I listened to a lot of metal this year, and these are the albums I liked the most. To shift things up from previous round-ups, I've included my personal Top 25, along with separate selections from Pitchfork's metal contributors. At this point I'm hardly the only person covering metal at the site, so I thought it would be worthwhile letting those other voices have their say.

I also included a list from Saint Vitus bar's Dave Castillo. I asked Dave, a close friend, to submit something because he's booked hundreds of metal and hardcore shows, and I was curious what stood out the most for someone in that position. Plus, I live in NYC, and his venue has provided a center for the metal scene here: Sometimes it's nice to step away from the laptop and remember the physical spaces that lured me to this world in the first place.

Speaking of which, I don't usually include books on these lists, but you should check out No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes, an excellent oral history of City Gardens that came out earlier this year. The now-shuttered Trenton venue was important to me as a teenager—I saw a ton of shows there, including the Ramones (my first non-backyard hardcore show), an unexpected Descendents reunion, early Green Day sets, Bad Brains, Butthole Surfers, My Bloody Valentine with Dinosaur, Fugazi, countless hardcore gigs, Gwar (with my frightened kid brother), Skinny Puppy with Pigface and a bunch of goth kids from my college, a few too many ska-punk shows (for unexplained reasons), Shelter somehow, and dozens upon dozens of others.

That space, and its no-bullshit construction and philosophy, helped shape my life and the way I approached doing shows, and things in general. In 2014, I'm especially interested in these kinds of underdog spots—you've already read enough about CBGB's and the like, and it's worth exploring scenes that existed outside of major urban centers, the locales that held scenes together under one roof. This is one of those, the stories are insane, and the book's a treat.

Onto the records.

__

25. Planning for Burial: Desideratum [The Flenser]

__Planning for Burial is the project of Matawan, NJ's Thom Wasluck. The mix of highly personalized doom, noise pop, and lo-fi post-metal on his second album brings to mind the '90s under-the-pillow noise of Twisted Village regular Luxurious Bags and the quieter, fuzzier work of Justin Broadrick's Jesu. As his moniker suggests, Wasluck goes into darker spaces, dealing with things like depression, loneliness, and jealousy—subjects you'd expect from music that sounds like it was recorded alone in a bedroom. On "Golden", the 16-minute closer, he offers a prime example of how to move from gentle acoustic strums to room-filling noise without hurting anyone's eardrums. It's like he was afraid to wake up his housemates.

Planning For Burial: "Golden" (via Bandcamp)

__24. Thantifaxath: Sacred White Noise [Dark Descent]

__On their ambitious, abstracted debut, the hooded Toronto trio play complex black metal that feels like it was recorded in a hall of mirrors—tones are extended and distorted, rhythms shattered and frayed, the overall atmosphere like a twisted carnival. Think a street-punk version of Deathspell Omega or Blut Aus Nord or, maybe, a creepier Krallice with a penchant for flights into new classical. For all the layers of atmosphere and technical chops, though, this is immediate, melodic music: It's enjoyable getting lost in Sacred White Noise, then using the surprise hooks to pull you out of the insanity.

Thantifaxath: "The Bright White Nothing at the End of the Tunnel" (via SoundCloud)

__23. Lantlôs: Melting Sun [Prophecy]

__German multi-instrumentalist Markus Siegenhort split vocals with Alcest's Neige on previous Lantlôs records; he goes it alone on album four, a pretty and still very sturdy collection that blends gorgeous, airy post-rock guitars and heavier, molasses drums with Siegenhort's bright, clear voice. Unlike Neige's flimsier recent work, Siegenhort maintains enough grit here (mostly in the drums) to remind you where the project originated. Ultimately, it's kaleidoscopic and progressive dream pop that often does sound like a sun melting. (Note: Despite the evocative album title, and the mention of post-rock, it sounds nothing like Sunbather.)

Lantlôs: "Melting Sun I: Azure Chimes"

22. Wreck & Reference: Want [The Flenser__]

__The Los Angeles duo Wreck & Reference use a sampler, drums, and voice to express immense, apocalyptic rage. On Want they sometimes hint at a more fucked up and heavy Xiu Xiu, other times Prurient screaming at a wall, and now and again an elegant Godflesh. You even get what might be best described as "Big Black-esque spoken word." Importantly, though, across these 11 spartan songs, they basically sound like no one else. (Of note: They have an entertaining Twitter feed, if you're into those sorts of things.)

