Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts.
It’s the end of the year and metal is bowling over itself with pride as its bulbous tummy sits full and satisfied, happy that it once again had a good year. Some may say that 2024 has been metal’s best year of the decade. Rather than tease you into waiting, let’s reveal our album of the year in the introduction! Our collective pick is… Blood Incantation’s Absolute Elsewhere (which also topped Heavy Consequence‘s overall list of the Best Metal & Hard Rock Albums of 2024). Now you can all close the tab. Go be with your families.
If you stuck around, we appreciate it, and we’re taking your patience as a sign that you have left your family to join ours. So, take a seat at the big boy table and we’ll proceed.
Before we move on to the albums of this month’s column, those that thought they could slip through our grasps by releasing in the year’s twilight hours, let’s confront the matter at hand. It should come as no surprise that Blood Incantation are our top pick if you’re at all familiar with Mining Metal’s tastes, which skew towards the strange and progressive. It can be assumed that you’ve already listened to it if you’re here and there’s not much more to say about Absolute Elsewhere aside from admitting that it’s that good. So, we’ll say it; it’s that good.
It’s also not the only album from this year that is that good, and luckily all our favorite metal albums have been among the Mining Metal halls in 2024 (if they were released via an independent label). They include SUMAC’s The Healer, Oranssi Pazuzu’s Muuntautuja, Tribulation’s Sub Rosa In Æternum, Noxis’ Violence Inherent in the System, Uniform’s American Standard, and Paysage d’Hiver’s Die Berge. All these acts, aside from Noxis, are well-known within underground metal spaces, which is not a sign that quality rises to the top but that there are exemplary and challenging works that sometimes rack up hundreds of thousands of plays on Spotify. We live in a time when Oranssi Pazuzu can be classified as “coworker metal” because I was asked by a colleague, one who does not listen to metal regularly and turned me onto Chappel Roan before she hit her stride, if I listened to them. Much like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day.
As mentioned earlier, frontloading our favorite albums frees us up to speak about all the records that braved December, the month averse to PR. But, in this house, in this family, we respect December releases. Now, go help your mom with the dishes if you want dessert.
— Colin Dempsey
Aara – Eiger
An atmospheric black metal record about a snowy mountain, what a novel idea! Luckily, rather than simply marveling at a mountain’s grandeur, Aara’s sixth album in as many years hones in on the peril associated with the titular mountain, Eiger. More than 60 climbers have died trying to scale the summit in the Alps and Eiger reflects that severity. There are no fantastical elements at play. Rather, the Swiss group has isolated that bolt of fear that comes when overlooking a sheer drop, then jacked it up with fantastic drumming. The work behind the kit ensures that Eiger is a white-knuckle experience, even when Aara enter into the territory of acoustic guitars and samples of wind blowing. These moments are but small ledges to perch on. Aside from them, Eiger will make you scour for blood pressure medication. Buy it on Bandcamp. — C. Dempsey
An Axis of Perdition – Apertures
In an interview with Occult Black Metal zine, An Axis of Perdition guitarist Michael Blenkarn (who handled everything on this new record) stated that Apertures was about “addressing a variety of mental health-related topics in very abstract terms.” Abstract undersells how shroudy this album, their first 13 years, is. Pinning it down is tricky because it’s peripheral, as if you can ascertain its shape and color but only roughly so. Take the guitar playing on “Metempsychosis,” which is lower in the mix than one would expect. You would think this holds space for the vocals to enter with power, but they are also buried under an inch of dirt. It’s just enough disruption that you cannot focus on one element at a time. You have to invite Apertures, a husk of a blackened industrial metal album, into your quarters in its entire form and use all your senses to perceive it. Buy it on Bandcamp. — C. Dempsey
