2018 TOP 100 Albums
By Stewart Lucas
And we are off and we start as we mean to go on with one of metal's most authentic, genuine and none compromising acts Corrosion to Conformity. Active since the early eighties they started as a hardcore punk outfit but in the nineties took a left turn into heavy blues territory. This is their first album in thirteen years with their classic groove metal line up but rather than stick to a tired and tested formula they have actually moved their sound on with this record. It is, as you would expect, brim-full of chunky scuzzy riffs but there also a lot more boundary pushing going on here than I had expected. There are slower moments and even some level of musical complexity beyond riff follows riff. Overall highly enjoyable.
Pitch black electronic that is warped and deliciously dark and distorted. Some may call this synth or dark wave but really It's essentially electro-black metal. Apex Twin if he sold his soul to Satan.
Facebook's almighty and all-knowing algorithms have figured out that I like a lot of bands and what my diverse and eclectic tastes are in those said bands. Therefore I get swamped with 'sponsored' posts from groups that because I have liked X and y want me to check out their latest effort. Visions of Atlantis were one of these attention seeking outfits flashing their wares at me and in a weak point where I was feeling a tinny weeny bit more peace and goodwill than usual, I thought I might check them out and to my surprise I liked what I heard. This is ambitious big budget symphonic metal with a mythical oceanic obsession, think Nightwish soundtracking Clash of the Titans. Everything here is big; the songs, the sound, the ambition and (from the sound of it) the lung capacity of the two vocalists. There has been plenty of swirling emotive symphonic metal this year that frankly has come across as so identikit that even though I have enjoyed my first listen I have not bothered with a second helping as there is another almost identical female fronted act coming around the corner. However Visions of Atlantis have the duel vocalist thing and their Atlantis obsession which together makes them stand out from the crowd enough to (just about) get a spot on my list.
Last year when compiling this list I seemed to listen to more doom metal albums than is entirely healthy for one person and the year before it was thrash that seemed to monopolize. Well this year it's been an abundance of retro sounding rock records that has filled my listening time. To be honest the vast majority of these haven't made the hallowed hundred but there are a few that managed to stand out from the crowd and earn their place and here is the first in the shape of the fourth album from Nashville's All Them Witches. This really is retro and old school as it sounds like a lost Door's album or outtakes from the first couple of Eagles albums. There is a real warmth to its old fashioned 70's rock feel and it seems like the tracks wash over you like waves of southern sunshine. It hasn’t got an original or challenging bone in its body but it manages to be feel good which to be honest was enough for me.
And to prove the utter eclecticism of my tastes, we go from two of the more accessible and casual-listener friendly in this list to probably one of the most impenetrable records on here. Ion is very much an acquired taste and if you are not into disjointed highly challenging white noise then I probably would give it a miss. But if, like me, you can see the art and beauty in harsh brutal black metal then this is great. It really pushes the boundaries of what constitutes music but isn't art's primary job to challenge and to confound?
And here comes the Doom. There is a precedent at present to mix doom with all sorts of other metallic flavours, this however is 100% proof accept no substitute Doom Metal. The reverence to Electric Wizard is very obvious but as standard fare Doom Metal goes this is really rather good. The riffs are slow and tombstone heavy and the songs are well structured. There is nought new here but I still found it highly enjoyable.
I am not a pop punk kid and I probably would take great offence if you deemed to refer to me as one. The whole bandwagon of shouty tattooed college fund American kids being annoyed at their lot in life, well, sort of passed me by. To be honest, I couldn't tell a Less Than Jake from a Rise Against. However, in my weekly trawl through weekly releases I really really enjoyed this album. It's short sharp no flab approach to songwriting appealed to my love of the Ramones and their anger at, well anger at everything has a real passion and authenticity to it. Most modern American punk feels sanitised and safe, designed to sell the sensation of rebellion whilst being less radical than a CBGB's full of Jacob Reese Moggs. “Wake the Sleeping Dragon” felt real and for that it earns a breadth in the hundred, just don't call me a pop punk kid!
It may be a well-kept secret, but Metal does actually have a pretty decent sense of humour and is perfectly capable of taking the Mickey out of itself. I'm not talking about the nod nod wink wink 'aren't we clever for acting stupid' irony of steel panther which, in my eyes, is one not particularly funny joke stretched over an entire career. The not taking seriously I refer to is the reverential approach of Evil Scarecrow who obviously love their Metal but are also acutely aware of the absurdity of it all. “Chapter IV: Antartartica” is their fourth self-released album and like everything they put their name to, is great fun. The approach here is not a general 'he he, isn't metal silly', it's much more subtle and in-jokey than that. You need to know your Manowar from your Megadeth to get plays on thrash ballads, prog epics and arms aloft anthems. The songs are well made and well played and the laughs come from the lyrics rather than the concept (Hurricanaddo and Balled of Brother Payne were still cracking me up on the fourth listen which is a good sign). This by no means high art but it is a hell of a lot of fun.
For those playing sub-genre bingo you can cross another off as here comes out a irst dollop of Folk Metal. Now Folk Metal takes two quite distinct forms. There is the jaunty type played by swedes in loin clothes and armour and there is the more serious type that channels Folk's very own inner darkness. Arkona are very much in the latter camp and there is nothing particularly jiggy or sing-alongable about “Kharm”. Russian Folk isn't particularly joyful to start with and when combined with blackened Metal it creates an immersive and rather striking aural experience. “Kharm” is actually a very deep, nuanced and layered album and it took me a number of listens to actually get it. But (like one of those 3D pictures) when it clicked I could see how rich and textured it actually is and I was able to get lost in the atmospheric ambience of it all.
There is a real fad currently in extreme metal for anonymity. Batushka are completely masked in cloaks with black vales, Ghost have their masked nameless ghouls and whilst Ghostbath may now show their faces, members are still never named. Add to that list Uada who wear black cowls over the heads and look Ringwraiths meet Dementers. As you can guess this is not an album of love ballads, but cult of a dying sun is not necessarily as harsh as you would expect. This is on the melodic end of Black Metal and sounds like Iron Maiden if they replaced Bruce with a goblin. The opening two tracks are terrific and whilst the album never quite matches that for quality, it is still a really well made and well produced piece of work!
OK intriguing one here. Mancunians Winterfylleth are one of the UK's foremost black metal acts and have carved a niche for themselves by removing the Satanism and replacing it with British pagan spirituality. This is their sixth studio release and is a real sharp left turn as they have completely ditched the metal and gone folk. This is stripped back mournful and stark acoustic folk and has nothing twee about it. It is quite beautiful in places and rich in pathos and atmosphere but it also does have a tendency to drag and whilst it is obviously really well made I did find a mite dull...
Death metal was born in 1986 when across America disenfranchised impressionable kids devoured Slayer's sublime “Reign In Blood” but simultaneously came to the same conclusion that it would be better if it was faster, more obscene and the vocals were more intangible.
And lo! Death Metal came into being. Pretty soon news spread around the globe of how bands like Possessed, Death, Autopsy and Obituary were pushing the boundaries of how extreme Metal could be. That further lead more young men (and it was at this stage a very white, male and horrifically sexist movement) to decide that their calling in life was to play nasty offensive music.
One of those bands was Telford's Cancer and pretty soon they had built up quite an impressive fan-base of English Death Metal convertees desperate for a home-grown champion to follow. Their second album “Death shall Rise” is now considered to be one of the foremost releases of the stage of death metals development but 1993's “Sins of Mankind” was a misguided attempt to go commercial and pretty soon the wheels fell off and Cancer messily fell apart. There was a sort of reunion in 2003 that featured some but not all of the original line up but as that produced the equally dreadful “Spirit in Flames” it's been pretty much erased from history and the 2013 reformation with all original member accounted form is seen officially was the beginning of this new face. So ignoring “Spirit”, “Shadow Gripped” is their first new record in 25 years and it's great. Like last year's memorable debut from Mermoriaum, it strips everything back to what made Death Metal so exciting in the first place. There is no trying to be over clever or technical here, they have simply based songs around sharp fast pulsating riffs. There is something reassuring but also refreshing about the simplicity of this record, it shows that great Death Metal just needs space to breathe.
Sometimes I am not quite sure where I exactly stumble upon the records that end up in the list as I continually keep my ears and eyes out for new interesting stuff. This could have come from Metal Hammer or a recommendation from a friend but it's really rather good. Gothic tinged quite aggressive power metal is probably my best attempt at a description as its got dollops loads of melody and clean vocals but there is also tons of ethereal atmosphere and also a real oomph. It's also got lots of Prog in there with time changing agogo and lots going on. As said not sure how I happened upon it and now very little about the band (so expect no history lessons) I just know I really liked it.
For an American act, Kamelot play a very European type of music in a very European style. This is Power Metal at its most overblown and it's most intricate In the main, American Metal tends to be much more in your face and straightforward than this. Kamelot have been at this since 1991 and have got stirling choruses, widdly widely guitar solos and grand keyboards flourishes down to a fine art and whilst “The Shadow Theory” sounds exactly like the eleven albums that precedes it, it is still great fun.