Wreck & Reference: "Corpse Museum" (via SoundCloud)

21. Mutilation Rites:__ Harbinger [Prosthetic]

__On their second album, and first with Ryan Jones (ex-Today Is the Day, and a very good sound man/producer) on bass and second vocals, the gnarled New York band continued finding a way to cram raw black metal with considerably more hooks, swing, and overall compositional know-how than your average Darkthrone worshippers. (Like Jones, drummer Justin Ennis is also an accomplished professional sound person—I figure this is how they manage to play so loud without losing definition.) Where a lot of black metal in 2014 felt rote, Harbinger is more life-affirming than a suffocating collection with song titles like "Suffer the Children" and "Gravitational Collapse" should be.

Mutilation Rites: "Contaminate" (via SoundCloud)

__20. Atriarch: An Unending Pathway [Relapse]

__

The Portland band, fronted by shape-shifting vocalist Lenny Smith (the guy should have his own reality show), play forward-marching death rock that also cycles into doom, black metal, and punk. (There are dark, catchy songs here you could imagine hearing on vintage 120 Minutes.) At one point on their third album, An Unending Pathway, Smith sings: "When I'm dead, bury me here with no casket or trinkets from life/ I’ll decompose into the Earth so the cycle is whole." It's a beautiful sentiment, and, importantly, you know he's not bullshitting.

Atriarch: "Entropy" (via Bandcamp)

19. Teitanblood: Death [Norma Evangelium Diaboli]

The chaotic Spanish duo Teitanblood's second collection of wall-of-noise blackened death metal (or whatever you decide to label a maelstrom) is satisfyingly overwhelming, but also entirely to the point: each track is akin to an uphill life/death struggle, with all the violent flailing you'd assume comes with that sort of experience. In this context, the occasional Tom G. Warrior-style death grunt rings like an actual death rattle, now and then a thrashy solo surfaces from the clamoring muck like an outstretched hand, and sometimes when a song ends you feel like you're the one who needs that sort of assistance. Honestly, it's difficult imagining the guys playing these shambling, suffocating songs more than once, but it's very enjoyable trying to figure out how they do.

Teitanblood: "Anteinfierno" (via SoundCloud)

18. Gridlink: Longhena [Handshake Inc]

Led by the shredded yowl of Jon Chang and Takafumi Matsubara's artfully complex guitar decompositions, the NJ/Tex./Japan grindcore group's swan song, like their previous salvos, found a way to locate a spot between chiseled violence and spit-shine beauty. On Longhena, 14 songs clock in at 22 minutes, but that doesn't mean there isn't time for a pensive ambient string piece amid the complex explosions. For some reason when I think of Longhena, I imagine it being placed somewhere in an art gallery.

[#audiofile: /audiofiles/5929cc0aeb335119a49ee2b7]||||||

__17. Krieg: Transient [Candlelight]

__Krieg's Neill Jameson is a prolific NJ-based American black metal lifer, a brainy former record store clerk writer who's made songs about American Psycho's Patrick Bateman and covered the Velvet Underground. He's been around for ages, seemingly always on the periphery. So it was kind of a surprise that his seventh album as Krieg, and first in four years, is a USBM masterpiece, one that comes almost 20 years into his discography. In part this is because Transient feels like a first. There's a punk black'n'roll feel—confirmed by a rollicking cover of Amebix's "Winter"—and an energy that eclipses anything he's done previously. But it's buttressed by his boundless invention—swirling power electronics before a massive hardcore breakdown, boozy post-punk, and, hey, a spoken word piece that pairs his Twilight cohort Thurston Moore with Integrity’s Dwid Hellion. I've booked a few Krieg shows over the years, and remember one time, ages ago, when I paired him with a nascent Liturgy, and watched Jameson down a bottle of honey before the show. That's always informed the way I heard his voice, and how he's figured out what he needs to do to keep things going.

