Gotta give a shoutout to the End of Year lists from Angry Metal Guy blog. They have a pretty good balance of popular and underground metal from a bunch of different writers with different genre preferences.
They introduced me to Warcrab and Xoth this year, at least.
Second AMG (I wrote an AMG Bot for this community that I can't get working due to some instances being behind cloudflare). They've exposed me to a lot of smaller bands that I wouldn't have known about otherwise. They're particularly helpful if you enjoy non-cvlt Black Metal, Death Metal and Doom Metal.
Side note OP: I love your posts. Many's the time I've seen something I haven't listened to in years and have a good couple of hours going through their back catalogue.
I’m gonna third AMG! It’s one of the few review sites that I think has consistently good reviews of a decently wide array of metal. And I’m not just saying that because I agree with them…I’m saying that because they introduced me to Blood Incantation. Which anyone unfamiliar should absolutely give a listen!