The 10 Greatest Death Metal Releases Of 2016

7. Defeated Sanity – Disposal of the Dead / Dharmata

Remember in the intro when we said “the gods of death metal were being honoured in ridiculously faithful ways”…..admit it, you thought we meant Gruesome, right? As good as Gruesome’s Dimensions Of Horror was (and lets face it, it was fuckin’ great) it was actually the Death worship found on Defeated Sanity’s Dharmata that proved most irresistible.

Harnessing the sounds of Death’s classic Individual Thought Patterns, Germany’s Defeated Sanity vomited forth an avant-garde homage to the founding fathers of progressive death metal.

But first came the brutal death metal.

That’s right, this beast was in fact a split EP featuring the same band. A genius move that allowed Disposal of the Dead room to showcase Defeated Sanity’s raw, unrelenting and ultra guttural style before unleashing the aforementioned and completely tenacious Dharmata.

A bold move that worked brilliantly….brutal and progressive on one outstanding semi-split release!

6. Altarage – Nihl

A droning dive into the charred heart of the Beast itself, Altarage’s blackened death metal debut was pure hell.

Bestial growls and shrieks engulfed the senses within Altarage’s suffocating sarcophagus of dense riffs and one listen probably meant your soul had already been sold to the horned one. Nihl was simply undefinable, incalculable evil in noise form….an experience endured rather than enjoyed but utterly captivating nonetheless!

Dark doesn’t cover it.

5. Unfathomable Ruination – Finitude

Total death metal insanity. Unfathomable Ruination’s Finitude seemed to dangerously hang on the precipice of complete carnage with it’s blitzkrieg of barely controlled chaos but there were quality tunes to be found here….and they were bloody good ones at that!

Like a thousand hands and feet at once moving in unison and yet separated by time and space, the sheer nerve of Unfathomable Ruination’s technical attack was exhausting and yet bewilderingly brilliant in its complex delivery. These brutal Brits sure can play and Finitude delivered a tour de force of reliably relentless insanity with each and every track.

A great year for tech-death, an even better year for Unfathomable Ruination.