Damn you, MetalSucks, and your early Top 15 deadlines; I rushed to put that incoherent stream of fanboy drivel together and now, little more than a week later, my list is already obsolete. While it was apparently individualistic and snobby enough to land a cherished spot on Corey Mitchell’s esteemed “MORE ELITIST WRITER HOO-HA” countdown, I only managed to tie for fourth place — disappointing, I know.

Just to affirm my elitist cred I’ve tacked on a few more “don’t know ‘em; don’t care” albums in 2011 that you’ll definitely want to check out if you’re a real snob like me:

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UPDATED:

We love a good list to argue over here at MetalSucks, and we also love us some progressive metal. Based on the comments you guys leave here, I’d say y’all love both of those things too. So Noisecreep’s “Top 10 Progressive Metal Albums of 2011″ list should be right up your alley.

The list was written by Jeff Wagner, author of last year’s Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal, a must-read for any fan of prog. I’ve never doubted that Wagner, the ex-Metal Maniacs editor, doesn’t know his shit, but it’s always refreshing when someone who’s positioned himself as a historian of sorts is so in touch with the modern scene. Head on over to Noisecreep to check his picks; there’s a few albums you’d expect to see — Opeth and Hammers of Misfortune, to name a couple — and there are several surprises as well.

ORIGINAL POST:

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I am a goofy stats and numbers geek and have been ever since I was a kid, starting when I created my own NFL board game using an NFL Strategy football field and hundreds of 1974 Topps Football cards with plays printed on the back.

Yesterday, I was reading the comments in the compilation of our Year End Top 15 lists and stumbled across “You”‘s request that someone should tabulate and collate our lists. This, of course, appealed to the stat geek in me.

In addition, another reader named “Agschwarzer” created the internet meme you see up top.

So, I was curious. What did the writers at MetalSucks like the most in 2011 and, more importantly, did we completely ignore Mastodon?

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We at MetalSucks have dealt with the paradoxes involved with conducting a poll to determine great guitar players (read our 25 Best Modern Metal Guitarists poll here)! So we get that in a unweighted vote, the top-ranked axemen may just represent those liked by the largest number of voters; i.e. a dude who we agree is pretty good may score higher than each of our individual favorite dudes.

So when Rolling Stone magazine enlisted a who’s-who of classic rock personalities for their 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time cover story, we prepared for some wacky aberrations. Let’s check out a few of the RS list’s inconsistencies:

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FEATURING MEMBERS OF GOATWHORE, AGALLOCH, WARBRINGER, ROSETTA, ZEBULON PIKE, NOCTEM, THE WILL OF A MILLION, EXCOMMUNICATED, AND TRANSLATION LOSS RECORDS

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike have graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ve been running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time two to three times a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the final group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

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FEATURING MEMBERS OF GWAR, DARKEST HOUR, REVOCATION, INTRONAUT, ABYSMAL DAWN, BRUTAL TRUTH, THE ATLAS MOTH, AND IKILLYA

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike have graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time two to three times a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the next group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

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FEATURING MEMBERS OF KYLESA, INSOMNIUM, ABORTED, MNEMIC, MARUTA, EAST OF THE WALL, BLOODIEST, BROKEN HOPE, AND IN DE GOOT ENTERTAINMENT

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike have graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time two to three times a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the next group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

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2011 was a year. Metal was released. Some of it was great, some was good, some was mediocre, some was bad. No one reads these intros or each album’s description anyway, right? You just scroll down to see we name #1 then fire off a stangry comment.

I do want to say one thing before you all start trolling: for the time ever this year I used iTunes play counts as a metric for determining the relative order of these choices. I didn’t use it as an absolute metric — so it’s possible that my #1 or #2 got less overall plays than something farther down the list — but when sussing out hard decisions about which of two candidates should be #2 and which should be #3, for example, it was a helpful tool that aided my decision. I listened to #2 more times than #3, so I must’ve enjoyed doing so more. And what are these lists if not really “favorite albums of 2011″? They’re completely subjective anyway; such a thing as objective music ranking is an impossibility and a fallacy.

Almost all of these albums are streaming in their entirety completely for free on Spotify! I’ve compiled a playlist; check it out here and listen along while you read.

So, the list:

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“Blogging isn’t writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.”
-Contaigon

Looking over my list once I had completed it, what I came to realize was that Pig Destroyer once again did not release an album this year, those bastards. But the other thing I noticed is that pretty much every album which appears on this list has two things in common: 1) great songwriting, and 2) one twist on genre conventions, however slight, that allows the music to stand out from literally thousands of competing records. I know I’ve emphasized the importance of these elements many times on this site before, but I really just wanna hammer it home. The ongoing democratization of art — i.e., the fact that it’s getting cheaper to make professional-grade albums and self-distribute those albums, and that the gatekeepers’ powers are consequently decreasing — means that now, more than ever, there is a LOT of music out there. A lot of it is awful. A lot of it is pretty great. You need to give people a better reason to remember you than “We’re so competent!” Sorry. It’s not good enough anymore.

