50 Best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Albums Of 2017

A nightmarish ghoul of a record, Völur’s sophomore album Ancestors is as doomy as doom metal could ever hope to be.

Probably the least conventional entry on this list (and that is saying a lot given the names we have coming up), Ancestors is the only album of the fifty in this article to not rely on the archetypal vocals–guitars–bass–drums combo. Instead, the three Canadian artistes behind Völur are double bassist Lucas Gadke, violinist Laura Bates and drummer James Payment.

Not a guitar in sight, which may seem blasphemous, but that’s only because you haven’t heard the kind of dissonant, soul-destroying heaviness that Völur specialises in yet. The percussion has the weight of a ten-tonne anvil and the upright bass has the crushing resonance of an earthquake, while Bates’s strings add an unhallowed dissonance reminiscent of such haunting soundtracks as those to The Shining (1980) or Psycho (1960). Vocal passages are few and far between and, when they are found, are either slow-burning and choral à la dark, European folk or immense growls channelling the likes of Chris Reifert.

The four songs found on Ancestors stretch the album to over fifty minutes in length, the sheer, slow enormity of the album giving it a dark, patient atmosphere that no album in 2017 has even come close to recreating.