Danny Sanderson

With a lot of one-person acts it can be very easy to tell that the music has been written and recorded by just one person. In black metal and death metal especially, there’s got to be several hundreds, perhaps thousands, with only a small number of bands standing out as not only solid, but exceptional at what they do. Born out of the mind of

While Canada is perhaps most famous for its fantastic black metal underground at present, it’s important to note that the Great White North is notorious for producing brilliant bands from across the extreme metal spectrum, with some of the most interesting death metal acts in the genre’s history having come from there. ABSORB

Norway’s SVARTELDER are perhaps one of the most impressive modern black metal acts operating within the country’s celebrated black metal underground. Whilst clearly taking influence from their second wave forebears, rather than lapse into a tired regurgitation of the sort of style and tropes that made Norwegian black metal so effective in the 90s, they have repurposed it and updated this sound for a modern audience, without straying too far from the genre’s core sound, with their first two albums – 2016’s Pyres and 2019’s Pits – firmly establishing the Bergen trio as one of the most promising acts the country has produced in the last decade.

On the surface, Montana’s LUST HAG and Washington’s REAPING FIELDS have very little in common other than their clear black metal influences. The former has, over the course of the last 18 months or so, and with a prodigious recorded output, become one of the most promising raw black netal acts to come out of the US in the last few years. The latter blends caustic black metal with hints of punk, thrash and death metal to craft something altogether more domineering and intense, though nonetheless sepulchral. But, somewhat surprisingly, the new EP that the two acts have produced, Prayers Unanswered, not only works well as a cohesive whole, but boasts more excellent music in its short 14-minute span than some bands fit onto entire albums.

In the decade since their inception SPECTRAL WOUND have firmly established themselves as one of the most singularly impressive black metal acts that Canada has produced in recent years, with the band’s first three albums, and in particular 2018’s Infernal Decadence and 2021’s A Diabolical Thirst

India’s ECCENTRIC PENDULUM are a band that, despite not producing many records over the course of their 16-year history, have managed to create music that is distinct from the vast majority of their peers. Their style is characterised by a blend of death and thrash metal, along with a liberal dose of metalcore and progressive touches, which has ensured that even their earliest releases possessed an imaginative and powerful feel, with their debut album, 2012’s

SERVANT have, over the course of the last few years especially, become arguably one of Germany’s best underground black metal acts, and have always felt as though they are on the cusp of breaking through onto the global stage. Ever since their debut album, 2021s Blessed by the Light of a Thousand Stars, and again on its follow up,

Within the emergent Danish powerviolence scene, MITE are perhaps one of the most effective bands. Since the release of their first E.P, 2020s 77 Days, the bands harsh and visceral take on hardcore has made the Odense-based four piece a musical force to be reckoned with, with their prodigious musical output in just a few short years seeing the band become ever more intense, with the bands debut album, the aptly named

UNTERVOID might very well be one of the very best black metal acts that Poland has produced in the last decade, considering that the Krakow-based trio features amongst its ranks current and former members of KRIEGSMACHINE, BEHEMOTH and THAW

London’s KNIFE PLANET are a band that possess a distinct and abrasive sound that is not only more feral and coarse than the majority of their peers, but fully atonal at points. Blending together elements of black metal, grindcore, noise and industrial within their varied sound, much of their nauseating and stringent offerings can perhaps, to make the closest musical comparison, be compared to that of acts like