I've listened to a lot of metal in my life and unfortunately, it seems a lot of it sounds the same, mostly due to imitation (even bands imitating younger versions of themselves!). Some albums stand the test of time, however, in terms of being unique. Here are some of those albums for me:

• Disembowelment - Transcendence into the Peripheral
• Cathedral - Forest of Equilibrium
• Lugubrum - Albino de Congo
• Neurosis - Souls at Zero
• Urfaust - Geist Ist Teufel

lykathea aflame's elvenefris is the only death metal album (let alone a bdm one) i ever heard that has this joyous beauty to it. completely different approach than any other dm album

while not a unique single album, since they made a couple of them, i haven't heard another band that sounds anything like atheist's original run - tho' i figure there must exist some total worship band somewhere, since they're such a big name

This is quite a tricky one because almost every one of those albums that sparked off whole new genres was at some point probably completely unique. Imagine hearing Det Sem Engang Var by Burzum for the first time! Not exactly unique now but at the time there was nothing like it. I think it may be more interesting to list those records that are still, despite the benefit of hindsight entirely unique.

Off the top of my head I'd go:

Orchid by Opeth (I've never heard an extreme metal release that had this particular blend of death metal and black metal before. Every riff seems to be harmonized which really sets it apart from their later material for me)

Ocean Machine by Devin Townsend (His solo stuff is so varied but each album kind of has it's own vibe and I don't think he ever quite returned to the vibe of this record. Damn shame because it's his best by far imo. So dense and I dunno, watery...)

Atrocity - Hallucinations. Weird, unique, advanced, ahead of its time, dark, twisted and wonderful.

Botanist’s last EP, ‘Green Metal’, has no guitars with the riffs being played only on distorted dulcimers. It actually sounds sweet, though not super brutal. Still a unique record.

The two Acid Bath albums for sure. There’s nothing else with that sludgy yet still melodic, songwritery vibe that doesn’t skimp on the riff destruction.

DHG’s Umbra Omega is a really unique album, a sound I’ve heard nowhere else with their schizo opera tendencies and crazy piano riffs.

sort vokter's folkloric necro metal for sure, especially considering the clone bands spawned by the *somewhat* similar main project ildjarn. if there's anything like it, I'm definitely interested in it.

gorgoroth's incipit satan. it's hard to come up with a black metal record that has this overarching theme and tone of, well, love, if you get what I mean.

woods of infinity - förintelse & libido. this one is just insane, totally demented with all the weird samples and vocals. also different from the rest of their discography. I'm also keen to check out similar stuff.

diapsiquir - crasse. even though this is technically a demo, it still feels like an album because of the rerelease on hospital. defies any description. totally sick, totally french. again, I'm interested in similar stuff.

Diabolical Masquerade's "Death's Design", without a doubt. It sounds completely unique.

I would actually also put De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in this bracket. As a Black Metal album I think it basically stands alone as a crowning jewel of a genre due to its ferocity, its atmosphere and tone and Attila's eerie vocal performance. The production is cold but fairly clear and really quite bass heavy for BM. Everyone talks about the legions of imitators but I can't really think of another BM album that really sounds anything like this. I would argue most modern BM is much more musically inspired by Dissection, Ulver, Darkthrone and Burzum than Mayhem, but it's this album that I think will eternally rule the roost of "trve" second wave albums.

Ripping Corpse - Dreaming with the Dead

A death/thrash masterpiece that sounds unlike any other. Rutan's technical, unorthodox riffing style reminds me a lot of Morbid Angel's "Blessed are the Sick" and unknown death metal heroes Mass Pyschosis. This album can be chaotic as FUCK sometimes, but there's a perverse elegance beneath the madness that elevates this gem to truly macabre territory.

Sigh - Imaginary Sonicscape

This album is absolutely filled to the brim with inventiveness. I'm not a fan of a lot of so-called "Avant-Garde" metal albums that prioritize Diablo Swing Orchestra-styled wankery over truly imaginative songwriting. This is just excellent. A funky, psychedelic, synth-drenched roller coaster of an album that remains fresh its entire duration.



Have you listened to Mithras or Sarpanitum? They remind me a lot of Lykathea Aflame with their ethereal approach to brutality. Very exultant and triumphant sounding.

The last Mare album is great and sounds a lot like DMDS.

https://terraturpossessions.bandcamp.co ... bony-tower

Agreed with LA's death metal - that is an astounding work. Completely surreal and unlike any other album.

