I'd mostly given up on finding new metal that I liked for some 10+ years now. When I checked out stuff linked in this thread it usually didn't appeal to me, and Youtube was constantly recommending me stuff with millions of views that was completely unoriginal and unmemorable (Nightwish clones and overproduced tech death bands that can play a million bpm but have nothing actually worth playing).


But lately I've made a concerted effort to broaden my horizons, and I think each of these recent-ish albums are pretty awesome:

Igorrr - Spirituality and Distortion (imagine you hired Nile and Emperor to collaborate on an album of traditional Balkan dance music and then laced their drinks with LSD)

The Great Old Ones - Cosmicism (post-black metal)

Cattle Decapitation - Death Atlas (death metal)

Septicflesh - Codex Omega (symphonic death metal)

Vader - Solitude in Madness (death metal)

Belzebubs - Pantheon of the Nightside Gods (melodic blackened death metal)

One of the great things about the diversity of new metal stuff is that while I agree with you that there's far too much uninspiring vaguely 'gothic' metal and tech death, I'm also not a fan of any one of those records (well, I've not listened to the Belzebubs but anything which has 'melodic' in its genre descriptor is normally not for me), but I know people with great taste who love each and every one of those.

I don't listen to a huge amount of new stuff any more but the one release that has really stuck out over the last few years was the Blood Incantation record last year, pretty quickly became one of my favourite death metal albums of all time.

Edit: actually, Fukpig continue to impress, not least in the sheer balls to name one album 'Bastards' and the next one 'More Bastards'.

Edit 2: not sure if 2005 and 2004 count as 'modern', but the albums I've been spinning a lot lately are:

Esoteric - Subconscious Dissolution into the Continuum
Deathspell Omega - Kénôse

Since I try to play 75% or so new stuff weekly on our radio show I am constantly finding new releases. Here are some I rated A+ on first listen so far in 2020:

Kurnugia



Black Curse



Perdition Temple



Cardiac Arrest



Noxis

I think the Venn diagram of music I like and music you like would just be two circles. :P

I've plowed through a bunch of random black metal in the last few days and found these two albums to be excellent:

Andavald - Undir Skyggðarhaldi

Negator - Vnitas Pvritas Existentia

Could be worse. One of us could not like metal at all

@soah This might be one we both like?

It's pretty decent. Some interesting stuff going on and fleeting moments where it establishes a nice groove, but also pretty repetitive.

The funny thing is that I'd never really listened to much black metal, but almost all of it that I'm finding now is at least listenable. I'm a lot pickier with death metal because it can quickly become tedious and grating if I'm not really into it. Not much middle ground there for me.

I guess I should also take a stab at something we might both like.

I like the guitar tone and the vocals but it has this almost poppy song structure that turns me off some. Not bad though, might like their other tunes more.

That's good stuff. Thanks.

I never knew I needed this in my life.

Lotta good new metal bands out there krunic, just sayin

A top Black Metal release of 2020 IMO

death metal

Dig it

Mix of deathcore/djent/prog-metal that came back after a 5~ year hiatus

Cryptic Shift

death metal of some sort

Did our first week of Best of 2020 over the weekend
Show archive and playlist: https://xray.fm/broadcasts/37528

This weekend is week 2. No ranking, they are all our favorites, unordered.

Xtremity

Digging the new Asphyx