ALTER BRIDGE — Alter Bridge
Alter Bridge waited eight albums and more than two decades to release a record under their own name, and Myles Kennedy frames the choice as a kind of "self-actualization." There are no keyboards and no left turns this time, which puts the full weight on Kennedy and Mark Tremonti's twin-guitar interplay and the rhythm section holding it down. The opener "Silent Divide" takes its time, easing in on a slow build before it ever raises its voice. "Rue The Day" tightens into one of the album's most immediate hooks, equal parts swagger and regret. The nine-minute closer "Slave to Master" is the big gamble, evolving through several movements and proving the band can still find fresh ground inside a sound they've spent twenty years refining.
AT THE GATES — The Ghost of a Future Dead
The hardest record here to write about. Vocalist Tomas Lindberg laid down his vocals in mostly single takes a day before going under for cancer surgery, and he died in September 2025 at 52, before the album was released. The band finished it to his exact specifications, down to the title, the mix, the running order, and the cover. Guitarist Anders Björler came back for the first time since 2014, restoring the lineup that cut 1995's landmark Slaughter of the Soul, and the songwriting answers with the same headlong Gothenburg ferocity. Lindberg's voice cuts through Jens Bogren's production sounding as feral as it did thirty years ago, and "Parasitical Hive" stands among the fiercest things the band has tracked in years. Off stage Lindberg taught social studies, and his lyrics carry that same push to make people look hard at the world. A monumental goodbye.
BLACK LABEL SOCIETY — Engines of Demolition
Five years on from Doom Crew Inc., Zakk Wylde points BLS back at what he does best, thirteen tracks of thick, squealing, Sabbath-indebted heavy metal he has been turning out since the late '90s. "Name in Blood" comes in on a heavy, deliberate stomp with solos peeling off the top. "Gatherer of Souls" digs into the doomy Sabbath worship the band wears openly. "The Hand of Tomorrow's Grave" might be the heaviest, slowest thing in the catalog, a sludgy crawl that takes its time. The conversation piece is the closer, "Ozzy's Song," Wylde's piano-and-acoustic farewell to Ozzy Osbourne, who died only days after the Back to the Beginning send-off that Wylde performed at. The track turns electric for a solo that aches, and it will soundtrack metal memorials for years. Wylde isn't reinventing anything, and the album is all the stronger for it.
BLACK VEIL BRIDES — Vindicate
Twenty years in, Black Veil Brides have never sounded heavier or more sure of themselves. Vindicate reaches back to the metalcore bite of their early years and runs it through everything Andy Biersack has since learned about scale and drama. The title track opens with Biersack talking the listener through the idea of holding your ground when people come for you, then drops into a swirl of sideshow theatrics and big-chorus heaviness. Across fourteen tracks the band chases a theme of self-justification that runs deeper than simple payback, and by the end even that gives way. "Ave Maria" arrives late as the record's most instantly likable moment. Vindicate is the sound of a band with one of rock's most devoted armies at its back, every sideshow flourish and stadium-sized chorus built for the arena floors that army has earned them.
BLINDEAD 23 — Deuterium
Blindead 23 rises from the wreckage of Blindead, the long-running Polish post-metal outfit, and the new lineup reads like a who's who of European extremity: ex-Behemoth guitarist Mateusz "Havoc" Smierzchalski, former Katatonia man Roger Öjersson, and drummer Pawel Jaroszewicz, with stints in Vader and Decapitated behind him. Their debut Deuterium was tracked back in 2023 and held until the moment felt right. It runs close to an hour as a single conceptual arc, sliding between vast atmospheric stretches, tender melody, and sudden heaviness, often inside one song. Jaroszewicz plays to weight and groove rather than constant speed, and the title track lands as the album's most punishing passage. Piano threads in and out to anchor the heaviest moments. For anyone who lives in the world of Neurosis, Cult of Luna, and The Ocean, this is the most rewarding new name of the year.
CONVERGE — Love Is Not Enough
After the cinematic gloom of 2021's Bloodmoon: I with Chelsea Wolfe, Converge swung back to outright violence for the first time in years. Love Is Not Enough is 31 minutes long, the leanest album they have ever made, built from jagged riffs and direct, hammering rhythms with no patience for easy release. Kurt Ballou has said it's simply the core band back in their natural roles, and you can hear the comfort in how hard it hits. The title track snaps from a thrash opening into blistering powerviolence. "To Feel Something" peaks on Bannon's gut-level howl of "I just want to feel something," a line built to be screamed back at them live while the band drops into a half-time crush made for crowd walks. Thirty-six years in, almost nobody touches this band when they fully connect.
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY — Good God / Baad Man
Eight years after No Cross No Crown, COC return with a sprawling fourteen-track double set, and they've split it by temperament. The first half runs hot and heavy, the second loosens into swaggering Southern rock. The lineup carries scars, with founding drummer Reed Mullin gone since 2020 and bassist Mike Dean having walked in 2024, but Pepper Keenan and Woody Weatherman anchor everything, and Stanton Moore returns to the kit for the first time since 2005. "You or Me" leans into the band's deep Black Sabbath streak with huge, slow-rolling riffs. The Baad Man disc gets stranger and funkier, the title cut riding an organ groove cut partly at Barry Gibb's Miami studio, with Keenan playing Maurice Gibb's old Stratocaster. The whole thing follows its gut wherever a riff feels good, and that looseness is the appeal.
