The year 2021 was a great one for epic Symphonic/Melodic/Folk Black Metal releases. Topping previous years, these bands kept alive the genre with outstanding musicianship and extreme catchiness.
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Putting the lid on 2020, today we have the releases that got us through this year of working from home and no summer festival travels. We had a hard time picking and sorting due to all albums being awesome, but we managed to pull a comprehensive list together.
Another of our favorite genres had some killer releases this 2020. Perfectly fitting for a doomy and gloomy year, these bands delivered crushing albums that ooze emotion and contrast it with brutality.
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Black Metal has evolved in very interesting ways adding highly atmospheric and experimental features to its raw roots. In this list, we aim to highlight the best releases that continue to expand the genre’s horizons and create unique atmospheric/emotional experiences for listeners.
The year 2020 had some intense Black Metal albums being unleashed into the wild. We don’t discriminate and love both raw and oppressive BM alongside Melodic/Symphonic stuff, hence this list we include Black/Death Metal, Symphonic/Melodic Black Metal and traditional Black Metal.
After writing about music for over 15 years, releases rarely surprise us with their take on Metal music. However, every year there are a handful of albums/bands that are just ahead of their time or just bored with the status quo. This year’s selection includes some very weird and cool stuff as well as otherworldly albums that transport the listener with their unique craftiness.
As one of our favorite genres, Melodic Death Metal had some killer releases in 2020. This list represents some of the best ones we thoroughly enjoyed. Not that you might see some obvious ones missing, and this is due to them being on our main best albums of the year list. However, all these bands deserve recognition for their amazing releases.
This year we are combining both Death and Technical Death Metal into this list. Since we reviewed over 200 releases this year, and really enjoyed many of them, we will have separate lists for Progressive/Melodic Death Metal and Blackened Death Metal lists just in case you don’t see any releases in this category.
As the year comes to a close, we are writing up a list of the albums we played and enjoyed the most that we purchased with our own money. These releases are worth mentioning on our site, but due to their label/PR companies not submitting them to use, we didn’t review them. With over 700 submissions in 2020, we focus on reviewing mostly (99.9%) albums we receive from our media partners.
We have to say that 2019 was the year of Black Metal for us, not only did we reviewed the most albums of this genre, but we also found the progress made in the scene quite amazing. These are our favorite releases of the year.
Zeal & Ardor - Baroness - Deafheaven
March 8th, 2019 - Houston, Texas
Ensiferum - Septicflesh - Arsis
January 28th, 2019 - Atlanta, Georgia
November 2nd & 3rd, 2018 - Brooklyn, NY
Eye of Solitude - Marche Funebre - Catapult the Dead
March 13th, 2018 - Oakland, California
Enslaved - Wolves in the Throne Room - Myrkur - Khemis
March 9th, 2018 - San Francisco, California
November 6th, 2017 - Atlanta, Georgia
October 29th, 2017 - Rotterdam, Netherlands
October 28th, 2017 - Rotterdam, Netherlands
Brujeria + Powerflo + Pinnata Protest
October 23rd, 2017 - San Francisco, CA
Orphaned Land + Pain + Voodoo KungFu
September 20th, 2017 - Oakland, California
August 16-19th, 2017 - Dinkelsbühl, Germany
August 10th, 2017 - Jaroměř, Czech Republic
August 11th, 2017 - Jaroměř, Czech Republic
August 12th, 2017 - Jaroměř, Czech Republic
July 28-29th, 2017 - Germany
Feb 2-6, 2017 - USA
Feb 2-6, 2017 - USA
Feb 2-6, 2017 - USA
Feb 2-6, 2017 - USA
Children of Bodom + Abbath + Exmortus + Oni
12/05/2016 - The Regency, CA
Sonata Arctica + Leaves' Eyes + Omnium Gatherum
12/02/2016 - Slim's - San Francisco, CA
Epica + Arkona + Fleshgod Apocalypse + The Agonist
11/18/2016 - Social Hall - San Francisco, CA
Fallujah + Between The Buried And Me + Devin Townsend Project
10/05/2016 - Regency Ballroom - San Francisco, CA
