10 Best Metal Bands Of The Last 10 Years

OK, real talk: Black Crown Initiate’s twenty-minute debut Song of the Crippled Bull is the single greatest EP to have come out of progressive death metal since Opeth stopped growling. Packed to the brim with aggression, melody, masterful pacing, unpredictability, brevity and intelligent reprises, that short little kick to the nuts just had everything you could ever want from a heavy prog experience.

Two full-length albums down the line, Black Crown Initiate are still a quintessential name in extreme, American experimentalism. Most recently, the quintet wowed once again with their 2016 sophomore full-length The Selves We Cannot Forgive, a fully realised opus that expertly expands upon everything that made Song of the Crippled Bull the masterful opus that it is.

It’s impossible to deny the sheer heavy metal brilliance that can be found in the opening explosion of “For Red Cloud”, the lengthy and tonally diverse epic “Belie the Machine”, the sorrowful melodies of “Vicious Lives” and the building-levelling breakdowns of the bipolar title track.

All this and more makes The Selves We Cannot Forgive the true, expansive sequel to one of the greatest metal EP’s of all time and, hopefully, another rung on Black Crown Initiate’s continued climb to success.