Album of The Year: ~ Top 15 Best Releases of 2022

 

On this year a lots of excellent metal albums invaded our ears once again and it’s time to name the greatest achievements of 2022. Indeed, this year is remarkable for metal music albums because a plenty of excellent, engrossing, spectacular, rich albums released. Basically, I’ve focused on critical acclaim, creative progression, originality, song writing prowess, technical achievements and many more dynamics. Well, here is my top listed releases of this year.

1. Deathspell Omega - The Long Defeat

Metal’s pantheon is inexplicably vast. The entities that reside in the depths of the abyss outstrip the heavenly host in variety, if not in devotees. French black metal abusers Deathspell Omega are indeed one of the most consistently exciting and forward-thinking acts in the modern black metal landscape. "The Long Defeat" combines the angular and rabid technicality with the experimental tinges of their previous offering. Their soundscape initially forceful and ultimately complex, gravely riffs, extremely raucous and abrasive sound, constant aural disharmony, and this new album redirects the image of black metal through a dervish funhouse. This album boasts some of the most dizzying, Avant-garde-tinged black metal and every single song is meticulously crafted and shows an incredible sense of tension, flow, and technical acumen. " The Long Defeat " is an incredibly rewarding album and the musical content remains highly underwhelming. This French black metal hybrid has built up steam, showing their ultimate culmination thus far.

2. Mortuus - Diablerie

Swedish black metal has their own style and heritage to be inspired by and that is just amazing really because quite often they are very good on what they do. Rooted firmly in the second wave of black metal’s sonic aesthetic, Sweden based duo Mortuus added another one chapter to the genre’s storied history unleashing their latest opus "Diablerie" on this year, the atmospheres and infernal ferociousness of black metal resonate just as determinedly today. This sounding excellent, raw, it is underground and has a very cool atmosphere as well. This is cryptic black metal, featuring a varied display of swirling chaos and brooding melodies along with ferocious riffs, pummeling, thundering drumming, a monstrous vocal. This is the best exemplifies the band’s capacity as composers of black metal par excellence. Overall, it's bleakly atmospheric and brutally cold, destruction, desolation, melodic, malicious, and brimming in black metal majesty. The veil is drawn slowly back, and the ceremonial depths of the album emerge.

3. Darvaza - Ascending into Perdition

International black metal super-group Darvaza unveiled their debut album on this year "Ascending Into Perdition" that savages the senses with its raw and rapacious malevolence with an unavoidable feeling that it is a long-overdue violation. Vocals from start to end with no glaringly weak moments found anywhere on this hike through the light-less catacombs of Satan's abode. It’ll scramble your trusty scythe to cut through it. This leaving the genre’s boundaries safe from rupturing into new pastures but with a causticity and vitriol which ignites the senses and provides a healthy level of satisfaction. Blazing forward with the rage of the bear and the fire of a thousand suns.

4. Ritual Death - Ritual Death

Norwegian orthodox black metal outfit Ritual Death (Consist with Behexen, Darvaza, One Tail, One Head, Mare, Celestial Bloodshed member) unveiled their self-titled debut album on this year that surpasses the usual stereotypes and presents something enjoyable, chaotic and decidedly well-presented. Trondheim based Norwegian black metal band Ritual Death has been quietly busying itself to recapture the essence of their nation’s golden age. It’s harsh, dark, atmospheric, horrific, and raw but there are also loads of brilliant style of dissonant, chaotic riffs, devilish melody in the songs. Plenty haunting lead guitars to reinforce that uneasy and ominous mood. It’s tumultuous, furious, and rather unrelenting. Such an execution of classic.

5. Sotherion – Schwarmgeist

French black metal band Sotherionis BST's (VI, EX – Aosoth, The Order of Apollyon) new project and unveiled their debut demo "Schwarmgeist" this year via World Terror Committee. This one-man black metal band has been making unholy noise and effortlessly combined with rumbling black metal angst. French misanthropic bile Sotherion unrelentingly continues to create primitive, aggressive, violent, misanthropic black metal accompanied with disgust for the modern world and its deification. The band combines the feelings of enmity, anger, aggression with anguish. Sotherion still intent on bruising the cranium with their ashen style of hateful metal. Overall, it's raw, fast and heretic. Such an appropriate introductory kick-off. Their latest effort “Schwarmgeist” has emerged onto a new level of musical growth which provides an irrevocable fixation consumed with indisputable darkness, a Methodical and unique piece of black metal. Thus, an unbreakable synergy is born that's all about the experience of misanthropic, nihilistic, bleak, gritty unsettling noise.

