Speculative Metal TOP 2024
Speculative Metal bands make explorations outside the known cartography of the genre, through incursions into the irrational based on rhizome-shaped vanishing points that deterritorialize metal, releasing diagonals (oblique vectors) to deviate from the marked path.
As Razalas reminds us in his "Liber Semitarum":
"In speculative metal, all aspects of music are forced, not only the voice, the guitars and the drums but also the production, the form, the mix... affecting the entire sound spectrum."
In "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia", Deleuze and Guattari talk about:
"... bifurcations that venture into the outside. Speculative Metal is not built, but constantly diverges as it accumulates rhizomatic variations, transversal lines towards the unknown."
Extreme metal continues to relentlessly search for the unknown Kadath, proudly taking popular music towards the last frontier. Psychedelia has been penetrating extreme metal for years, opening rhizome-shaped escape points to deterritorialize metal, fostering a hallucinatory mentality that is the basis of the future of the movement.
The complex contrapuntal mentality of the guitars of Ulcerate or Defacement, the vehement folding of different aesthetic planes of Oranssi Pazuzu or Blood Incantation, the irrational systematicity of Ar'lyxkq'wr, the explorations of the dense textures of the Deep Fog of Trhä or Berillium, the insane productivity of The Body, Full of Hell or the unattainable Reverorum ib Malacht... all the musicians on this list propose an exercise of poetic fascination with metal, of excessive and astonishing delirium.
Although among several of these bands there are dark texts circulating on Speculative Metal (treatises on metallurgy) that supposedly expose procedures for rupture, to open cracks systematically, the truth is that the best system is the one that Metal has always followed since it emerged: not stopping at any threshold... crossing the limit in search of the unbearable whiteness, that which awaits behind the blackest darkness.
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The following list has been compiled by Druj, Elliv-Lem, Inat-se-Ragen and Relgneps Razalas, members of The Swarn (https://www.instagram.com/elenjambre13/) who are the ones who write the texts at https://www.instagram.com/metalespeculativo/.
20. FULL OF HELL
Spectacular new release (second of this year) from Full of Hell, a band that has an amazing ability to renew its sound album after album.Full of Hell are perhaps the most interesting band of the last decade in Grindcore, a style very prone to experimentation and here it is demonstrated again.
In "Scraping the divine" (composed in collaboration with Andrew Nolan) the typical grind elements (such as ultra-fast blast beats) give way to industrial environments, where electronic drums stand out mixed with acoustic ones (excellent percussion here), to adapt to compositions with a predominance of mid-tempos.
The guitars take a backseat (adopting a more textural role) in favor of synthesizers and keyboards, which means a timbral renewal that is favored by a more industrial approach in the production, sounding like Godflesh on many occasions (in fact, J. Broadrick participates in the album).
An excellent album that places them very close to the sounds of their sister band The Body, taking the studio as another element when composing the group's sound with the amazing work of Seth Manchester on the controls.
19. PAYSAGE D'HIVER
In extreme metal, the length of compositions has been increasing in recent years, more commonly in Black than in Death Metal.
It was the release by Deathspell Omega of Chaining the Katechon (2008) that sparked a line of flight that ventured into Death Metal through Gorguts and that bands like Teitanblood or Blood Incantation have continued.
Paysage d'Hiver's latest album fits into this paradigm where the length of the compositions is an essential element to provoke the desired effect. The length here causes a deterritorialization of the cartography of the style allowing to reach unexplored regions.
Here the compositions advance deploying the resources in a minimalist and slow way, building a temple that rises stone by stone until reaching leviathanic dimensions, just like the mountains that star in the album.
If a resource is repeated constantly and extensively, when the change occurs, the consequences are devastating.
https://paysagedhiver.bandcamp.com/album/die-berge
18.TRHA & COFFRET DE BIJOUX
One of the most interesting releases of this year was this SPLIT between two of the best bands of Textural Metal or Atmospheric Black Metal today:TRHÄ are possibly the matrix of the entire movement today and COFFRET DE BIJOUX one of its most important lines of escape.
Each band displays here a spectacular amount of resources using an enormous stylistic variety with a final result far above average.
