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The year is already thick with essential heavy music, experimental vision, and genre-defining statements. Here’s what you need to hear—and what’s coming.
Krushers Of The World
Mille Petrozza hasn't learned a new trick since 1989 and that's entirely the point. Krushers Of The World is Kreator at peak Kreator: riffs that feel like getting hit by a municipal bus, vocals that sound like the bus was on fire. If you need a reminder that German thrash never lost a step, start here. Thrash this pure doesn't need reinvention. It needs volume.
Shop Kreator →Lonely People With Power
George Clarke and company have been slowly dismantling what black metal can be since Sunbather, and Lonely People With Power might be the most complete version of that evolution yet. The shoegaze textures are still there, but the songwriting has a confidence and clarity that suggests a band no longer interested in proving anything to anyone. Pitchfork has tracked their arc from underground darlings to genre-defining force, and this record feels like the full arrival.
Shop Deafheaven →Megadeth
Megadeth naming a record after themselves in 2026 is either the most confident or most unhinged move in recent metal history. Turns out it's both. Mustaine sounds like he's settling every score he's ever kept, and the riffs have that clinical precision that makes you forget the man is basically a Bond villain who chose guitar over world domination. For fans of Rust in Peace-era technicality with modern teeth.
Shop Megadeth →Empty Hands
Poppy keeps shapeshifting and nobody can keep up. Empty Hands strips back the genre-hopping chaos of her last few records into something uncomfortably intimate, part industrial lullaby, part art-pop panic attack. She's the only artist right now who could open for both Nine Inch Nails and Grimes and make both crowds nervous. This one sits somewhere between Yeezus and a Bjork B-side.
Shop Poppy →Ascending EP
Pelican return with a compact, devastating EP that proves instrumental post-metal doesn't need bloat to hit hard. Ascending is four tracks of tectonic guitar work that builds like weather systems and breaks like levees. If you've been following them since Australasia, this feels like a homecoming. No vocals necessary when the amps are doing all the screaming.
Shop Pelican →Cool World
Oklahoma City's most unsettling band follow up God's Country with another record that sounds like late capitalism having a nervous breakdown. Cool World is noise rock at its most politically charged and sonically abrasive. Raygun Busch's vocals still sound like a man shouting into a void, and the band behind him still sounds like the void shouting back. Pitchfork gave their debut Best New Music. This one earns the same conversation.
Shop Chat Pile →Bad Fire
Scotland's greatest post-rock band have been building cathedrals out of feedback for three decades, and Bad Fire proves they haven't run out of blueprints. It's quieter than you'd expect and louder than you're ready for, often in the same song. Mogwai have always understood that the space between sounds is where the real drama lives. If you've been following them since Young Team, this feels like a band still in conversation with everything they've built.
Shop Mogwai →Dreamcrush
MoL have been quietly making the case that blackgaze isn't a dead genre, it just needed a band from Denmark with better taste. Dreamcrush is the sound of shoegaze and black metal colliding at 120 mph, all blast beats buried under walls of reverb-drenched beauty. Think Deafheaven's Sunbather meets Slowdive. It shouldn't work this well, but it does.
Shop MØL →I Used To Go To This Bar
Torrance's finest emo-punk band have never needed more than 20 minutes to make a point, and their Epitaph debut keeps that tradition alive. I Used To Go To This Bar is 11 songs of bruised, breathless pop-punk that sounds like it was written in a single sitting and recorded before anyone could second-guess it. Barry Johnson still writes hooks that stick in your teeth. If you came up on Never Hungover Again, this is the record that proves it wasn't a fluke. It was a lifestyle.
Shop Joyce Manor →Liturgy Of Death
Mayhem put out a record called Liturgy Of Death and somehow it's exactly as terrifying as that title promises. Norwegian black metal's elder statesmen aren't mellowing. They're doubling down on dissonance, chaos, and the kind of raw nihilistic fury that makes you check your locks. Forty-plus years in and still genuinely unsettling. The genre they helped invent still belongs to them.
Sold Out — View DetailsNormal Isn't
Maynard's weird side project continues to be the best argument that Tool should never be anyone's entire personality. Normal Isn't is Puscifer at peak oddball: synth-driven art-rock that's simultaneously funny, unsettling, and genuinely gorgeous. It's the record you put on when you want to freak out your neighbors without technically breaking any laws. Somewhere between David Bowie and a desert hallucination.
