2022 TOP 100 ALBUMS

And so we begin and let’s start with a big hitter. Alter Bridge have established themselves over the last decade as an arena bothering and festival-topping Behemoth. They manage to faultlessly combine slick heavy rock with a harder, crunching underbelly. “Pawn & Kings” doesn’t see them deviate in any way from the formula that has taken them to the top. There is plenty of pulsating guitar histrionics from Mark Tremonti and lots of vocal dexterity from Myles Kennedy. It might lack the stand-out numbers of previous records (hence its position at the very cusp of the list) but it’s still a solid release

Ok given that this was only released the day before I closed the list and I have therefore given this only two cursory listens, its inclusion is a bit of a punt, to be honest. But I am prepared to take the risk for two reasons. Firstly, its level of ambition and sheer scale reminds me of “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”, their sprawling 1995 masterpiece and the last Smashing Pumpkins album that I truly adored. Secondly, there are several tracks that hark back to “Mary Star of the Sea” the exquisite debut (and only) album from Billy Corgan’s short-lived side project Zawn. ”Atum: Part One”, is as the name suggests, the first part of a rock opera trilogy. It embraces the utter bombastic nature of that medium and for the first time in a long time, our Billy actually sounds like he cares. I suspect with further listens that this could have been higher.

The kings of stuttering stop/start riffs, there have been a lot of pretenders after Meshuggah’s crown, but nobody does precise, rhythmic, technical death metal like them. “Immutable” is another masterclass on how to create driving minimalistic metal, that is full of clean angles and precision-engineered riffs. Its only failing is that it deviates very little from the band’s given template. It’s good, indeed very good, but it lacks any surprises or a sense of variety. Beautifully crafted, hence the reason it sneaks onto the list, but perhaps a little safe.

The torchbearers for true Black Metal. There is no experimentation, variation, or amalgamation with these guys. If it isn’t authentically satanic then they don’t want to know. Having said that, “The Agony & Ecstasy of Watain” does see them play around with texture, style, and rhythmic pattern, but still remaining safely within Black Metal’s clear parameters. The overall feeling is of something big, spacious, and distinctly epic but still a hundred percent evil.

Our first chunk of Death Metal but a completely different variety to some of the more brutal stuff to come. This is symphonic Death with the inference very much on camp bombastity. Whilst other purveyors may take this all very seriously, you get the distinct feeling that Septicflesh are quite simply having an utter whale of a time and are hellbent on seeing how far they can push the boundaries of this distinctly conservative genre. In many ways, the Death Metal component are just there as a launch pad for them to head off in a variety of highly intricate but also highly entertaining avenues. The overall feeling is of something grandiloquent and musically verbose. It’s a long way from the carnal simplicity of the genre’s origins and its revels in its opulence. If you have turned your nose up in the past at Death Metal primal grit then maybe this is your avenue in, as it’s utterly sumptuous and indulgent.

If want to find a hotbed of experimental metal then you need to look no further than over the channel. Over the last decade, France has established itself as the spiritual home of those who want to play with and actively overturn metal’s established rules and regulations. Blut Aus Nord produce hypnotic avent-Garde Black Metal.

This is a digital-only compilation of tracks that were hitherto only available to subscribers on their online forum. This would usually mean that it was exempt from the list, but as the material hasn’t been available anywhere else, I am letting this through. It also makes the list because it’s ruddy excellent. Dark, dank, and distinctly disturbing, this is challenging music that consumes the listener. At times discombobulating, it is a swirling maelstrom of random noise that is underpinned by repetitive rhythmic melodies.

It’s the evil twin of an ambient meditative album, designed to induce horrific nightmares as opposed to relaxing enriching sleep. But it is also utterly addictive and you feel yourself pulled into the twirling refrains as they burrow deep into your soul. Not for the faint-hearted or the Taylor Swift fans among you, but incredibly rewarding.

A bit of an unknown gem from Sheffield here. Gilmore Trail are an instrumental post-rock outfit that has been diligently operating under the radar for the last ten years producing exquisite chunks of lilting beauty. “Impermanence” is their third album and was created and produced in fits and spurts during the Covid outbreak. It seeks to capture that feeling of constant change and to (in the band’s words) honour those they have lost along the way. It’s reflective and solemn but also simultaneously gloriously beautiful. It’s restrained and refrained for most of its running time, but then in places, it explodes in glorious techno colour. Haunting and thought-provoking music that washes over you in waves of pathos.

