This album shows how an album can be or is very much a piece of art: i could look at this cover art forever, the production is eerie dry and cold and the drone and ambient interludes sound kind of artsy. Overall visionary.
Maybe not the best songwriting but the music is so ice-cold and tightly executed that this album cannot be ignored for this list. And it stands out as being comfortably straight forward death metal with complex and dissonant details at the same time.
I gave up trying to get into Paradise Lost, but the rest is certainly on my radar, the list goes into bookmarks (only checked out Deafheaven's newest so far, which is exactly as good as you're describing)
