These are the albums that defined the sound of metal in 2019.

The list, sorted alphabetically, includes albums found on Pitchfork’s main year-end tallies as well as additional records that did not make those lists but are just as worth your time.

Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.

Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2019 wrap-up coverage here.

(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)

Dark Descent/Century Media

Blood Incantation: Hidden History of the Human Race

In one sense, Blood Incantation are traditionalists. The warped, intricate death metal of the Colorado quartet’s sophomore album takes influence from legendary bands like Death and Morbid Angel, while its all-analog recording and illustrated sci-fi cover art feel further rooted in the past. Even the side-long closing track, “Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul),” seems like a nod to the ’70s prog acts whose dark visions helped inspire countless subgenres of heavy music. Yet the real brilliance of this music lies in how free it sounds from what’s come before. On these four songs—ranging from gnarled chaos in “The Giza Power Plant” to the psychedelic slow burn of “Inner Paths (to Outer Space)”—Blood Incantation find their own corner in a storied cosmos, where even the most familiar textures can feel thrilling and extreme. –Sam Sodomsky

Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidal

Napalm Records

Candlemass: The Door to Doom

For most of this decade, these dismal Swedes seemed ready to burn out. But the decade-spanning doom metal pioneers found a new spark from an old flame by reenlisting Johan Längqvist, the singer from their landmark debut Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. They emerged with The Door to Doom, a sprawling expanse of barbed riffs and belted hooks that reinvigorates even the hoariest doom-metal tropes. The music is awash in them—“Astorolus - The Great Octopus,” an epic tale of a murderous tentacled beast, even trots out an appearance by Tony Iommi himself. For a band forever obsessed with death, they find joy in being reborn. –Grayson Haver Currin

Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Tidal

Artoffact Records

Cloud Rat: Pollinator

Cloud Rat’s evolution from a weird political grindcore band into a more unquantifiable (though still political) extreme music band came to a head in 2019 when the Michigan trio released Pollinator, their many-headed fourth LP. Cloud Rat’s inspired songwriting chops are on full display on tracks like the brutally melodic “Al Di La” and “Luminescent Cellar,” and the closer “Perla” ends in a burst of fury. Vocalist Madison Marshall’s gothic yowl has never sounded stronger, or more torn. –Kim Kelly

Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Tidal

Dark Descent

Crypt Sermon: The Ruins of Fading Light

One of the best choruses of the year reads as follows: “I looked over the edge of the rainbow/I stood atop the thunder head/Far away, a dark horizon/We are lost and Christ is dead.” The song, called “Christ Is Dead,” is sequenced near the beginning of Philadelphia doom band Crypt Sermon’s second album, and vocalist Brooks Wilson sings it like he wants you to rise from your seat and join him on his heavenly mountain top. It’s uplifting in the most literal sense, even if the words are steeped in the kind of hopelessness that reminds you how their subgenre got its name. –Sam Sodomsky