6. Desolate Shrine - Fires of the Dying World

"The Dying World" is saturated to the teats with carnal death and black metal outfits of the same retinue. Finally, they've unleashed their latest effort "Fires of the Dying World". They've accentuated their riffs but combining this with furious riffage also brings about a level of melody and catchiness to the riffs, which the drums do well to also instill this in your mind by adding well-timed cymbal work, rolls and catchy beats to these riffs. You'll get your blast beats, but these are used to accentuate the carefully honed song structure. The transitions between fast and mid-paced aren't 'unnatural' but flow smoothly, like destructive lava oozing from Earth's mantle. It's a very filthy, high-octane ride through dark, twisted corridors. Finland based Desolate Shrine have a more distinguished sound than most other entrants, making it their only indicator of visibility in a miasma of smoke and darkness. A dark, underground death metal, reeking of the devil for miles.

7. Funeral Harvest - Redemptio

Satanic black metal quartet Funeral Harvest shared their musical and ideological goals through their debut album of this year “Redemptio”. They are playing the type of scathing, otherworldly black metal and manage to strike between raw, atavistic aggression and a more sophisticated, occult approach as they are directly assaulting with extreme malice. This record has an unspeakably unsettling quality, its inflections quickly turning feverish and nightmarish in its claustrophobic way. They have instant appeal also as depth and substance. The energy and intensity of the band members individually are also quite noteworthy, as is the nearly complete absence of purity and light that they have snuffed out with all the dark forces of the underworld.

8. Serpent Noir / Sargeist - Transcendental Black Magic

Athens, Attica based Greek trio religious, ritualistic, occult, Kabbalah black metal enigma Serpent Noir and Finnish dark, suffocating, dissonant, ghastly black metal stalwart Sargeist's latest split album on this year entitled "Transcendental Black Magic" is a good mix of fast and slow, gloomy black metal that marries the raw style with the more epic, melodic, cleaner style that would become popular a few years later accompanied by a strong dose of a guitar line and some choir inspired backing vocals this hymn is a definite bright spot. Serpent Noir is controlled, ghost-like ghouls that draw you into their Kabbalah fold of yoga, meditation, and concentration via melody, perversion and complete depravity also represent the two faces of the Kabbalah religion or some such pagan notion. I bow my head once more with respect to the never-ending stream of evil Hellenic blood. Sargeist’s approach to the music is a very traditional, clad in darkness and spreading like a deadly plague, directed by fast, sharp riffs that would rip one’s ear drum from time to time and guarded by a legion of fast as hell drum blasting. Sargeist are simply being their most succulent version of themselves here. They expose to the impenetrable darkness that shrouds. Both black metal hybrid has built up steam, showing their ultimate culmination thus far with claustrophobic, heretic, evil flatulence from below the Earth's crust.

9. Negative Plane - The Pact...

Negative Plane plays a very exciting & passionate form of black metal and they have taken the clear and refined focus on their latest release of this year "The Pact..." and are embracing their darkened melodies and disharmonic vision into a tighter and clearer whole than ever before to get more spectacular while also adding guitar leads, synthesized keyboards onto the recording and start utilizing more tremolo picking with intricate songs full of instrumental acrobatics and contrasting interludes. "The Pact..." develops into a cleverly insane display of black metal easing the listener in with an ominous atmosphere before unceremoniously crashing into visceral riff work accompanied by vocals. The drum patterns are unorthodox and seem to be laid down with a calculated coarseness. Its allegiance to all things unfiltered, unclean, unholy. The lead guitar, gliding back and forth between weird, twisty riffs and classical motifs and virtuosity delivered with more mystique than conceit and weirdly awesome departures that it renders the contrast necessary to define evil obsolete. It's a nice flowing material that captivates your attention and keeps you involved until the end; I'd say it's a successful effort that deserves your attention. Vast emptiness is now choked by a tortuous sonic web spanning the breadth and depth of this unholy place and the deathly temple is drained to an inanimate void, save towering calcite cylinders piping hymnal blasphemies. It demonstrates this facet to such a wholly unyielding degree of worship as to make its output nearly unimportant by comparison. Time to invite the darkness, both literally and figuratively.

10. Chaos Invocation - Devil, Stone & Man

Luciferian terror chorale German black metal horde Chaos Invocation's latest full-length ritual "Devil, Stone & Man" is insane, evil black metal fury. The band becoming more experimental and ritualistic, much like we’d expect with other black metal bands these days. This is even more caustic, poisonous, Luciferian and chaotic. The legacy would Chaos Invocation pass through music is fed with beliefs that many such acts adopt. Beliefs that revolve around Satanism, which are totally against the current of Christianity with the enhancement of the role of the fallen angel.