Krieg: "Return Fire" (via SoundCloud)

__16. Agalloch: The Serpent & the Sphere [Profound Lore]

__Agalloch's fifth album is the Oregon dark metal group's gentlest—it takes its time with the hushed 10-minute opener and a three-minute classical guitar piece, and remains controlled and unhurried throughout. The record is definitely grand—there are dramatic upswings and echoes and double drumming—but in tone, an often whispering John Haughm and company are pensive, allowing more room for folk and less for blackened whatever. But, of course, when they do decide to howl into the wind, the shivers are even more pronounced, and Serpent suggests an elegant way for these guys to continue mutating around their central conceit for years to come.

Embed is unavailable.

__15. Diocletian: Gesundrian [Osmose Productions]

__The long-running New Zealand war metal outfit Diocletian's third full length features what sounds like air raid sirens emerging from the black/death muck of the second to last track "Beast Atop the Trapezoid". It's a calming moment on an otherwise buzzing, blistering assault of a record.

Diocletian: "Steel Jaws" (via SoundCloud)

__14. Eyehategod: *

Eyehategod* [Housecore]

__

The classic New Orleans group's first record in 14 years, which comes after Katrina and various personal tragedies, ranks with the best of their over-driven punked-up sludge blues. It's also the last record to feature drummer Joe LaCaze, who passed away in August of this year, a fact that's hard to grasp when you hear how alive he is on these recordings.

Eyehategod: "Robitussin and Rejection" (via SoundCloud)

__13. Inter Arma: The Cavern EP [Relapse]

__Last year Richmond, Virginia's Inter Arma turned heads with their second album, Sky Burial, a collection that offered a gimmick-free mix of doom, Americana, sludge, groove metal, Southern acoustic ambiance, and filthy crust psychedelia. This year they packed all of that, and more, into one 40 minute song that will keep you glued to your stereo from start to finish. A very exciting band who'll hopefully continue with these sorts of curveballs.

Inter Arma: "The Cavern" (via Bandcamp)

__12. Morbus Chron: Sweven [Century Media]

__The Swedish band's adventurous second collection features 10 songs focusing in one way or another on being stuck in an extended nightmare or astral projection...or something. It's not all that important you decipher that aspect of Sweven—the music's rich enough on its own. The patient, brainy, knotty collection finds the group moving away from their 2011 debut's old-school Autopsy nods to progressive death metal complete with mathy breakdowns, a black metal interlude or two, blazing solos, and tons of atmosphere. Because of the care in these compositions, it's an album best experienced whole, and it's one you can listen to a dozen times a day and continue unpacking. (If you end up being a fan, check out Tribulation from last year's list.)

Morbus Chron: "It Stretches in the Hollow" (via SoundCloud)

__11. Primordial: Where Greater Men Have Fallen [Metal Blade]

__On their eighth album, the Irish epic metal band's vocalist/iconic frontman A.A. Nemtheanga chews the vast soundscapes his band lays down behind him. You get eight songs stretching to more than an hour, and he never lags or phones anything in as he intones about Ireland's history, tyrants that oppress the common man, and giving your life for what you love, among other things (hell, there's a song called "Wield Lightning to Split the Sun"). It's a fist-pumping, call-to-arms performance that's made me think of a blackened folk metal Freddie Mercury now and again (why not?). If you at all care about nations and the people working hard to survive in them, this stuff will give you chills.

Primordial: "Where Greater Men Have Fallen" (via SoundCloud)

__10. Dead Congregation: Promulgation of the Fall [Profound Lore]

__The Greek band's second full-length channels the old school death metal of Incantation and Immolation and makes it new. They're not rewriting the book, but they've managed to create another masterpiece of the form. They're a band as technically sick as they are able to create sick atmospheres, and when I saw them live recently, I caught myself staring with my mouth open, a dumfounded witness.

