The best contemporary death metal albums you’ve never heard of

After my recent survey of modern black metal, a death metal follow up was all but inevitable. Commercially speaking, death metal seems to be in a healthier place than black metal, with bands like Blood Incantation threatening to transcend the genre in terms of their brand reach. Tastes in death metal also seem to behave a little more coherently than black metal, with certain styles trending in and out of favour in reliable phases. Black metal by contrast seems to cohere around key artists more than a specific style (that’s been the case since the protracted hipster wars to my mind at least). The albums featured on my black metal list, in my not-at-all humble opinion, represent some of the best that metal music has had to offer in recent history, but scanning over it again, there’s no particular rhyme or reason to the picks. Each artist being from different scenes, traditions, and schools of thought. Death metal, by contrast, is clearly mappable, oriented around distinct regional hubs.…