“Moritat” comes from the Latin for “murder ballad,” a term which hints at the beauty and ugliness battling for your attention within the work. Much folklore once carried similar macabre details before being burnished by a New Testament society so that clean lessons could be presented without grimy context. Der Rote Milan’s murder ballad of an album focuses on Schinderhannes — a real-life German folk hero and criminal who flaunted French occupiers during the 30 Years War — slams black metal’s cruel, truthful fist of truth until it leaves the blood shows, showing the icon for both the hero he was and the foolish coward fool he died as.

Black metal represents mankind’s movement away from urban centers to its rustic roots, a trend actually predated by the suburban pilgrimage of major city centers across the world following continuous population bursts. It’s a movement driven less by rebellion than economic necessity yet nonetheless many of those on the outskirts of town took up a blue-collar begrudged outlook toward the white-collar city centers, which is at least part of white rock ‘n’ roll’s roots. Kvelertak’s biker-jacket black metal reflects a class both appreciative and wary of the genre it hails from, keen on crushing Black Label cans if not necessarily society.

Of all the sharp instruments aligned on Surgical Steel‘s cover, the one missing and most relevant to the band’s success is Jeff Walker’s tongue, a rare death metal vocalist enunciating enough for you to make out his pointed message (guitarist Bill Steer’s “axe” probably deserves a place on the cover as well). The genre’s traditional lyrical fodder about the dead, the undead, and the killing of both might fool a fan into believing they’re beyond lyrical discomfort but Carcass proves otherwise, using the vast portion of this album to push a vegan agenda with imagery every bit as bloody as the next death metal album’s, but also on your plate this evening.

Graves at Sea appeared alongside Asunder on perhaps the single-best split of the oughts and then, like the group’s sludgy, doom-oriented songs, took a really long time getting its debut LP released. Perhaps provoked by the according anticipation, The Curse That Is may have ended up being too much released at once; taken alone, the first disc in this double LP could justify placement in the Top 10 metal albums of the ’10s, a decade’s worth of agony and aggression packed into Nathan Misterek’s voice while single guitarist Nick Phit and an Orange stack profess the important difference between heavy and dense.

Ascension, as a verb, describes the discography of Yob quite well. The band’s follow-up albums have always been a little more high-minded than the previous, beginning its career with a heaviness that people enjoy getting high to (see Sleep’s entry above) and progressing to something that commands conversation while sober. Mike Scheidt may not quite have unchained himself from earthly bounds, but that in itself is the task to clearing a path to ascend. It’s not the over-idealized transcendence of psychedelic rock but the actual decimation of all that separates you from the next state, an action Yob sets about doing here.