[#audiofile: /audiofiles/5929cc0aeb335119a49ee2b8]||||||

__9. Indian: From All Purity [Relapse]

__The Chicago doomed sludge band's fifth record features even more feedback and noise than usual, courtesy of Chicago mainstay, Bloodyminded/Anatomy of Habit's Mark Solotroff. Otherwise they remain as single-mindedly focused (and as blown-out and nihilistic) as ever. On the back of 2011's great Guiltless and this record, I asked the quartet to headline my Show No Mercy showcase at SXSW last year—watching them live was like watching four very focused men beat something until it died.

Indian: "Directional" (via SoundCloud)

__8. Woods of Desolation: As the Stars [Northern Silence Productions]

__Woods of Desolation is the ongoing project of guitarist/bassist D. and a revolving cast of players. For his excellent third album as WoD, he got help from drummer Vlad (Drudkh) and fellow Australians, bassist Luke Mills (Nazxul, Pestilential Shadows) and vocalist Drohtnung (Old). On paper, the combination of pretty sky-melting guitars and depressive black metal vocals may bring to mind early Alcest and Deafheaven, but this is actually more reminiscent of vintage Katatonia, albeit recorded somewhere deep in the forest and after they somehow got into Explosions in the Sky.

Woods of Desolation: "This Autumn Light" (via Bandcamp)

__7. Godflesh: A World Lit Only By Fire [Avalanche]

__The best thing you can say about industrial metal giants Godflesh's first album in 13 years is that it sounds like a record they made more than 20 years ago. On it, Justin Broadrick and G.C. Green returned to their roots—1988’s Godflesh EP, 1989’s Streetcleaner, and 1992’s Pure—and managed to expand upon what they did best without losing any of the original burn.

Godflesh: "New Dark Ages" (via SoundCloud)

__6. Blut Aus Nord: Memoria Vetusta III - Saturnian Poetry [Debemur Morti]

__Each year Blut Aus Nord release a record they show up somewhere on my year-end list with a description about how the project of French multi-instrumentalist Vindsval continues pushing boundaries. On his 11th full-length, this one featuring the live drumming of Thorns (Frostmoon Eclipse, Glorior Belli, Deathrow), he returns from the dark ambient and industrial offerings of the 777 trilogy with a proper black metal record—albeit, one clearly from the mind of a guy who's also made dark ambient and industrial albums. Every element, down to the light in the landscape on the cover, is in the right place.

Blut Aus Nord: "Paien" (via SoundCloud)

__5. Nux Vomica: Nux Vomica [Relapse]

__For their first record in five years, and first for Relapse, the crusty Portland-via-Baltimore doom band give us three punked-up, politically minded songs that reminded me of the best of Dystopia and Nausea while adding in unexpected elements (the fluttering guitar beauty of "Reeling," the soaring ambient section of "Choked at the Roots") and stretching to 45 minutes. These very catchy, very inspired tracks already have the feel of classic anthems, and when vocalist Just Dave yells "We must resist!" or "We stopped watching the news/ cause we couldn't take it anymore," it's very easy not only to yell along, but to remember that thoughts like this are what got you here initially.

Nux Vomica: "Sanity Is for the Passive" (via Bandcamp)

__4. Tombs: Savage Gold [Relapse]

__

From intense frontman/band leader Mike Hill and on, the Brooklyn band Tombs is best described as “muscular,” but are otherwise difficult to pin down. The music is precise, heavy, and powerful, and they mix black metal, post-rock, noise rock, straight-up rock, and other elements into a specific, identifiable sound. (Imagine Unsane discovering black metal and copping to an interest in Joy Division.) It’s a style that's buffed to a shine on their third album, Savage Gold, which was recorded and produced by death metal legend Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal, ex-Morbid Angel). There’s a coiled intensity to these 10 songs, and Savage manages to feel both more stripped back and deeper than their also excellent previous work.

Embed is unavailable.

__3. YOB: Clearing the Path to Ascend [Neurot]

__

The Eugene, Oregon doom band and year-end list-regulars' seventh album consists of four instant classics clocking in at more than an hour. Their humble, shamanistic frontman and guitarist Mike Scheidt, who wrote this material after a divorce and decision to go off antidepressants, reminds me of J Mascis in his off-stage soft-spoken manner and on-stage six-string theatrics. The music itself is the usual blend of psychedelic and stoner rock, blues, and something more blackened, capped by Scheidt's powerful vocals. But this time out, the material feels especially classic (especially closer "Marrow"), and it's clear that Yob truly are one of America's great heavy bands, a group that should be much bigger than they are.