Other highlights.

Liturgy's The Ark Work. From my review: "[It was] almost by design, destined to fail in the traditional metal scene. It's the whole and wholesome visions of a figure that the scene cannot accept as genuine. It's an enthralling and extremely complex piece of music that reveals in intimate detail, the creator's passion and focus, and great works that do that will either fail or succeed wildly. explosive, organic and warm. It's an invitation to participate with the album, to listen to the nuances and the slight changes - to get lost in it. Every change from the previous albums was Hendrix's particular choice - the move to a warmer production is to reflect that heavenly nature, the chants replaced the screams to create a more religious atmosphere, and the move towards bells, horns, and all of that is to give Liturgy an otherworldly feel. This is the diametric opposite of so much in extreme metal right now - it's not cavernous, or "echo-drenched", it's not old school or menacing, it's not jarring and clanging - it's impossibly bright [and] cathartic.

Bolzer's Hero. An emotional, explosive album filled with sludgy yet bright and evocative riffs. Primal drumming that is both minimalist and devastatingly effective. The album is a full drive into a prelapsarian time, exploring spiritualism, tribal forces, and a search for transcendence. Musically it's not black metal, it's not death metal, it's not heavy metal, but it is definitively metal and nothing else sounds like it now. Unbelievably provocative and emotional album. Every time I listen it feels like a journey. It's so different from their earlier work while being a continuation of the themes.

Jute Gyte's Senescence - maintains traditional black metal roots while taking the genre to an extreme and poetic end. Riffs are simultaneously melodic, epic and distinctly USBM while still being insanely nuanced and serpentine. Amazing album that is unmatched by its peers.

Mayhem's [i]Grand Declaration of War[i] - Mayhem's best, most challenging, most brutal album. A complete examination of the death of religion and the wars and chaos that follows - a true harrowing experience where the riffs careen over each other and Hellhammer's (normally annoying) incessant blasting fits so perfectly into the chaotic mold of the album that it's hard to describe it as anything other than apocalyptic. The lyrics are goofy and over the top but the theatrical nature of it works so well. The electronic bits are well placed among the black metal and the ambient loops. A fantastic album.

the only one I know that sort of *comes close* to DMDS is ofermod's mysterion tes anomias, at least subjectively speaking in terms of atmosphere and aesthetics, and it's not even one single recording (session).

btw I fully agree with you on its unique character

i'm familiar with both (and think they're both great in their own ways), but while they also aren't so actively angry and hateful like most death metal, i don't really get the huge opposite positivity from them either, like i do with elvenefris. i guess sarpanitum is a bit closer with the happy feels, but it's also musically more dismemberish melodic (as an adjective) death metal, compared to the huge contrast in lykathea aflame's brutality and joyful harmony

I don't really get any kind of positive or joyful vibes from elvenefris, personally. It's a pretty cool album though.

I don't think I've ever heard anything else that sounds like Nuclear Deaths Carrion for Worm. It's just so fucking out there.

Disembowelment is a good one too, very unique and very good album.

Can't really think of two many albums that sound like Consuming Impulse either, but that could be due to that awesome phaser effect all over the record.

Ripping Corpse Is a good mention, except those were Shaun Kelly's riffs, not Rutans.

I think Realm of Chaos from Bolt Thrower is pretty unique sounding as well, super fucking heavy atmosphere too.

Endorama by Kreator.

It is impossible to categorize that album into any sort of genre.

Hail Spirit Noir's Pneuma is the first thing that comes to mind. One of my favorite albums of all time and there's really nothing it can be compared to.

https://hailspiritnoir666.bandcamp.com/album/pneuma

Demilich - Nespithe. Not really oldschool death metal, but also not technical death metal. Also not progressive, nor avant-garde death metal.

Krisiun - Black Force Domain. Sounds like a peculiar mix of oldschool death metal with modern brutal drumming

Hellwitch - syzisifdsfnlal miscreancy. ADHD thrash metal

Two of my all-time favourites that most definitely fit the bill here

Ved Buens Ende – Written In Waters
Monumentum – In Absentia Christi (this one in particular is HUGELY underappreciated. Some type of atmospheric/avant/goth-doom but so much more.)

Anything by Type O Negative also wouldn’t be out of place in this discussion.

