13 (x2) UNDERRATED DEATH METAL ALBUMS (OF THE 21ST CENTURY) PART 2
Death is only the beginning, again.
And here it is, the second part of our massive double-13 Underrated selection of death metal’s overlooked gems of this century (part one is here if you missed it, and you can check out all other genres we’ve done lists for here too). Now that we have the full picture of our selection, it’s interesting to note a couple of things about it that allow for some generalisations about the genre that might not be too far off the actual reality. First of all, the geographic distribution of the bands. Full disclosure, I did not think of that at all while making the selection - just so you know, the process usually involves me sitting in my slowly rotating office chair with a hazy, far away look while my increasingly fallible mind goes through every death metal album I’ve ever remembered liking, sometimes glancing at the record shelves all around me for some random divine inspiration. It’s practically a science, bitches.
The only rule I consciously enforce is to not have more than one album by the same band on the list. Still, it ended up being an unintentionally very diverse list in terms of nationalities. There is a majority of US bands, naturally, it being the sort of birthplace of the genre and also a continuous source of death metal, but also various bands from very different corners of Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa, not to mention Canada. Now that I think of it, I wish I had considered this factor, because I ended up with no representation from South America and I can now think of several records from those countries which could well have made the list. In any case, this spread does suggest death metal to be a worldwide phenomenon, which I believe it’s obvious that it really is.
Furthermore, in terms of record labels, it’s cool to note that most of my favourites in regards to this genre have all made the list with at least one album, some even more - people like 20 Buck Spin, Sentient Ruin, Profound Lore or Transcending Obscurity, to name but a few, have done a lot for underground death metal (and beyond) in the last few years, so here’s a little homage to them, and to all the others represented in the list as well.
Finally, in regarding years, as a mere curiosity, there was a bit of almost everything from 2003 to 2025, and 2018 emerged as the surprising clear winner with an impressive four records in the list.
Okay then, enough nerd stats. Onwards for DEATH METAL!
Giybaaw
Ancestral War Hymns
(self-released)
2009
The cultures of Indigenous people seem very suitable for providing a theme for quality, innovative extreme music. With bands like Mutilated Tyrant, Blackbraid or Ysyry Mollvün (whom we included on the black metal list), to mention but a few, there have been great recent examples of this. Though mostly they tend to veer towards black metal, there’s also some really great death metal ones (Tzompantli, who made one of our favourite records of 2024, leaps to mind), and Giybaaw was one of the very best. Hailing from the British Columbia region of Canada, they are unfortunately not the most active of bands, but this, their one full-length so far, remains as a towering monument of blackened death metal seemingly evoked from an ancient time. "Gyibaaw" actually means "Wolf" in S'malygax, the language of the Tsimshian people, most of their lyrics are also in that language, and the band even calls their style Tsimshian/Gitksan war metal. The end result is a balanced mix of pre-war metal rudimentary savagery (think Holocausto and derivates, mostly) and some pleasingly elaborate, more technical death metal that wouldn’t be entirely out of place on a Nile album, for instance. They don’t need constant breakneck speed to lay down their heaviness and the full extent of their art, and ‘Ancestral War Hymns’ turns out to be a dynamic and very diverse experience, always high on the intensity but very agile and unexpected in the way it blazes through the songs. Can we have a follow-up already, please?
兀突骨 (Gotsu Totsu Kotsu)
背水之陣 (The Final Stand)
(Bang the Head Records)
2018
Fuck yeah, samurai metal! Someone had to, eventually, and fortunately it ended up being an awesome group of Japanese musicians who are able to do it with the grace, elegance and epic savagery that it requires, rather than have it all descend into silliness like it easily could have in less capable hands. 兀突骨, or Gotsu Totsu Kotsu, is actually the Japanese pronounciation of Wutugu, a barbarian general from the Three Kingdoms period of China, a name that translates literally to “bone collision”, which in turn reflects pretty well the impact of the kind of death metal on offer here. Obviously the focus is on the gory, bloody fields where the epic battles of that time took place, something that 兀突骨 are able to represent extraordinarily well with their lively, energetic songs. It doesn’t take too long to be instantly captivated by them - if you like a touch of epic battles in your music, you’ll be all over this in a second. Raging, thrashing, enormous-sounding death metal that rips all over the place as if you’re suffering a thousand cuts from the sharpest sword or receiving a full hail of arrows piercing you all over, 兀突骨 are merciless, razor-sharp and a whole lot of fun. They already have six full-length albums, and though I picked this, the fifth one, for this list, it was mainly due to it boasting my favourite song of theirs, the devastating ‘撫デ斬リ’ (“Nadegiri”, ie, “Sword Sweep”), because otherwise they’re all equally awesome. I suggest, if you don’t know the band, starting chronologically and taking a whole day to travel through all these glorious battlefields of yore. You won’t regret it.