So after all that Metal, it is time to sound the indie klaxon. Well actually it might be worth digging out the post-punk hooter that we last used back in the noughties as this album wouldn't have sounded out of place in the bygone era of the Ordinary Boys, vintage Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs. It could even quite nicely fit into the sub-genre my wife refers to as boys go fighting music (Kooks, Fratelieez, Libertines all get lumped in there, in fact anyone who attracts an audience of Fred Perry wearing lager drinkers). So after all those not particularly complimentary descriptions you are probably wondering how it made it onto this list. The reason is that it is actually a really clever album. Usually nowadays I give very little time to this time of music but as I listened I found myself highly impressed by the song structures and the thought that had gone into each track. Don't be fooled by the outward impression, this is not a bunch of lads eulogising about a night on the tiles, this is actual a bunch of intelligent chaps who have got something profound, important and subversive to say. Deceptively good.
I caught Leeds's Hundred Year Old Man live at Bloodstock and Damnation festivals this year and both times their brutal and brooding take on post rock blew me away. On record they haven't quite managed to capture the intensity of their live performance but this is still an immersive and highly intriguing record that shows buckets loads of promise.
More doom, well, actually none more doom to be honest as this is huge, heavy, grinding, black, brittle slabs of doom that will shake the very fillings in your teeth. You see Doom Metal can be fragile and beautiful (see Pallbearer and The Warning, in fact, if you haven't heard the latter's “Watching from a Distance” stop reading this and go listen to it now as its an utter masterpiece), but that is not the suburbs of doom where Conan dwell. You will instead find them institute in Doom's run-down derelict dystopian inner cities producing dark, rumbling, dirty and brutal music. They do what they do well but after four near identical albums I had hoped for some level of variation.
I love The Decembrists and I love their quirky irreverent take on Americana. They construct their albums magpie style, procuring elements from all over the musical shop. In other hands this could over as clumsy or even deeply cynical and synthetic but The Decembrists have become masters and mistresses of weaving together all the little nuggets of influence to create what feels like a coherent whole.
'I'll Be Your Girl' is their eighth studio album and in their quaint sort of way, is their protest album focusing on how to be a liberal in what feels like a post liberal world. As ever, it cannons through different styles and musical constructs, though this time there is much more of a leaning toward eighties electro than usual. And it is that concentration on such an in vogue sound that has resulted in me loving this a little less than I have loved other The Decembrists albums. It's still a really good record I just don't feel the same urge to run down the road screaming to non-convertees "Have you heard this? It's brilliant!!!" as I did with the previous seven albums.
Our second album on the list entitled “Hexenhammer”. Well you wouldn't get that in the NME end of year, I can tell you! This“Hexenhammer” is by Swiss traditional metal band Burning Witches. And the first thing that annoys me is that all publicity on them (both official and fan fuelled) focuses on the fact they are an all-female (or even worse 'all-girl' band). As if we would describe Judas Priest as all male band. It just still gets my goat that women make up 51% of the population but if one deems to join a band or god forbid make up all the members of a band then that is the only think we can talk about. So I’m going to ignore Burning Witches gender and tell you that this is an affectionate rehash of everything that makes heavy metal so much fun. It may contain new songs but as they feel so warm and familiar in their construct “Hexenhammer” actually ends up coming across as a greatest hits album. So there may be little or no originality here but what is there is passion and enthusiasm, and that in itself makes for an enjoyable listen.
Finland's Wolfheart remind me of the bird in Dante's inferno that spends a millennia tapping away at the mountain but never gets anywhere but also never gives in. For ten years, Wolfheart have paraded their Viking obsessed melodic Death Metal over four albums and probably haven't progressed further than they were at the start of their career. What they do ain't bad and “Constellation of the Black” earns a place here on the fact I actually wanted to go back and listen to it again. But the fact is Amon Amarth do exactly the same thing a lot better and with a lot more success and if Wolfheart insist in continuing to sing about Viking rituals and lost warriors they will sadly continue to remain in their shadow.
Right! Remember this lot’s name as they are going to be huge. In a decades time, they will being headlining the Download Festival and they will be the band that the next generation of metalheads align themselves to. For now they are a work in progress but by god do they have heaps of potential and the embryonic stages of a style and a sound that I believe will make them Metal's next big act. They are still only in their mid-teens (Christ none of them can legally drink yet) but already the musicianship is stunning. They are yet to truly to find their own musical voice (which is why ‘Tu’ resides in the upper seventies) but there are flashes of what I think is the brilliance yet to come.
Kiwi (and Aussie) metal has up until this point been pretty much a facsimile of American and European influences but in the same way Sepultura made a name for themselves by blending Amazonian tribal music into thrash, Alien Weaponry have brought Maori chants, rhythms and attitude into the mix. It doesn't quite work as yet and within ‘Tu’ comes across as messy in places, but you just feel the potential fizzing. Second track in 'Holding My Breath' is by far the best thing on here but you just know that next time around with a bit of time and maturity under their belt they will come back with a whole album of songs that good and that is when the fun will really start.
More Doom Metal, this is from the dark, slow, pendulous and fecken heavy end of the spectrum. When it comes to impenetrable Extreme Metal, I would always put myself more in the Death and Black camp (now camp Black Metal that's a sub-genre I'll love to see "ohhhh Satan, get you") but every time I compile these lists I am always surprised how much Doom I put in! Musically this may be on the more experimental and complex end of the Doom scale but as a band Thou are a very much a straight edge punk act at heart. Paradoxically for an act sometimes lumped into the stoner category they are all T-total and chemical abstainers. They also take DIY to the nth degree by not having a record deal and simply putting out stuff online when it's ready. As you can guess they are pretty prolific and whilst this only their fifth 'long player' overall this is fourth release of year as it was preceded by three EP's all long enough to be considered albums.
Magus has a lot in it, the stylistic changes are enough to make you dizzy in places and whilst it is at all times dark and heavy, the way that darkness and heaviness is presented changes on almost a minute by minute basis. This is an album you lose yourself in and if I had spent hours wandering in its musical corridors I suspect it would have been higher, but it is here because it is an ambitious, commendable and admirable piece of work even if it does feel a little of a slog to get to the end of.
Guess what this is? Yep it's more Doom. But this is as far from Thou that you possibly can go whilst staying in the same sub-genre. This is Doom at its most commercial and bluesy, essentially back to its roots of unashamed Sabbath worship. This is slick and well-made heavy Blues Rock. Its swagger and attitude outweighs the fact that it has the brutality and danger of Mr. Tumble. Lightweight but very enjoyable.
TesseracT have worked bloody hard to get this far. For fifteen years, they have tirelessly and slowly trod their very distinct path of pop meets highly technical polyrhythmic Metal. They have resolutely stuck to their guns even when bands they have obviously influenced have overtaken them in the fame and glory stakes. ‘Sonder’ is very much more of the same; precise and highly complex Metal built around structured concise riffs and constantly shifting time signatures and topped with Dan Tompkins soulful even poppy vocals. Those schooled on the dirt, scuzz and chaos of heavy rock may struggle with ultra-clean, repetitive and almost identikit feel of the music, but for me this almost autotronic coldness beautifully juxtaposes the passion and fragility in the vocals. This may well be the future of our genre and from the huge throng singing along when I saw them last week, it's in safe hands.
And let us make our first visit to the enchanted world that is Sludge Metal, so called for the scuzzy, distorted riffs that typify it. Think Motorhead but faster, heavier and Uglier. High on Fire came out of the ashes of probably the greatest Doom metal band of all time Sleep (remember them, it might be important later), and are led by Matt Pike the absolute master of the unrefined bluesy riff. Comparing this and the TesseracT record hopefully illustrates for the unbeliever the utter diversity that exists within heavy metal. Whereas TesseracT were precise and tightly regimented, High on Fire are the exact opposite. ‘Electric Messiah’ is raw, primal and wildly erratic, If ‘Yonder’ is guilty of being engineered within an inch of its life, then ‘Electric Messiah’ has grown organically with wild abandonment. It may be as clever as a division two defender, but it's got passion and conviction in spades!
I was really really disappointed with this album. Now that may come across a tad bizarre given the amount of platitudes and positive vibes that I have flung upon the previous twenty-six albums. The reason is that no matter how good this record is (and it is good) it is not the life changing album of the decade that I had been expecting (I had gone as far as holding the number one spot open for it, I was that certain that this was going to be something special. You see it has been a long long while since a new band has been feted in the way that Greta Van Fleet have. Gigs have been sold out without them releasing a thing, journalists have been salivating and people whose musical tastes I highly admire have been proclaiming them the second coming. The last time I remember this much hysteria about a debut album was The Strokes and ‘Is That It’ was magnificent so my hopes were high. ‘Anthem of the Peaceful Army’ is immaculately produced and fantastically made, but (and as it is a lowly number 74 there is a but) it just doesn't quite have the songs. The musicianship is stunning but it just lacks those killer sing-along numbers. They may sound uncannily like Led Zeppelin but sadly they are yet to write a ‘Whole Lotta Love’, 'Rock N' Roll' or a 'Black Dog’.
