Wolves in the Throne Room -
Diadem of 12 Stars
Best black metal album of 2006 thus far. Great for fans of USBM like Weakling (these guys do what Weakling did, but a whole lot better and not boring). Great harmonized black metal with a modern guitar tone, folk elements, and guest female vocals.
My favorite album by my favorite band:
Solefald -
Pills Against the Ageless Ills
The quintessential post-black metal album. Heavily guitar driven, not as electronic and experimental as their previous album,
Neonism and not as atmospheric as their next album,
In Harmonia Universali, this album incorporates influences from other guitar-driven genres, like old prog rock, punk, etc.
Darvulia -
L'Alliance des Venins
Great damn black metal. Combines the minimalistic stylings of second-wave black metal and the semi-technical dissonant songwriting and cleaner, more modern production of third-wave BM bands, in particular, their other French contemporaries, such as Deathspell Omega.
Benighted -
Identisick
Everything you could want in a death metal album: groove, brutality, technicality,
and its fair share of melody. One of the few death metal bands that can pull off an album with ultra-spiffy, modern production. If you don't listen to this, you don't like good death metal. One of 2006's best.
Saprogenic -
Ichneumonid
Saprogenic: one of the very few good things to come out of Michigan. For fans of brutal death metal (like Suffocation). This album was a breath of fresh air in the brutal death scene as most recent brutal death albums have been incredibly generic, lackluster, and contrived. Saprogenic's songwriting drastically matured and improved since their first album,
The Wet Sound of Flesh on Concrete. Rather than playing two great riffs for about two and a half to three minutes, they'd tossed in more with a surprising element--melody.
Dismember -
The God That Never Was
Holy shit this album restored my faith in the Swedes. Not having released anything decent since like 1993 and having put out a lot of crap (see Bloodbath, most of the Gothenburg melo-death movement) for over the past decade, Dismember comes back with their best album since
Like an Ever Flowing Stream and
Indecent & Obscene with a surprisingly amazing death metal album. Just as groovy as their first two albums but even heavier and more melodic! There should be no reason any death metal fan wouldn't like this. Best death metal in over two years.