Shop Puscifer →Tenterhooks
Silversun Pickups have always existed in the space between shoegaze and alt-rock where everything feels slightly too loud and slightly too beautiful. Tenterhooks leans all the way into that tension. Guitars that shimmer and crush simultaneously, Brian Aubert's voice floating above the wreckage. Fans of My Bloody Valentine and Smashing Pumpkins will feel right at home.
Shop Silversun Pickups →Singin' To An Empty Chair
Chicago's Ratboys have been quietly building one of indie rock's most consistent catalogs, and Singin' To An Empty Chair is the one that should finally make everyone pay attention. Julia Steiner's songwriting has always balanced tenderness with teeth, and here the band pushes into expansive alt-country territory without losing the melodic precision that made Happy Birthday and Printer's Devil so good. Pitchfork gave it an 8.4 for a reason. This is the kind of record that makes you rethink your year-end list in February.
Shop Ratboys →Lost On You
Scranton's Tigers Jaw have spent over a decade writing emo-inflected indie rock that feels lived in rather than performed. Lost On You continues that tradition with their most open-hearted record yet. Brianna Collins and Ben Walsh trade vocals like old friends finishing each other's sentences, and the hooks are sharper than anything they've done since their self-titled record. The kind of band Pitchfork championed early and keeps coming back to.
Shop Tigers Jaw →Love Is Not Enough
Jacob Bannon and company keep pushing into territory that has nothing to do with what Converge used to be, and it's thrilling every time. Love Is Not Enough is post-metal, post-hardcore, post-whatever. Heavy music that prioritizes emotional devastation over breakdown counting. If you followed them from Jane Doe through Bloodmoon, this is the next logical leap. Growth without compromise.
Shop Converge →Cold 2 The Touch
Bay Area hardcore has a new-old problem: Angel Dust won't stop making records this ferocious. Cold 2 The Touch channels restless post-punk energy into something darker and more claustrophobic, blurring the lines between hardcore aggression and new wave anxiety. Think Ceremony meets Bauhaus with a California edge. It hits like a panic attack in a good way.
Shop Angel Dust →Necropalace
Florida death-doom outfit Worm make music that sounds like it was recorded inside a mausoleum, and Necropalace is their most cavernous work yet. Funeral organs, oppressive reverb, vocals from the actual crypt. It's less a record and more an archaeological dig through layers of theatrical darkness. If you miss the days when death metal bands had actual set pieces, this is your moment.
Pre-Order Now →Creature Of Habit
Courtney Barnett could sing about doing laundry and make it feel like a revelation, and Creature Of Habit occasionally does exactly that. The Australian songwriter's gift for turning mundane observations into profound little rock songs remains unmatched. This one feels looser and funnier than Things Take Time, Take Time, with guitars that sound like she plugged in without checking the amp settings first. Pitchfork named her one of the most anticipated artists of 2026 for good reason.
Shop Courtney Barnett →Red Asphalt
Exhumed have been grinding since the '90s, and Red Asphalt proves they still have more gore and grit than bands half their age. This is death-grind with its foot through the floor. No pretension, no clean production, just riffs that sound like chainsaws and blast beats that register on the Richter scale. The kind of record that Carcass would nod at approvingly.
Sold Out — View DetailsThe New Flesh
Sylosis keep making technically perfect metal records that somehow never feel clinical. The New Flesh is razor-sharp modern thrash with a melodic death metal brain. Josh Middleton's riffing is so precise it should come with a warning label, and the songwriting is miles ahead of most bands playing this fast. Sits comfortably next to At The Gates and Revocation in your rotation.
Shop Sylosis →No Lube So Rude
Peaches has been provoking, confronting, and delighting in equal measure for over two decades, and No Lube So Rude marks her first album in ten years. The Toronto-born, Berlin-based provocateur returns with the same electroclash snarl and zero-filter energy that made The Teaches of Peaches a countercultural landmark. Vice flagged this as one of 2026's essential releases, and they're not wrong. If you thought she mellowed out, you clearly haven't been paying attention.
