CVLT Nation’s Top 10 DEATH DOOM Releases of 2024

#10 SANGUINARY EMPEROR Demo

Deep down in the pits of Hades exists a band called Sanguinary Emperor. Their Demo is a 3-song portal into a place where no light exists only grimness! As their song “ENTRANCED BY THE INESCAPABLE NOTHING” crawls into my mind I can’t help but think about how this band is gnarly AF. I love how they can conjure up nightmares in 3D with their putrid anthems of FILTH. Sanguinary Emperor are band will drag you into their universe of hateful Death Anthems and leave you for dead! I can’t get enough of this demo and I’m sure y’all are going to dig it just as much as me.

#9 PERISHING Lutum

Slow-moving Death, Slow-moving Dirge, Slow-moving Suffocating Riffs are what come to mind as I blast PERISHING’s tape Lutum which is out now on Caligari Records. WTF every second of this release is the fucking jam. I love bands that create their grim audio world where rotting sonic maggots are the stars! I dare y’all to blast “Existential Rift” and then tell me that this does not RULE! PERISHING manifest songs that are the soundtrack to our fucked up real-life reality.

#8 GUTHOOK S/T

Do you want to know what decaying flesh sounds like? Do you want to know what a maggot smells while feasting on human meat? Do you want to hear one of the most vile Death Doom releases of 2024? GUTHOOK’s self-titled tape is an ultra-bleak look into a never-ending audio black hole. This band’s songs are slow-moving death hymns that will not only suffocate you but also will have you saying damn, this band creates some grim fucking tunes, tunes like “PERMANENT HOME” and “ADDICTED TO KILLING” prove that murder was on their mind when they wrote these songs. GUTHOOK’s music gives my darkest thoughts a safe place and becomes the anger I need to battle my demons. This band’s riffs lurch over the somber atmosphere that this band conjures up. GUTHOOK is not trying to be popular, but they are succeeded in manifesting some of the gnarliest Death Doom on this FUCKED UP PLANET.

#7 NEKUS Death Apophenia

Crazy to reckon that this monster took only a year after its predecessor to see the light. You’d figure the crushing magnitude of 2023’s double LP Sepulchral Divination would take years to beat, and instead it took Nekus less than a year to close that chapter and open a new one that is stronger in every sense. This gives you a clear idea on what level of ambition this band dwells on. Read the full review HERE.

#6 MAUDISSEZ S/T

The self-titled album from Maudissez is truly out of this FUCKING WORLD! It’s hard to even describe how insanely sick this band is because of how they can blend different genres into this Mass Sonic Weapon of Audio FILTH!!! Imagine if your favorite Death Doom band transformed into your favorite Black Metal band and then transformed into your favorite Raw Punk band — the outcome just might come close to the mammoth morbid sounds that are Maudissez. As I listen to this record, I begin to feel like I’m in the brain of a crazed serial killer that is out on the prowl! Better yet I feel like I’m hunting down every member of the IDF and KKK and I am about to decapitate them all for the wrongs that they have done to my people! I want y’all to blast their song “fracture par fracture” and tell me it does not make you want to slap the fuck out of all the heads of the Catholic Church of Demons! The sounds you will experience on this album will put you in a state of ANGER JOY! I love Maudissez, because they are comfortable in their own creative skin to create a record that defies any genre and is full of blackened passion. 

#5 Desperation Eclipse Inner Ruin

Right now, I’m looking at the world through thick clouds of sonic filth. Right now, my ears are being suffocated by the sounds of murky audio torment. Right now, I’m about to turn y’all on to Desperation Eclipse who happen to be one of the sickest Death Doom projects doing it Right NOW! Their album Inner Ruin is a 30-minute portal into the Black Abyss of pure Bleakness. Call me weird, but I find music like this very healing. Maybe because it cuts through all of the bullshit of the world and shows us all what’s beneath the surface. Under all of the lies exists a world where slow-moving riffs of despair shine a light on where we really should be headed. As Desperation Eclipse’s song “Inner” crawls into my skull, I begin to see the world for what it is. In the atmosphere of dirge that this band creates, I can hear how much blackened passion went into this project, and for that, I have nothing mad respect! As I blast their song “Ruin,” I have daydreams of drowning all of the negativity that is trying to come my way. I want this band to know that they have set the 2024 Death Doom bar high, and I’m not sure anyone else will surpass them. Right now, I want to say thank you to Desperation Eclipse for existing!