Hieronymus Bosch
Artificial Emotions
(CD-Maximum)
2005
I discovered Hieronymus Bosch in the best way that you can discover a band - by seeing them play a kickass live show. It was at the 2005 edition of the Tuska Open Air festival in Helsinki, they were the first Russian band to play there at the time. Their name obviously opened up some immediate curiosity, so I was already excited for the show before I heard a single note and they did not disappoint. A proggy, labyrinthine, Atheist-like take on death metal that nevertheless maintains all the heaviness and intensity that you require of the genre, and on top of it they were able to lay it all down perfectly on stage. An instant favourite, which at the time led me to immediately purchase of what was their new record, this little gem here, that I have spun many times since. Vsevolod Gorbenko, aside from being a great frontman with a pleastanly raspy kind of growl, does a stellar job on the bass, his mazy runs matching any other ‘90s prog-death bass icon you might want to mention. Unfortunately, they only had one more album in them, 2008’s also excellent ‘Equivoke’, before splitting up and disappearing from the scene for good, apart from drummer Mikhail Sorokin who is still active with the unfortunately much less interesting Oblivion Machine. Still, this record remains a great discovery for anyone into the proggier side of death metal.
Infernal Coil
Within A World Forgotten
(Profound Lore Records)
2018
A relentless fucking barrage of dank, obscure, grinding filth, ‘Within A World Forgotten’ is quite simply one of my favourite death metal albums ever, no more buts or ifs about it. After seven years of living with the foul thing, it remains in my personal rotation whenever I feel like my music matching the overall vibe of the world today - suffocating, claustrophobic, dangerous, menacing and absolutely, desperately hopeless. Since the Boise, Idaho trio (which included Dead In The Dirt’s Blake Connally on vocals and guitar) released it and then seemingly forgot all about it - there have been no signs of activity from the band basically ever since - it also stands in itself as a perfect monument to the futility of our existence. Nothing good will last, everything will fade and die underneath a blanket of dust and ash. I mean, take the song ‘Crusher Of The Seed’, for instance - it sounds like Portal rehearsing in the basement while being chased by giant slugs, and as we all know, Portal already feel like they warped in from a, erm, portal connecting to the universe’s own cosmic filthy basement themselves, so that’s saying something. Because everything is shit, this band probably won’t ever return to activity, but I’ll happily spin this album over and over while staring into the inevitable all-consuming void.
Karcavul
Intersaone
(Sentient Ruin Laboratories)
2016
Three songs, 24 minutes, and nothing else since 2016, so fuck you. What’s annoying is that these French weirdos, whoever they are (no info on the line-up, or on anything else for that matter), could have been special. There’s a certain something lying underneath the unhinged, muddy savagery of these songs, something loose, something deep, something so much more lasting than your usual autopilot brutality that so many bands make and then forget about it after a second. “All musical decency ends here,” says on their Bandcamp blurb, and yeah, there’s a feeling of decadence, of wrongness, that is very unusual to get this clearly from a piece of extreme music. They mention a few bands in that same blurb, and we can take two of them to give you an idea of what to expect - imagine Eyehategod playing Dragged Into Sunlight songs on some beat-up, about-to-break gear, with the urgency of trying to cram an hour’s worth of material into less than half an hour. Now press play and see if it’s not that.