Shop Peaches →In The Earth Again
A collaboration between Oklahoma City's noisiest band and Amarillo's most meditative fingerpicker sounds impossible on paper. In The Earth Again makes it sound inevitable. Chat Pile strips back their usual assault to meet Hayden Pedigo's ambient Americana in a damaged middle ground that feels like driving through the plains at 3am with the radio between stations. Vice and Pitchfork both flagged this as one of 2026's most unexpected releases.
Shop Chat Pile / Hayden Pedigo →URGH
Manchester duo Mandy, Indiana make industrial noise-pop that sounds like a warehouse rave collapsing in on itself in the most thrilling way possible. URGH is their follow-up to the Mercury Prize-nominated I've Seen A Way, and it pushes even further into abrasive, danceable chaos. Sung entirely in French over crushing beats and feedback, it's the kind of record that Pitchfork rates in the high 8s and most people have never heard of. That gap won't last long. This is one of the most exciting bands working in experimental music right now.
Shop Mandy, Indiana →A Short History Of Decay
Nothing have spent a decade perfecting the art of beautiful sadness, and A Short History Of Decay might be the thesis statement. It's shoegaze for people who find My Bloody Valentine too optimistic. All distortion and drift and lyrics you can barely hear but feel in your chest. If Whirr and Hum had a particularly bleak evening together, this would be the result.
Pre-Order Now →Leather Temple
Carpenter Brut's move from synthwave to full-blown industrial metal continues to be one of the decade's best plot twists. Leather Temple is chrome-plated, neon-lit heaviness. Imagine if Skinny Puppy scored a John Carpenter film with a metal band backing them. It's ridiculous and it absolutely rules. The Hotline Miami generation grows up and starts moshing.
Pre-Order Now →The Great Satan
Rob Zombie hasn't made a genuinely surprising record in years, and that's fine. Nobody goes to a Rob Zombie show expecting subtlety. The Great Satan is exactly what the title suggests: big dumb riffs, horror-movie samples, and the kind of industrial metal swagger that peaked in 1998 and refuses to die. If White Zombie's Astro-Creep had a grandchild raised on B-movies, this would be it.
Shop Rob Zombie →The Mountain
Damon Albarn's virtual band returns with their ninth studio album and a collaborator list that reads like a festival lineup: Sparks, Johnny Marr, Idles, Yasiin Bey, Black Thought, Kara Jackson, and Anoushka Shankar all make appearances. The Mountain is Gorillaz at their most ambitious and sprawling, which is saying something for a project that has always treated genre boundaries as suggestions. Pitchfork named it one of their 55 most anticipated albums of the year. The cartoon band that outlasted most real ones keeps finding new mountain to climb.
Shop Gorillaz →Punk Tactics
Joey Valence and Brae make rap music that sounds like it was beamed in from 1986 and then smashed through a punk rock filter. Punk Tactics channels Beastie Boys energy with a TikTok-era metabolism. It's loud, it's fast, it's funny, and it's way smarter than it has any right to be. The kind of record that Creem would have put on the cover in 1987 and Vice would spotlight today.
Shop Joey Valence & Brae →Remember That You Will Die
Polyphia broke instrumental guitar music wide open with this record, treating prog-metal technique like a suggestion rather than a rulebook. Tim Henson and Scott LePage play with the precision of session musicians and the irreverence of skate punks. Features from Chino Moreno and Steve Vai only add to the absurdity. It's the rare guitar album that non-guitarists obsess over, and it sounds nothing like anything else in the heavy music conversation.
Shop Polyphia →White Pepper
Ween's poppiest and most accessible album gets the vinyl treatment it deserves. White Pepper is the record where Gene and Dean Ween proved they could write straight-faced classic rock, AM radio gold, and psychedelic pop as well as anyone, then decided to do all three at once. Tracks like Flutes of Chi and Even If You Don't still hold up as some of the weirdest, most beautiful songs of the early 2000s. Essential reissue for anyone who believes music should be fun.
Shop Ween →The Fist In The Face Of God Box Set
Darkthrone releasing a box set of early material is less nostalgia trip than historical document. The Fist In The Face Of God collects the rawest, most uncompromising black metal ever committed to tape. Fenriz and Nocturno Culto when they were still trying to burn everything down. Essential listening for anyone who thinks modern black metal has gotten too comfortable.
