodic death comeback following the tragic passing of their former vocalist.
While early technical death albums by Apogean (Cyberstrictive) and Hideous Divinity (Unextinct) stayed surprisingly active in my playlists all year.
I've obviously spent a crap-load of time listening to The Horde releases over the past year. Of those that I've given a full review, the Civerous album is the one that I rate the most highly. I fully intend on giving a whole bunch of the other standouts from my casual listening sessions a more detailed examination this month though, including the Blood Incantation, Ulcerate, Defeated Sanity, Gigan, Viscera Infest & Carnophage records.
Obvs it’s Ulcerate all the way for me. I am such a fan boy of them though. By comparison, I found that Blood Incantation record to be an absolute yawnfest! Civerous didn’t move me all that much on reflection. I would add Vitriol (USA) and Noxis’ records from this year also.
Also Replicant, Gatecreeper and Slimelord.
I liked the Civerous but it didn't absolutely move me the same way it has for others, so it's pretty far down compared to the other Death Metal albums from this year. Very strong year to be honest.
Blood Incantation sits at the top for me, followed by Ulcerate.
Some others that are definitely more my taste would be Piah Mater's Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun for some Prog Death Metal, Dark Oath for its early Wintersun like tendencies, In Vain's Solemn for some Melodic Death Metal, and the Cavern Womb EP Stages of Infinity for a glimpse at a hopefully strong upcoming Tech Death band. A lot of my Death Metal is sandwiched between different clans so the initial 3 are probably good as is.
I've just finished reviewing the Blood Incantation record. It's certainly very solid but it won't be competing for my top spot with the likes of Civerous, Ulcerate & Carnophage. I slightly prefer their previous album "Hidden History of the Human Race” but there's very little between them.
Picked up on an album called Bleed on My Teeth by UK band, Adorior after a friend on RYM had it as his #1 of the year. They have been around for thirty years but have only released three albums. Unholy thrashy death metal with female vocals (singer Melissa Gray is the only remaining original member). Definitely worth checking out. Spotify have censored the cover for some reason - it is fairly blasphemous, but there are much worse metal covers out there.
I've been a fan of Adorior since their first album back in the late 1990's Sonny. They're always very consistent, even if they're not particularly prolific. I've really enjoyed my couple of casual listens to the new record over the last few months too & it may even be their finest work to date. Hopefully I get the time to review it before the end of January but the list is pretty long at this point.
I just finished reviewing the new Ulcerate album & it's fair to say that I can't see it being beaten for my AOTY.
I've been a fan of Adorior since their first album back in the late 1990's Sonny. They're always very consistent, even if they're not particularly prolific. I've really enjoyed my couple of casual listens to the new record over the last few months too & it may even be their finest work to date. Hopefully I get the time to review it before the end of January but the list is pretty long at this point.
I just finished reviewing the new Ulcerate album & it's fair to say that I can't see it being beaten for my AOTY.
I was sceptical as to whether the Ulcerate album would appeal to me, but it is a genuine era-defining release and I too was blown away by it. It is also my AOTY and I could see it being the metal release of the decade, ultimately. Unfortunately I was unable to score a vinyl copy and the scalpers on Discogs are asking silly money, so I got my CD copy today instead.
I was sceptical as to whether the Ulcerate album would appeal to me, but it is a genuine era-defining release and I too was blown away by it. It is also my AOTY and I could see it being the metal release of the decade, ultimately. Unfortunately I was unable to score a vinyl copy and the scalpers on Discogs are asking silly money, so I got my CD copy today instead.
It's actually cracked its way into my Top 100 Metal Releases of All Time list which is no small feat after nearly four decades of metal indulgence.
I took a detailed look at the new Defeated Sanity record I've been enjoying over the last couple of months yesterday & it's yet another extraordinarily overthetop release from the very consistent German brutal/technical death metal band. I don't think I could say that it's a classic though so it won't compete for my The Horde award. It's definitely worth exploring if you can handle extraordinarily technical, ADD-fueled brutality though.
I've really enjoyed the new Gigan album over the last few months & think it's probably their best work thus far. It's certainly a very solid example of avant-garde dissonant death metal but I wouldn't place it in the same class as the Ulcerate, Civerous or Carnophage records so it's not coming into consideration for this award. If you love shit like Artificial Brain, Pyrrhon & Mithras though, I'd definitely recommend that you check it out.
Daniel, you must check out Mexico's Stenched and their "Purulence Gushing From the Coffin" album before the closing date. I came upon it by accident and it is utterly filthy and rotten sounding OSDM that has got me proper fired up. Fuck all this fancy bollocks, this is the shit.