This may have been the Worst Year EverTM, but holy mince pies, Batman, was there some great music.
To try and help cheer you up (and to drown out the bloody awful festive music you must be sick of by now), I’ve assembled what I think is the finest 52 songs (one for each week of this 129 month-long year) I heard in 2020. There’s a convenient Spotify playlist with them all in at the end too. (And yes, of course it includes Unreqvited.)
The 52 best songs of 2020*
(In alphabetical order by artist)
ACxDC – Satan Is King [devilish grindcore]
Anaal Nathrakh – Endarkenment [excoriating black metal/grind, with catchy choruses]
Benighted ft. Jamey Jasta – Implore The Negative [wicked fun brutal death metal]
Black Crown Initiate – Invitation [anthemic progressive death metal]
Black Magnet – Anubis [raging industrial metal]
Bleed From Within – The End Of All We Know [techy melodeath/metalcore]
Blodiga Skald – To The East Of Sorrow Town (Circus Of Pigsley) [clever drunk folk metal]
Boisson Divine – Lo Pèla Pòrc [even drunker folk metal]
Bring Me The Horizon ft. Babymetal – Kingslayer [absurdly catchy electro pop metal]
Code Orange – The Easy Way [the most exciting band in the world]
Déluge – Abysses [post-hardcore/Altar Of Plagues-y black metal]
Dool – Sulphur & Starlight [occult rock, very Roadburn-y]
Dzö-nga – The Death Of Minnehaha [American-style folk black metal]
Elephant Tree – Bird [floaty doom]
Emyn Muil – Where The Light Drowns [Tolkien none-more-nerd black metal]
Ensiferum – Midsummer Magic [trve drvnk folk metal]
Enslaved – Urjotun [progressive black metal]
Erdling – Yggdrasil [Neue Deutsche Härte-style industrial party metal]
Falconer – Thrust The Dagger Deep [prog/Viking/power/West End musicals metal]
Fellwarden – Scafell’s Blight [atmospheric Lake District black metal]
Feuerschwanz – Das Elfte Gebot [the most German folk/Wacken metal imaginable]
Finntroll – Ormfolk [impish black/folk metal with lots of trolls]
Fluisteraars – Nasleep [agoraphobic, bleak-as-fuck-yet-still-accessible black metal]
Fortiõ – The True Awakening [melodic black metal]
Gaerea – Glare [forward-thinking black metal]
Gulch – All Fall Down The Well [very very very hard hardcore]
Havukruunu – Uinuos Syömein Sota [extremely Finnish black metal using folk rhythms]
Ingested – No Half Measures [SLAM]
Kassad – The Hollow [black/post-metal that sounds like getting off the tube into the pissing rain somewhere grimy and overcrowded]
Katatonia – Laquer [melancholic prog/electro pop]
Lamb Of God – Gears [Southern groove metal – it’s Lamb Of God, you know what they sound like]
LIK – Faces Of Death [very, very Swedish death metal]
Lotus Thief – The Furies [post-metal]
Morwinyon – Sea Of Stars [uplifting black metal]
Mystic Prophecy – Metal Division [preposterously metal power metal]
The Night Flight Orchestro – Divinyls [AORgasm]
Operus – Book Of Shadows [gloriously OTT/silly symphonic power metal]
Paradise Lost – Forsaken [goth metal with lots of Yorkshire]
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Hell’s Teeth [riffs riffs riffs riffs riffs riffs riffs/stoner metal]
Romuvos – Aizkraukle (1279) [tale-telling epic folk metal]
Sepultura – Means To An End [groovy thrash… it’s Sepultura, you must know by now]
Sweven – Sanctum Sanctorum [prog metal/sacred choral vocal harmonies]
Terminal Nation – Death For Profit [righteously furious death metal with hardcore bits]
Thy Catafalque – Napút [I genuinely have no idea what Thy Catafalque are any more, but they rule]
Trivium – Catastrophist [metal for the mainstream written by people who like Death and Emperor]
Unleash The Archers – Afterlife [ultra muscular warp-core-driven power metal]
Unreqvited – Empathica II: Everwinter [a post-orgasmic cuddle with the love of your life in musical form]
Vader – And Satan Wept [thrashy death metal. WADER!]
Video Nasties – They Rise [zombie horror move metal]
Violet Cold – Battle Unicorn [everything under the sun]
Vredehammer – Aggressor [thrashy melodic slightly industrial black metal]
Xenobiotic ft. Sam Dishington – Saphis [technical death metal meets atmospheric melancholic rock]
KILL WITH POWER 