Necrosic
Putrid Decimation
(Nuclear War Now! Productions)
2016
Aw, man. The thing when you start messing with “underrated” stuff is that you’ll come across a ton of “what if”s. Missed opportunities, abandoned projects, just a whole bunch of unfulfilled potential. When Necrosic appeared with this debut EP, full of awesome people in the line-up - seriously, Erika from Scolex, Charlie Koryn of Ascended Dead and VoidCeremony and many others, Chris from Gravehill and Destroyed In Seconds and the fucking legends that are Eric from Autopsy and Sean from Ghoul and Impaled! -, it was such an promising time. Here was a band that I felt could become a big name and a rallying point for the genre in the next few years. Even at a short eighteen minutes, the four songs on this EP fully confirmed that too, brilliantly treading the frontier between affirming the credentials of those involved and also creating something new and exciting. ‘Squirming In Your Guts’ and ‘Vomit Transmutation’ are effective, three-minute sucker punches that highlight how good these people (Eric Cutler in particular, of course) can be at writing a proper song, whereas the two longer pieces, ‘Spawn Of Radiation’ and ‘My Casket Drains’, really take off with, as the great text on their Bandcamp describes, “various tempo shifts, sporadically-implemented guitar harmonies, and precisely-woven leads that erupt from, dance atop, and disappear within Bolt Thrower-like rhythm vamps.” Yeah, that sums it up. Eric had another masterclass in death metal guitar playing, Sean was as cool as ever, puking up tales of putrid woe, everything was in its right place, and there’s even a post from December 2017 on their facebook going “We are shaking off the rust and getting ready to record an album in March. We will deliver something sick!” And then… nothing. I have no idea what happened, or even if anything specific did happen, but Necrosic weren’t heard from again. All of these cool people continued on their merry way with their other bands, and everyone forgot about the one band that could have ruled them all. Smile because it happened, even if it was just eighteen minutes of it, or something, right?
Noose Rot
The Creeping Unknown
(Sentient Ruin Laboratories)
2018
Sort of an all-star line-up, crushing four-song EP from the 2010s under twenty minutes, nothing ever since - no, we’re not doing Necrosic by mistake all over again, but that’s also the story of Noose Rot in a nutshell. Is it the music? Does death metal destroy some ability in you to keep doing things? I mean, Autopsy are still around and doing great. Gatecreeper, whose drummer Matt Arabollo aka Metal Matt played (plays?) in Noose Rot, is also up and running nicely. So it can’t be just that. Anyway, yeah, Noose Rot was/is Metal Matt, Adam Clemans (Skeletonwitch, Wolvhammer, etc) on vocals and lyrics and Jim Adolphson (Horrid Litany, Boson, also played live with Wolvhammer) on guitars and bass, and this kickass EP is one of the best examples of how the old school rotted filth of death metal has carried on so well into the next generation. Macabre, poisonous vibes and a punked up Bolt Thrower kind of energy to it that puts them in the category of contemporary greats like Acephalix or Necrot among others. Sometimes it’s even hard to explain the appeal, but when that blackened miasma starts pouring out of a song, you immediately recognise it. And Noose Rot had that in spades, I can’t imagine how awesome a full-length of this stuff owuld have been. Boys, can we get back on this undead horse for another go around the carousel, please?
Our Place Of Worship Is Silence
With Inexorable Suffering
(Translation Loss Records)
2018
Portal aside, this might just be my favourite death metal band of the 21st century. Each of their three albums is just a monument to desperate, unending violence and grief, the songs come at you so rabidly and so aggressively that it’s hard to not think if these people are actually okay. For once, someone is actually able to turn a Jef “Wrest” Whitehead illustration (incidentally, artwork was once again the only reason why I was able to pick out one album out of their three) into actual music that represents it correctly, right? The thing about, erm, OPOWIS - man, I hate it when writers start referring to bands like this, don’t you? - is that they cover everything you might ever want from a death metal band. Tim and Eric, for those are the names of the two Los Angeles gentlemen that make up the duo, are obviously amazingly gifted technically, but much in the same way as the most animalistic moments of Gorguts, all of that is channeled into heigthening the ferocity and the spontaneous-sounding anger of the music, not for oh-look-at-me widdling around. Also, that seemingly out of control savagery belies the superb structuring of the songs, how they keep shifting moods and tempos and keeping things vibrant and engaging. Furthermore, that typically DM deep and cavernous feeling doesn’t imply that you can’t understand everything that’s going on, as both the production and the actual playing hit that sweet spot between murky sewer-dwelling and clear, razor-sharp impact. Most of all, it’s the universality of their appeal that impresses the most. From the most basic death metal knucklehead who just wants it to chug it out to the most pretentious nerd who will mention “time signatures” in every comment, everyone should go apeshit about this band. Honestly, they could be a meme. You know, “the perfect death metal band doesn’t exis…”, and then the cover of one of their albums is slapped on it and a dissonant fucking nightmare such as ‘Lawlessness Will About’ starts playing. Now for the less pleasant news - though technically active, it is however slightly worrying that Our Place Of Worship Is Silence’s (much better written in full, isn’t it? I have no wordcounts here, I don’t care) last Instagram post was already from four years ago, around the time their latest beast, the equally fantastic ‘Disavowed, and Left Hopeless’ came out. Let’s hope they’re okay and will surprise us with a new album soon.
