MUSIC WENT WEIRD

xtreme metal has a long history of arriving at the doors of perception, but perhaps unsurprisingly, this was the year that more people than ever heard it knocking. If 2019 wasn’t short of surreal, sense-heightening visions it could call its own – with stunning albums from France’s standard-bearers of avant-garde black metal, Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord, as well as sci-fi-obsessed, multi-dimensional death metallers Blood Incantation – they didn’t feel of their time in quite the same way as this year’s crop of sonic psychonauts did. New albums from the likes of Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu, New York City’s Imperial Triumphant, Leeds’ Cryptic Shift and more beamed down into