CTEBCM started mostly thanks to progressive metal. Since then, the scope of the website has widened quite a bit, but there’s undeniably a stronger focus on metal music than any other. Thus, the metal albums of the year post (the one you’re reading right now) will divide the metal releases into various subgenres. Obviously, there is a lot of crossover going on so you might question some of my allotments. Some bands really do fit into more than one broad category, and so I put them in the one I think is most fitting, but you might have a different opinion. So, below are 85 metal albums divided into thirteen categories. Feel free to comment your choices. One last thing before we begin: there are obviously things missing from this list. I am not a perfect net and I can’t consider truly everything that has come out this year. I will never listen to everything that comes out in a given year, and, even amidst those to which I do listen, I forget, I overlook, and my feelings change over time. This, however, is a list I’m rather satisfied with as of now. Hopefully it makes you, once again, discover many great artists!

Black Metal Top 10
1. Jute Gyte – Oviri
2. Siberian Hell Sounds and Convulsing – The Breath of the Beast and Engraved upon Bleached Bone
3. Der Weg einer Freiheit – Finisterre
4. Schammasch – The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite
5. Thantifaxath – Void Masquerading as Matter
6. Eschatos – Mære
7. Voidcraeft and Agonanist – Indoctrination of Emptiness
8. Chaos Moon – Eschaton Mémoire
9. Ignis haereticum – Autocognition of Light
10. Krallice – Go Be Forgotten

Death Metal Top 10
1. Coma Cluster Void – Thoughts from a Stone
2. Sutrah – Dunes
3. Cleric – Retrocausal
4. Ingurgitating Oblivion – Vision Wallows in Symphonies of Light
5. John Frum – A Stirring in the Noos
6. Nyn – Entropy: Of Chaos and Salt
7. Aeternam – Ruins of Empires
8. Obsidian Mantra – Existential Gravity
9. Altarage – Endinghent
10. Sunless – Urraca

Doom Metal Top 10
1. Ehnahre – The Marrow
2. Mudbath – Brine Pool
3. Weeping Sores – Weeping Sores
4. Big|Brave – Ardor
5. Sloth Herder – No Pity, No Sunrise
6. Orthodox – Κρέας
7. Spectral Voice – Eroded Corridors of Unbeing
8. Bereft – Lands
9. An Empty Room – II
10. Five the Hierophant – Over Phlegethon

Progressive Metal Top 10
1. Caligula’s Horse – In Contact

2. Others by No One – Book I: Dr. Breacher
3. Xanthochroid – Of Erthe and Axen
4. Dreadnought – A Wake in Sacred Waves
5. Traun – The Traun Trilogy
6. Cryptic Ruse – Pineal Algebra
7. Свентояр (Sventoyar) – Ethnix
8. Ashenspire – Speak Not of the Laudanum Quandary
9. Dreamgrave – Monuments, Part 1: The Anxious
10. Michael Avery – Michael Avery

Deathcore Top 5
1. Travesty of Mankind – Hematohidrosis
2. Gravemind – The Deathgate
3. Shadow of Intent – Reclaimer
4. Atena – Possessed
5. Reptilian Civilian – It’s Impossible That Reptilians Don’t Exist

Gaze Metal Top 5
1. Nullingroots – Into the Grey
2. Planning for Burial – Below the House
3. Huszar – Providencia
4. Wending Tide – The Painter
5. Pale – Demo

Grind Metal Top 5
1. Psudoku – Deep Space Psudokument
2. The Clockwork Deity – An Anthology of Human Sickness
3. Grizzly – Reaper
4. Friendship – Hatred
5. 怨霊 (Onryō) – ムート (Mūto)

Hardcore Top 5
1. The Body and Full of Hell – Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light
2. Down I Go – Mortals
3. Morrow – Fallow
4. Hexis – XII
5. It’s the Lipstick on Your Teeth – Skintrade

Mathcore Top 5
1. Bisbâyé – Synkronyk
2. II II II – Frequency Illusion
3. The Last of Lucy – Ashvattha
4. Brandon Seabrook – Needle Driver
5. Codex Obscura – Miira

Metalcore and Djent Top 5
1. Spiritbox – Spiritbox

2. Arphael – Argenesis
3. Everything Is Terrible – Intensely Distressed and on the Verge of Mental Collapse
4. The Ancient Mental – Philomath
5. Sleep Token – Two

Post Top 5
1. LLNN and Wovoka – Marks and Traces
2. Redshift Pilots – Moonlight Synthesis
3. Thot – Fleuve
4. Charnia – Het laatste licht

5. The Burden Remains and The Horns of the Seventh Seal – Touchstone

Stoner Metal Top 5
1. Elder – Reflections of a Floating World
2. Taiga Woods – Taiga Woods
3. Seer – Volumes 3, 4, and 5
4. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Feed the Rats
5. Anacondas – Gracer and Disgracer

Thrash Metal Top 5
1. Vexovoid – Call of the Starforger
2. Gorod – Kiss the Freak

3. Plague Father – Misery Ritual
4. Sorcery – Piss Ripper
5. Cryptic Fog – Staring through the Veil