EXODUS — Goliath
Rob Dukes is back on the microphone for the first time since 2010, and Goliath makes a fast case for the reunion. The opener "3111" coils up before it lets loose, and Dukes attacks it with more venom than he ever showed in his first run with the band. Gary Holt and Lee Altus remain one of thrash's most undervalued guitar pairings, trading vicious riffs while Tom Hunting pounds away underneath. The curveball is the title track, the slowest piece Exodus has ever put to tape, a heavy, hypnotic plod with violinist Katie Jacoby adding an unexpected orchestral color. Guests like Peter Tägtgren fill out the edges. Four decades past Bonded by Blood, with the band sounding genuinely ticked off and out for blood, Exodus prove they can still pick a fight worth having.
HELLRIPPER — Coronach
Hellripper is one man, James McBain, who writes and plays every part himself, and Coronach is his fourth album and first for Century Media. The blueprint is blackened speed metal drawn from Venom, Motörhead, and Bathory, laced with Scottish history and folklore. What separates this one from his earlier work is the reach. "The Art of Resurrection" detours into a stately piano and orchestral passage before the speed comes roaring back, and McBain folds in nods to Running Wild and Opeth without dropping the rock-and-roll snarl. The eight-and-a-half-minute closer "Coronach" takes its title from a Walter Scott poem and circles the funeral of a public hero hiding private rot. For a one-man operation, this sounds like the work of a packed, sweating band.
IMMOLATION — Descent
Thirty-seven years deep, Immolation are still among the most dependable forces in death metal, and Descent keeps a late-career hot streak rolling that started with 2022's Acts of God. The New York band has spent its whole life conjuring a particular brand of murky, dissonant dread, and Ross Dolan's cavernous roar still sits at the center of every twisting Vigna-Bouks riff. The opener "These Vengeful Winds" wastes a quiet intro on purpose, blowing it apart almost immediately. "Adversary" rides one of the album's filthiest riffs and a video Vigna directed himself. "Bend Towards the Dark" reaches for stranger, more melodic shapes. At a tight 42 minutes, Descent is a precise, suffocating machine, and one more reminder that few bands have ever made rot and ruin sound this towering.
KARNIVOOL — In Verses
Thirteen years passed between Asymmetry and In Verses, long enough that some fans wondered whether the Australian prog band would ever resurface. They have, and the album rewards the wait. "Drone," the first taste fans got, is everything that makes Karnivool tick, all heaving riffs, abrupt turns, and a forward push that pulls you along. Ian Kenny sails over guitars that batter and soothe in the same stretch, while Jon Stockman's bass stays loud and prominent, doing real work in the calmer passages. The eight-minute "Conversations" is the emotional core, a slow, searching reckoning with regret that Kenny sells completely, and it flows straight into "Reanimation," where Guthrie Govan turns in a guest solo. The long-form tracks are where the record opens up, unhurried and deliberate, as happy to explore quiet and melody as to bring the weight. An hour-plus journey with no dead air, and one of the year's most absorbing returns.
KREATOR — Krushers of the World
For their sixteenth album, the German thrash institution teamed up again with producer Jens Bogren, landing a big, polished sound that still keeps their teeth bared. Krushers of the World tilts harder toward thrash than Kreator's last few records. It opens on the scorching "Seven Serpents," and "Satanic Anarchy" follows with some of Mille Petrozza's most defiant lyrics in ages. The title track is a fist-in-the-air anthem made for festival fields, while "Tränenpalast" brings in Britta Görtz of Hiraes for a duet that splits the difference between Kreator's old fury and a newer melodic streak. Zbigniew Bielak's cover art wraps it in proper menace. Four decades on from Pleasure to Kill, Petrozza and company still play with real bite, stretching their sound without letting go of the speed that made them.
LAMB OF GOD — Into Oblivion
Lamb of God return with their angriest, most direct album in years, and the rage this time feels less like one man's burden than a collective response to the moment. The title track opens with Randy Blythe spitting "I am the chaos, I am the voice you can't unhear" over a coiling John Campbell bassline and Art Cruz drums that hit like a sledgehammer. They cut the record at Total Access in Redondo Beach, the studio where Black Flag made My War, and Blythe's delivery carries a stripped, hardcore-punk grit to match. "Sepsis" and "Blunt Force Blues" bring back a meanness that the band's more chorus-heavy recent run had smoothed over. The targets here are the news cycle, the algorithm, the slow collapse of everything, and the fury lands clean. After a couple of patchier records, this is the jolt the catalog needed.