Meaty, chunky melodic Folk Metal from Iceland. As with all their stuff, they "sing" (OK growl and scream) entirely in Icelandic and the lyrics conform to the old Norse poetic forms of Fornyrðislag and Sléttubönd. I really liked this album as it seemed to have more body and structure than you usually get in Viking obsessed Folk Metal and the Metal and Folk blended in seamlessly rather than seeming to be forced together as, again, you get in some forms of Folk Metal. Well-made and highly enjoyable.
Thy Catafalque is one of Edinburgh based Hungarian photographer Tamás Kátai's many musical projects. He is rather prolific and likes to push the envelope a wee bit. ‘Geometric’ is best described as avant-garde Metal which means that it has everything but the kitchen sink in it. There is Jazz, Prog, Folk and all shades of Metal in here. You sometimes feel like screaming 'just pick one style' but it is still a rather good album.
‘I love you Honeybear’ remains one of the greatest albums this decade has given us. A heartfelt and emotionally raw tale of loss and love told in a wonderfully warm, witty and self-referential fashion that engaged and immersed you in a musical snapshot of Josh Tillman's chaotic life. The follow up ‘Pure Comedy’ however was such a disappointment. It lost the irreverence and playfulness that made ‘I love you Honeybear’ such a joy and was overwrought, over-serious, over long and just lost its self in its own sense of self-importance. ‘God's Favourite Customer’ is a real return to form, it will never be as good as ‘Honeybear’ but the playful humour and self-deprecating self-awareness is back. The music is once again laidback, informal and full of warmth and spontaneity. ‘Pure Comedy’ was packed with over-stylised over-designed torch songs but thankfully the messy improvised and lazy delivery is back and general mischievous glint in the musical eye is once more present. And most importantly it is almost forty minutes shorter than ‘Pure Comedy’ which just felt like a chore to listen to! You shouldn't label an album a success purely on the fact that it is better than its predecessor but he'll I feel like I've got the Josh Tillman I love back which is great!
In our world there are two Shining's (and that is not counting the Stephen King novel or the Kubrick masterpiece). There is the Swedish Black Metal band which is a vanity project of egotistical nightmare Niklas Kvarforth and there is the Norwegian Black Jazz band. This is from the latter though somewhere between the last album and this, they have ditched the Black, the Jazz and the Metal and undergone the most incredible stylistic change I have ever seen a band undertake. There is literally no similarities at all between ‘International Black Jazz Society’ and ‘Animal’, every single fibre of their musical DNA is different.
Now I am/was quite a fan and loved the whole sax over distorted guitar sound, so initially I was shocked and appalled by this complete rejection of everything that made the Shining great and I had my outraged of Manchester review written in my head after my first spin of ‘Animal’. But I thought I would give it another go and suddenly I realised that they had produced a very very good pop rock album that I potentially would be raving about if it had been made by another band. This is pure bubble-gum keyboard drenched schmaltz that sounds like it has escaped from the soundtrack for a eighties Arnie action movie. It has choruses that you could build an entire international airport on and hooks catchier than the common cold. The fact that this is the same band that produced scary distorted Black Metal (OK with saxophones but still) I find mind-boggling but I need to give them their due that this is rather good!
Glen Benton produces decent album shock. In my late teens, Deicide were probably the most evil thing that I had encountered. They talked about Satan not in a 'boogie man is going to get me' way but in terms of reverence and worship. Whilst most other Metal band played at being demonic and servants of hell, Deicide seemed to mean to. Their second album 'Legion' is still considered one of the great Death Metal albums of all time but for the last two decades they have traded on their name and past glories, not helped by perpetually seeming to cancel tours and festival appearances and making really poor records.
However after many of us had given up on them, Deicide have stopped arsing about and made a really rather good record. This is chunky, muscular Death Metal and it is very well made. Deicide records have been guilty of being sloppy and messy but this is concise and immaculately structured. It seems out of nowhere they have re-found their venom, power and fire and realised good Death Metal is not just a case of playing fast and growling. Really good, now for that tour?
And here is another veteran act still producing the goods. I fell in love with Voivod way back in 1988 when their extraordinary fourth album ‘Dimension Hatröss’ seemed to combine my love of thrash with my emerging love of Queensryche. Thirty years later, it is a joy to behold that they are still producing complex and challenging music that refuses to adhere to any particular genre. Founding member "Piggy" may sadly be no longer with us and there have been numerous comings and goings and comings again with the line-up but that urge to experiment and confound that I found so enticing on the fourth release seems very much still be in place here on what is their fourteenth album. ‘The Wake’ is fascinating to listen to because it keeps changing and morphing in front of your eyes. There is essentially a funky core to the album but around that it wraps varying time signatures and proggy guitars to the point that It comes across as ambient, trancy and almost hypnotic in places. It sounds completely unlike anything you will find under the label heavy metal and I found that particularly heartening as that is exactly what I thought of ‘Dimension Hatröss’ thirty years ago.
Last year, a couple of friends and I fulfilled a bit of a bucket list ambition of attending a European music festival by heading to Grass Pop Metal Meeting in Belgium. I tell you this as the first band we saw on entering this Disneyland for metal heads was MaYan. I'm not sure whether my affection for them was artificially enhanced by the euphoric experience of actually being in a festival where you are treated with respect and a level of intelligence but they were absolutely amazing. So I come to their new album with huge expectations and thankfully it doesn't disappoint. This is symphonic operatic metal at its most bombastic and over the top. Yes they are not alone in producing this stuff but ‘Dhyana’ seems to ratchet everything up about five gears. Whilst I wouldn't always argue more is better this album succeeds because it is so cinematic and ambitious.
Ever wondered what a Fugazi album released in 2018 would sound like? Well here is your answer as Turnstile takes the musical blueprint of the straight edge legends and update it for a post truth world. This is intelligent minimalistic experimental punk at its best. It's short and it's uses every note sparingly, very much aware of not out staying it's welcome. But within its brief 25 minute lifespan it still manages to pack so much energy and conviction that there are times you are left breathless by its pace and vision. Very much proof that you don’t have to have length to make an impression.
Aborted are from Belgium and over the last twenty two years have had so many members pass through their ranks that they potentially qualify as a Flemish work creation scheme. They specialise in big, chunky wide-screen Death Metal and ‘Terrorvision’ is no exception. This album is as near to stadium rock as Death Metal will get. It is big confident music designed to fill a big space and whilst it retains its brutality it is highly polished and extraordinarily well produced. What sets ‘Terrorvision’ apart is the sheer power and vitally they manage to amass over the eleven tracks. It feels so alive and life affirming and proves once again just because something is fast and brittle, it doesn't stop being euphoric.
A friend on Facebook whose opinions on music and a whole host of other things I hugely admire and respect, enquired whether the none metal entries were in the list to keep the listener on their toes. A nice idea but like most conspiracy theories it shows more design and thought that is actually the case.
You see, like some very slow cybernautic transformation over the last fifteen years, my tastes and musical touchstones have become more and more and more metallic as I lose touch with my indie and dance reference points. So the occasional non-metal entries are all that remains of the old indie and dance kid Stewart, my old identity screaming to still be heard over the metallic din. None of the entries from outside metals many fiefdoms are new acts as I am no longer in those circles, they are older acts that I still cling onto as the metamorphosis happens and there are less than ten of these on the whole list and there will be even less next year and so on and so forth until the process is complete.
OK, if you are not into experimental post metal then I would approach this one with caution. This is a bubbling cauldron of angst and isolation expressed through the medium of repetitive noise. It isn't particularly heavy or fast and there is a lot of melody on display here. It is just presented in such a random and non linier way that it comes across as disorienting and nonsensical. None of this is a bad thing though as the resulting maelstrom of noise is immersive, intriguing and completely fascinating. You found yourself hypnotically sucked in by patterns of repeated notes and otherworldly sounds. Probably not music for dinner parties but still utterly compelling.
Very slick pop prog from Denmark. This is all smooth edges, dreamy melodies and rich harmonies. There is lots of A-ha comparisons giving it a distinct eighties vibe but it also splices in modern metal when you are least expecting. It's biggest selling point is it's warmth. Modern prog can be so angular and cold but Vola (very much like Tesseract) manage to add a human and fragile edge through copious usage of soaring melodies. A rich and thoroughly engaging record.
Never mind the radiant light this is a sub-genre devouring record as it absorbs in thrash, Black, Death and Power metal and digests them to create something quite unique and special. There is so much in here that I love in that it has Death Metal’s brutality and Black Metal’s ethereal atmospherics and then it combines these with the song structures and melodies of traditional metal. It sounds rich and deep and just so confident. Extreme metal is not meant to be this catchy.
My beloved Dimmu Borgir's first album in eight years and whilst it is good and is the stirring cinematic Black Metal that we expect from Dimmu it sadly lacks that majestic touch that I adore in their material. It is a great record but Dimmu don't do great, they do outstanding and this falls short of that accolade. The reason is that as well structured and enjoyable the stuff on here is (and it is good) it is missing a stand out anthem such as 'Allegiance' or 'Gateways’. You may well criticise me for berating a perfectly good record for simply not being as good as its stunning predecessors, but if you set the bar high....