11. Adaestuo - Purge of the Night Cloak

International trio black metal/dark ambient/experimental conduit of darkness secret society Adaestuo’s latest EP of this year " Purge of the Night Cloak" to inaugurate the transparent alignment beyond death and the transcendence of the higher self and dedicates a large portion to building a more brooding atmosphere. They have female vocalizations throughout that are reminiscent of both the grandeur of the opera and the unnerving sound of a wailing banshee. The overall effect is cold, completely exalted experience, with vocals equally morose. The dark entity seems to be fully invoked. They are given full reign of the rite, as the congregation watches the magnificence unfold. This is quite an all-encompassing experience, a true feast for listeners to devour.

12. Dunkelheit - Inner Awakening

Hungary based orthodox, infernal black metal outfit Dunkelheit have seamlessly adopted a nuanced sound that almost straddles borders with power at many junctures. Their debut release " Inner Awakening" surpasses the usual stereotypes and presents something enjoyable, chaotic, and decidedly well-presented. This savages the senses with its raw and rapacious malevolence with an unavoidable feeling that it is a long-overdue violation. It’s harsh, dark, horrific, and raw but there are also loads of brilliant style of chaotic riffs, devilish melody in the songs leaving the genre’s boundaries safe from rupturing into new pastures but with a causticity and vitriol which ignites the senses and provides a healthy level of satisfaction. They have always executed with the utmost confidence but never with overt creativity that made them truly rise above their black metal compatriots. Plenty haunting lead guitars to reinforce that uneasy and ominous mood. Everything they strove to accomplish with this album was unequivocally achieved, and the extra dose of heaviness fleshed out by a punishingly passionate performance really keeps this album fresh even after multiple playthroughs. Vocals from start to end with no glaringly weak moments found anywhere on this hike through the lightless catacombs of Satan's abode.

13. Deströyer 666 - Never Surrender

Seminal Australian cruel, nasty, brutish blackened thrash nomads Destroyer 666 added disgust and anger to the atmosphere as well as linking riff transitions to the next which somehow adds to the brutality. Brooding opening before a lead spiral its way out and bridging into a veritable onslaught of a verse riff is inevitable. This fastest material and rips through its run time with pauses for a chorus that builds behind the tracks lyrical themes before descending into madness once again with solo’s and Thrash-influences broadly displayed.

14. Piołun - Rzeki Goryczy

Another fantastic Polish black metal undertaking in the form of a debut album this year entitled "Rzeki goryczy" by Piołun. People out there who say that the genre has landed in a repetitive style, and rarely there is a band with fresh ideas, well, just listen to this piece of black art forged in caustic atmospheres. In their debut album, they deliver a wide range of searing chord cascades and body-wracking riffs that lend the music an air of grandeur. The vocals are fantastic and wide-ranging from vicious throat-cutting snarls to crazed screams and ugly growls which have their allure. This album provides precisely the feeling that permeates plenty of the record and it rarely persists but always delivers a unique sense of euphoria where this band shines in a completely different light than before. The music combines malevolent atmospheres with occult stylings to create a masterpiece of supreme black metal art and indeed manages to mix trauma with fear, and anger, embodying the grimmest atmospheres that we could ever experience.

15. Ritualization - Hema Ignis Necros

Ritualization is dedicated to keeping the spirit of the black arts alive in their true form and unveiling them through uncompromising music. Raising the darkness since their inception in 2007, this French quintet latest grimoire " Hema Ignis Necros" is malevolent, evil black metal with some old-school death metal and doom elements and embraces the blackened aesthetic and frozen Satanic evil of the style, while still acknowledging and weaponizing death metal’s more misanthropic qualities. These guys flow onwards and upwards in their endeavors, a solid effort brimming with darkness and the black arts. Embodies a dark descent into madness with the vocalist’s savage screams, pounding tribal drums, growling bass and droning guitars but then the madness ensues with blast beats and ferocious riffing. The album has a solid underground sound that does the material justice, allowing it to glow with a cold, infernal light, telling a tale of exorcism, the music dips deep into the realm of the occult and otherworldly, fashioning hymns to blackened evil that firmly make their mark on the listener also unsettle and disturb with their dark ambience and morbid atmospheres. The band is equally adept at blasting with hateful speed, slowing down to a doom-infected crawl that’s relentlessly aggressive. Ritualization gave the impression that they have settled well into their sound, there’s a sureness to their performance throughout the album. Warchangel remaining that mocking presence, merely commentating on what is to be your eventual demise at the hands of a far greater, darker force. Their debut is an exercise in total filth, delivered with unnerving levels of aggression, dark, dirty, and proudly invidious eruption of unholy noise. Bludgeoning black/death attack.

So, that's it from my end. Though there are still numerous bands unleashed their albums on this year, but I always prefer such albums which all consist of chaotic whirling black metal riffing, putrid, devilish, occult, and true primitive feelings of grandiosity. Hope you've enjoyed the list. Cheers!!

Published by: Souvik Basu 

Published on: 16-12-2022