The last album from Sweden’s Martyrdöd, 2012’s Paranoia, was a fire-starting collision of crust punk and melodic death metal with some lead-guitar heroics that occasionally lifted the whole thing to Iron Maiden-levels of fist-pumping anthemry; it landed at #8 on our list of that year’s best metal albums. The band’s 2014 release, Elddop, didn’t merely improve on their already incredible body of work; it distilled Martyrdöd’s sound to its most exciting elements, leaving everything but the highlights on the cutting-room floor. Elddop opens with a few bars of ominous doom, then quickly shifts into ultra-catchy, hard-shredding d-beat, similar to Disfear’s incredible 2008 LP, Live The Storm — but more — and it stays in that gear for the next 45 minutes. A lot of metal in 2014 was either self-consciously mirroring legends of the past or uncomfortably evolving into something not always recognizable as metal; Elddop, on the other hand, felt totally fresh and thrillingly new, yet achieved those ends only using tools fashioned in the ancient forges. (It’s worth noting that the name Martyrdöd looks and sounds an awful lot like the name Motörhead.) I can’t imagine any generation of metal fan for whom Elddop would seem inappropriate — in many ways, it’s the very essence of metal. Or you could just call it essential. –Michael [LISTEN]