I am sure bands don’t actively seek to be referred to as that most derided of subgenres, “metalcore”. But Counterparts have seemingly been anointed as the torchbearers of the metalcore revival. In many ways that trivializes what they are actually doing as “A Eulogy for Those Still Here” is a stunning amalgamation of searing emotion and crushing aggression. It is full of tight, taut melodies that are designed to be screamed along to be baying thousands but it is grounded by coarse, corrosive anger. The belligerence spills out and gives the album a feel of rampant hostility that effectively tempers any of its overtly commercial moments. A skilful mix of accessibility and antagonism that is rather bewitching.

As always this list is brim-full of difficult but ultimately highly rewarding records and this is very much one of them. On first listen I found this to be impenetrable and non-linear. It wasn’t behaving as my brain wanted it to and ultimately, I found it frustrating and unsatisfying. But I know not to give up on the first hurdle and during numerous subsequent listens an intriguing and deeply fascinating record started to emerge. The trick here is to go into it with no expectations as whatever you think it is going to do next, it doesn’t.

There are no joins or interlocking pieces, everything is slightly ajar from everything else. Over a number of listens, this stops being annoying and starts to be its charm. You realize that the leaps in musical narrative provide a level of uniqueness and freshness to the proceeding. On the umpteenth listen it is still taking me by surprise each time I listen to it, and that is no bad thing.

Ahh The Melvins, the band Kurt Cobain wanted Nirvana to be. The rather excellent grunge biog "Everyone Loves our Town" recounts how Kurt abandoned his Iron Maiden albums after seeing the Melvins play in car parks across Washington state. In many ways, they were grunge before grunge happened and remained grunge long after the wheels came off the genre. Over 36 years they have remained fiercely independent and heavily prolific. This is studio album number 25 and yet again they remain true to Buzz Osborne’s singular vision. Even though there is a melodic sheen to the tracks on offer there are very few nods to commerciality. The opening track Mr. Dog is Totally Right is 14 minutes long and illustrates perfectly the band’s desire to not play by anyone's rules. The rest of the album is chock full of sludgy riffs and off-kilter rhythms. The Melvins never achieved the success of the bands that they influenced and, in many ways, their continued output is all the better for that. This is the sound of a band that four decades into their varied career are still intent on being creative. Long may that continue.

If the Sex Pistols had re-recorded the first Black Sabbath album, this is what it would have sounded like. Witch Fever are a scarily young quartet from Manchester that take the nihilistic anarchism of punk and channel that into producing authentic doom metal. They manage to be simultaneously irreverent and respectful to the subject matter that they are nonchalantly mining. They use this unique take on a decades-old genre to make a remarkably current protest album. But this is not a protest album as we fuddy-duddy oldies remember them. “Congregation” is full of incensed indignation for the world that generation Z will inherit. Witch Fever remarkably takes genres that were created decades before anyone of them was born and manage to create something that sounds both fresh and incendiary.

To compile this list I have listened to over six hundred albums. There were some where I knew, before I pressed play, that I would like them and there were some where from the start I would have to work very hard to be objective. Then there were the middle ground, the ones where I had seen the band’s name bandied but had no preordained idea of what I would get. I Prevail fall squarely into that category. I had always assumed that they were landfill post-hardcore, yet another band that was trying to emulate Glassjaw and At the Drive In.

True Power turned out to be a very pleasant surprise indeed. It is a high-octane mix of slick commercial metal and traits from Metal’s more extreme avenues. It manages to be big and anthemic, but without fully divorcing itself from its brutal roots. The tracks are widescreen and Technicolor but it never lowers its self to the common denominator. Instead, it manages to stay fresh and interesting in a space where cheap reputation is king.

