The Black Dahlia Murder Albums Ranked

The Black Dahlia Murder are an American institution at this point, the Metallica of melodeath. 

If you read this site, then you know them and their music. They’re as great as they’ve ever been with their current lineup—vocalist and co-founder Brian Eschbach, lead guitarist Brandon Ellis, rhythm guitarist Ryan Knight, bassist Max Lavelle, and drummer Alan Cassidy. 

Let’s tackle their catalog.

10. Unhallowed (2003)

Unhallowed is a surprisingly-confident debut, mostly because Eschbach pretty much knew from the outset what he wanted TBDM to be—which is to say: melodeath played like hardcore punk. Similarly, Trevor Strnad emerged nearly fully developed as a vocalist—wielding both a strangled rasp and a possessed growl—and he was already a solid writer. He’s always been able to unnerve in a single couplet, and Unhallowed has its share, like “Another trophy of my blood-fed psychosis / Another body to mangle, to ravage, and explore.” Here, he establishes themes that he’d return to for his entire career, including zombies, werewolves, and necrophilia. The only real downside here is the drumming and soloing. They’re adequate, but are overshadowed on later albums. Still, Black Dahlia kicked in the door with their first full-length and have been using it as a (rough) blueprint ever since.

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9. Miasma (2005)

Their sophomore effort is an upgrade from Unhallowed in every way, including new drummer Zach Gibson. Lyrically, Strnad goes darker than the band’s debut, coinciding with improved story-telling. What sets Miasma apart in the band’s catalog, though, is the non-horror material. Strnad’s unusually political on this record, discussing the futility of war (“In vengeance we are born / To our fucking graves / The greatest tribe forever”) and his generation’s apathy towards life (“No, we don’t wanna work / We just wanna fuck, swallow pills, and forget our curses”). With more and improved soloing, as well as a handful of songs that veer as close to verse-chorus-verse as they’d ever get, Miasma is the easiest entry point into the band’s catalog.

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8. Servitude (2024)

Black Dahlia’s newest full-length is their first without Strnad, as well as their first with Knight since Abysmal (see #7). Eschbach is an admirable replacement for Strnad, even if Eschbach’s writing is a bit pedestrian compared to Strnad—e.g., “Foraging to sustain / Clumsily, I learned this frame / Such brilliant lights and sounds / Into the village I was lured down.” The songs and musicianship, however, are as strong as anything in the quintet’s catalog, featuring some of Ellis’ finest solos, and Cassidy’s superb, career-best drumming. If you were worried that Strnad’s death would adversely affect the band, fear not. Servitude is the band’s shortest record to date, but it sounds like The Black Dahlia Murder, and that’ll do just fine.

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7. Abysmal (2015)

For Abysmal, ghouls and goblins are minimized. Instead, humans are the threat: they’re Vlad the Impaler (“Torture, a past time of bloodiest sorts / I feel I should be thanked for those fiends I abort”), they’re rich assholes who lock up family members with mental illness in institutions that treat them like animals (“Mistreated and molested / Fed food not fit for pigs”), and they’re killers who wear their victims’ skin (“I prefer to leave the facial tissue still connected to the scalp / A woman I am not, but flowing locks will surely help”). The record’s title is apt, because this is about as close to rock-bottom-bleak as you can get.

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6. Verminous (2020)

Black Dahlia’s ninth record finds them downshifting a bit from Nightbringers (see #4) and letting a groove metal influence seep in (especially Cassidy’s fluid playing). Verminous, then, is a sleeker and catchier Everblack (see #2) There are several moments that could be considered hooks, and even a handful of memorable choruses (!). Lyrically, Strnad finds a theme in the world unseen (“This kingdom’s our excremental answer / To the fecal world you’ve built”) and the icky things that live there (“We creep / And we crawl / Through you”). This album has the dubious honor of being the last one with Strnad’s untimely death. He was a unique talent in metal, and he will be missed. When he snarls, “He who created us did break the mold / A sick evolution’s bastard masterpiece,” that was as self-aware as anything he ever wrote.

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5. Nocturnal (2007)

Nocturnal kicked off an impressive three-album run. With the addition of drummer Shannon Lucas and his fluid technicality, the band and the songs sprint faster than ever before, as if they’re being chased by one of Strnad’s nightmares. Strnad, meanwhile, continued improving as a lyricist, and he offers some truly unsettling material—indeed, his writing almost makes you empathize with his demented characters with lines like “I did my best to love you while you did live and breathe / This tender taxidermy, trophy of the bereaved”—while he becomes more performative in his delivery (in the kindest-possible sense) that further elevates his writing and the record as a whole. This is where Black Dahlia truly began.

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4. Nightbringers (2017)

This is the sound of Black Dahlia reborn. Perhaps Ellis joining (and replacing Knight on lead guitar) helps explain it. Nightbringers fucking gallops in a way that its two predecessors didn’t. Ellis, fittingly, wastes no time proving he was the correct choice: his playing is marvelous, with his leadwork and soloing bringing a melodic majesty to the band’s sound. Speaking of (re)awakening: a lyrical motif of the album is (horrific) births—e.g., “Spider sacks erupt / A million tiny princes / Pouring from her hollowed hull / Hungry for flesh.” And Strnad demonstrates once more that he can perturb in just two lines: “The smell of entrails wrestling the nose / Gutted and splayed; to hell sweet mommy goes.” The album opens with a song about a skilled assassin: “Killing is my business,” snarls Strnad, “and at my business I excel.” After eight albums, there was no doubt left.

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3. Deflorate (2009)

Their fourth record is their most intense to this point. Perhaps it was the injection of new blood— Knight replacing John Kempainen on lead guitar—that inspired such sprint-heavy songwriting. Much of the material seems to tear through time. The title’s fitting, then, because there’s a theme of tearing down what once was—“The children now are bleeding; we eunuchate his sons / To evil, blood, and fire this earth will soon succumb”—that runs through the album. Eschbach and Knight, meanwhile, throw out one catchy riff after another. And the latter spends the entire record improving upon Kempainen with thoughtfully-showy playing throughout. Deflorate is where the band finally put all the pieces—speed, intensity, musicianship, and performances—together.

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2. Everblack (2013)

Everblack is the most Black Dahlia Murder album. It’s not quite their longest record, but the average song length is: four and a half minutes. These (mostly longer) tracks have some groove to them, and are filled with satisfying and nifty riffing and soloing throughout, as well as stellar drumming from newcomer Cassidy. And the album features some of Strnad’s most (gleefully) immoral writing—to wit, you only write a song about having an amputee fetish and one about the vine-rape scene from Evil Dead if you’re trying to out-do yourself. The title and cover are appropriate because this is the band’s heaviest and, well, blackest work.

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1. Ritual (2011)

Black Dahlia’s stunning fifth record is the band’s most singular work, with the titular idea as the topic. Songs about werewolves, child-r*pe and -murder, human sacrifice, and profiting from grave-robbing are all ritualistic in nature, at least to Strnad’s characters. Of that last one, shows off by sketching out a character in just a few lines: “The blackened bits of exhumed evidence / Embedded ’neath my fettered fingernails / It’s but a smallish part of what our dirty work entails.” Knight, meanwhile, took a bigger part of the creative process, resulting in some of the most inventive riffing in the band’s catalog—riffs dance and twirl around Lucas’ best-ever drumming. “No, you shan’t kill Halloween,” snarls Strnad early on, “For we’ve bore it in our blood." Ritual is all the proof you’d need.

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