Lithium-sulfur cells exhibit poor cycle life, due to the well-known 'polysulfide shuttle' enabled by the dissolution of the sulfur reduction products in organic electrolyte. Different strategies have been implemented to reduce the shuttle effects, with limited success, especially through use of low sulfur loadings (1-2 mg/cm 2 ). Dense electrodes with high sulfur loadings are essential for high energy cells, however, such electrodes experience more serious polysulfide effects. In this paper, we describe the benefits of blending sulfur with a transition metal sulfide (here, TiS 2 and MoS 2 ) to form dense composite cathodes with enhanced conductivity. There is an improvement in both the initial capacity from sulfur utilization (∼800 mAh/g based on sulfur content), the coulombic efficiency (>96%) and also in cycle life upon blending with the metal sulfide. High sulfur loadings (>12 mg/cm 2 or ∼6 mAh/cm 2 per side) were demonstrated to display high sulfur utilization in Li-S cells containing the metal sulfide blends either with or without coatings over the sulfur cathode. XRD studies were carried out to understand the redox behavior of the metal sulfide additive during charge/discharge cycling of the sulfur cathodes. DC polarization and Potentiometric Intermittent Titration Technique (PITT) measurements were made on sulfur cathodes with and without metal sulfide blends to determine the charge transfer and diffusional kinetics. Since their inception in 1991, Li-ion batteries 1 have progressed at a rapid pace, with a three-fold enhancement in their performance achieved through many advances in both electrode materials and electrolytes.2-9 Current Li-ion cells from commercial vendors (e.g., Panasonic, LG and Samsung) provide an impressive specific energy of >250 Wh/kg and energy density of >600 Wh/l which are benefiting a wide range of applications including portable electronic devices, electric vehicles and aerospace needs. Yet, many of the emerging markets such as electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies place even higher demands on the battery technologies, both in terms of performance and cost. It is believed that the performance of lithium-ion technologies has reached a plateau, and any future improvements will only be marginal. Replacement of graphite anodes with Si, and conventional 4 V cathodes with the high voltage Li-rich layered-layered composite cathodes, 10,11 has not yet successfully been applied to commercial batteries. Accordingly, any gains in specific energy and energy density have been modest so far after a decade of development. 12,13 There is, thus, a pursuit for more energetic battery technologies beyond Li-ion batteries. This has led to a renewed interest in the lithiumsulfur system, which has the highest theoretical specific energy of all the known rechargeable systems (due to the high capacity of sulfur, 1672 mAh/g, ∼ 6-10x of Li-ion cathodes), with the notable exception of Li-O 2 which itself has several serious fundamental hurdles that are not close to being overcome.14-16 The spe...