Gnavhol. Another slice of Scandinavian black metal and this time from its spiritual homeland (and mine) Norway. Nordjevel are the brainchild of Doedsadmiral who has been around the blocks in numerous outfits. He wanted to create a band that builds on black metal’s archetype but provided more opportunity for creativity. “Gnavhol” is their third full-length release and the keyword here is intensity. It consists of ten slices of hyper-intense jagged metal. In fact its potency seems to increase as the album goes on. Just when you think it can’t get any more gnarled and extreme, it ratchets up vigor and dials everything up one more notch. It’s fair to say that I do like my black metal experimental and probably rather nuanced, but sometimes you just want something that can hit you between the eyes and grab hold of your throat. “Gnavh” certainly fulfils the criteria.

Xentrix were meant to be Preston’s answer to Metallica. When they emerged in the late 80s they seemed intent on avoiding thrash’s more juvenile tendencies and concentrated more on song structure than they did gimmicks (apart from that Ghostbusters cover that they now significantly distance themselves from). They fell by the wayside during the lean years of the ’90s when thrash spectacularly plunged from grace, only to be revived in 2013 by Kristian and Dennis from the original line-up. Since then, they have flown the flag for home-grown thrash, touring the length and breadth of the country and returned it to the studio to record two new albums (of which this is the second). Don’t tell Municipal Waste but thrash doesn’t have to be stupid as this album adeptly proves. It is a strident and unrepentant collection of well-constructed songs, full of riotous anger and vociferous undertaking. This is the sound of a band that has paid its dues many times over but still feels that they have something left to say. Conclusive proof of the redemptive power of growing old disgracefully.

And here come the youngsters. This is an album firmly of the Spotify generation, in that it takes a would shed load of contrasting influences and shoves them all in the blender. When I got into metal in the eighties it was all very linear. Pop bands were influenced by pop bands, rock bands were influenced by rock bands and metal bands were influenced by other metal bands and therefore sounded like metal bands. It is so different for this generation as streaming offers up instant access to a whole host of differing and counter-intuitive influences. Suddenly it commonplace to splice together styles and genres to create mutant varieties that bridge together countless musical worlds.

Static Dress are at the heart of this cavortion of musical forms and “Rouge Carpet Disaster” is a mix match of electronica, emo, punk, pop and frankly anything else that they can get their mucky paws upon. It twists and turns, never taking the same structure twice. It feels like you are listening to an audio shapeshifter, continually moulding into differing entities. However at the heart of this tornado of styles is a highly creative and really rather entertaining record that is both familiar and distinctly alien. I have no idea where Generation Z are taking our music but I do know the journey is going to be a utter blast.

Even though we are in the top hundred, there are a number of entries that I expected to be ordering significantly higher than I have. This is one of them. Massive Wagons are one of the forerunners in the New Wave of British Classic Rock. Live they are phenomenal, a kaleidoscope of all that is great and escapist about stadium rock. Their last release “House of Noise” was a most excellent collision of juvenile humour and self-deprecation. It reminded me about the utter joyfulness of no-nonsense, back-to-the-walls rock n’ roll and made it to number seventeen in my 2020 list.

“Triggered” see’s them attempt to add a level of maturity to their sound and the results are to be honest mixed. There are enough nuggets of genius to give it a solid 85 out of 616 placing, BUT the crucial point is that it fails to have the memorable numbers that its predecessor had. Yes A.S.S.H.O.L.E. and Fuck the Haters will be live favourites for years to come, but as the album reached its crescendo it all sort of became predictable and well, a little boring (words I thought I would never use to describe Massive Wagons). Not a dud by any means, but after what went before I think my expectations were high.

The Halo Effect are a new outfit constructed solely of former members of In Flames. Understandably they sound an awful lot like the collective former paymaster, in fact they sound a lot more like In Flames than the current incarnation of the band does. Days of the Lost feels like it comes from a parallel universe where In Flames never made “Reroute to Remain” and instead followed up the astonishing “Clayman” with another slice of exquisite melodic death metal. But this isn’t just an exercise in fan-appeasing nostalgia. The Halo Effect manage to update the melo-death sound without significantly diverting from its core components. What you end up with is a rather satisfying peep into what In Flames would have sounded like now if they hadn’t decided to go off and emulate Linkin Park.