Myles Kennedy makes his second appearance with his other extra circular activity, namely being Slash's wing man on his solo endeavours. As I said before I’ve never previously bought into Slash the solo artist and I have released this because this isn't about Slash on his tod. What makes this album great is the chemistry between him and Myles, as they just bounce and feed of each other and bring out the best that each can give. Slash's guitar hero antics on here are refined and measured which works brilliantly as when he does explode out into his trademark solos they come across as exciting and unexpected. Myles vocals are also excellent and really play off Slash’s funky and chunky riffs. Overall it feels like a tight knit band doing this for kicks as opposed to the vanity project of two rock and roll egos.
Very little Power Metal this year but this sort of makes up for it. ‘The Sacrament Of Sin’ is something I would play to anyone who innocently asked what Power Metal is as it seems to encapsulate all the absurdities and flourishes of this most wonderful of genres. It's got the catchy hooks, the booming vocal delivery, the soaring keyboards, the fantastical lyrics and choruses that claim squatters rights in your cranial. It's all here and all done so so well. Over blown and lacking in any subtlety it may be, but this is just pure and simply a brilliantly fun album.
Really intriguing one, this comes under the heading of post-metal but I think that is because they don't know where else to put it. It manages to be both tight and claustrophobic in its delivery, but also sprawling and almost grandiose in its vision. This is Metal but it has been turned ninety degrees and it feels simultaneously familiar, new and challenging. It has pulsating guitars but they are down-tuned and create a brooding sound and they then give way to slower sections which almost have the feeling of coming up for air. As you can tell there is so much in this album and my clumsy description is only touching the surface, just go listen.
OK! History lesson time, Tristana are Norway's answer to the mighty Nightwish (every Nordic country has to have a set quota of symphonic metal bands with opera trained female vocalists, it's a EU directive). Amid one of the many fallings out that seems to happen within European metal bands, Tristana’s founder, guitarist and 'Harsh' (known as beast) vocalist Morten Veland flounced off and within two weeks had formed Sirenia who strangely enough were also a symphonic metal band with a female soprano on vocals, who would have thought it!. Since then they have released nine albums, had four female vocalists (one bizarrely the winner of the Spanish X-factor) and, as this is very much Morten's project, a whole host of session musicians.
Currently the band consist of the aforementioned Morten and French opera singer Emmanuelle Zoldan and who ever happens to be in the studio at the time, so to produce something as good as ‘Arcane Astral Aeons’ seems like a minor miracle. This is a lush and rather euphoric collection of high tempo symphonic metal. What wins it extra points in this crowded market is Emmanuelle's vocals which are fantastic and full of emotion and power. Because the album is drenched in strings and choral sections as much as it is in guitar, it feels like the big stirring soundtrack of an unmade film. Bombastic but brill.
Last year outspoken but charismatic Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta had Dee Snider as a guest on his popular and irreverent podcast. He challenged Dee to make a full pelt proper metal album and lo and behold Dee took up that Challenge as ‘For the Love of Metal’ is the result. Now for the unitiated, Dee is the larger than life Sarah Jessica Parker look alike that fronted now defunct eighties glam metal phenomenon Twisted Sister. He is known as be willing to turn his hand to anything to pay the bill and has done Broadway, big band and reality TV.
He has now turned his attention to metal (Twisted Sister were always more heavy glam rock than metal) and managed to produce a Five Finger Death Punch album that is better than anything Five Finger Death Punch put its name to (I await the death threats from the Five Finger Death Punch massive). Dee chews the scenery, the lyrics, the mic and anything else he can get his hands on, in what is an utterly blistering vocal performance, especially when you consider he is in his mid sixty. The stuff on here may not be original but it is delivered with such power and conviction that you forgive the obvious lifts from Disturbed, Killswitch Engage and early Godsmack. This is a big bold and proud album that wears it's heart on its sleeve and is just so much better than a record made to win a wager should be.
As unlikely as it might sound I have a real thing for female singer songwriters and especially love those who pour out the contents of their fragile and breaking heart onto vinyl. I love Cat Power (her new album was number 101), Joanna Newsom and anyone else that is able to make honest and emotionally charged music out of their disastrous personnel lives.
This is very very old skool minimalistic straight forward Death Metal and you would expect nothing else from the band that emerged from the ashes of the legendary Bolthrower. Last year's debut ‘For the Fallen’ made no 4 in that year’s list and whilst ‘The Silent Vigil’ sounds like they just left the tape running and bashed out another nine tunes, it does suffer from diminishing returns in that I love this style of Death Metal but it has lost the shock and the novelty of the new. It's simply another set of nine songs that sound like the late lamented Bolthrower and whilst they are all good tracks, that is no longer enough to get beyond number 53.
Now if Dimmu a few entries back are the acceptable symphonic and accessible face of Black Metal then Watain are the impermeable claustrophobic real deal. ‘Trident Wolf Eclipse’ is a cauldron of searing white noise that is down-tuned, thick and unrelenting. It it's harsh, brittle, takes no prisoners and is really rather wonderful.
And our final record in the top half of our countdown is a big dollop of anthemic Irish Black Folk. Dublin's Primordial have been at this for thirty years with a pretty much stable line up (their last new recruit signed up eighteen years ago). They will never headline festivals or graduate beyond clubs and small halls but they are very much a cult phenomenon and command a select but dedicated group of followers.
What thirty years of treading metal’s least trodden paths has given them is the time and space to hone an incredibly individual sound. Primordial sound like Primordial and no other band. This is album number nine and once again they have crafted a highly emotive selection of tracks that use Black Metal sense of grandeur and scale but replace the gnarly distorted guitar work with a clean melodic sound that wouldn't sound out of place on an Iron Maiden album. Add to that flourishes of atmospherics from the use of traditional Irish instrumentation and Nemtheanga's powerful but emotionally wrought vocals and you have something that sounds quite unique. ‘Exile Amongst The Ruin’s won't get Primordial the wider recognition they so richly deserve but will once again confirm to those already in the know that this is indeed a really special band.
Let's dive into the final fifty with a slice of home-grown psychedelic doom. Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats are suave and sophisticated and ‘Wasteland’ is their third collection of authentic sounding 70's tinged occult rock. All eight tracks here could easily have fallen through time from a mid-seventies edition of old grey whistle test as they are drenched in Hammond organ and distorted bluesy riffs. But what saves it all from being just a nostalgia fest is the richness of the song-writing as each track comes across as captivating and excellent. Overall ‘Wasteland’ is a vintage sound reinvented rather regurgitated.
Bloodbath is a super group made up of members of Katatonia, Opeth and Paradise Lost who come together to celebrate their mutual love of early nineties Swedish Death Metal. They are reverential and deeply passionate about their subject matter and (bizarre as it may sound for a Death Metal album) The Arrow of Satan is Drawn is produced with a huge amount of love and respect for its subject matter. The bottom line is whilst this may well be a distraction during various bands’ down times, it is actually some of the finest Death Metal out there.
The only way I can find to describe this is to say it's Corey Glover of Living Colour fronting The Architects. This is warm bouncy funk driven headlong into cold structured jittery modern metal. It groves and moves but also can be heavy and relentless. In fact it is madly eclectic and seems to wander off in about five different directions per song. It's, though really good, really really really good.
It's now traditional that this list features at least one heritage act who are releasing their best material for decades. Last year it was Deep Purple, the year before that Marillion and the year before that the mighty Scorpions. And this year? Well this year there are not just one legendary act rediscovering their ability to make decent stuff, there are three.
And let's start with Saxon. Yes Saxon. A band that even as far back as 1988, when I first started listening to Metal, was deemed to be culturally bankrupt. Well, forty years in, they are playing to the biggest crowds they have ever attracted and in ‘Thunderbolt’ they have produced their best album since the mid-eighties. This is still big dumb Metal with preposterous subject matters and chunky choruses but this time around they have actually taken the time and effort to craft really good songs. Every single track manages the unenviable task of holding its own against Saxon’s highly impressive back catalogue. Saxon seem finally entirely comfortable with what makes a great Saxon track, have bottled that formula and, as this album shows, are now bating them out the ball park.
The Ocean are German and are a collective rather than a band and have an evolving roll call of contributors. Given the Fall are now sadly defunct I suspect the Ocean are well on the way of surpassing the Fall's record of 66 members. This is their seventh album and is the first part of a sprawling concept album about the rise of artificial intelligence with part two to follow in 2019. This is modern Prog at its most modern and most eclectic. The riffs loop over each other and the other musical components seem at one moment to be densely packed together but then suddenly shift to become reflective and ethereal. I know I keep saying this but there is so much in here and as a listener you get lost in the textured layers and intricate time signatures. One of the cleverest albums on this list.
Last year this list was choker full of Doom, couldn't move for the stuff. This year, it’s Death Metal and here is another in the shape of swedes’ Lik. This lot were stunning at Damnation and ‘Carnage’ is equally good. This is much more open form of Death Metal and the riffs are given plenty of room to breathe and flex, there is also tons of melody in here and solos that wouldn't have felt out of place on the Saxon album. For a Death metal album this feels clean and crisp and the amount of different ideas in here makes me think that Lik could go on to be something really special.
