The Top 10 Albums Most Mistaken for Metal in 2024

Once upon a time, the battle cry championed by metal bands was "Death to False Metal", it's a sentiment going back to the earliest beginnings of the genre when it drew lines to separate itself from the bands of the Sunset Strip who wanted the look but were making glammed out pop music. Today kids are thin-skinned and take offense screaming out that this is gatekeeping rather than seeing it as quality control standards. Most of those people just need to feel like they belong wherever they want to go and call those who actually belong there elitists as a projection of their own insecurities. 

I'm here to say fuck your feelings. In the interest of this blog's mission statement pledging to always tell it like it is easy even if you can't handle the truth. After seeing albums like those represented here appearing on metal top ten lists, I think it fair to set the record straight and have some truth in advertising to pick out the top ten offenders in this regard. Four of these entries are great albums, they just are not great metal albums. They are great rock, shoe-gaze, and trip-hop albums, just not metal. There are a few that are terrible, but they are also not metal so here we go setting the record straight for you.  

 10- Unto Others - "Never Neverland" 

These guys used to make cock rock dressed up as goth, but now they are applying that template to pop music, it's catchier than their previous work, Wish it was darker than it is. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/08/unto-others-never-neverland.html

9-Haunted Plasma -"I' 

This album features members of Oranassi Pazuzu, but that doesn't make it metal. It does carry a great dark throb to it and has Mat McNeary lending his voice to this album, so it sometimes sounds like Grave Pleasures on acid. Lots of metal comes from Finland, this project is not counted among that. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/04/haunted-plasma-i.html

8-Dool- "The Shape of Fluidity" 

There were once doom metal elements to what they did on their previous album. This more rock n roll approach to things works as they are appearing on more end-of-the-year lists, which means they are getting more recognition, which works for me, as they deserve it even if they are growing away from metal. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/05/dool-shape-of-fluidity.html

7-Bring me the Horizon - ""Post Human -NeX GEn" 

This is a fun pop album, Pierce the Veul might do it better, but kids seem to like this, though kids don't know any better as they are young and dumb, we know better, making it our job to set the record straight, distortion or the occasional scream does not make things metal, even pop bands throw temper tantrums from time to time. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/05/bring-me-horizon-post-human-nex-gen.html

6-Devin Townsend- "Powernerd" 

Here is a good case in point of an artist who was in a metal band (Strapping Young Lad) branching off to play other kinds of music, Sure the influence of their metal past is there, but that does not make their current project metal. What this album proves is Def Leppard would be fools for not asking Devy to produce their next album as he sounds more like them than they have in decades. If you are tempted to say Def Leppard is metal then you should keep your mouth shut before you embarrass yourself. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/11/devin-townsend-powernerd.html

5-Pallbearer - "Mind Burns Alive" 

It was not so long ago these guys were a doom-metal band. People change and artists grow out of genres and do other things, I can accept that. These guys made one of the year's best shoe-gaze albums, so at least if they are no longer a metal band they are good at what they are doing. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/04/pallbearer-mind-burns-alive.html

 

4-Zeal & Ardor-"Grief" 

This one made it onto my worst albums of 2024 list. This project has a long history of being mislabeled thanks to the wishful thinking of the music press. They were first called black metal when they had more in common with ni-metal, and now they are just a shitty rock band who might as well be Breaking Benjamin or some other radio shit. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/08/zeal-ardor-grief.html

3-Poppy-"Negative Spaces" 

I like this album, and while Poppy has appropriated metal in the past, this album kind of splits the difference between her flirtations with nu-metal and the pop of her previous album. There is a mainstream radio rock formula on most of these songs that she makes work thanks to her quirky charisma. I think the guest appearance she did with Knocked Loose this year has made people unable to compartmentalize her from her own career, but this is not a metal album, industrial-influenced pop at best. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/11/poppy-negative-spaces.html

2-Linkin Park -"From Zero"

Lumped in with nu-metal, but they have never been a metal band. This album brings that fact to the forefront. It's not a bad album though unable to live up to its hype, this is a fun lighthearted pop album that its fans are taking way too seriously. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/11/linkin-park-from-zero.html

1-Chelsea Wolfe -" She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She"

She's never made a metal album, there are albums where that is used as a dynamic in a few songs, but never throughout. This is more of a trip-hop album it is closer to Portishead than Motorhead, and yet it keeps appearing on metal lists because people are well ...stupid. I prefer the acoustic episode to this one , as it sounds more like her, but it continues to grow on me.  Regardless of how good it is, if you think this is metal, you clearly don't know what you are talking about. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2024/02/chelsea-wolfe-she-reaches-out-to-she.html

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