Sorrowful Black Metal from Minnesota. The tracks unfold with so much fragility and introspection that I would almost be tempted to call it post-black. The heaviness and coarseness is scaled back. It's there, but shares space with mournful cello and spiralling atmospherics. I
Read MoreAs AC/DC once sang ‘It’s a long way to top if you wanna rock n’ roll’. Next year marks Black Dahlia Murder’s 20th anniversary as a band, yet it only now feels that they beginning to exert themselves as a force to be reckoned with. They have slogged, toured and released nine albums (counting this one), slowly but surely building both a fanbase and a name for themselves.
Read MoreFounding member (and stalwart of Classic Doom acts My Dying Bride and Solstice) Hamish Glencross describes “Reflections” as a 'love letter to doom in its entirety; its history and its present state’. He couldn't be more right (unsurprisingly as he wrote and recorded the darn thing) as this is the entire forty odd year history of Doom Metal distilled into 54 mins and 33 seconds.
Read MoreI was saving a space in the top ten for this record. If anyone could make sense of 2020 then it's the Boss. He is the greatest American singer songwriter of all time (and if anyone is screaming Dylan at this point, well you are wrong) and no one else weaves stories like he does. With the dependable E-Street band by his side, the stage was set for Bruce to produce the definitive soundtrack to this most bizarre and unprecedented of years.
Read MoreIntricate heavy Prog from Sweden. This is a dense and highly technical record. Vulkan are obviously accomplished musicians and they manage to build layer upon layer of sumptuous and complex sound. One of things that adds additional interest to the record is that, in the main, they sing in their native language.
Read MoreYes, you are reading this right. Not only is there are a Marylin Manson album on this list, but it is higher than my beloved Springsteen. I have been very honest in the past that I have never got Brian Warner and his ego driven goth-industrial horror show. He emerged at a time when I was busy being an Indie-Kid and on my return to Metal in the early noughties, he seemed to me little more than a Poundland Alice Cooper with authority issues. Over the year’s various lacklustre encounters at various festivals did nothing to redeem his reputation in my eyes. Until now.
Read MoreI’m about halfway through this and I am pretty certain I have overused my life allocation of the word melodic. There is a lot of melody in the list, a surprising amount for something that is, in the main, grounded in Heavy Metal. However (and you knew that there was a however coming) there is nothing melodic about “Sulfuric Disintegration”.
Read MorePortuguese Black Metal that further pushes the boundaries of the genre. There is no denying that “Limbo” is an intense and, at times, impenetrable album. Having said that, there is an expansive and almost anthemically joyous sound to be found across the six tracks.
Read MoreGerman Black metallers that have gone all goth with their seventh record. They started the metamorphization a couple of albums back, however “Black House” marks the culmination of their transformation as there is absolutely no Black Metal in this record.
Read MoreEvery year the process of compiling this list throws up albums by veteran acts that are a lot better than they deserve to be. This year’s winner of the “bloody hell are they still around” award is none other than Blue Oyster Cult. It is hard to believe, but they were already seen as a spent force back when I was first getting into Metal in the mid to late eighties. However here we are forty-four years on from the seminal “Agents of Fortune” with them not only still ploughing their unique furrow but also managing to produce a warm, engaging and highly enjoyable record.
Read MoreContinuing with the legends theme, here comes one of the most influential, but also one of the most unsung, British metal bands of the last thirty years. Their grubby fingerprints are all over our music’s evolution during the last three decades, yet they are still very much a cult concern.My Dying Bride marry goth and doom in totally unique way.
Read MoreThe name Valkyrie gives the impression that this is a bunch of Viking obsessed Scandinavians singing songs of Norse warriors sailing out into adventure. That however couldn’t be further from the truth. Valkyrie are a stoner rock outfit from Virginia and Fear is all about primal bluesy riffs, there are no fake plastic swords or helmets here.
Read MoreIf my relationship with The Deftones was a Facebook status it would say "it’s complicated". I adored “White Pony” and 2003’s self-titled masterpiece. To my ears they sound other-worldly; they had Metal’s power and aggression, but they managed to traverse genre boundaries. Sadly, subsequent releases left me cold until 2016's “Gore” once again pulled me back in. It seduced me with its alternating layers of noise and fragile melody.
Read MoreAnother band I have a checkered past with. I have just never got them. Back in the day, I rather liked “Arise” and “Chaos AD”, but heretically I found “Roots” to be a lot of fuss about nothing. It felt, to me, to be a lot of testosterone fuelled male posturing and, in my eyes, Sepultura came to represent the toxic masculinity side of Metal that I personally find so repulsive.
Read More“Volume III” lets its tracks unfold like rambling poems. It is in no hurry to get to the harsh bits. In fact, the journey feels more important than the end destination. It takes you by the hand and pulls you down a rabbit hole of swirling atmospherics. The five tracks become separate bubble universes. They trap you inside and rob you of all sense of time.
Read MoreBlisteringly heavy and brutally fast, this is dubbed Extreme Hardcore, but it shares a lot of DNA with the more excessive end of Death Metal and, of course, my beloved Grind-core. The tracks here slam at you, dripping with conviction and consternation. This is an angry album; it certainly not going to take any more, using walls of snarling guitars and precising vocals to push that point home.
Read MoreI have visited in on his collaborations (Soulsavers and the Gutter Twins to name two), his curiosities (the three wonderful albums with Isobel Campbell), his cameo’s (Queens of the Stone Age) and his never-ending conveyor belt of solo albums of which this is the 13th.
Read MoreThis album is very reminiscent of Opeth back when they were a Death Metal band. It easily could be the album that they should have made after “Watershed”. All of this is completely understandable as White Stones is the Death Metal side project of Opeth's long standing bassist Martín Méndez.
Read MoreNamed after the Uriah Heep album, Demons and Wizards is a match made in Power Metal heaven. It see’s Iced Earth’s six string maestro Jon Schaffer join forces with Blind Guardian’s golden tonsiled vocalist Hansi Kürsch. Actually, Demons and Wizards has been a going concern for 22 years, but day jobs and competing priorities have meant that this is only their third record together.
Read MoreAbsolutely bonkers album from the French multi-instrumentalist Gautier Serre. It is impossible to describe just how out there and utterly ludicrous this album actually is. Just imagine if you played every other album on here simultaneously and you are still nowhere near the utter lunacy of “Spirituality and Distortion”.
Read More