#4 ABYSSAL Glacial

I’m blessed to live in a city surrounded by mountains, water, forests, and beaches. Every day, as I take my kids to school, I see peaks and valleys that remind me that human history is but a blink of an eye on this planet. All that we’ve done to raze and ravage the natural majesty of this planet has been done in an instant, like an infection that bubbles and bursts overnight, eating your flesh and oozing with pus. Time is the antidote, because in time the planet with inoculate herself against the human virus. ABYSSAL’s record Glacial is this thought process in musical form; agonizingly slow in the most devastating, crushing way, one deep, dark riff meandering into the next until a cataclysm of drums breaks open the earth and a cavernous voice rises from our mother’s belly to reclaim our infantile civilization. I’m thankful for records like this.

#3 BLOOD OF SOKAR Avorsor

There was a time before CVLT Nation when I used to talk to Sean about whatever dark and weird stuff popped into my head and he would say, you need a blog to write about this shit. Like maybe I could find other people on the internet who were as intrigued by death, decay, destruction, disease. Lo and behold, we founded CVLT Nation, and it became the perfect place for my fascinations. And there’s no other genre that captures my imagination like funeral and death doom, and records like BLOOD OF SOKAR’s Avorsor. Just as I’ve found myself floating on a black river of aural torment, they pull me under with a vortex of funereal howls that seem to come from the other side of the veil. This is what Dracula listens to in his mausoleum after a long night of draining blood from people’s veins.

#2 TZOMPANTLI Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force

As “new world” cultures finally come to terms with the reality and consequences of colonialism and the fact that we are indeed living in an “old world,” a place where indigenous peoples built breathtaking civilizations for millennia, bands like TZOMPANTLI rise up to put the power of their people on full sonic display! With the full force of their blackened death doom fury, this band comes down on my senses like a 55-ton monolith! TZOMPANTLI have created a masterpiece with this record, with ritualistic drumming underpinning the ferocious riffs and lethal vocals calling for vengeance and bloodshed. Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force is an album that will go down in death doom infamy.

#1 SPECTRAL VOICE Sparagmos

I’m writing this from a place of JOY! I’m writing this from a place of BLISS! I’m writing this from a place of knowing that SPECTRAL VOICE are the fucking BOMB! Their new album Sparagmos out now on Dark Descent Records is a certified Death Doom classic! At least this is my point of view, because it’s so Heavy and full of Suffocating Morbid Atmosphere! I love how layered their songs are and how they weave in so many different emotions into one riff. As I blast “Be Cadaver,” I can hear and feel the ancient agony that this death hymn conjures up! At times the song is fragile and etheral before becoming this Death Metal hydra that is ready to kill.

SPECTRAL VOICE music is full of putrified space that allows the listener to lucid dream about their night terrors. “Red Feasts Condensed Into One” waste no time in dragging you down into a cave of sonic fecal matter before becoming a slow moving river of audio filth. Sparagmos proves that this band creates on a level that many bands never reach. Also, this is an album that will grow on you like moss and cover you in dirge for years to come! SPECTRAL VOICE are so comfortable in their creative skin, and this fact only makes me more of a fan. The last song on the album, “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity,” is a massive Death Doom anthem that will have you head banging and blissing out at the same time. I look forward to eating a THC gummie and making new SPECTRAL VOICE record the soundtrack to my elevated state of mind!