Pre-Order Now →Hidden Fires Burn Hottest
San Francisco's Bosse-de-Nage have always occupied the uncomfortable space where black metal meets post-punk intellectualism, and Hidden Fires Burn Hottest pushes further into that territory. It's heavy music for people who read theory. Dissonant, emotionally complex, and willing to make you work for the payoff. Fans of Deathspell Omega and Liturgy should pay close attention.
Shop Bosse-de-Nage →The Crawl
Temple Of Void make death-doom that feels genuinely ancient, like they unearthed it from somewhere it was never supposed to be found. The Crawl is exactly that: a slow, crushing descent into riffs so massive they distort the room around them. Detroit heaviness at its most primordial. If Hooded Menace and Spectral Voice are in your rotation, make room.
Shop Temple Of Void →Quebec
If White Pepper was Ween going pop, Quebec was them going dark. This is the band at their most fractured and their most brilliant, a record born from real dysfunction that somehow channels it into songs like Transdermal Celebration and If You Could Save Yourself. The vinyl reissue brings this back into circulation for a generation that found Ween through the internet and stayed for the chaos. One of the great cult albums of the 2000s.
Shop Ween →You Could Have It So Much Better (Remaster)
The Scottish art-rock band's second album gets a remastered reissue, and it still sounds like the most fun anyone's ever had being pretentious. Do You Want To and The Dark of the Matinee remain two of the best post-punk revival singles ever written, and Alex Kapranos still delivers them like a man who knows he's the coolest person in the room. The remaster just makes the angles sharper.
Shop Franz Ferdinand →Into Oblivion
Randy Blythe sounds angrier than ever on Into Oblivion, which is saying something for a man who's been professionally furious for two decades. Lamb of God's latest is lean, mean groove metal with zero fat. Every riff exists to do damage, every breakdown calibrated for maximum pit velocity. They know exactly what they are and they're great at it. Pantera's spiritual heirs keep delivering.
Pre-Order Now →Still There's A Glow
Philadelphia's Sweet Pill make the kind of emo-adjacent indie rock that feels like a bruise you keep pressing on because it reminds you that you're alive. Still There's A Glow is their second full-length, following up a 2025 EP that hinted at bigger, more textured ambitions. Vice highlighted them as one of 2026's essential alternative releases, and the early singles suggest a band that's figured out how to be loud and vulnerable at the same time. Think Superchunk meets The Hotelier with a Philly basement show ethos.
Shop Sweet Pill →Live (35th Anniversary)
Trever Keith and Face to Face have been a cornerstone of West Coast punk for 35 years, and this live recording captures why they've outlasted every trend that tried to bury them. The energy of a band that still believes in the songs, played in front of an audience that grew up on them. If you ever saw them at the Warped Tour or a VFW hall in the late '90s, this record will put you right back there.
Shop Face To Face →Detonate
New York street punk lifers The Casualties are still out here making records that sound like they were written on the subway and recorded before the cops showed up. Detonate is exactly what the title suggests: fast, loud, and completely unwilling to mature. In a world of polished punk bands chasing playlists, there's something genuinely refreshing about a band that still thinks 1983 was the peak of civilization.
Shop Casualties →Goliath
Exodus at this point are the last original Bay Area thrash band still operating at full power, and Goliath is the proof. Gary Holt's riffs remain some of the most violent sounds a guitar can make, and the band plays with the intensity of people who know they've outlived every trend that tried to replace them. If Bonded by Blood is gospel to you, this is the new testament.
Shop Exodus →Loss
Portuguese black metal outfit Gaerea turned heads with their masked anonymity schtick, but Loss proves the music was always the real hook. It's atmospheric black metal with genuine emotional heft. Blast beats that feel like grief, melodies that sound like processing trauma in real time. Heavy in ways that have nothing to do with volume. Think Alcest's darkness without the dreaming.
Pre-Order Now →Volumes: One Selections From Music Concerts
Justin Vernon's live recordings have always felt like a separate experience from the studio albums, and Volumes captures that ephemeral quality on wax. These are songs from across Bon Iver's catalog reworked and reimagined in concert settings, with all the spontaneity and imperfection that implies. If you've seen them live, you know the studio versions only tell half the story. This fills in the rest.
Shop Bon Iver →Poem 1
Ana Roxanne makes ambient music that feels like it exists in the space between sleeping and waking. Poem 1 is her most focused and emotionally direct work, layering vocal loops and field recordings into something that hovers between new age and avant-garde without committing to either. Pitchfork has consistently championed her as one of the most interesting artists working in experimental sound. This record is why.
