THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2019

50 CANDLEMASS

NAPALM

The Door To Doom

We may all be doomed, but at least we have doom. Thirty-five years into their slow trudge towards oblivion, Leif Edling’s Candlemass pulled out one of their greatest records ever in 2019. Devoutly Sabbathian and yet brimming with its own dark charisma, The Door To Doom brought Leif’s riffs together with Johan Längquist’s glorious voice for the first time since seminal debut Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. Monu-fucking-mental, then.

49 DREAM THEATER

INSIDE OUT MUSIC

Distance Over Time

Dream Theater’s 14th outing was in stark contrast to 2016’s extravagant double-album, The Astonishing. Written and recorded in a remote residential studio in upstate New York, Distance Over Time was the sound of a band rejuvenated by their longstanding solidarity and reaffirmed their commitment to experimentation, utmost precision and dynamic hooks. Harnessing unruffled heaviness, the prog metal pioneers turned in their punchiest release for a long time.

48 ASTRONOID

BLOOD MUSIC

Astronoid

Astronoid’s second album blended wistful shoegaze with touches of extreme metal. At the accessible end of the tech/prog metal spectrum, the album was full of saccharine pop moments, only the weight of relentless percussion preventing the effects-laden guitars and vocalist Brett Boland’s futuristic choirboy falsetto from floating away, paving the runway for an uplifting, sunlit flight through the rainbow-pierced clouds of prog’s upper atmosphere.

47 ALTER BRIDGE

NAPALM

Walk The Sky

Walk The Sky was the passion project Alter Bridge needed to unleash – an aural therapy session with an undercurrent of synth vibes inspired by John Carpenter movie soundtracks peppered over their no-nonsense, melodic, sentimental heaviness. Wielding the heartfelt Tear Us Apart and Pay No Mind’s forceful riff, the Floridians’ sixth album was a gift to fans ready to accept positive change.

46 CAR BOMB

HOLY ROAR

Mordial

After a long career that had seen them mostly ignored by metal fans and press alike, it was about time that Car Bomb stepped up to make an album that truly defined them. Mordial was it. Taking Meshuggah’s head-fucking brutal tech and making it catchy, as they did on the sci-fi flavoured Scattered Sprites, this was the record we had been longing for from the New Yorkers.

45 MAYHEM

CENTURY MEDIA

Daemon

When black metal heavyweights Mayhem unleash a new album, the whole scene listens. might have been their least daring release in quite a while, but that didn’t make it less powerful. The record was a furious, hostile storm of hellfire on the highest level of the musicians’ craft,