Liturgy's "The Ark Work."
They don't like play grim music and they don't like wear corpse paint. And theyre kind of like sickened by like sort of reveling in negativity. And they wrote a like manifesto which is called 'transcendental black metal.' Which is the genre of music that they play. Basically two aspects of transcendental black metal. One is insofar as it is like, like, like a rejection of black metal, and, and the second is insofar as it's actually sort of like, like and attempt to like take black metal as seriously as you can possibly take it. And so, so that that this indication of kind of like transcendence and affirmation and ecstasy is I think something that is, have locked in, or, uh, like latent sort of, sort of like beneath all the kind of like of grim vibes of black metal theres this kind of like spiritual ecstasy. They are very interested in romantacism and I think that uh, romanticism is also a big of part of black metal, but that, when, when once again, like people, its sort of like an unacknowleged influence almost or something like that. Like, you know, like, like the tremolo, the tremolo picking and like black metal guitars like create the effect of like a string orchestra. Like you know like, that's what it does, and that's why like tonal harmonies work in black metal. But I think that a lot of black metal lacks the momentum and the development and sort of like the structure of like sort of like ecstatic romantic harmany and uh and so, so, so like part of the completing of Liturgy is sort of in this like sonata form vibe almost making sure it kind of starts somewhere and creates this like huge rapturous amount of momentum. Which comes from romanticism which does have a natural connection to black metal, though it's not always acknowledged.
And it isn't the only, the only thing that's composed in advance is like, the arc of decelerations and accelerations, you know, so it's like alright, when, when this chord comes up like it has to accelerate and then hit this like, grind moment or whatever you know. But then it's like what did I, what did I happens for like so many bars or, or not or whatever like that, um. That, that kind of just depends on sort of how, how we're vibing.
Hey man, this is straight from the source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ6LguUL-e8

But on a serious note, this is how I felt when I listened to Voivod's "Dimension Hatross" all the way through. It was one of my favorate albums for a while, and I'm not usually that into weird/progressive stuff like that.

Mandatory Faith No More's Angel Dust mention

Don't really know your other picks so I'll definitely have to check them out, but definitely agree with this one- though I might add that the THORNS album is potentially in at least the same ballpark.

But while we're on MAYHEM, I'd throw in ORDO AD CHAO as well. A great band that gets a lot of points for simply ignoring trends & doing their own thing each time out, which to me, is a large part of what black metal is really about (DARKTHRONE get points for this too, imo, even AS they move further from true black metal).

And while we're in the realm of bizarre cyborg/militaristic/industrial/futuristic, etc., (or however one would classify 'Grand Declaration Of War'), I'll mention ABIGOR'S 'FRACTAL POSSESSION' because it's similar in ways but still fairly unique in its own right.

Also, I didn't want to get too convoluted in one post so this is better separate, but back to Darkthrone, 'GOATLORD' is kind of unlike anything else I can think of

boris - Smile
The album had all of the genres they do mixed into one and did it the best I think compared to Pink. I don't think any dom, drone, or shogaze band can come close to boris/Boris's style.

Empyrium - Weiland
Sure there's a lot of neofolk/bm out there, but this album had a dark tone to it and combined the right pinch of bm into the mix with some of the tracks. I haven't heard any other bm/neofolk that can incorporate bm elements into their music but still be neofolk purely like that album was.

Enslaved - Monumension
A lot of bands now do a lot to incorporate proggy or spacey effects into their music, primarily Ukrainian/Russian stuff like Khors and Kroda, but Enslaved did some of the most psychedelic stuff with this album I've ever heard in bm. Songs like The Voices and Enemy I had a bad trip mixed with a 90s Disney Channel horror movie with all the blackened grime of late 90s black metal. It's hard to find albums that got it like they did.

October Rust was my first thought upon seeing the topic title. A very unique band for sure.

Tiamat - Wildhoney & A Deeper Kind Of Slumber

I still haven't found anything like it...

Enslaved are a great shout actually! They're late 90's/early 00's stuff is pretty much in a genre of it's own. Mardraum to Isa is such a good album run it's untrue although I think you could definitely lump Mardraum/Monumension together in terms of style. Below the Lights and Isa (I knot it's two separate records) have some of the most specific, transcendent and peculiar atmospheres in all of "Black Metal" to my ears.

this



DEFINITELY



hell yeah

let's not forget:


Mr Bungle - s/t
And Oceans - The Symmetry of I the Circle of O
Amesoeurs - s/t
Beyond Dawn - Revelry

Basically any album by Dødheimsgard, but specifically anything they released since 1998. Their last album was unlike any (black) metal album i heard before. They are definitely pushing the boundaries with their own unique sound and keep morphing into something new.