OK, obscure Nordic corner. Wallachia are the long-term labour of love of Lars Stavdal from Steinkjer in mid Norway. Since 1992 he has produced (usually by himself and usually with little acclaim) highly cinematic symphonic Black Metal. Whilst probably unknown to all but the most diligent student of true Norwegian Black Metal, the stuff he produces is extraordinarily good and also exquisitely produced. He/they are also responsible for what I consider to be the greatest of all Black Metal albums, 2009’s brilliant ‘Ceremony of Accession’, though don't try to find it on Spotify as I had to write to Lars personally to get a physical copy.
Funding all this himself Lars still fly's the flag for true Norwegian Black Metal and ‘Monumental Heresyy’ is the fourth Wallachia album in twenty six years, though the first to be recorded with an actual band. As always with Lars this is highly complex and textured Black Metal with tons of choral bits and keyboards but having other musicians around seems to have pushed him to be even more ambitious as the sound even is deeper and more orchestrated than the previous three albums. As always what Lars has managed to produce on a modest budget is simply stunning and the only down point is that this album is likely to only reach a small audience.
Those that recall the mid-noughties (and as they say if you remember the noughties please remind the rest of us as we may have dozed through it) then you will be familiar with the clutch of Joy Division sound along bands that emerged. Interpol, Editors, the Stills and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club all channelled the spirit of Ian Curtis and all tried to update ‘Unknown Pleasures’ for the iPod (remember them?) generation. My then girlfriend (and now wife) had a real thing for The Editors and therefore I saw them in many northern toilet sized venues and in numerous late morning festival slots. Even though they were never 'my' band I kept my hand in and whilst there appeal has become more selective (i.e. back to the toilet venues and early afternoon festival ) they have unfathomably continued to make excellent records. ‘Violence’ is another slice of emotive and stirring stadium rock (they have long ago got the Joy Division obsession out of their system) and it manages to retain an edge, energy and spark that is missing from so many other bands doing this stuff. It may be completely out of character but I really really like this.
Haken's previous album ‘Affinity’ was a highly authentic stab at capturing the sound of Rush's magnificent run of form in the early eighties. It was drenched in guitar synths and sounded like it had fallen through a very Prog-centric hole in the space and time continuum. ‘Vector’, for all its Hammond organs is a much more modern sounding album, though with one eye firmly on Dream Theater's extensive back catalogue. Where it works really well is the merging of angular riffs with almost dreamy Prog, whilst ‘Vector’ appropriates lots of people's sound the end result is actually rather original. The upshot is that Haken seem to have finally have craved their own musical identity rather than being the band that sounds like this or that other act.
In the sixties Britain invented the modern pop group with the Beatles, then the Americans spent the next forty years selling it back to us, the same is true with grindcore. We invented it back in the mid-eighties with acts like Carcass, Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror but since then the best grind has come from over the pond and Pig Destroyer are by far the best and truest grindcore act currently screaming angrily into a microphone. Grind is Death Metal's uglier and more raucous unrefined cousin. Whilst Death Metal may think it's dangerous and a bit of an outlaw with three points on its licence, grindcore is currently serving fifteen years for assault and battery. The riffs are also shorter more repetitive and, as the name suggests, seem to Grind.
‘Head Cage’ is Pig Destroyer’s first album in 6 years and it's a full frontal assault on the senses. These once nihilistic kids are now adults in their forties but they are still as angry and as pissed off as ever. With ‘Head Cage’ they have channeled that anger into a powerful message of isolation and dis-franchisement as this is the sound of disregarded and ignored America. Basically protest songs for the Trump generation.
We are as far from the early nineties as the early nineties were from the late sixties, so it only makes sense that young millennials will take influences from sources that many of still view as current. This is modern Metal poured through a filter of Rage Against the Machine, Chilli Peppers (when they were good), Faith No More, The Prodigy and Symposium (remember them). It's spikey, shouty and leery but also knows it's pop sensibilities in that puts to the front the accessibility that nineties alt-rock majored in. It is self-assured and full of youthful vibe and vigour and just great fun, in fact I would go as far as to say it could easily have got higher if it was shorter. Great album, even if it slightly overstays it's welcome.
I've take an executive decision and combined parts one and two of Between the Buried and Me's grand concept work into one single entry. They may have been released separately at different times during the year but they still make up the same story of viewing other people's dreams, so I'm classing them as same album. I adore Between the Buried and Me so I am rather biased, but there is no one like them. They combine Prog, Death Metal and Jazz and do so in a way that constantly sees their music shifting and morphing. Across the ten tracks that sprawl across the two parts they net together thousands of individual musical pieces. The complexity is mind blowing as they leap from style to style in a way that is both invigorating and befuddling. There is just so much going on here, it is utterly mind-blowing that it still manages to sound like a coherent whole. Stunning and unlike anything else you will listen to this year.
Årabrot are named after a garbage dump in their home town of Haugesund, Norway. They occupy the more avant-garde and experimental planes of Norwegian Metal and since the beginning of this decade have essentially consisted solely of guitarist and vocalist Kjetil Nernes (with a supporting cast of contributors from Norway's many art collectives, including his wife Karin Park). In 2014, Kjetil was diagnosed with throat cancer and spent two years fighting and eventually beating the disease. 2016's 'The Gospel' was the story of his battle with cancer played out in bleak experimental Metal, 'Who Do You Love' is the glorious cultural re-birth with the Metal replaced by a jagged but also playful take on post-punk. The closest comparison is Television circa Marquee Moon but with harsh guitars, there is also a feel of Arcade Fire's wonderful debut album. This is a glorious life-affirming record, it is the sound of musician deciding to push his boundaries to the limit but also wanting to deploy joy in what he does. Yes it is heavy and weird in many places but ultimately, it is the sound of someone glad to be alive.
One of the most interesting, inventive and vibrant British bands currently operating under the musical radar.
We haven't had any Doom for quite a while so here is some Sexy Doom. Yes, you heard right, Sexy Doom. Sultry and seductive Doom Metal that literally drips sensuality. This is all down to Patricia Andrade's hypnotic "come to bed" vocal chords which creates a lush entrancing sound that would easily have lead mariners to smash their ships upon the rocks. Her voice is silky smooth but full of lust with the promise of forbidden pleasures. With delivery in her native Portuguese, it bypasses your ears and goes straight for your reproductive organs. The music is dreamy cinematic Doom and it manages to paint huge aural pictures of crashing waves and ethereal forests in your mind. But it's the vocals that makes your hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, it's just so sensual and alluring. Fantastic album but you may need a cold shower after...
Well, here we have part two of our “bloody hell are they still making records” department. And it's Magnum, yes Magnum, don't you worry I can hear the scoffing from Wolverhampton and Swansea, but yes Magnum, have only gone and made their best album in thirty years. As you will have seen there are loads of authentic sounding Prog and Blues albums around made by young whipper-snappers who weren't even born in the eighties. Well here comes a band who looked old back in the eighties to wipe the floor with all of them. What 'Lost on the Road to Eternity' has is songs, eleven of them and they are all absolute corkers. There are plenty of albums in this list that are cleverer than this one, plenty more that are more complex, many others that are probably musically better, but and it is a big but there is no other album on here where I found myself singing along to each and every track. By my fourth or fifth outing with this album, all the songs had started to feel like old friends and comfortable shoes. So Magnum prove that you can be as cerebral as you want but a good hummable tune will win each and every time.
Progressive Doom (yep another flavour, remember Metal loves it's sub-genres) from Brighton. There are lots and lots of great things about this record, but the one that screams out is Anthony Trimmings vocals. They are outstandingly good and not in anyway what you would expect to find on a Doom Metal record. It is magnificently full and bellowy, 'Brian Blessed sings tenor is probably the best description I can find. But humour aside, it is brilliantly rich and full of pitch and power. It is also fabulously enunciated, which is a very rare thing in Metal! Musically, this is a fantastically deep and diverse record. The heaviness that is in the DNA of doom is there but it's subtle and in many places understated. It shares space with intricate Prog interludes that never feel over-complicated, in fact the albums seeming simplicity and minimalism is another of it fascinating features. The album feels lean and well rounded, whilst there is lots here nothing feels over indulgent or over-played. But the last words has to be about that voice, it possesses so much emotion and passion that just makes the album.
Leeds collective A Forest of Stars produce Black Metal with very much a steam-punk flavour. This is grandiose story-telling plucked straight from the Penny Dreadful's of a bygone era and the Black Metal flourishes heighten the atmospherics rather than dominate the sound. ‘Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes’ is their fourth album and is a further exploration into a gas-lamp lit netherworld of occultism and forbidden magics. The songs are expertly crafted fables of fallen women, questionable gentlemen and the influence of powers beyond our understanding. Essentially it's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel given a dark avant-garde and ethereal soundtrack.
Ahh the glorious and rather wonderful Mr. Grant, one of the most genuine and inventive artist to emerge this decade. What is fantastic and highly unique about him is his brutally honest self-awareness and his reverential delivery. His material is becoming even more electro and experimental record by record and there is very much a feel of LCD Soundsystem about this album. ‘Love is Magic’ manages to combine warm conversational song writing with envelope pushing arty credentials and then wrap all that up with lush production. But at the heart of all of this is the man and his enigmatic self-deprecating personality and the fact that every song feels like it is being sung directly to you. A true and rare talent indeed.