Shop Ana Roxanne →Ricochet
Lindsey Jordan was 18 when Lush made her one of indie rock's most talked-about voices. Now, three albums deep, Ricochet finds her settling into something grittier and more direct. The Matador release leans into distortion and mortality in equal measure, with lead single Dead End signaling a turn toward heavier emotional and sonic territory. Both Pitchfork and Vice have been tracking this one closely. Jordan has always written songs that feel older than she is. On Ricochet, she's finally catching up to them.
Shop Snail Mail →Pra Que Vou Recordar
Brazilian funk and soul from the golden era, finally back on wax. Carlos Dafe was one of the architects of the sound that made Rio's nightlife legendary in the late seventies, and Pra Que Vou Recordar is the record that proves it. Warm bass lines, lush horn arrangements, and a voice that turns every track into an invitation. Essential reissue for crate diggers and anyone who thinks soul music stopped at the American border.
Shop Carlos Dafe →Monolith Of Phobos
Les Claypool and Sean Lennon together is the kind of pairing that only makes sense if you've spent enough time in the deep end of psychedelic rock. Monolith of Phobos is their debut and it sounds exactly like you'd hope: weird, proggy, and completely untethered from commercial ambition. Claypool's bass still sounds like it was designed on another planet, and Lennon brings a melodic sensibility that keeps things from floating away entirely.
Shop Claypool Lennon Delirium →Liquid
Opal Sunn makes electronic music that feels like it was beamed in from a late-night radio station in a city that doesn't exist yet. Liquid is shimmering, immersive, and deeply strange in all the right ways. Synthesizers that pulse and breathe, rhythms that dissolve into texture, and a sense of space that most producers spend entire careers trying to find. Put this on headphones and disappear for forty minutes.
Shop Opal Sunn →Plastic Kids
Tazers play punk rock the way it was meant to be played: fast, loud, and with zero interest in anyone's approval. Plastic Kids is twelve tracks of buzzing guitars and shouted hooks that sound like they were recorded in a garage and mixed by someone who genuinely does not care about your streaming algorithm. Three albums deep into their catalog and they keep getting sharper. This is a weekend record.
Shop Tazers →V
Poland's Weedpecker have been quietly building one of the most consistent catalogs in modern psych-doom, and V is the culmination of everything they've been working toward. Massive, glacial riffs that open up into passages of genuine beauty, like watching a thunderstorm roll across an open field. Five albums in and they still sound like nobody else. If you missed them before, this is where you start.
Shop Weedpecker →Good God/Baad Man
Pepper Keenan's voice on a Corrosion of Conformity record is one of Southern metal's most reliable pleasures. Good God/Baad Man is swampy, riff-drunk stoner metal with a Sabbath tattoo and a bourbon habit. The kind of record where every song sounds like a bar fight that ends in a handshake. If Down and Clutch are your people, COC is the root of the family tree.
Pre-Order Now →Hymns From The Hills
Poison Ruin play punk that sounds like it was recorded in a medieval dungeon, and Hymns From The Hills doubles down on that aesthetic. Raw, reverb-soaked darkness that sits somewhere between crust punk and dark folk. Philadelphia's best-kept secret is getting harder to keep secret. If Amebix and Current 93 ever found common ground, this would be the meeting point.
Pre-Order Now →Nowhere In Between Forever
Lantlos started as a black metal project and have evolved into something closer to post-rock with teeth. Nowhere In Between Forever is gorgeous and disorienting. Ambient passages that bloom into heavy crescendos, all wrapped in production so lush it feels like drowning in velvet. Genre tags are useless here. Just let it wash over you like the best Sigur Ros record you never heard.
Pre-Order Now →Springtime & Blind
Pat Flynn traded Have Heart's straight-edge hardcore for something rawer and more emotionally exposed with Fiddlehead. Springtime and Blind is post-hardcore that wears its heart on its sleeve without ever feeling soft. The hooks are massive, the lyrics are uncomfortably honest, and the band plays like every song might be their last. If you think punk lost its ability to make you feel something, start here.