Sigh is of course in the same ball park, none of their album sound the same and they manage to successfully combine some of the most weird genres you can think of.

Morbid Angel's "illud divinum insanus" is certainly unique although for all the wrong reasons...

This. I tried to (drunkenly) write a review for it once, but it got rejected. I think I was too vague in trying to explain an album without any real reference point.

Manilla Road - basically anything by them, but we'll go with Mystification since it's my current favorite
Hammers of Misfortune - The August Engine

Going for more of an intrinsic weirdness here... as opposed to the more outward "let's throw in all different genres into a blending pot," these are bands who just compose songs in ways unlike anyone else, and have riffs and melodies that are strange and affecting and powerful.

Any of the last three A Forest of Stars albums. Part psychedelic black metal, part neofolk, part victorian era theatre, wholly weird and unique. Their latest even had the balls throw any and all vocal structures out of the window, reducing it to mad spoken word ramblings.

A Forest Of Stars are another great shout, very unique BM. The vibe in particular is outstanding, that whole Arthur Machen-y Victorian cult thing.

I just listened to Watershed Between Firmament and The Realm of Hyperborea by The Clearing Path... I haven't really heard anything quite like this band. Very cool, dissonant and cavernous death metal with a melodic, atmospheric and psychedelic edge.

Demilich - Nespithe

Weird album, very out there. A special brand of death metal that's very unique, complex, muddy and dirty (in a good way), and the structures are just so freakin' different from everything else you hear. And it's the band's only release. So it has got this aura of mystery and uniqueness because the band came to life, released this unique and weird monster, than disappeared.

Agalloch - The Mantle

Often bands have tried to imitate Agalloch, but none of them ever came close to mastering the sound. The Mantle is the most unique of their records. It's folk, it's black metal, it's doom metal, it's gothic rock, it's post-rock... it has got a great variety of instruments and the atmosphere is absolutely unique and recognizable.

Ulver - Bergtatt

The atmosphere! Especially on Troldskog Faren Vild, the first track on there, the atmosphere is just wow! With Varg's clean singing, his voice and the norwegian lyrics, mixed with a few riffs that repeat to build an amazing atmospheric black/folk track, they really had one hell of a receipe. The rest of the album is also quite amazing since the tracks all follow the same kind of song structures, but without the clean vocals.

__________________________________
Seconded on the Acid Bath records.
Seconded on Sigh's Imaginary Sonicscape.
Seconded on Bolt Thrower's Realm of Chaos. Great combination of british death metal and grind with the distinctive BT sound. Love it.

I second Ulver, and I must add their "Themes From William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell" here as well. Not sure if it qualifies for metal record, but it sure is an oddball, in a good way.

Agreed especially with DHG. Their last 3 have just been.. beyond. Truly demented. A Forest of Stars have been characterful, though their place in the genre's traditions is more identifiable.

Elvenefris is still unique. There's another uniquely happy-sounding record (two) from The Senseless; Sam Bean's post-The Berzerker project. In the Realm of the Senseless is a pretty joyous and irreverent take on the hyper fast, clinically brutal DM sound laid down by The Berzerker. Speaking of them, the s/t is still a totally unique industrial/noise/grind/DM experiment, better than and unlike the more stabilized lightning DM they'd play going on. Sam Bean took that later sound and made another unique blueprint in DM with The Senseless. Check em out.

I'm a little sceptical about these famous black and death metal albums being mentioned (Mayhem, Bolt Thrower) because they don't sound unique exactly, just haven't been totally paralleled as of now. Sometimes the atmosphere sticks out on a personal level, but it's difficult to tell others why.

I got turned onto Panegyrist - Hierurgy a while ago and that's a great avant-garde black metal album with all kinds of special atmosphere and techniques.

I think Melvins definitely deserve a place in this conversation. Some of the things they've done are unique within their own discography, such as The Bootlicker, which I call the "whisper album".

It has just dawned on me:
This timeless masterpiece, still misunderstood and challenging a listening experience after all those years: La Masquerade Infernale. The alpha and omega of uniqueness.

Nuclear Death - Bride of Insect
Nuclear Death - Carrion for Worm
Nuclear Death - All Creatures Great and Eaten
Nuclear Death - The Planet Cachexial

Consistent run of absolutely unique and perfect material.