Pavor
Furioso
(Imperator Music)
2003
You know, in a way it’s somehow surprising that every technical death metal band didn’t just give up and start playing polka or eurodance or just took up coin collecting or whatever. I know I would, if I had a band like that and had listened to this album at any point. 9:31-long fuck-you opener ‘Inflictor Of Grimness’ is quite enough of an immediate example for you to hear what I mean. Imagine if ‘Piece Of Time’-era Atheist and ‘Focus’-era Cynic were from Germany, and had joined up to play a big-band death metal show while it snowed cocaine, and you’re still pretty far away from what Pavor sounded like on this record because sometimes no amount of funny analogies are able to describe stuff as unique as this. But yeah, those names weren’t chosen at random either - Rainer Landfermann’s bass work in particular, those crazy, warped runs he goes on where it seems he ventures totally off-script for a few seconds (remember, it was snowing cocaine) before locking in perfectly with the gigantic groove again, is the most notable culprit for the comparison, but the whole disorienting, skewed-jazzy writing will keep doing your head in. Oh, and did that bassist name sound familiar? Yeah, it’s the exact same Rainer Landfermann who ripped our soul to pieces with one of the most harrowing vocal performances ever recorded, on Bethlehem’s ‘Dictius Te Necare’, and who now does mind-bending avant-garde music under his own name (check out his 2019 album ‘Mein Wort in Deiner Dunkelheit’ if you dare). Dude contains multitudes. And so does this surreal album, to which there was naturally no possible follow-up, though the band never really officially split up, so after 22 years we’re not really holding our breath. In any case, go for it.
Snorlax
II
(Brilliant Emperor Records / Mallevs Records)
2019
I know, I know, it’s the name of a fucking Pokémon. Sole member Brendan Auld has already talked about it, it doesn’t matter, you’ll get used to it. As Bill Hicks once screamed at his petrified audience, “shut up and listen to him play!”, okay? ‘II’ is essentially the perfect sonic representation of what it would feel like to walk down that stairway in the artwork. Grimy, obscure blackened death metal, with a touch of grind when Brendan really goes all out (which he does often), it is a record that positively drips with menace and malice. It’s never just mindless blasting away, there’s always a guitar line, a particularly venomous roar, something that makes it pointed, something that seriously threatens. Given Brendan’s record in many other amazing projects (check it out), it’s no surprise how good Snorlax’s records turn out - 2023’s ‘The Necrotrophic Abyss’ was also great and made it onto my year-end list -, but this project in particular is even better than his usual high standard. Hopefully he’ll keep dedicating himself to it, as there’s something special at work here. And hey, if you really want to focus on the Pokémon thing, Snorlax is actually a fat blue beast who eats and sleeps all day, and whose attacks include a body slam. How death metal is that?