Shop Fiddlehead →Descent
Immolation have been making technically devastating death metal since before most current bands were born, and Descent is further proof that the New York legends haven't lost a step. Ross Dolan's bass tone alone could flatten buildings. This is the sound of a band that never needed a gimmick because the riffs were always enough. Peers to Incantation and Suffocation, beholden to nobody.
Shop Immolation →Savage Imperial Death March
A Melvins and Napalm Death collab is the kind of idea that sounds like a joke until you hear it. Savage Imperial Death March is exactly as unhinged as two of extreme music's most iconoclastic bands playing together should be. Buzz Osborne's sludge meeting Barney Greenway's grind in a head-on collision with no survivors. The weirdest supergroup of the year, and possibly the best.
Pre-Order Now →Too Fast To Die
Archspire play faster than any human being should be allowed to. Too Fast To Die is tech-death at its most absurd. Blast beats that break the sound barrier, vocals that sound like an auctioneer at a death metal convention, and riffs so complex they need their own PhD program. If Necrophagist and Origin had a speed competition, Archspire would lap them both.
Shop Archspire →Life Under The Gun
Ian Shelton's post-hardcore project keeps getting bigger without getting less weird. Life Under the Gun is Militarie Gun at their most anthemic, pairing shouted vocals and dissonant guitars with choruses that could fill arenas. They've been all over Pitchfork's radar since day one, and this record is the one that should push them from underground favorite to genuine crossover. Think Fugazi if Fugazi wanted to be on the radio.
Shop Militarie Gun →Sceaduheim
Crippled Black Phoenix make sprawling, cinematic post-rock that refuses to be categorized, and Sceaduheim is their darkest work yet. Equal parts Pink Floyd and Neurosis, it's the kind of record that demands two hours and a dark room. Not for the impatient, but transformative for those willing to commit. Think Godspeed You! Black Emperor with a heavier conscience.
Shop Crippled Black Phoenix →Devil Music
Austin's Portrayal of Guilt make music that exists at the intersection of screamo, black metal, and industrial noise, and Devil Music is their most cohesive descent into that chaos yet. It's fast, it's punishing, and it's weirdly catchy in spots that feel like they shouldn't be. The kind of band that Pitchfork files under 'experimental' and Vice files under 'terrifying.' Both labels fit.
Shop Portrayal Of Guilt →The Ghost Of A Future Dead
At The Gates invented an entire subgenre of metal and then had the audacity to keep making records that live up to it. The Ghost Of A Future Dead is melodic death metal with the urgency of a band that still has something to prove. Tomas Lindberg's vocals remain the most desperate-sounding instrument in extreme music. Slaughter of the Soul casts a long shadow, and they keep walking in it with confidence.
Shop At The Gates →Your Favorite Toy
The Foo Fighters are still here, still massive, still making records that sound like the biggest band in the world going through it. Your Favorite Toy wrestles with legacy and loss more directly than anything Grohl has put out. Arena rock with an emotional weight that cuts through the bombast. Say what you will, but nobody else operates at this scale with this much sincerity.
Shop Foo Fighters →Two Dreams
Anthony Green's voice has always sounded like it's about to crack under the weight of whatever he's feeling, and Two Dreams leans all the way into that vulnerability. Circa Survive make art-rock that remembers it came from hardcore, and this record balances beauty and chaos better than anything they've done since Blue Sky Noise. If you came up in the 2000s post-hardcore scene, this band is still the beating heart of it.
Shop Circa Survive →Wildlife (Vertigo Vinyl)
Wildlife is the La Dispute album that broke the mold for what post-hardcore could do with narrative storytelling. Jordan Dreyer's spoken-word delivery over some of the genre's most dynamic instrumentation turned this into an essential text. The Vertigo Vinyl reissue brings it back to circulation for a new wave of listeners discovering that heavy music and literary ambition were never mutually exclusive.
Shop La Dispute →Lament
Jeremy Bolm has always written about loss like it's a physical space he's trapped in, and Lament is the album where he finally found the door. Touche Amore's fourth record is their most melodic and accessible without sacrificing any of the intensity that made them a post-hardcore institution. Ross Robinson's production gives it a warmth that their earlier records deliberately avoided. Pitchfork called it their best. Hard to argue.