Every year that we do these lists, I become increasingly aware that they’re fairly meaningless. I don’t mean that to belittle the accomplishments of the artists who end up on the lists, because they are all worthy of your recognition and support. I really mean it as an apology to all the artists whose accomplishments we can’t recognize because we organize these things with some arbitrary number, and because we use the words “best” and “top” instead just “great.”

But whatever. We’re not writers — we’re just graffiti artists. And who cares what a graffiti artist has to say, right?

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Maybe you’ve had this experience: A recent acquaintance hears that you listen to tons of metal and reacts with surprise. Usually a work friend, this person kinda blinks in disbelief that a cuddly, sweet cupcake like you loves what appears to be violent, negative music. But you explain that though its popular face dons a mask of self-pity and boner panic, tons of metal’s listeners are sunny dudes.

It’s truer than ever in 2011, as metal’s most heeded voices charge toward enlightened contentment: Mastodon urges us to “pursue happiness with diligence.” Devin Townsend and Junius send a toilet snake down our emotional drain to root out harmful gunk. Anal Cunt, Steel Panther, and Whitesnake help us to party with abandon, to bang and be banged. And, yes, even the doom-and-destruction jamz from Warbringer and Hate Eternal feed our perspective, encourage healthy skepticism, and massage kinks from our rage muscles. The destroyers of our society are not followers of metal. Maybe its saviors are :)

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Junior & I are presiding over an orgy of opinions, and you’re all invited to lube up and slide in….

Just when it seems like life can’t get any crazier, inevitably it does and another layer of the shell gets peeled away to reveal a whole new set of criteria for perspective. This year clean became the new heavy and introspective vulnerability came back in style (but did it ever really leave though?). So many great albums came out — old masters taking new forms, young turks carving new terrain, plenty of new sounds coming out of nowhere….frankly it’s been near-impossible to fashion this list in a distinguishable order. But I wasn’t about to give up, no way José!

So let’s get crackin.

You – love – IT.
And it loves you :) Click to read more…

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli to get in on today’s needless-listing fun…

HIPSTERS

“Well, someone didn’t like Wolves in the Throne Room.”

REASONABLE NERDS

“Somewhat surprised that neither Batillus nor Hull cracked the top 40, while Junius—a meh-ish post-something-or-other band w/ a Coldplay vocal influence—did.”

UNDERGROUND ELITIST DOUCHEBAGS

“well im glad to see decible is still totally clueless and of total shit taste as they should be. stay out of the trve vndergrovnd!”

PEOPLE REALLY EXCITED ABOUT LULU

“Over the half the bands on that list won’t even be around in 5 years. Horrible.”

PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY BUY RECORDS 

“Glad to see Yob, 40 Watt Sun, Tombs, Subrosa, and Graveyard among a few others getting some love.”

-AB

If you wanna read the Top 40 list to which everyone is so reasonably reacting, you’ll need to buy the January 2012 issue of Decibel here. But why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?

I’ll just come out and say it: what a shit year, huh? Natural disasters galore (up in my little corner of New England, we had a tornado, earthquake, and late-October Nor’easter that left everyone without power for a week, all in the span of a few months) following a brutal summer that included a “heat dome”; continued economic misery compounded with heretofore unseen governmental ineptitude due to partisan gridlock/higher-than-normal choad ratio in elected office; the death of The Last Great American Entrepreneur, Steve Jobs or the canonization of child labor enthusiast/capitalist sociopath Steve Jobs, depending on your perspective; new blockbuster Nickelback and Evanescence albums; and the continued existence of Dancing With the Stars, Fox News/MSNBC, Kardashian-related programming where none of them are naked, and of course, the Twilight franchise, which has made the GDP of a small country where emotionally vapid teenagers don‘t fuck each other. If you didn’t wake up a few mornings hurling your alarm at the fresh sunlight sneaking into your room, you had it lucky and were most likely in the minority.

Or perhaps I’m being dramatic. Or it’s certain I’m being dramatic. But even metal, at least on the surface, had less than a banner year. Morbid Angel violently shit the bed with their new album, as did Metallica. Limp Bizkit returned and Korn not only continued to exist but, with Skrillex’s assistance, provided dubstep with a pretty sweet shark-jumping moment. Even Jeff Hanneman got a FLESH-EATING VIRUS from a SPIDER BITE, which was bad enough without mainstream media outlets condescendingly pointing out how “metal” that was. But there were bright spots, as there always are. Hell, Autopsy, Exhumed, and Brutal Truth all put out excellent, peerless albums despite the noticeable handicap of being in the soccer dad demographic now. Perhaps we — and by “we,” I mean “I” — focus too much on the negative. But while theoretically the night is darkest before dawn, perhaps there will never be another dawn, and we have an eternity of endless night with a moon as black as sack cloth and boiling seas and lambs opening seventh seals and so on awaiting us. Here’s this year’s soundtrack to that possibility.

