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Accept - Too Mean to Die (2021)

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Starting 2021 strong, today we have the legendary Accept and their latest opus “Too Mean to Die”. Delivering over 50 minutes of high-octane Heavy Metal, this outfit keeps the momentum going on their ‘revival’ with hard hitting and superbly catchy songs. If you are a fan of Heavy Metal, this release won’t disappoint.

The band’s new signature vocalist, Mark Tornillo, quickly leads tracks like “Zombie Apocalypse”, “Too Mean to Die”, and “Overnight Sensation” with his soaring vocals and playful style. Perfectly paired with Wolf Hoffmann’s incisive guitars, this release sets a very furious and catchy pace right off the gate. The band thrives by unleashing superbly engaging tracks that are both melodic and epic, such as the killer “No Ones Master” and its blistering twin guitar onslaughts.

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Top Atmospheric / Experimental / Post Black Metal albums of 2020

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.

10. Aethyrick - Gnosis (2020)

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Top out of the box / otherworldly releases of 2020

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.

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Top Melodic Death Metal releases of 2020

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.

Honorable Mention Hinayana - Death Of The Cosmic (2020)

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Top Death/Technical Death Metal releases of 2020

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.

5. Cult of Lilith - Mara (2020)

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Top albums that we didn’t review in 2020

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.

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Psychonaut 4 - Beautyfall (2020)

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Hailing from Georgia, a place where we have only heard of a few bands, today we have deranged outfit Psychonaut 4 and their latest opus “Beautyfall”. As one of the weirdest and intense bands in Depressive Black Metal, this album showcases their maturity and intensity of their craft. We rarely review albums we didn’t receive for review, but this release is one that has been in constant rotation in our playlist and we believe more and more people should know about this excellent band.

The release kicks off in style with the pummeling opening of “One Man's War”, showcasing that this album will be heavy and yet feature a good dose of melody as the song evolves alongside dramatic vocal arrangements and solid guitar work. Our favorite track in this release, and probably one of our top 10 of the year has to be the emotive “Tbilisian Tragedy”. We particularly enjoy the eerie atmospherics and funky tempo changes, transmitting magical misery through its mixture of clean vocal passages and dramatic guitars.

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