Shop Touche Amore →No Place Of Warmth
Texas death-doom crew Frozen Soul play music that sounds like being buried alive in permafrost. Slow, suffocating, and impossibly heavy. No Place Of Warmth is their coldest work yet, all glacial tempos and subterranean growls. If you thought doom couldn't get any more punishing, these Texans would like a word. Bolt Thrower energy with a winter storm warning.
Shop Frozen Soul →Born To Kill
Mike Ness has been writing the same song about being a beautiful disaster for forty years and it still hits every single time. Born To Kill is Social Distortion at their most Social Distortion. Street punk with a rockabilly swagger, tattooed heartbreak anthems, and the conviction that the best songs are the ones you can sing in a bar fight. The Clash meets Johnny Cash, as always.
Shop Social Distortion →Above
Pittsburgh's Code Orange broke hardcore wide open by refusing to stay in it. Above is the sound of a band that grew up on Integrity and Nine Inch Nails deciding they could be both at once. Industrial textures, nu-metal groove, and genuine hardcore fury collide in ways that shouldn't work but absolutely do. Vice covered their evolution from basement shows to arena support slots. This record is why that trajectory made sense.
Shop Code Orange →Hell Awaits 40th Anniversary Edition
Hell Awaits turned 40 and still sounds like it was recorded yesterday in a room that was actively on fire. This anniversary edition of Slayer's second album is a reminder that before they became a brand, they were four guys from Huntington Park making the most terrifying music on Earth. If you own a turntable and you don't own this, fix that immediately.
Sold Out — View DetailsApocalypse
Canadian duo Crown Lands play prog-rock like they're channeling Rush through a fever dream, and Apocalypse is their most ambitious swing yet. It's big, weird, occasionally overwrought, and completely committed to being all of those things at maximum volume. The kind of record that dares you to call it pretentious while soloing in 7/8. Geddy Lee would approve.
Pre-Order Now →Clearing The Path To Ascend
Mike Scheidt's doom metal trio has always operated on a different plane from their peers, and Clearing the Path to Ascend is the album that proved it. This isn't just heavy. It's transcendent. Riffs that stretch across entire zip codes, vocals that sound like a man pleading with the universe, and a sense of dynamics that most doom bands can only dream about. The vinyl reissue is essential for anyone who believes heavy music can be a spiritual practice.
Shop Yob →Through Zero
Elder keep stretching the boundaries of what heavy music can be, and Through Zero might be their most fluid record yet. It's psychedelic, progressive, and impossibly melodic for a band this heavy. Long songs that justify every minute of their runtime. Stoner rock for people who outgrew stoner rock but still want the riffs. Think Mastodon meets King Crimson on a desert drive.
Shop Elder →Giddy Up/Big Attraction Re-Release
Amyl and the Sniffers reissuing their earliest material is a reminder that Amy Taylor has been a force of nature since day one. Giddy Up/Big Attraction captures the Melbourne punks at their most raw and unpolished. Garage rock with the energy of a kicked hornet's nest. If you came in through Comfort To Me, go back to the beginning and hear where all that fury started.
Pre-Order Now →Thrice Woven
The Weaver brothers returned to the Pacific Northwest black metal that made them legends with Thrice Woven, after a brief detour into synth-driven territory. This is the sound of old growth forests and glacial rivers translated into blast beats and tremolo picking. Atmospheric black metal for people who actually spend time outdoors. If Cascadian black metal means anything to you, this record is canon.
Shop Wolves In The Throne Room →House Of Mirrors
All Them Witches make psychedelic rock that sounds like it's coming from inside a haunted amplifier, and House Of Mirrors is their trippiest work yet. It's heavy without being metal, weird without being inaccessible, and the kind of record that sounds different every time you play it. Nashville's answer to King Gizzard, but with more blues in its bones.
Shop All Them Witches →The Moth
Devin Townsend could release a record of himself humming into a broken microphone and it would still be more interesting than 90% of what's out there. The Moth is Hevy Devy at his most emotionally exposed. Huge, layered, occasionally overwhelming, and shot through with the kind of melodic brilliance that makes you forget he's essentially a one-man orchestra. Nobody else sounds like this. Nobody.
Shop Devin Townsend →Ei8ht
Shinedown are one of those bands that sells out arenas while critics pretend they don't exist, and Ei8ht won't change that dynamic. Brent Smith's voice remains a legitimate weapon, and the hooks are engineered for maximum impact. It's populist hard rock that knows exactly what it's doing and does it extremely well. The blue-collar counterweight to everything trying too hard to be cool.