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No long-winded descriptions. No waxing poetic over 2011. I know you don’t read these things. Potato potato potato.

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Phew! Hopefully, you’ve been reading my Bleeders’ Digests this year to get an idea of what I consider to be the best releases in what has truly been a stellar year for metal. I started this insane venture back in January and have listened to, front to back, 723 metal releases this year!

Since we had an earlier than usual deadline this year to submit our final Top 15 (and because I have a book deadline in December), I’ve only made it through half of the month of October. I did sneak in a few key November releases as well such as the new Animals As Leaders, Megadeth, Vektor, and Cynic. For those of you that read the Bleeders, don’t worry, I’ll catch up on the October, November, and December releases in the new year.

What an amazing year for heavy metal. While I somehow managed to whittle my list down to a Top 15, do yourself a favor and check out my previous Bleeders Digests (links at bottom) for a year’s worth of killer tunes. This is but the top 10% of what I found to be excellent. Most of the reviews here are from my earlier Bleeders columns and the updated notes are from my mid-year top albums list. There are a couple of new reviews in the mix as well.

My Top 15 contains a little bit of everything: thrash, crust, instrumetal, black metal, stoner, doom, punk, grindcore, death metal, hardcore, blackened this and that, and more.

Yes, there is a noticeable lack of Djent, wank, and Ghost. Deal with it.

For the rest of you, enjoy!

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When I was first making this list, I had a hard time thinking of that many new albums I’d actually listened to in 2011. But once I actually got home and went through my iTunes/most recent pile of vinyl scores/the mid-year list I wrote, I realized that it’s actually been a damn good year. A few early favorites were supplanted by more recent discoveries and sneaky year-end releases (sorry, Aksumite; hello, Wrathprayer!). Two of my enduring picks came courtesy of the always-excellent Gilead Media, who could use a hand right now and richly deserve your support.

Most of the albums I really loved fall beneath the “black metal” umbrella (11/15), but there are a couple monuments of death and a few doomed souls thrown in there as well. Hell, I would have just written down Beherit’s Live at the Devil’s Studio 1990 fifteen times if I thought I could get away with it.

So, here’s my list! I decided to leave the descriptions a bit vague this year to pique curiosity and inspire further exploration. Spoiler alert: Opeth’s not on it, and I still think that Burzum re-recording was a terrible idea. No, I’m still not sold on the Sonne Adam record (Armed with Hammers was better, and  the production on Transformation was far too clean), and if you’re going to leave pouty comments saying that “I’ve never heard of any of these bands, jeez!”, I recommend you direct your browser to Metal Archives and start typing.

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This was an incredible year for metal, with major players and up-and-comers alike releasing stellar material in almost every subgenre. There were some clear winners for me, but a number of spots on Top 15 could easily have gone to any of the albums on my “honorable mention” list, so I partially picked this based on which of my favorite albums I invested more time into. Please check out any of the bands you haven’t heard here – they need and deserve your support.

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The first thing I think of when trying to sum up the year, musically speaking, is that I really just wanted people to shut up. I’m sure I’m not the only one, because I can think of at least three albums that had an alternate, instrumental version released. (Sorry, Darkest Hour.) I also apparently really liked music that generally falls into the “guitar wankery” category. That’s new. Tastes change, bands change, and another year comes to a close. Here are my top fifteen choices for 2011.

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It was the best of times, it was the most epically lame of times. 2011 saw my first speeding ticket ever, my car totaled, me spend a month in a sling due to surgery necessary after an injury at a Deströyer 666 show five years ago, and start writing for this fine online publication right here. So yeah, this year “suck”ed — but it’s just about over, and there have been some pretty awesome bands come out with new shit to listen to day in and day out. Awwww, there’s that silver lining :)

When I was first asked to submit my year-end list, I have to say, I was a bit intimidated. Not because I’ve never comprised one for public consumption before, but because this year has been, in my mind, a phenomenal year for metal. I can’t tell you how many times I rearranged, added to, subtracted from, and stressed over this list so that it reflected exactly what got me stoked this year. I was lucky enough to see a large chunk of these bands live in 2011, which certainly didn’t hurt in helping me with my painstaking decisions. One band, and I’ll point this out when we get to them, actually swayed me almost entirely after seeing them live, allowing me to listen to the album in a new light and appreciate it on a new level. Don’t you love it when that happens?

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No doubt about it; 2011 has been a pretty swingin’ year for music —the year I had kind of expected 2010 to be (probably because about half of the albums I was anticipating came out so late anyway…). New Limp Bizkit, KoRn, Nickelback, and Soulja Boy? Am I in heaven?

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