Being a heavy metal journalist is the best job in the world, but there are only so many times you can wring a headline out of whatever Metallica did this week before you go insane. People enter this line of work for various reasons and, for me, it was finding new, exciting, brutal shit and screaming about it from the rooftops. So now I’m going to do just that.
Below, you’ll find 11 mind-bending acts that I’ve long wanted to write about despite never getting a decent-enough excuse. From clamouring thrash obsessed with pizza to power metal made by monks, these free-thinkers need to be heard to be believed. Have a read before my boss turns back around and asks why that piece ranking Slipknot’s masks in reverse-order of sexiness isn’t on his desk yet.
Blindfolded And Led To The Woods
These New Zealanders are extreme metal’s ugly duckling story. They formed as a “funny” deathcore troupe and released a debut EP called Armed To The Teeth With Jelly Beans. So 2010s, so random, LOL, etc. Mercifully, they enjoyed a glow-up over the ensuing years, then emerged from the pandemic with Nightmare Withdrawals: a choking ooze of noise, tech-death and breakdowns. 2023’s Rejecting Obliteration doubled down on the density, affirming these former jesters as one of the underground’s most disorienting forces.
Briqueville
The moment you accept you’ll never understand Briqueville is the moment you’ll fall in love with Briqueville. At first, the Belgians seem like a riddle to solve, playing instrumental but shamanic post-metal in hoods and robes. It’s tempting to search for the meaning behind those riffs, but that way only madness lies. In a world where Sleep Token and Ghost have conditioned us to expect lore from masked bands, it’s refreshing to get one that just writes avant-garde music for its own brilliant sake.
Crippling Alcoholism
If Nine Inch Nails were somehow creepier, they’d be Crippling Alcoholism. New album With Love From A Padded Room is a nightmarish concept piece where each lyric tells the story of a prisoner in a made-up jail. It coalesces noise rock, metal, goth and lashings of synthesisers underneath Tony Castrato’s baritone vocals, half-sung and half-spoken like a looming maniac. It’s not just the atmosphere, either – the fact the Bostonians know how to write a memorable hook means their songs cruelly linger long after you’ve stopped listening.
Ecclesia
Have you seen that priest who went viral last year by nailing the drum part to Meshuggah’s Bleed? Ecclesia are that guy but a whole band. They’re a hooded order of monks who, if their press releases are to be believed, were united by the Vatican to fight heresy with the power of trad-metal. 2024’s Ecclesia Militans is a collection of hymns about burning witches, exorcising demons and redeeming souls, converging into a rare metal album that makes virtue sound badass.
Grorr
France may be the greatest hotbed of forward-thinking metal in the world right now. As well as such pioneers as Gojira and Alcest, it’s giving us underground innovators like Hypn0se and Slift. Grorr (their name an onomatopoeia for the sound of a death growl) only strengthen that argument. The Pyrenees-based originals mix djent with world music, as epitomised by latest album Ddulden’s Last Flight, which adapts an unfilmed movie script into a saga of hard riffs and twanging Asian folk.
Lord Buffalo
Not to be confused with psych outfit King Buffalo, these Americans lead a genre that fans call “mud-folk”. You’ll see why the quartet had to receive their own catch-all when you listen to them, because the tag “country-noise-metal” wouldn’t exactly roll off the tongue. They carry the tar-smoked soul of Americana through walls of scratching riffs and equally discordant violins, but all that roughness is smoothed out by the pipes of frontman Daniel Pruitt. How this lot are so under-heard is baffling.
Love Sex Machine
One of my hardest laughs of 2024 came when I saw Love Sex Machine at Pelagic Fest. This is a collective of four burly, bearded Frenchmen unleashing riffs heavy enough to make Morbid Angel shit themselves. But all of their lyrics are tongue-in-cheek yarns about fucking, aliens and warfare. So, how could my sides not split when, while onstage, the band’s sonic fury gets interrupted by their singer saying, “This next song is called Killed By A Monster Cock”? Just… genius work, lads.
Obscure Sphinx
Who are the scariest metal band ever? Is it Mayhem with their murderous history, or Amenra with their panic-attack-like intensity? How about Slayer when they hit terminal velocity? Wherever you align, I’d humbly like to add Obscure Sphinx to the conversation. The Polish enigmas release noxiously claustrophobic post-metal, and their grip on your neck only tightens every time frontwoman Zofia Fraś snarls like a hellhound. If those vocals don’t haunt your nightmares, the art of 2013 album Void Mother certainly will.
Pizza Death
Ever heard of ‘pizza thrash’? It’s a condescending label thrown at bands who deal in high-speed, 80s-style aggro with snapback caps and party-hard lyrics. Pizza Death, however, wear it like a badge of honour. Each of the Australians’ rapid tracks genuflect before the glutinous, with titles like Napalm Cheese and Pizzapocalypse to their name. Is it stupid? Yes. But lay down one of their records and you’ll get a saucy thrashback to the likes of Suicidal Tendencies and even Napalm Death.
Psychonaut
Stick on some Psychonaut and they’ll gladly pull you through a wormhole ear-first. The Belgians may only be a power trio, but the way their space rock blockbusters escalate and deviate sounds like they have the force of a thousand men. The echoing, distorted vocals only make the whole journey even more alien, and by the time the band reach the crescendo of whatever it is they’re playing, your mind will be as expanded as the protagonist’s at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Spaceslug
Since 2017, Spaceslug have been making wobbly doom about a mollusc that travels through space and time. Whatever drug they needed to come up with that, the three-piece have probably smoked the world’s supply of it, having put out five albums and three EPs around the theme already. As easy as it is to laugh at their central concept, though, the smoothness and melody of their music make this seemingly jokey band something worth hearing again and again and again.