YOB: "Unmask the Spectre" (via SoundCloud)

__2. Pallbearer: Foundations of Burden [Profound Lore]

__For their second album, the Arkansas doom band recorded with Billy Anderson, who sat behind the controls for the classic Sleep oeuvre and has recorded seminal works for High on Fire, Melvins, Jawbreaker, and others. In an interview I did with Pallbearer co-founder/co-lyricist/bassist Joseph D. Rowland, he said Anderson told them he's never recorded a band that used so many guitar tracks—an element of Pallbearer's sound that explains the massiveness of Foundations, as well as how they saw Sorrow and Extinction's successes as an opportunity to deepen and strengthen their craft. This is an ambitious record that doesn't feel at all over-worked or stale, and while Extinction holds up beautifully two years later, Foundations is the stronger collection to the point that it almost comes across as demos for this new material. And where Extinction often felt like a solitary album—especially in its focus on death and mortality—Foundations is built for larger communal spaces.

Pallbearer: "The Ghost I Used To Be" (via SoundCloud)

__1. Thou: Heathen [Gilead Media/Vendetta/Howling Mine]

__

With their fourth full-length, the first since 2010's great Summit, the prolific Baton Rouge band Thou continue putting out important, enthralling music that combines their DIY approach with sludge, doom, and punk. (It's their fourth LP, but they've released more than 20 records when you count the EPs and splits.) Heathen is painful and raw, but melodic and transportive. There are throat-shredders like the 15-minute opener "Free Will", moody acoustic interludes (one's called "Take Off Your Skin and Dance in Your Bones"), and ghostly female vocals (courtesy of Emily McWilliams),

On their label's site, they mention that it's recommended if you like "nature, the sensual world, sexual decadence, pain and ecstasy, actively experiencing the present." Summit reminded me of my mother's death, largely because she passed away the year it was released, but also because of the subtle funereal horns and its overall darkness. Heathen, though, for all its intensity, feels to me like an affirmation.

Thou: "Free Will" (via Bandcamp)

____Honorable Mention: The Soft Pink Truth: Why Do the Heathen Rage? [Thrill Jockey]

____On Why Do the Heathen Rage?, Matmos' Drew Daniel applies his experimental house project Soft Pink Truth's lusty style to songs by Darkthrone, Venom, Beherit, Mayhem, Hellhammer, and other black metal outfits, incorporating guests like Antony, Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner, David Serrotte of the Baltimore vogue ball crew House of Revlon, and Locrian’s Terence Hannum. Snippets from gay house classics (and porn) also play a part.

As Daniel’s made clear in the past, SPT is a queer-focused project, as shown on this LP by his cover of Seth Putnam/Impaled Northern Moonforest’s “Grim and Frostbitten Gay Bar” and artist Mavado Charon’s cover illustration of corpse-painted men fucking and murdering each other. The liner notes feature a piece called “Confessions of a Former Burzum T-Shirt Wearer”, where Daniel talks about what it means to be a gay man as well as a fan of black metal—a genre with a sketchy, violent history that includes the murder of a gay man by Emperor’s Bård “Faust”, as well as the fascism of Burzum’s Varg Vikernes. As Daniel puts it, “Just as blasphemy both affirms and assaults the sacred powers it invokes and inverts, so too this record celebrates black metal and offers queer critique, mockery, and profanation of its ideological morass in equal measure.”

It's an album inspired by metal, yes, but it's also a metal album. Sort of. I gave it Honorable Mention because it feels like it deserves its own space. I did the same thing with Liturgy a few years back when they released Aesthethica. Sometimes an album feel too singular to add to a list. At least to me.

The Soft Pink Truth: "Black Metal" (Venom cover) (via SoundCloud)

I was also into Cult of Fire's मृत्यु का तापसी अनुध्यान (Iron Bonehead) this year. I discovered it in 2014, but it came out last December, so I didn't include it. Here's a track:

Embed is unavailable.

Here are the rest of the lists...