Modern Death Metal has taken two distinct paths. Those who have rammed up the brutality and simplicity, looking to strip it down to its primal vicious core; and those who have used musical technicality to build on its foundation. Fallujah are very very much in the second camp and essentially Empyrean sounds like what would have happened if Steve Vai had joined Cannibal Corpse. It is heavy and it is aggressive BUT the guitar work is intricate and utterly divine. The speed and dexterity is utterly astonishing and perfectly juxtaposes the gruff vocals and pounding drums. This is Death Metal with high production values and high level of musical proficiency.

Well, that’s well-timed as I was just talking about those who are looking to up the ante in terms of the brittle brutality of Death Metal, and along comes Bonecraver with an album that feels like the last word in crushing oppressive metal. It is insular and utterly pulverizing in its unrelenting intensity. Wave after wave of overwhelming suppression. Granular and primordial this is music designed to get your heartbeat racing.

Black Peaks were on the verge of something really special but then disharmoniously fell apart last year due to the age-old vestige of musical differences. Skin Failure is what vocalist Will Garner and Bassist Will Larkin did next and it fits with the eclecticism of Black Peaks that it sounds nothing like the Black Peaks. What they have produced is theatrical thrash that harks back to the heyday of Suicidal Tendencies, Mr. Bungle and Voivod. It’s thoroughly self-aware and understanding the intellectual capability of playing dumb. It may come across as simplistic and underneath it all it is actually fuelled by highly intricate storytelling. Black Peaks made a (admittedly short) carrier out of never letting their audience pre-guess their direction and I have the distinct impression that Skin Failure may efficiently pick up the mantle.

The Flower Kings are very much a cult concern. They are the Prog bands’ Prog Band and are adored by a small but dedicated contingent of beard-stroking, real ale-drinking gentlemen. This is sort of The Flower Kings and sort of a Roine Stolt solo project as in 2018 he decided he was done being in a group and disbanded the band much to the displeasure of keyboardist Tomas Bodin. Long-term members Hasse Fröbergand and Michael Stolt are now back in the band but it isn’t clear whether they are there as full contributors or mere session musicians. Anyway, enough of the office politics, “By Royal Decree” is meant to be the spiritual follow-up to their 1997 masterpiece “Stardust We Are” and it does succeed in having the same level of wide-eyed innocence that that album had. It does not feel processed or predetermined, like other examples of modern prog. Instead, it has a warm feeling of spontaneous creation, like the music just comes into being when you press play. It feels light and enticing and beautifully edifying. Just like prog should be.

More brutal death metal, but this time the home-grown variety via the highly thought-of Mancunian quartet (though due to the departure of Sam Yates they are currently operating as a power trio). They are six albums into a highly promising career and “Ashes Lie Still” does nothing to upset their momentum. It’s corrosive and crunching, full of crushing breakdowns and blistering pace. They are doing very little different than their previous releases but when it’s this pristine and this precision engineered there is no real need to make any significant changes.

And the death metal continues to roll out, this time courtesy of the Baltimoreion legends Misery Index. For 20 years Misery Index have rather effectively spliced traditional death with grind. For the uninitiated grind is death metal’s feral younger brother. It has no truck with any journey towards respectability and instead is quite happy to sit in the corner and play with his own faeces. “Complete Control” is another collection of nasty, gnarled semi-formed treaties on the state of the world. It’s vicious, jagged, and highly effectively concise. The whole thing is done and dusted in 33 minutes, leaving you battered and bruised but rather partial to go another round.

Our second bunch of French experimentalists (and, spoiler, they won’t be the last), Birds in a Row are currently doing highly interesting things within the usually safe territories of post-rock. They seem to work on two separate levels, the top layer is harsh and brittle, fuelled by course vocals. I would love to tell you who the vocalist is but they never let on, instead opting to operate as a collective with no details given about the individual members. Below the crust there is another layer, this is actually much more melodic and seems to borrow generously from 80’s jingling jangly indie. There are times in “Gris Klein” when these two facets of Birds in a Row’s world seem to operate as entirely separate entities but then there are moments where they combined together to create an awesome miss-mash of contrasting styles. I’m sure that these layers have their layers, as this is a highly complex and intricately constructed album. This is a record where at 5 or 6 listens I am still not yet to do it justice.