MØL — Dreamcrush
The Danish blackgaze band built their third album out of real personal hardship, then deliberately steered it toward light instead of letting it sink. Dreamcrush is the most assured thing MØL has done. The bookends "Dream" and "Crush" snap together into the title, and between them the band moves through some of its best writing. "Young" hits the sweet spot where blast beats and shimmering, uplifting guitar lines meet head-on. "Garland" lands a gorgeous verse and saves something even bigger for the chorus. Kim Song Sternkopf is the engine, sliding from black-metal shrieks to deep growls to soft clean singing, flipping between Danish and English without a hitch. The band has drifted a long way from the fire of their debut, and the version of MØL on Dreamcrush sounds fully their own.
NEUROSIS — An Undying Love for a Burning World
Neurosis dropped their first album in ten years out of nowhere, and it plays like a reckoning. After cutting ties with Scott Kelly, the band added Aaron Turner, the former Isis frontman who now fronts Sumac, and his throat-shredding roar gives Steve Von Till a fresh foil to push against. The record holds onto the slow, tectonic heaviness the band has traded in for four decades, staring down a world in collapse while wringing some kind of release out of the wreckage. "We Are Torn Wide Open" opens in pure dissonance. "Mirror Deep" drops a thick, foul riff and trades vocal shots across the lineup. The hushed passages cut as deep as the brutal ones. This release feels like one of 2026's heaviest statements, in every sense of the word.
PERIPHERY — A Pale White Dot
For their eighth album, Periphery ditched the numbered, self-titled format they'd used since the Juggernaut records and trimmed their maximalist tendencies into their most accessible release. Every track lands at five minutes or under, a startling move from a band that used to sprawl well past ten. The shorter leash makes room for surprises. "Subhuman" enlists Lorna Shore's Will Ramos for a guttural guest spot that flattens everything around it, while "Blackwall" wanders off into synth-wave and the title track closes the album on bare acoustic guitar, nodding to Carl Sagan along the way. Spencer Sotelo turns in some of his sharpest singing yet. It's a leaner, catchier Periphery that won't please everyone who showed up for the djent mazes, but the writing and the hooks carry it across.
POISON THE WELL — Peace in Place
Seventeen years is a long layoff, and Peace in Place shows that the metalcore pioneers came back with their instincts fully intact. Will Putney's production makes them sound massive without any chase after current trends. The opener "Wax Mask" eases in on a mournful sung passage from Jeff Moreira before tearing into the kind of jagged, shape-shifting heaviness that made the band matter in the first place. Their great trick has always been the way they handle contrast, and cuts like "Weeping Tones" and "Drifting Without End" loosen their grip just enough for a melody to surface before the next hit. The result is tense, jittery, and stubbornly uncommercial at a time when heavy music has gone glossy and safe. It's the rare reunion record that earns its place in the discography.
POPPY — Empty Hands
On her seventh album, Poppy commits fully to the heavy direction she has been circling for years. Working again with producer Jordan Fish, she blends metalcore, industrial, and alternative metal into a record that sounds nothing like the art-pop oddity she started as. The opener "Public Domain" comes on like glitchy industrial rock, and the title track caps the album with a genuinely punishing deathcore finish. "Dying to Forget" is the showcase for her range, snapping from shredded screams to clean, soaring melody and back. The penultimate cut "Ribs" is the soft spot at the album's core, Fish surrounding her with drum and bass electronics. Poppy has always been at her best when the anger is real and personal, and Empty Hands runs on that current the whole way through. Whatever doubts trailed her move into metal, this puts most of them to bed.
PUSCIFER — Normal Isn't
Maynard James Keenan's loosest project came back after five years with a title that says it all. Normal Isn't pulls on the post-punk records that shaped Keenan, Carina Round, and Mat Mitchell as kids while pushing into darker, more guitar-driven terrain. The opener "Thrust" locks in fast on a slinky bass figure and a hypnotic riff. The guest list runs deep, with Tool's Danny Carey and bassist Tony Levin both turning up, and the whole project comes dressed in Keenan's usual tangle of alter egos and comic-book lore. As always with Puscifer, the music is sharp, restless, and laced with both jokes and real unease about where things are headed. Keenan and Round play off each other better than anyone else in his orbit, and that interplay is what holds the album together.
WORM — Necropalace
Worm's evolution takes its wildest swerve yet on Necropalace. After a pair of well-received death-doom albums, founder Phantom Slaughter and guitarist Phil "Wroth Septentrion" Tougas push the Florida band headlong into symphonic black metal, heavy on gothic theater and icy grandeur. Charlie Koryn produced. The brief intro "Gates to the Shadowzone" gives way to a ten-minute title track that plays like the soundtrack to a candlelit vampire's lair, with the spirit of early-'90s symphonic black metal all over it. "Dragon Dreams" is the clearest proof of how much the band crams into a single track, lurching from doom plod to acoustic hush to organ to a flat-out thrash sprint and somehow making it cohere. The closer "Witchmoon: The Infernal Masquerade" pulls in Marty Friedman to drive the point home. It's gaudy, theatrical, and pure Worm, an evolution that sharpens who they are rather than blurring it.