Well, it seems the secret to releasing decent material in 2018 is to have a near death experience.
'Dose your Dreams' is a direct squeal to Fucked Up's seminal 2011 album 'David Comes Life', a concept album about concept albums and never trusting a narrator as they have an ulterior motive. 'David Comes Alive' was a blur of different musical styles and bonkers story-telling and I am happy to report that 'Dose Your Dreams is an equally ridiculous kaleidoscope of euphoric colourful contrasting musical styles. It feels like my entire eclectic CD collection has been boiled down into eighteen tracks. Fucked Up have always been a band daring to be different and doing things on their own terms, but here they take all of that to dizzy new heights. This is no longer punk, it isn’t even rock any more, it maybe psychedelic funk but even that doesn't work. What it is, is sprawling, challenging and different to anything else you will find here this year. Seriously bizarre but utterly awesome!
Sleep are by far the greatest and most significant doom metal band of all time (to set the record straight Black Sabbath may have single-handedly birthed the whole Doom Metal movement but they were never a Doom Metal outfit). Sleep may have only operated between 1990 and 1998 but in their short time they produced ‘Holy Mountain’ and ‘Dope Smoker’, two colossal granite heavy monolith like records that still to this day provide the benchmark by which other Doom records are measured by (though neither are the greatest Doom record of all time, that honour goes to the Warning's extraordinary ‘Watching from a Distance’). Sleep reunited in 2009 and for the last ten years they popped up at various festivals playing either ‘Holy Mountain’ or ‘Dope smoker’ in their entireties. Then in April of this year with no pre-warning or fanfare, their fourth album ‘The Sciences’ magically appeared and boy is it good. As you will all be more than aware of by now there are lots of acts doing Doom but ‘The Sciences’ is a case of the masters walking in and saying "no, this is how you do it". It is heavy, slow and pendulous and the riffs grind against your bones. It is the sound of tectonic plates smashing together and the earth folding in on itself. It's heavy and relentless and unrepentant. Most importantly, it's very existence is a joy to behold.
What I do hope this list has done is prove that Metal is not as emotionally illiterate as the mainstream media portrays it to be. It can be a highly passionate and soulful medium that it is subtle, fragile and full of emotional nuance. One example of Metal at its most beautiful and entrancing are the excellent Oceans of Slumber and 'The Banished Heart' that sees them further explore how to produce rich heart-wrenching music using Metal’s many building blocks. This is sophisticated and sultry Metal and Cammie Gilbert's vocal delivery is haunting and otherworldly. Both clever and captivating, Oceans of Slumber have once again proven there is indeed a soul within Metal.
There isn’t much social mobility in Metal. Extreme Metal tends to stay in its box and mainstream happily exists in its. Very few acts crossover, in fact Metallica are probably the only band that began in the dark and probably ripped and blood stained extreme box but then became god-emperors of the mainstream. There are however a number of acts in a transient phase, becoming too big or ambitious for the extreme end but not quite having the smooth edges for mainstream. Behemoth are one of those band. Their 2014 album ‘The Satanist’ was the first ever Stadium Blackened Metal record which showed that they potentially had the ability to take their hybrid of Black and Death Metal songs to a much wider audience. ‘I loved You at Your Darkest’ is great If you liked ‘The Satanist’ (which I did) but doesn't really move them on further in their quest to be the first extreme act since Metallica to make it into arenas and Download headline slots. They have broadened their sound and the songs on here are great (hence the high placing) but they haven't made that stellar leap I thought they may be capable of. This is still very much Blackened Metal for a Blackened Metal audience and whilst it is very good I am disappointed as I had hoped they would produce an album that would take them crashing into the world of Avenged Sevenfold and Slipknot. Maybe next time....
It’s bat-shit bonker’s corner. Avatar are not a band for a person with Clownophobia, they are a modern day freak show designed to frighten the hell of anyone that finds circuses, the tinniest bit creepy. Usually they major in melodic Death Metal of the early In Flames variety, but with this album they have just gone utterly pottty and created not only an album that visits most musical genres in existence (and a couple that don't) but actually their own fully formed universe. ‘Avatar Country’ is not just a concept album, it is a fully formed alternative reality with a ready-made history attached to it. This is the story of Avatar Country's god like ruler (similarities to Sweden's legendary Charles XII are purely intentional). This is a bloody brilliant album and it would have been top ten but they lose their bottle toward the end and it all peters out with two completely sulphurous instrumentals. All a real shame as the first seven tracks (discounting the king speaks as it is dialogue) are all stunning . It is still fabulous and over the top, but it could have been even better with a proper ending!!
So when is a Metal album, not a Metal album? In this case, it is when the Metal band making the album decided not to put ANY Metal whatsoever in it. Voices are what the rest of legendary Black Metallers Ackercocke did when vocalist Jason Mendonça split the band in 2012 and seemingly walked away from music forever (the band reformed in 2016 but that is another story for another time). Voices produced two claustrophobic dark Black Metal albums (the evil in these albums were not Satan but instead real-life issues such as poverty and isolation) before the call came to re-group Ackercocke. So ‘Frightened’ is Voices first post reformation album and it feels like the members have no need to make Black Metal as that urge is dealt with in their day job, instead they have carved a dark goth rock album that is very much grounded in the horrors of modern day reality. This is an unsettling and bleak record but it isn’t metal, it almost seems to want to drag indie away from its comfortable dotage and make it again the sound of nightmares and despair. There is also a lot of David Bowie’s incredible but highly underrated 1995 masterpiece ‘’Outside and The Cure’s equally amazing ‘Disintegration’. Yes those are two amazing records to try and live up to but this is bloody excellent record. It is disturbing and effecting but it is also utterly brilliant.
At The Gates are probably my third favourite band of all time (I'm a geeky male who is on the spectrum, of course I can give you a full list of my fifty favourite bands with a full explanation of why for each one), they are also probably the most influential band that you have never heard of. Their third album ‘Slaughter of the Soul’ is metal's very own ‘Raw Power’, no one bought it on release in 1996 but by the power of word of mouth, it has gone on to influence every single metal album released this century. The whole harsh but melodic sound that modern metal is founded on came from the one incredible thirty five minute long record, it really is that important. As you would expect At The Gates reformed in 2007 to draw dividend from the fact that everyone seemed to cite them as an influence and after milking the nostalgia gravy train for a good number of years in 2014 they released their first new album in eighteen years. As is often the way, At The Gates have now been reunited for longer than they were together the first time around and can no longer rely on good will to secure their position at metal's top table. Fortunately ‘To Drink From the Night Itself’ is excellent and sees At The Gates once again effectively mix brutality with great songwriting, but this isn't just a re-run of past glories as you can hear new influences and nuances coming into their sound. I always worry about new material from bands who are incredibly important to me as I always feel that the bubble is about to burst (Manics I am so looking at you) but here I shouldn't have fretted as this is once again brill.
After having made a sensible grown up record about sensible grown up things, Coheed and Cambria have gone back to their much loved comic books series Amory Wars concept for possibly one of the best albums they have made. They have certainly recaptured what made me fall in love with them ten or so years ago, in that this is once again a perfect blend of commercial rock and eighties Prog. It manages to be unashamedly euphoric and cheesy but without losing the overall cleverness of the whole thing. Big, bold and commercial, if only all accessible pop rock was this good.
At a wedding earlier this year I was genuinely asked by a curious enquirer what I got out of ultra extreme Metal. Their probing was fuelled by the enquirer’s complete mystification about what pleasure I could derive from listening to what they perceived as being pure noise. My simple answer was that I reveled in and fed off the sheer intensity and utter primal power of brutal extreme music. To be honest, I don't think he got my explanation as he then went on to tell me how Adele had the same effect on him, at that point my eyes glazed over. Anyway I recount this story because I see Anaal Nathrakh as a fantastic example of the magnificent beauty of brutal music. Not only is this heavy as hell but they have thrown in all possible ingredients to make the end product as chaotic and disorienting as possible. The genius of Anaal Nathrakh is rather than an incoherent mess, what they come out with is a highly compelling sensory overload of extremity that leaves the listener breathless and just a little punch drunk. ‘A New Kind Of Horror’ is focused on the utter futility of war and the maelstrom of jagged heaviness matches the subject matter. The vocal delivery is beyond angry and has arrived at indignity and utter contempt, screaming at the atrocities we reap on each other. This by far is Anaal Nathrakh’s finest piece of work and shows once again protest music doesn't have to be a hippie with an acoustic guitar.
A huge, huge, apology to every single person I disbelieved over the years about Clutch. There are plenty of people (you know who you are) who I have dismissed and disregarded when they have bigged up Clutch and encouraged me to take a chance on them. "Oh not for me" I would reply "I just don't get them". Well I can tell you now that having lived with ‘Book of Bad Decisions’ for four months or so I so do get it now. This is stunning confident swaggering heavy blues rock. It is gritty real life blue collar rock n’ roll, there is no finesse or fancy twiddly bits, just straight down the line solid jaunty heavy rock. But it does it so so well that the whole thing feels effortless. I'm so, so, a convert.