Pre-Order Now →Gish (Reissue)
Before Mellon Collie and before Siamese Dream, there was Gish. Billy Corgan's debut record was all fuzz and fury, a document of a band that hadn't yet learned to be careful. The reissue puts Rhinoceros and I Am One back on vinyl where they belong. Pitchfork and Vice both treated this album as a touchstone of early '90s alt-rock, and hearing it on wax in 2026 reminds you why. The heaviest Pumpkins ever sounded.
Shop Smashing Pumpkins →Shelter
Neige took Alcest from black metal into dream pop territory with Shelter and the results were polarizing in the best possible way. This is the album where screaming gave way to singing, where blast beats became brush strokes, and where one of metal's most visionary artists decided beauty was a heavier weapon than volume. The vinyl reissue lets you hear that transformation in full analog warmth.
Shop Alcest →Solstice
A.A. Williams makes music that exists in the negative space between sound and silence. Solstice is her most fully realized work, all hushed vocals and cinematic arrangements that swell from whisper to roar. It's post-rock, it's darkwave, it's chamber music with distortion pedals. If Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle are in your world, A.A. Williams belongs right next to them.
Sold Out — View DetailsEternal Kingdom
Swedish post-metal institution Cult of Luna made their most cinematic and devastating record with Eternal Kingdom. It's a concept album about an isolated Swedish mining community that sounds exactly as bleak and beautiful as that description suggests. Every riff feels like it weighs a metric ton, and the atmosphere is thick enough to choke on. If Neurosis and Isis are in your pantheon, Cult of Luna deserves a seat at the same table.
Shop Cult Of Luna →In Grief Or In Hope
Montreal's Big Brave make drone and noise that feels genuinely dangerous, like the speakers might not survive the playback. In Grief Or In Hope is sparse, crushing, and deeply physical. Robin Wattie's voice cutting through walls of feedback like a signal from somewhere ancient. Heaviness as meditation. Not for everyone, but transformative for those it reaches. Sunn O))) with a human heartbeat.
Shop Big Brave →Dear God
Taylor Momsen went from Gossip Girl to genuine rock frontwoman and somehow made it look inevitable. Dear God is The Pretty Reckless at their heaviest and most unfiltered. Big riffs, bigger choruses, and a refusal to be dismissed as anything other than a legitimate hard rock band. The doubters ran out of excuses a few records ago. If Halestorm is your lane, pull over and let this one pass.
Shop The Pretty Reckless →Dinosaur Jr (Reissue)
Before J Mascis became indie rock's laziest-looking guitar god, there was this record. Dinosaur Jr's self-titled debut is all blown-out amps and vocal melodies buried under sheets of feedback. The reissue puts Repulsion and Severed Lips back on vinyl where they were always meant to live. Pitchfork, Vice, and Creem all trace lines back to this record when discussing why American indie rock sounds the way it does.
Shop Dinosaur Jr →Become
Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally have spent nearly two decades perfecting the art of the dream pop slow burn, and Become continues that tradition without repeating it. Beach House records all feel like they exist in the same twilight, but each one finds a different color in that light. Pitchfork has given them Best New Music multiple times. At this point they're not chasing approval. They're just making the music that comes naturally, and it keeps being extraordinary.
Shop Beach House →this is goodbye...
Pure Noise's post-hardcore wrecking ball says goodbye with their most emotionally devastating record yet. If you're not paying attention to Chamber, you're wrong.
Shop Chamber →Coronach
Scottish one-man black-thrash tornado James McBain returns with Coronach — a Celtic-infused ripper that makes Bathory sound like a lullaby. Century Media knew what they were buying.
Shop Hellripper →The Unyielding Season
Manchester's atmospheric black metal flagbearers deliver another hymn to the English landscape. The Unyielding Season is exactly what the title promises — relentless, beautiful, and ancient.
Shop Winterfylleth →death fetish
SharpTone's heaviest signing goes full death fetish — nu-metal's twisted grandchildren finally found their sound and it's genuinely unsettling.
Shop Moodring →No Speed Limit For Destruction (Reissue)
Tankcrimes reissues the Montréal d-beat classic that should've made these guys legends the first time. No speed limit, no compromises, no skipping.
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