Extensive, complex songs with rhizomatic structures that allow the deployment of speculative techniques for their irrational incursion into DEEP FOG.
Trha publishes one of their best compositions with brutal drums, excellent vocals and a masterful work in production.
Coffret de Bijoux is not far behind and repeats these patterns placing even more emphasis on the spectral keyboards that give their music that liminal and desolate sound.
https://coffretdebijoux.bandcamp.com/album/di-najb-tu-nat-lja-ibajnma-ct-l-m-enth
17.VERBERIS
Verberis released their new album on Norma Evangelium Diaboli.
The first thing that is usually highlighted about this band is that on drums is Jaime Saint-Merat, drummer in turn of the almighty Ulcerate and who here shows a less overloaded style where we can better appreciate his arrangements full of nuances.
Essential for this change of style are the excellent guitars, the main dish of the band. And the fact is that their style is highly influenced by Hasjarl of Deathspell Omega. DsO fans speculate that Hasjarl plays in other projects and this could well be the case here (he is the only member for whom there is no information). The riffs are of a very high quality. As in the last DsO album, here the harmonic architecture expands, the arpeggios slow down showing a patience in the construction of the songs very similar. There are more similarities that you can check:
https://verberis.bandcamp.com/album/the-apophatic-wilderness
16.Ar'lyxkq'wr - Vwn'yv´rl
Centipede Abyss is one of the labels that is publishing a good part of the most demanding and experimental extreme metal.
Among all its bands, Ar'lyxkq'wr stands out, where Pan Merakli and Jared Moran play, very prominent figures in the most avant-garde Speculative Metal.
The new material presents us with guitars that launch irrational lines of flight and psychic melodies to which the drums respond with amphibious and polymorphic patterns. Two voices (one per channel) intone cryptic non-Euclidean mathematical formulas to conjure hidden abyssal entities.
Dissonances, improvisation and experimentation in one of the most impressive proposals you will ever hear.
15. KNOLL
Total Dissonance Worship is a label to keep an eye on. Emerging in 2020, it specializes in publishing experimental material, top-notch Speculative Metal.
We start by talking about Evan Kubick, guitarist who has composed most of Knoll's material, a band that has released all its material with Total Dissonance Worship. Knoll's style falls within the paradigm of Textural Death Metal (TDM) with a great influence from Portal.
Kubick's work is noteworthy since most guitarists who try to emulate Portal's style fall far short of doing so without sounding like a copy.
Kubick has left Knoll after "As Spoken", the band's third album.
https://totaldissonanceworship.bandcamp.com/album/as-spoken
14. SLIMELORD
Finally, the debut album by SLIMELORD (20 Buck Spin) was released, becoming one of the most important albums in the Old School Death Metal genre, adding elements of Speculative Metal.
This is an abstract, complex and ambitious album on a compositional level with unpredictable rhizomatic structures that perfectly exemplify the evolution of the style in recent years.
There is a great variety of ideas, beats and types of riffs, with aesthetics that go from Old School Death Metal to the use of more experimental dissonances and asymmetries. To this we must add the work on the guitars with different ideas in each channel, which makes the plot denser and more complex in terms of harmonization, this being an aspect that reminds us of Blood Incantation.
The guitar solos, of great quality and variety, are very present, providing content to the narrative, highlighting in this sense the work of the guitars in the second track. The vocals are also outstanding, as they adapt to the narrative of the album using a variety of techniques and effects.
It should be added that they share members with Cryptic Shift, so the talent of these musicians must be taken into account.
https://slimelord.bandcamp.com/album/chytridiomycosis-relinquished
13. SUMAC
Within Speculative Metal, few bands in its slower vein (doom, drone, sludge...) have taken experimentation as far as Sumac.
Aaron Turner is not afraid of risk and proposes increasingly leviathanic and abstract themes, with a truly impressive amount of resources deployed and where improvisation is increasingly present.
A baroque and extremely complex anarchy is built on guitar ideas that abhors repetition. Expansion in all directions is the ultimate goal...
https://sumac.bandcamp.com/album/the-healer
12. THE BODY
The Body is one of the main bands that have redefined the most experimental sounds within extreme music in the last two decades.
Each album by The Body is like attending a first-rate sonic spectacle, as they apply avant-garde techniques that make them an essential reference within the genre.
