The Plague Nurse’s Year in Heavy Metal and Hard Rock: 2024
What a strange year it’s been
It was a strange year. Strange things even invaded the Plague Nurse’s listening habits. Ever fearless— this is, after all, a woman capable of wading amongst the bubonic-riddled croaked and croaking— she persisted and kept listening. Here are ten outstanding new discoveries she made in 2024.
1. Whitechapel’s A New Era of Corruption (Metal Blade, 2010)
Heavy Metal > Death Metal + Metalcore = Deathcore
Hands down, this was the Plague Nurse’s most listened-to album this year. This American band isn’t breaking any molds with its third studio release, and sure every song sounds the same, but it crushes, and sometimes, quite often in fact, that’s exactly what you need. Throw in cover artwork that’s reminiscent of a killer bodhisattva and this album is an act of mercy at the end of a long, hard day. Rating: 7/10
2. Babymetal, s/t (BMD Fox Records, 2014)
Heavy Metal > Power Metal + J-pop = Kawaii Metal
A strange year indeed if the Plague Nurse has anything for Babymetal but sneer — whatever Rob Halferd of Judas Priest may say — but so it is. The deluxe rereleases of the Japanese trio’s first two albums, Babymetal and Metal Resistance, had such glorious artwork that she couldn’t resist. This particular release’s cover shows three red-velvet coffins, fox heads peeking out, against a black-and-white gothic cathedral backdrop. If you can handle the cute vocals and programmed wankery, this fairly rocks. Rating: 6/10
3. Marilyn Manson’s Holy Wood (Nothing/Interscope, 2000)
Heavy Metal > Alternative Metal > Industrial Metal
The Plague Nurse swore off Marilyn Manson when the list of accusations became too awful to overlook . . . but while one may choose not to separate artist from art, art may insist on its primacy. Mechanical Animals is a top five metal album, and on a good day Brian Warner is a generation’s voice of conscience. Here, “The Nobodies” hits the disaffected vein on a par with “The Black Collar Song” off The Golden Age of Grotesque. If he’s guilty, keep the music but cancel the man. Rating: 9/10
4. Gojira’s “Ça Ira” (2024 Summer Olympics)
Heavy Metal > Death Metal > Technical Death Metal
When Gojira performed a French Revolution anthem during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, it was definitely one of those moments that soberer heads might have axed during planning . . . but we can be glad they didn’t. Thus, we get severed heads, moshing atop the Conciergerie, sprays of faux blood over the Seine, and opera mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti. Props to whoever said, “Donne une chance au heavy metal.” Rating: 8/10
5. Extreme’s Waiting for the Puncline (A&M, 1995)
Hard Rock
Extreme entered the Halls of Immortalia with the ballad “More Than Words,” so it’s rare that a metalhead will fess up to love for the band, but one convinced me to give the band a serious listen. On Waiting for the Punchline, which is adorned with a sad clown standing in a post-industrial wasteland, the glam metal darlings of Pornograffitti get cynical, funky and bluesy. The Plague Nurse found herself discovered of a more reflective Whitesnake, and that’s gilding the lily. Rating: 7/10
6. Full Blown Chaos’s Within the Grasp of Titans (Stillborn, 2006)
Heavy Metal + Hardcore
Much like Whitechapel’s A New Era of Corruption, this is a mood you need to indulge from time to time for mental health: specifically the mood that is Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. If you’ve ever listened to the hardest of hardcore punk and felt like something was missing, like it didn’t pummel and growel quite enough, like even Hatebreed was a bit radio-friendly, then Full Blown Chaos is the band for you. From start to finish, this gnaws off limbs and spits them out. Rating: 6/10
7. Golden Resurrection’s Glory to My King (Liljegren, 2010)
Heavy Metal > Power Metal + Christian Metal
As if it wasn’t unheralded enough that the Plague Nurse listened to Babymetal this year, she also found this Christian-metal opus from Golden Resurrection impossible to keep out of the CD deck. Christian Leljegren and company manage to wear their dorky lyrics on their sleeves winningly: timbrel barrages, gripped-by-the-fount-of-one’s-seed heavy-metal shrieks, and lyre shredding. In a world given to middling power metal, this is one cut above the rest. Rating: 6/10
8. King’s X, s/t (Atlantic, 1991)
Hard Rock + Progressive Rock = Progressive Metal
What is one to make of a table strewn with the ragged remains of bread and spilled wine, the crude matter of a sacrament, under which a child squats amongst the crumbs? King’s X makes of this cover art a collection of inimitable exercises in Rush-inspired hard rock. This is a deep album, but above all each track is unique, emotionally moving and inhabited with inventive riffery. The Plague Nurse wishes she had replaced her old cassette sooner. Rating: 10/10
9. Nightrage’s Insidious (Lifeforce, 2011)
Heavy Metal > Death Metal > Melodic Death Metal > Gothenberg Metal
Like Romeo to Juliet, Orihime to Hikoboshi, Harry to Sally, so The Plague Nurse to melodic death metal. Nightrage isn’t quite fellow Gothenburgers In Flames, Dark Tranquillity or At the Gates, or even fellow Swedes Arch Enemy, but there’s nothing not to love on the band’s fifth. Guitars you can sing to, vocals you can bark to with aguish, and that percussion, like something off Clayman, rousing and propulsive. A winner on first listen, a winner ever after. Rating: 6/10
10. Mithotyn’s In the Sign of the Raven (Black Diamond, 1997)
Heavy Metal > Black Metal & Folk Metal > Viking Metal
Now that Vikings: Valhalla has concluded, the Plague Nurse is in need of Viking metal to keep her warm in the cold, Scandinavian night, and Mithotyn’s first full-length is just the thing: electric guitar and dulcimer, black metal rasping and rousing tavern choruses. In the Sign of the Raven is epic in every track, testament to a way of life whose brief fluorishing struck fear into scriptorium and throne room alike, ranging as far as the land of the Russ and the Middle East. Rating: 7/10
Rare is the day that The Plague Nurse doesn’t feel as if the world has — as in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series — “moved on” to more fractured, poisoned times, but sometimes the crack of thunder and flash of lightning cut through stygian moods. What music lifted your mood this year?