Succumb
Succumb
(The Flenser / Caligari Records)
2017
One of the most seemingly effortlessly self-renewing styles, death metal, isn’t it? Refreshingly free of most of the hullabaloo that black metal, for instance, goes through whenever something new and a bit weird appears, it seems that death metal people (in general, of course - there’s troglodytes in every style of music always) are less tethered to the shackles of tradition and allow for bands to run with it to places unknown with much more understanding. So with people like convulsing, Floating, Chiaroscuro or this Succumb mob here, just to mention a few recent favourites and not even going to the bigger names, the future seems bright. Both on this, their debut, and on its 2021 follow-up ‘XXI’, Succumb both adhere to some semblance of proper death metal and simultaneously twist the hell out of it with some truly creative, unorthodox playing. Derek Webster’s guitarwork is sublime, constantly surprising, with real heaviness always underpinning the exploratory, angular nature of his huge Voivodian riffs. Bosse-de-Nage drummer Harry Cantwell also deserves a special mention, for the way he is able to reflect this kind of constantly on edge, always on the verge of derailing but never quite getting there, anxiety-ridden type of thing. Having said all that, the major highlight has to be Cheri Musrasrik’s atypical vocals - full of bile and despair, she feels like a banshee constantly following you from afar, shrieking bad omens at you. And just wait until you see her doing that on stage. Frankly terrifying.
Vorum
Poisoned Void
(Woodcut Records)
2013
Even if you didn’t know Vorum before, you might have run into the name since they are the previous band of Mikko “M” Josefsson and Jonatan “PJ” Johansson, the two Finns who make up one of death metal’s current sensations, the amazing Concrete Winds. As revolutionary as they are proving to be right now, I thought it would be nice to not leave Vorum’s only full-length forgotten in the dust as just the previous step to something else, especially since it is a tremendously strong album that holds up on its own very well. First of all, to get the comparisons out of the way, though they were but two of the members in a total of five in this band, yes, you can spot some of the roots of what would become Concrete Winds sometimes. It’s like Mikko and Jonatan took the basic formula and just pushed the intensity knob right to the “are you sure?” insane red level. Vorum were however more diverse in a way, alternating clearly Swedish DM-influenced mid-tempo crunching heaviness with those mad grinding accelerations so typical of Concrete Winds. Honestly, it’s actually when they were stomping it mercilessly, heavy and not necessarily at breakneck speed, that Vorum were at their best. I don’t think there is a death metal fan alive who won’t be tickled in the exact right way by that rumble at the beginning of ‘Rabid Blood’, the colossal groove of ‘Death’s Stains’, or even the extreme Maiden-isms of the enormous closing title-track, for example. It’s weird to think this album is already twelve years old and the people on it (and not just the Concrete Winds duo) have all moved on to other stuff, when every bit of it feels as relevant as if it was a new record. A mark of greatness, I suppose.
Void Meditation Cult
Sulfurous Prayers Of Blight And Darkness
(Hells Headbangers Records)
2013
And so, appropriately enough, we end this big-ass double list with a band that made one great record and then disappeared for almost a decade already. Seems like an unfortunate theme, right? Anyway, you can dispute Void Meditation Cult’s inclusion in a death metal list (they are listed under black metal on Metal Archives and other places, for instance), but to me they are the epitome of what the genre is. Heavy, murky, downtuned, deep unsettling growls… Of course, there is a blackened miasma permeating the whole thing, but to me, it almost feels like a particularly belligerent war metal band playing in slow motion. Call it what you will, anyway, this is one of the bleakest pieces of music ever created. The word “rituals” is now banded about in a very silly way, but if you forget all that, this really feels like something you would hear in your head if you were indeed involved in a “real” ritual to invoke some sort of ancient demon or something equally horror-movie creepy like that. To clarify, the “one great record” I mentioned earlier isn’t this thing - their one official full-length release is 2016’s ‘Utter The Tongue Of The Dead’, which I also heartily recommend, but I can’t get over the sticky, uncomfortably negative atmosphere of this horrid release. This is actually a split/compilation uniting the two demos by Void Meditation Cult (‘Sulfurous Prayers’, the first four songs) and its previous incarnation Sperm Of Antichrist (‘Blight And Darkness’, the last four songs), but you know, whatever. It’s all the product of one guy anyway, a certain Desolate Defiler, whose real name is, appropriately enough, Dave Ingram. Not that Dave Ingram, of course (this dude is American, from Ohio), but apparently it’s a name that will naturally imbue you with an innate talent for death metal. Now Dave, how about another Void Meditation Cult album, eh?
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