Apparently you can get a t-shirt that simply reads 'Female Fronted Metal is Not a Genre' and equally Svalbard vocalist and lyricist Serna Cherry argues she is not a female artist, she is simply an artist. ‘It’s Hard To Hope’ is an angry but ultimately uplifting record. It channels the bands rage and the indignity against the sexism inherent within the system but for all the despair at the lack of parity, there is hope here. The music is almost euphoric in its swirling storm of up-tempo guitars and whilst the subject matter is serious and often depressing, this is not a dark or bleak album. The music is full of resilience and crescendo after crescendo of searing guitars. This is the sound of fighting the system rather than be downtrodden by it, a battle cry rather than a scream of anger and in the end it is that feeling of stringent defiance that you are left with.
Our final “old guard make staggering record” entry and staggering is the word here. Best Judas Priest album in decades and probably up there with their best ever work. This is heavy metal in its purest undiluted form and I cannot stress enough how strong, confident and vital this sounds. This may be the work of (mostly) seventy year old men, but it has such a fire in its belly and such energy and conviction in its material. They are not doing anything particularly different, they are just doing it with renewed passion and conviction. Everything is on top form from the songwriting through to Rob Halford's dazzling vocals to the awe inspiring dual guitar work, it is just such a well-crafted record. If Judas Priest needed to reassert themselves as one of the most important bands in our world they have certainly done so here.
When I was in Sixth-Form in the late eighties, we used to brag that our band Garrett Lane played Goth Metal, which to be honest went about as far as us performing both Faster Pussycat and Sisters Of Mercy covers. But we were certainly ahead of our time (well in concept rather than delivery) as in the decades since Goth metal as not just become a thing but its own living breathing counter-culture with countless constituent sub-genres. Tribulation are Goth Melo-Death, think Amon Amarth if they exchanged their Viking fixation for a vampire one. They look like they have all stepped out of a Rocky Horror convention and they probably don't do much sunbathing (or looking in mirrors) but boy is this good. ‘Down Below’ is rich, dense and wonderfully melodic. It's heavy but also has an ethereal and atmospheric quality to it and the duel guitar work is superb and just oozes quality. Whilst this is de-facto extreme metal it isn't brutal or guttural. This is actually a fragile and beautiful record that wears it's (jet black) heart on its sleeve. Excellent.
Right! Black-gaze is the utterly incredible melding of eighties shoe-gaze with Black Metal. Also known as transcendental or euphoric Black Metal, it is essentially what happens when you up-tune your guitars and then play them blisteringly fast. I love it, but was concerned that the glean was wearing off, especially since Deafheaven have abandoned the scene for pastures new (more on them later....spoilers). But this is an utterly incredible record, powerful and full of venom but also utterly beautifully constructed. It is wave after wave of soft fragile instrumentation ripped from an early Cocteau Twins album and then it builds and builds and builds and then the noise hits. It's heavy and claustrophobic and chaotic but always tuneful and mesmerizing. It is just compelling the way that the sound rises and falls and the caustic vocals surrounds gorgeous musical pieces. I love this because it is emotive and stirring, when you reach the end you feel you have been immersed in a masterpiece of sonic power and just want to dive back in. Astonishingly good.
Another record doing stunningly different things with the template of Black Metal, but even though this is using the same musical template as MØL it couldn't be further in sound. This is Black Prog or Black Classic Rock and I would go as far as throwing Black Easy-Listening into the mix. Ihsahn was/is the creative force behind black metal legends Emperor (they are the Black Metal The Beatles), since their split and between their numerous reunions he has produced seven utterly incredible solo albums stretching the walls of Black Metal and even Metal itself. Think of him as our genre's Peter Gabriel, a man unafraid to mix influences and continually confound expectations. ‘Amr’ is as ever wonderful. It is about as Classic Rock as you can go but still have harsh vocals, but it also manages to be both haunting and anthemic. Tracks like 'Where You Are Lost And I Belong' just make the hairs on the back of the neck stand on end with its wrought emotion and feel like the best thing U2 never did. The fact that an album this deep, passionate and intricate exists in the same world as other Metal bands I could name, I find astonishing and for those who feel Black Metal is barbaric, you will not find more heart and soul in any other record on this list.
I struggled with this album and I had to form a virtual working group of those I consider my musical peers to help me consider its merits. It is by far the hardest album to get on with in this list and very much the furthest from the shallow waters of the mainstream, and as this countdown is awash with Death and Black Metal that is certainly saying something. But for all its impenetrable nature, this is a deeply affecting record. It is hard listening but it is also equally hypnotic and engaging. You get drawn in by its raw exposed emotion and whilst it is an incredibly powerful record, it is also subtle and nuanced and in places low-key. Very much uneasy listening, but also compelling in the way that it unfurls. I am now convinced this one of the most important records of the year if not the decade but don't expect to get it first time.
I must be coming across as a right barrel of laughs, as this is yet another emotionally wrought entry dealing with the pain and anguish of loss. You should all know the drill with the Architects, one of the UK's finest young bands they were on the verge of finally breaking into the big time when in 2016 Tom Searle, their guitarist and chief songwriter, lost his three year battle with skin cancer. The band were within touching distance of finally claiming the crown that Bullet For My Valentine had cast aside, but still they considered calling it a day. However instead they have channeled their emotional turmoil into "Holy Hell" a gaping wound of an album that is a brutally honest account of the heartbreak of the last two years. This is an incredibly angry album, raging at the unfairness of the whole situation and it is also raw and untamed in the way that it describes the maelstrom of feelings that the band have been through. Another not easy listen, but it is an incredibly powerful testament to the apocalyptic after-shocks of loss.
Deafheaven were the architects or at least the main producers of Blackgaze. ‘Sunbather’ and ‘New Bermuda’ are both high-water marks in the evolution of this most special and frankly niche of genres. However ‘Ordinary Corrupt Human Love’ sees them completely abandon the sound they single handily cultivated and instead shift towards a much more cinematic and fragile side. Musically they have become subtle, beautiful and enigmatic and frankly what they have created had much more in common with Nordic Giants and Explosions In The Sky than it does with any Black Metal. What keeps it tethered to our world and also what makes it such a fantastic album is that George Clarke's harsh Goblinesque vocals are still there. It is such a startling juxtapose, gorgeous lush sweeping instrumentation with this guttural primal screeching laid over it. As my good lady wife would say it's the sound of someone being tortured to a Mogwai album, but god does it work. Once again Deafheaven have defied the odds and melded together opposing styles to create something utterly wondrous. Just, just brilliant.
A bit of a Finnish double header for the next two entries (ohh spoilers). First out of the traps is progressive Death band Barren Earth with their fourth record and they have created a minor masterpiece that marries the sweeping grander of Prog with the brutal power of Death Metal. But whereas say Opeth would have the two styles operating in an alternating linear fashion juxtaposing each other, here Barren Earth blend them to a create a wonderfully rich but dominant sound. This is a wonderfully textured album with layers upon layers of warm decadent folk flourishes but it is expertly pulled together by an overcoat of precision deployed caustic death metal. The other thing that makes this album so special is Jón Aldará absolutely incredible vocals. They share this astonishing vocal delivery with Faroese metal band Hamferð and this is his second record with Barren Earth, but his first as a full creative collaborator. His range is astonishing as he moves effortlessly from death growls to soaring operatic and this perpetually changing delivery so well matches the shifting instrumentation. Just such a wondrous record.
The second part of our Finnish take over are fellow Progressive Death band Amorphis, now they may be given the same label as Barren Earth but this sounds completely different. This is a far more up-tempo, anthemic and keyboard drenched form of Progressive Death. It has much more of a bombastic symphonic feeling whereas Barren Earth was much more fragile and nuanced. Amorphis are veritable veterans, having done this for twenty-eight years and this is their thirteenth album. Almost out of sight they have produced a string of fantastic albums this decade and “Queen of Time” is the greatest thing they have ever produced, quite a feat. for a band with this much history and this far into their career. Put simply “Queen of Time” doesn't let up for its entire 57 minute running time, it is big, over-blown and sumptuous from beginning to end. It is like being in the middle of an aural firework display as it just encases you in such a huge cacophony of euphoric sound. But this is not noise for noise sake, this is melodic, tuneful and the songs take up squatters rights in your head. Brilliant, just brilliant.
This list is a labour of love that I start compiling from the moment that Big Ben's chimes signal the start of a new year. It is pretty much tied in by November as I await the final stragglers and those that have made the list jockey for position. Some go up as I fall in love with an album that had initially alluded me and some fall away as I realise that they may not be all that after all. “Nanoångström” is a rarity as I had actually closed the list when it was released in late November and I was resolute that I wasn't letting anyone else in, but this so good that I couldn't overlook it, so another record was sacrificed (sorry Cat Power, not your year) and Bast got a last minute berth on a ship that had already sailed. “Nanoångström” is astonishing, it is space rock for the 21st century, Hawkwind reimagined for 2019. A sprawling epic of a record that unfurls in front of you like a portal into another astral plane. It's like someone has unearthed an unreleased alternative soundtrack to ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’. Bast have always made music that defines genre and description, but here they have excelled with a monolith of a record that is the sonic equivalent of an out of body experience. Fabulous, and that will teach me to write off November releases.