The unexpected but wholly welcome return of the American progressive metal pioneers Zero Hour who called it a day back in 2008 when founding member Troy Tipton suffered horrific injuries that meant he could no longer play his bass. Fast forward fourteen years and Troy’s brother (and fellow original member) Jasun has reunified the outfit using original vocalist Erik Rosvold and a couple of hired hands on bass and drums. Musically it’s like they never went away and “Agenda 21” continues in the same vein of a more sophisticated and experimental Dream Theatre. The lyrical content does trespass into some areas occupied by right-wing conspiracy theorist’s but if we are going to be honest so did those penned by the late great Neil Peart of Rush and we never let that sway us from the brilliance of that band. So if you can take the verbal musings with a large pinch of salt this is a rather dandy and highly edifying slice of prime-time prog.

The utterly amazing, undefinable and completely unique Ms. Jo Quail. If you told me 10 years ago that a female classically trained cellist operating solo would become a leading light in our very chauvinistic and small-minded world, I would have laughed at you. But here we are, Jo Quail has managed to carve a place in our world (that says undeterred “Metal as Fuck”) without once changing who or diluting what she’s doing.

What’s she does do is simply quite remarkable. She creates a sound I cello, catches it and then loops it back. By doing this multiple times she creates her own evocative, dark and sensory backing track over which her cello is able to mournfully tread. It’s one of those cases where you are acutely aware of the mechanics behind what she’s doing but it doesn’t take away any of the wonder of the achievement.

“The Cartographer” is evocative and minimal. It consists of five distinct movements commissioned for the Roadburn festival. The idea behind it is to explore the heaviness that is at the heart of classical music and to challenge the notions that classical and heavy metal exists in different spaces. It is quite something and it is another album where I still don’t think I’m yet to get the most out of it. Slow burning but utterly worth it.

The bands who would be king. Bleed from Within are probably the longest-gestating “overnight sensation” ever. For sixteen years and over six albums, these plucky Scots have tirelessly toiled to make it up Metal’s slippery pole. At numerous points, it had looked like they were about to surface into the wider psyche only for them to inexplicably plunge back into obscurity. But, but this may just be their moment. “Shrine” is a solid piece of commercial metalcore that, whilst not spectacular, gives them enough anthemic ammunition to make an impact where they are at their most potent, namely in the live arena. They nailed it at diddy Download and Bloodstock last year and at the full-fat Download this year and “Shrine” feels like the work of a band that feels like their destiny is finally in their own hands. This time next year Rodney…….

Whilst only an ongoing eternity for nine years, it does feel that Wolfheart has been around for a lot longer than that. Their previous five albums have all been in and around my end-of-the-year lists and “Flames of Perdition” by Tumas’ other band Dawn of Solace scored highly last year. “King of the North” manages to be a little more than your standard Viking-obsessed Melodeath. It’s big, Widescreen and really rather epic, but there also seems to be a lot of effort made in terms of the actual song writing. Usually, in this game, it’s a case of a couple of jaunty choruses, some whooa-whooas and their job is a good ‘un. Here it feels actual thought has gone into each and every one of the tracks and it sounds all the better for it.

More indignation from Generation X. This is a highly political protest album that makes no apologies for being thoroughly pissed off about what my generation is doing to the world. It describes a dystopian world that the band sees as the inevitable result of the environmental crisis that we currently face. The riffs are crisp and direct but there is also a level of progressive experimentation about their sound. They don’t seem content with staying within metalcore oppressive structures and instead, they deviate into various other genres. Anger has indeed made them very creative.

Well, it has taken us 29 records to get here but this is our first proper deviation from the metal (Smashing Pumpkins don’t count they live on the peripheries of our world). If you have even half an eye on modern music you will be familiar with the almost metaphorical rise of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers. That ‘Chaise Longue’ song seemed to become the soundtrack to everything over the last two years. The good news is that is not the best thing on this album by far and what they seem to have crafted is a wonderfully refreshing return to the jiggly jangly indie of the 90’s that I thought had become extinct. It’s playful, quaint, and refreshingly quirky. Just when I thought indie has abandoned its position as the music of Goth, geeks and outcasts it chucks out this fabulous slice of off-kilter absurdity. Let’s dance like the noughties never happened.