The path started in previous albums continues, although with new features: The musical ideas (ultra-heavy rhythms, danceable patterns, layering, timbral variation...) are exposed and at the same time subjected to a subsequent process in the studio by Seth Manchester, which makes the band reach very high levels of brutality.
All the sound layers are modified as if they were being hit by cyclopean gravitational forces.
The superimposed rhythms fight to stand out in the mix, taking the mix to the limit, which reflects the density of a plot where the frequencies distorted to the maximum are launched into a first-rate vibratory conflict.
Quite a show.
https://thebody.bandcamp.com/album/the-crying-out-of-things
11. CABINET
CABINET is one of the most original bands to emerge in the Extreme Metal scene in recent years.
They play brutal, minimalist Death Metal, yet full of nuances and details. On a formal level, they are very innovative: their albums are surprising, the kind where you never know what's going to happen, with a very careful production and (like any good Speculative Metal band), they make excellent use of the different sound layers and textures, with atmosphere being a primary element within their compositions.
CABINET is made up of a single member, Lord Sxuperion, who has other extreme projects (such as Oreamnos, Xsuperion or Garden of Hesperides) although it is in CABINET where in my opinion he shows his best talents as a composer and musician.
Lord Xsuperion is also the one behind Bloody Mountain Records, an excellent label that is home mainly to his own bands.
https://bloodymountainrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hydrolysated-ordination
10. ULCERATE
One of the heavyweights of the Extreme Metal scene is back. ULCERATE releases a new album after four years: Cutting the Throat of God, released again on Debemur Morti
The preview has a style that continues with their previous album, where they moved away from the band's more dissonant and frenetic material to adopt a more melodic and less aggressive, but equally complex aesthetic.
Although when talking about Ulcerate, the work of Jamie Saint Merat on drums is always highlighted, I would insist more on the spectacular work of Michael Hoggard on guitar, one of the best developing the style of riffs-plot, characteristic of Speculative Metal, with an excellent work as a composer building dense and abstract textures that stand out above all in his movement of hidden transitions between riffs (reminiscent of the plot used by Renaissance musicians).
Few guitarists are at his level.
https://ulcerate.bandcamp.com/album/cutting-the-throat-of-god
9. VENOMOUS ECHOES
Venomous Echoes have come to play. They have what so many other bands lack: ideas.
Their debut (2023) was spectacular and with their new album (again on I, Voidhanger Records) they have already established themselves as one of the Death Metal bands that has the most to contribute to the scene.
The variety of resources, with a very marked style in each song, makes them stand out from the average.
https://venomousechoes.bandcamp.com/album/split-formations-and-infinite-mania
8. BERYLLIUM
Within atmospheric Black Metal, some of the most surprising and interesting movements within experimental metal or Speculative Metal are developing.
Total Dissonance Worship released BERYLLIUM's debut in January.
The saturation of the style is maximum, as well as the aggressiveness. The music struggles to exist in the middle of this sonic storm.
Synthesizers are added to the layers of percussion and guitars so saturated and deformed that disorientation is inevitable.
Layers of superimposed texture. Variety of resources buried in the deep fog. Destruction of music until only vibration remains, the last frontier.
Are we facing a new paradigm?
https://totaldissonanceworship.bandcamp.com/album/your-laughter-is-an-echo-in-my-head
7. QRIXkUOR
Speculative Metal is:
- textural
- traumatic
- metastructural
- psychedelic
- rhizomatic
- hyperchaotic and schizophrenic
Qrixkuor possesses all these attributes.
Long tracks with hyper-ambitious structures with irregular riffs that mutate uncontrollably along with insane vocals that place the music behind a dense fog supported by textural layers.
This is sonic savagery of the highest quality.
https://qrixkuordeath.bandcamp.com/album/zoetrope
6. ORANSSI PAZUZU
Their new album crowns the band as one of the most important and influential experimental metal bands today.
Oranssi Pazuzu has been developing a complex style by adding more and more experimental elements to their sound and all this crystallizes with great inspiration in Muuntautuja:
- Synthesizers have gained weight both on a textural and compositional level.
- Guitars reduce their prominence (they are used mainly as ambient textures) in favor of synthesizers and grooves.