This started off in the list somewhere in the mid-eighties and then moved its way into a mid-table obscurity position. I liked it, but was still unsure of what all the fuss was about (this is Metal Hammer’s album of the year) and then it just clicked and it flew up to number nine in the closing moments of list compiling as I realised that “Prequelle” is indeed utterly wonderful. It took a while for the curtain to fall, but I must admit but I am now converted. This is Metal on Broadway, a wonderfully camp and frankly OTT soundtrack to an unwritten musical celebrating the occult. It is Sondheim does Satanism, Andrew Lloyd Webber selling his soul to the dark lord. It is just so wonderfully silly, but still manages to retain the brilliance of the songs, and they are good. Daft as a box of frogs but absolutely brilliant. This is big Stadium Metal redefined with a theatrical wink and huge dose irony but most importantly with the songs.
Best Pink Floyd album in absolute decades is not released by Pink Floyd. Shocker! This is the album I always wanted Pink Floyd to make in that it is brim-full of bold, soulful, highly polished melodic Prog. What is so different to most other modern takes on Prog is it's feeling of self-restraint, essentially it doesn't lose itself down pointless blind avenues of senseless instrumental noodling. Instead this is a concise and small c, conservative album that has beautiful flourishes and gorgeous interludes but is very measured in how it uses them. It knows when enough is enough and everything is in its own proportion. Yes, there are long songs here, but rather than being sprawling epics that going on and on, they are actually quite reserved and minimalist in the way that they unravel and at no point do any of them outstay their welcome. This is a magical, enthralling and warm record that proves good high quality Prog is not actually about how much you've got, its about how you use what you have got.
In my ROCKFLESH review of their recent Manchester show, I described Black Peaks as being a band for the Spotify generation. By this I meant that their influences were so varied and diverse that that much different musical input would have only been possible due to the ‘eat as much as you like’ mentality of Spotify. This veritable free for all on every track every written ever has allowed Black Peaks to forge an album that exists within our world but possess musical tentacles that stretch out into many other spheres of influence. Their debut, “Statues”, was self-assured but this just oozes self-confidence and the arrogance of youth. I have not heard an album this aware of its own brilliance since the Stone Roses' debut, and this self-awareness is not a bad thing. This album is frothing over with passion and pride, it knows that it's good and that it's got great songs and it so desperately wants you all to hear them all. And the songs here are stunning, strong call to arms that utilise countless reference points. ‘All that Divides’ is very much a modern rock album, aware of its history but also determined to do its own thing. Fantastic, utterly fantastic.
Metal is never afraid to consume other musical forms, in fact the main reason It has survived for fifty years is the fact that it merged with other genres and brought new influences into its initially rather limiting framework. Zeal & Ardor have discovered a whole new seam of fruitful creativity by looking beyond and before Metal's first great influence, the Blues. You see, like most sixties rock, Metal was initially based on the Blues. But the Blues aren't themselves a Prime Mover, they were influenced by Gospel and Afro-Spirituals. Zeal & Ardor have taken these and combined them with Black Metal and what they have created is incredible. ‘Stranger Fruit’ is amazing, both heavy and soulful. The vocals are soaring and emotive and the use of chants makes this an a fascinating and extremely powerful record. This feels so original and exciting and makes me fall in love with Metal all over again.
Completely unexpectedly, Suede have made an album that is almost as good as their 1994 masterpiece ‘Dog Man Star’. They hinted that they had reached a creative highpoint with 2016's excellent 'Night Thoughts’, but 'The Blue Hour' is even better. The songs are excellent high-tempo glam stompers but also reverberate with the menace and fear that resonates across the record. Whilst it may seem outwardly poppy this is actually an incredibly dark and foreboding record. The threat creeps through the tracks and the changes in tempo marry the ongoing concern that something is not quite right. Overfull this is a masterful record, a fully formed story-telling backed by stunning musicianship. Wonderful, utterly wonderful.
As I have said, this list takes life over many months as I travel across Greater Manchester. Albums move up and down as my relationship with them changes over the twelve months. However this record was released in the second week of 2018 and claimed a spot at the top and has just stayed there. Hamferð are from the Faeroe Islands and as you would expect make windswept widescreen atmospheric Metal. ‘Támsins Likam’ is just beautiful, a snowstorm of building waves of instrumentation that then crash into a powerful outpouring and then slowly dissipate. It is just jaw dropping in both its intricacy and also it's utter majesticism. The vocals are also amazing and you will remember the shifting tones of Jón Aldará from the Barren Earth album. This album is the nearest you will come to experiencing what it is like living on an isolated island, stirring, emotive and utterly awesome.
Until this year, A Perfect Circle were in my eyes very much Maynard's other band. I listened to them or watched them as a type of methadone to keep me going until that blessed moment Tool would deem us worthy to visit these shores or even produce a new record. ‘Eat the Elephant’ has changed everything as it is utterly stunning. It's further from Metal than Maynard ever wandered with Tool and probably fit more under the title alt-rock or even, god forbid, indie. Whatever you want to call it though, it is brilliant from start to finish, beautifully crafted rock songs that have one foot in the past but also embrace the future. It is a highly reflective album casting aspersions on societies, smart phone addiction and also lack of physical activity, but it manages to do this all with sly black humour. 'So Long and Thanks For All The Fish' for instance has brilliantly witty lyrics, as well as being a darn brilliant. Overall I have fallen head over heels with this album by realizing that it is not Tool and can never replace Tool. It's something different, equally as challenging and rewarding but built of softer cloth but still utterly wonderful.
Loads and loads, reams and reams has been written about where the next big commercially successful Metal band will come from and where is the next stadium bothering festival headlining household name from our genre. You may say Avenged Sevenfold, Bring Me the Horizon, Slipknot and (for a while) Bullet For My Valentine all filled that void but frankly they have all had to be willed and guided into that position by a media and an industry paranoid about emerging holes in their column inches, release schedules, festival bills and (most importantly) bank balances. It's been decades since a band from our end of town rose to the top purely on the back of making music that appeals to millions of people. Now I'm not about to argue that Parkway Drive have achieved this feat with ‘Reverence’, but what they have done is put down a marker that it is entirely possible that they can go on to produce angry heavy music that has massive commercial potential. What we have in the meantime is an utterly outstanding collection of accessible but uncompromising Metal. ‘Reverence’ is polished, melodic and immediate (and in many places eminently hummable) but it is also pissed off, genuine and heavy as Fuck. It may be by far, the most commercial thing they have produced, but it is by no means an easy record. It is an emotionally wrought, passionate and (at times) difficult listen but instead of using death growls and blast-beats, Parkway Drive have utilised the trappings of mainstream Metal to illustrate the heartache the band have been through (death, divorce, cancer diagnosis, its all here). It is very rare for Metal this commercial to be this genuine and (to coin a phrase) 4 real, but with ‘Reverence’ this is the lighting in the bottle that Parkway Drive have managed to capture.
Back in 2001, Andrew W.K. released ‘I Get Wet’ a pop punk glam stomp of an album that won over my heart. In subsequent years, Mr W.K. diversified into motivational speaking, politics (with the party party) and fronting a Ramones cover band with Marky Ramone. Musically he has been less prolific and when albums have appeared they have been less than inspiring to say the least. So imagine the surprise when this juggernaut of up-tempo feel good life affirming goodness hits in April. ‘You're Not Alone’ is wonderful, it is a musically diverse magical mystery tour through sonic affirmation. It is packed full of hymns to not giving in and motivational messages about embracing who you are. Musically, it is also magnificent and brings in every influences it can find from The Beach Boys to Moby. Towards the end it just become utterly euphoric with waves and waves of transcendental heart-warming lifting music. It is just utterly wonderful from start to finish and a fitting number one.
To listen, click here TOP 100 2018 Spotify Playlist
Mr. Kennedy's first of two appearances on the list (Spoilers) and I really should stop disregarding and under estimating our Myles. I completely ignored his main group Alter Bridge for a good long while, telling myself that they were forgettable soft rock for those who didn't like rock. Then accidentally, I found myself listening to their third record ‘ABIII’ and I loved it as it was Heavy Rock with a real metallic punch and I have been a convert and a big fan ever since. And then, there is his extra curricular partnership with Slash which again I didn't get for a good while but then on seeing them live I realised what a warm and fruitful musical relationship it has become and how the genuine mutual respect between the two shines a light on another more frosty partnership Slash might have. And there might be more from this later but ... spoilers.
So I really should have learnt but I hadn't, so when Myles first solo record was released back in March I didn't even bother downloading it and it was only in September that I got around to listening to it and wouldn't you know it's really really good. This is an acoustic based concept album about Myles late father but it is not a maudling and down-tempo record. This is jaunty Southern Bluegrass given a modern twist. It is reverential in use of the Blues but does it in a way that doesn't feel retro or that it is treading old ground. It may be an acoustic album but it certainly isn't stripped back as it has a full and rich sound and a real power and oomph to each track. And the moral of the story is that I need to accept I really like Myles Kennedy and all his many incarnations and even if he went on to release an album of Adele covers I probably would like it.