Kylesa came from the same swamps that birthed Baroness’s Faulknerian mournfulness and Black Tusk’s hardcore. This brand of sludge might veer a bit closer toward the latter in terms of mood but it blooms with songwriting complexity only matched in the region — and subgenre — by Mastodon. The band employed a double-drum kit (a ploy akin to, while sounding nothing like, Georgia’s Allman Brothers), a double-microphone approach — with Laura Pleasants and Philip Cope peaking the band’s possibilities when weaving interplaying vocal parts — with that pair’s two guitars matching their voices in terms of both force and intrigue.

Barring Suicide Silence’s first two albums, the deathcore scene had left me without anything particularly stimulating, a gap retrospectively filled by Dir En Grey, a Japanese group that, perhaps accidentally amid all of its toying with the avant garde, managed to create what I now realize to be a strain of progressive deathcore. Japan has quietly (quite loud, actually) born the world’s best collection of metal vocalists, and mononymous Kyo may be the best of all. His extreme range from bottomless growls to splitting highs — occasionally punctuating shrieks with his signature move, an equine whinny — makes Dir En Grey worthwhile unto itself.

Dillinger Escape Plan’s understood status as the kings of the weird time signature masks the fact that the band spent a long period of its existence among the most catchy in metal as well; Calculating Infinity set a high bar for instrumental insanity within hardcore music, a major influencer in the resulting creation of the much-maligned descriptor “mathcore.” Dillinger thus worked to fit hooks within the insanity and — although you’d be hard-pressed to suggest a band that jumps between 18/8 and 3/4 in a single song, or that features Greg Puciato’s squalling is “approachable,” it’s nonetheless among the most arresting sounds in metal.

The differences between outer space and the Mariana Trench are few. It took until the 21st Century for humanity to witness a live giant squid, and many noted they preferred the world that came before. Why should space be any different? Darkspace embraces both humanity’s triumphal and isolationist perspectives on the beyond, moving during its epic pieces (each borders 20 minutes in length) between moments of terrifying loneliness, within the burnt out hull of a ship left to drift (assuming you are indeed alone), and moments of Straussian momentum, accelerated by Jean-Michel Jarre synthesizers, which too come laden with foreboding.

Thou reads like many a cynical author, philosophizing darkly among a doom-oriented band. Cobalt reads more like Henry Miller’s self-titled Tropic of Cancer protagonist, embracing the same bleak outlook rather than mourning it, romping through substances and sex to a more eager, sludge soundtrack. Scuzz alone can’t fool one into transcendence, however, as hard as Miller tried. Eventually the full weight of these thoughts and riffs will pull one down. Lord Mantis frontman Charlie Fell served as vocalist for the two-man group on this release, mandibles chewing into Cobalt’s identity, a new and able mouthpiece for his hissed sermons.