- The textural plot is increasingly dense and complex, increasing the sensation of psychedelic hallucination. The band is now a metal ensemble where there is no limit in terms of its sound, with some of the most brutal and challenging moments of their discography.
- Mixing is an essential element to be able to handle the above successfully. Oranssi Pazuzu use the studio as another compositional element.
- There is also experimentation with different types of production: there are various sonic approaches for drums, guitars or vocals.
This is top-notch Speculative Metal.
https://oranssipazuzu.bandcamp.com/album/muuntautuja
5. BLOOD INCANTATION
In the 21st century, Death Metal has expanded through three paradigms. The most significant contributions to the genre have come from two of them: Textural Death Metal and Technical Death Metal, led by the two most influential bands in this century in death: Portal and Gorguts.
Along with the experiments contributed by these bands, Old School Death Metal (OSDM) developed simultaneously with groups whose style is based on an apparent conservation of the sound of classic death bands.
Blood Incantation have led this movement but have contributed innovations that have crystallized in "Absolute elsewhere": the sounds of Kraut Rock and progressive psychedelia are added to the death aesthetic, consolidating a trend that advances unstoppably: Cosmic Death Metal.
Blood Incantation puts no limits on its ambition: long songs with a complex internal structure where huge riffs are approached by a spectacular variety of progressive sections with very different sound aesthetics.
https://bloodincantation.bandcamp.com/album/absolute-elsewhere
4. KRALLICE
Krallice is one of the bands that best represents what Speculative Metal is.
After an overwhelming discography, their new album shows again what these musicians (with Colin Marston from Gorguts) are capable of, as they do not set limits for themselves.
The compositions included in "Inorganic rites" are designed with astonishing mastery, with a spectacular handling of transitions and where each instrument continually surprises with original and musical ideas in its combination.
3. DEFACEMENT
In recent years the Death Metal trend towards 70's progressive music and Krautrock is expanding among top-level bands: BLOOD INCANTATION, TOMB MOLD, ULTHAR...
DEFACEMENT comes to prove that they want to join this trend, with an amazing new album: "Duality"
The compositions reach a very high and very ambitious level. Long songs with rhizomatic structures where the most outstanding thing is the balance between aggressiveness and the most melodic parts, mainly embodied in the guitar solos. The balance between tension, dissonance and luminosity is spectacular.
The use of synthesizers is taking on great importance in the album, being more than interludes and providing a psychedelic atmosphere also characteristic of this trend.
New paths are opening up in Death Metal and we are looking at them.
https://defacementofficial.bandcamp.com/album/duality
2. REVERORUM IB MALACHT
You should be obsessed with REVERORUM IB MALACHT because they are one of the few bands that are showing now what metal will be like in the future.
The most experimental band currently in extreme metal puts into practice one of the unwritten rules of speculative bands has released 5!! releases (one of them double!) in 2024.
Their deployment of experimental techniques allows them to make incursions into Speculative Metal that seem inexhaustible in terms of their originality and inspiration.
Prepare to face a music that does not recognize any limits.
Everything is in question, everything is put to the test, everything is taken to the limit, flooding it with metaphysical atmospheres worthy of the Camerata Fiorentina.
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/music
1. DEATHSPELL OMEGA
After talking about some of the most important albums for Speculative Metal this year, we have to admit that the event that has had the most impact on the experimental underground scene has been seeing how DEATHSPELL OMEGA has lifted the veil and shown us part of what was hidden behind it. The stir caused by the publication of this video was enormous, since we could finally see something we didn't expect to happen, that is, the members of the band playing.
The most important and influential band (along with PORTAL) of Extreme Metal this century allowed us to analyze something of the amazing technical ability of its members. Seeing the hands of Hasjarl (the most imitated guitarist in the scene) running along the neck and jumping between strings is a gift for all those who want to see how genius personified manifests itself. Everyone wonders: what would it have been like to see them play songs by Fas or Paracletus? That would perhaps be impossible to assimilate... As Lovecraft reminds us at the beginning of "The Call of Cthulhu":
"We live on an island of placid ignorance, surrounded by the black seas of infinity (...); but one day (...) we will go mad before the revelation."
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