19 Most Anticipated Alternative Rock and Metal Albums of 2019: its shaping up to be a potentially amazing year for rock fans.

Hello folks and a belated happy New Year! 2019 is off and running, and for those hoping for some rocking new tunes during our current, crazy times, all signs point to a truly great year for alternative, metal and electronic music.

Click here for our list of the best albums of 2018

Indeed, 2019 will see releases from some bands who haven’t put out new material for over a decade, and prove a nice balance between veteran acts and up and comers, making for a diverse and exciting musical year.

With that in mind, here are our picks for the most anticipated albums of 2019:

 

19. Youth Code

Industrial metal has been due for a renaissance for a while now, and L.A.’s Youth Code spearheaded the revival with 2016’s excellent Commitment to Complications. Expect more serrated beats, haunting hellscapes and howling vocals on their upcoming (and as yet untitled) release.

 

18. Body Count Carnivore

Body Count defied expectations on 2017’s Bloodlust, leaving their earlier output in the dust with its brutal groove-laden assault. For this year’s follow-up, Ice-T says, “It’s basically: ‘Fuck vegans.’ We figure, anything carnivorous pretty much kicks ass. We’re carnivorous! I’m not [really] saying ‘Fuck vegans.” Everyone’s so pussy right now, [so] we’re carnivores.”

 

17. Chromatics Dear Tommy?

We’ve awaited this enigmatically titled album from the Portland synth-wavers since 2014, but band mastermind Johnny Jewel keeps moving the goalposts for reasons both personal and mysterious. Nonetheless, 2018 saw the début of the first single Black Walls, so hopefully 2019 is when it will finally materialize.

 

16. Phil Anselmo’s En Minor

Anselmo goes goth? That’s the intriguing left field premise behind the former Pantera vocalist’s new project En Minor. The singer reveled in a 2017 interview that “I guess it would be my, ‘Hello, great dark Eighties, of Sisters of Mercy, of the Cure’s Seventeen Seconds record and Faith album … [inspired by] early the Cure, early U2, Nick Cave and the fucking Bad Seeds or the Birthday Party, David Bowie…I’m just trying to broaden my horizons, write some harkening songs.” Color us very intrigued to hear the end results.

 

15. Mastodon

The Southern sludge titans are readying their return in 2018 beginning with a new single. In a recent interview with Kerrang, Guitarist Bill Kelliher calls it “a basher…brutal” while drummer Brann Dailor added it’s “as heavy as I’ve heard us in a while.”

The track should drop shortly, and the band will work in earnest on a new album after their 2018 tour concludes.

 

14. Garbage

Shirley Manson and co. just released Destroying Angels, a dark new single featuring X’s a John Doe and Exene Cervenka for Record Store Day, and there’s reportedly more to come, so get ready.

 

13. Slipknot

The band surprised fans with the new single All Out Life last year, and if that song is any indication, their new album (tentatively due for release this summer) will be another classic collection of downtuned slammers.

 

12. Filter Rebus

After years of working with hired hands with mixed results, Filter frontman Richard Patrick is finally reuniting with original member Brian Liesgang, his collaborator behind the band’s breakthrough 1995 album Short Bus.

Fittingly, the new crowdfunded album is called Rebus. According to the band’s Pledge Music page “It appears that perhaps time, circumstance, and the stark reality of modern events have indeed driven Richard and Brian together again to do what they do best together.” Sounds good to us.

 

11. Chelsea Wolfe LP7

Wolfe’s transformation from goth chanteuse to doom metal priestess has been fascinating to behold, but it looks like she’s going to return to her ethereal folk roots this year as witnessed via the cryptic tweet below:

2019 pic.twitter.com/jDSb9wZAPu

— Chelsea Wolfe (@CCHELSEAWWOLFE) January 3, 2019

We’re here for it.

 

10. Ministry

Ministry made their best album since the Bush year’s with 2018’s Amerikkkant, which saw them trying to make sense of the Trump administration as only Al Jourgensen can.

And they’re showing no signs of slowing down: Jourgensen recently told Billboard that “this next album is going to be much more of a positive message of ‘How do we get out of Trump and keep it that way?’ So I’m thinking about this in a structural sense. We’re getting a lot more into electronics again and scratching, as opposed to three chords and a cloud of dust and shouting as loud as you can through blown-out speakers. That’s certainly served its purpose for me for a while, but I think we’re getting into more heady material.”

And the new album may also feature former member Paul Barker, who Jourgensen recently mended fences with: “We’re actually talking about doing something in the very near future…so who knows what may pop up on the next Ministry album. That’s really gonna get the old school crowd going.”

 

9. Sunn O)))

The drone metal masters haven’t released new material since 2015 (save for soundtrack work on trippy horror flicks The Devil’s Candy and Mandy), but that’s about to change. The group are recording with veteran producer Steve Albini. We can only imagine what beautiful, brutal music they’ll forge together.

 

8. Baroness

2019 will see the long-awaited follow-up to 2016’s acclaimed Purple, and will feature the group’s new guitarist Gina Gleason. While details are sparse, the band have kept fans on the edge of their seats with a December Instagram post, which simply said “Just you wait and see… #redalbum #bluerecord #yellow&green #purple #???”

 

7. Chemical Brothers No Geography 

The techno pioneers are readying their new album No Geography for a Spring 2019 release, and the two singles that have been released thus far (Free Yourself and MAH) point to another collection of irresistible, relentless grooves.

 

6. Deftones

Deftones 2012 release Koi No Yokan was arguably their best since White Pony, but 2016’s Gore was more of a mixed bag. We’ll have to see what the group have in store for their next album they’re currently recording, but recent Instagram photos suggests guitarist Stephen Carpenter may be more involved than their prior outing.

 

5. Danzig

Glenn Danzig claims that 2019 will finally see the release of his long-in-the-works Elvis Presley covers album, followed by some live shows, telling Full Metal Jackie that “I can’t wait for everyone to hear it. A lot of people ask me about it all the time when I’m on the road. So it will be nice to get it out in some period in 2019 and do some of those little intimate shows I was talking about.”

 

4. Faith No More

Okay, this is probably the biggest longshot on this list: I’ve yet to see any other anticipated album lists with FNM on it, but given keyboardist Roddy Bottum’s recent interview admission that  he “will periodically go to San Francisco and make music with those guys…I think we all acknowledge that it’s not something that any of us wanna turn our backs on, and it’s kind of fun to do. So in the hopes of pushing things forward and making new music, we continue to do that, to get together and make new sounds.”

So they ARE making new music. Whether it’ll be released, or if Mike Patton will return, is up in the air, but their story isn’t over yet.

 

3. My Bloody Valentine

While the wait between 1991’s classic Loveless and its 2013 follow-up mbv proved an insanely long wait, it appears we won’t have nearly as long for their upcoming material–even though it was first announced as a 2018 EP release.

Frontman Kevin Shields teased what fans can expect in a Japanese interview, saying that “There will be a lot of new material coming in the next year, there will be about two new records.” The band have already debuted two new tracks during live 2018 performances, and they plan to hit the road in 2019, so expect an album to potentially drop around tour kickoff time.

 

2. The Cure

It’s been 10 years since The Cure’s last album 4:13 Dream–and while Robert Smith has teased the release of a companion album of previously recorded material, he now appears to have scrapped it in favor of all new songs.

Smith told Sirius XM last month “We’re going in about six weeks time to finish up what will be our first album in more than a decade. It’s very exciting times for us all around.”