Best Death Metal Album of Each Year Since 1985

Here is the best death metal album of each year since 1985.

Yes, we’re starting in 1985. It’s a divisive year for some as the true birth of death metal is at a decades-long standstill with Possessed‘s Seven Churches and Death‘s Scream Bloody Gore still locking horns.

There is no way to solve this debate and both albums will forever be linked with one another in this manner. What that ultimately means, is nobody gets left out. And that’s why we’re not leaving anyone out either and are peeling back death metal’s timeline to 1985 when a group of high school students made something revolutionary.

Excluding Possessed just seems trivial, no? With that oversized elephant now addressed and being drawn out of the room, that leaves us much more space to discuss all the gut-check breakdowns, heaving riffs, clinical leads, bowel-emptying bellows and every other disgusting sound death metal has managed to bring to the butcher’s table.

Anyway, that’s a lot to do about just one of nearly four full decades of death metal.

Surely, you’ll disagree about many of the selections below, which is fine. Go ahead, debate! That’s what this is all about and, with the abundantly rich years of the early ’90s and a litany of all-time classics, making these decisions can be agonizing.

Prepare to take in the expansive sounds of death metal in all of its deranged forms as we examine the Best Death Metal Album of Each Year Since 1985 in the gallery below.