Farewell, 2024! It's been another massive 12 months in the heavy music world with new releases from everyone from Judas Priest and Opeth to Nightwish, Bring Me The Horizon and Poppy, but we're finally ready to put the year to bed.
There've been comebacks - Nails, Bruce Dickinson, Job For A Cowboy, Kerry King - ascendant new bands like Heriot and Lowen making their stunning debuts and an all-round bounty of all things extreme and interesting, but the time has come to rule which albums best represented the heavy music world in 2024.
That in mind, we asked Hammer's extensive pool of freelancers, staffers and contributors to submit their picks for the 20 best metal albums of 2024, and below you'll find the fruits of those labour as every vote has been tallied to create a comprehensive rundown of the finest 2024 had to offer. Don't recognise a name on the list? Stick 'em on! We'll see you for more brilliant new music in 2025.
50. Fever 333 - Darker White (Century Media/333 Wreck Chords)
Jason Aalon Butler certainly knows his way around a rap metal anthem. Only, with Fever 333 he hadn’t really shown it – until now. Rebuilding from scratch in 2022, the all-new and revitalised Fever took a massive leap towards the huge anthemia Jason had commanded in Letlive.
Singles Higher Power, No Hostages and Desert Rap stuck massive hooks to his soaring vocals and maximised the band’s funky, incendiary alt metal, resulting in a bouncy and galvanising record that went some way to realising the band’s potential.
![FEVER 333 - HIGHER POWER [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/gAuuUHpKPmk/maxresdefault.jpg)
49. Caligula's Horse - Charcoal Grace (Inside Out)
Before 2024, Caligula’s Horse made music on a pendulum, going back and forth between proggier and heavier albums. Charcoal Grace smashed that swing, presenting grand epics with bleak, brutal themes. The four-movement title track took the perspective of an abused child seething at their father, and represented the Aussie band at their biggest, darkest, and absolute best.
48. Hamferd - Men Guðs Hond Er Sterk (Metal Blade)
Sounding as bleak, powerful and starkly beautiful as the natural forces that batter their Faroe Islands home, Hamferð’s fourth fulll-ength turned death-doom’s propensity for disaster into a gorgeously affecting modern fable.
Conceptually based around a disaster that claimed the lives of 14 men on a whaling expedition, the record dredged up an ocean’s worth of low-end to subsume all in its wake, offering serenity only beneath its crushing waves.
READ MORE: "Hamferd probably has more crying than moshing."
47. Kati Rán - Sála (Svart)
Kati Rán put together an impressive crew for this voyage, with black metal legend Gaahl, Mitch Harris of Napalm Death and members of Heilung, Sígur Rós and more taking turns on the oars.
But this was very much Kati’s vision, as she navigated a journey of selfdiscovery through dark Nordic folk waters filled with oceanic swells of primal power and moments of calm introspection. Sála was mythic in scope yet deeply personal and stunning on all its many levels.
READ MORE: "It's been a long time in the making!" Dark folk enchantress Kati Ran is a songwriter like no other
46. While She Sleeps - Self Hell (Sleeps Brothers)
There’s the kitchen sink, and then there’s Self Hell. WSS’s sixth album felt like the end-of-level boss for everything Sheffield’s finest had been building to this point, slapping together their anthemic but gritty brand of metalcore with lashings of arena rock, EDM, hip hop and even alt pop, producing an album that leaked ambition from every pore. It was a headspinning ride, but for those willing to jump onboard, greatness awaited.
45. Undeath - More Insane (Prosthetic)
With the possible exception of Frozen Soul, nobody’s done more to sustain the rise of death metal’s new generation than Undeath. The New Yorkers’ third album fulfilled all the promise of their first two, widely acclaimed albums.
Bolstered by an absolutely crushing production, More Insane blended old-school incisiveness with contemporary levels of aggression. From the punishing entry point of Dead From Beyond to the bilious slurry of Bones Clattering In The Cave, it loudly confirmed that Undeath were serious heavyweights.
44. Satan - Songs In Crimson (Metal Blade)
What’s your da doing right now? Sitting on the couch, yelling at the latest Premier League debacle? What he’s not doing is continuing to rewrite proto-thrash metal and the NWOBHM with precision guitars, unrestrained drum galloping and cloud-poking vocal heights with the same wiry intensity of a hardly misspent youth.
Forty-five years ago Satan helped invent a sound and scene; Songs In Crimson helped to reshape that invention in 2024. All hail the old flesh!
43. Grand Magus - Sunraven (Nuclear Blast)
From the doomy blues of their early albums, Grand Magus have gradually distilled their sound to the essence of pure heavy metal. Sunraven raised its burnished steel to the living gods of Judas Priest and the departed great one Dio, while weaving in epic threads that were all the Swedes’ own making.
Sunraven was also the trio’s first foray into concept album territory, with a heroic but surprisingly nuanced lyrical take on the Old English poem Beowulf
42. Winterfylleth - The Imperious Horizon (Candlelight)
From the snowcovered peaks on the cover to enlisting Primordial’s Alan Averill for the glorious hymn In Silent Grace, everything about Winterfylleth’s eighth album saw the epic dial turned up another couple of notches.
Maintaining the savagery and craft that’s made them the UK’s most consistent black metal band of the last 15 years, the sheer presence of songs like The Insurrection and the title track ensured The Imperious Horizon would be carved into the mountains.
41. Tribulation - Sub Rosa In Æternum (Century Media)
In both a left turn yet some kind of ordained inevitability, Sweden’s masters of the mystical went more goth rock than ever on album six. Johannes Andersson flexed his clean, crooner muscles and shook up their sound with cuts of dark Wild West Americana and slithering giallosoundtrack synth-prog.
There was still the metallic Tribulation you know and love, but as part of the most diverse record of their career, as one of metal’s 21st-century iconoclasts continued to tinker with their own building blocks.
