FEATURING MEMBERS OF AT THE GATES, TEXTURES, GRIDLINK, FIGHT AMP, MONSTRO, GLORIOR BELLI, VALLENFYRE, HOODED MENACE, AND PORTRAIT

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 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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Longtime MS Maniac Ziv Frenkel describes British doom kings Paradise Lost thusly:

PL is one of those bands that has about 6 fans, but all 6 of em think they are the greatest band in history (yours truly among them). some of these cats must follow your site.

Though Ziv apologized for spamming us about Paradise Lost before, it’s true that we’ve barely given any e-ink to this tremendously influential band. And since Ziv thought you might like to know that Paradise Lost will be re-releasing their 1995 landmark album Draconian Times on special edition vinyl in July, he also thought it’d be a good time to post the video for the classic song “Lost Forever” from that album. Here ya go, Ziv (and the other 5 of you).

-VN

For some reason Paradise Lost don’t seem to be getting much press around their new album — not just on this website, but in the entire U.S, both print and web. And it’s a shame, because this band has been making excellent albums for 20 years now and their latest, Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us, is no exception. Stream the new album in full on the band’s MySpace page right now, and if you like it then make sure you buy it when it comes out on September 28th (that’s a Monday; it’s a European release, but really, in 2009 aren’t all releases basically worldwide by default?).

Seriously, folks; really good album here, and ya’ll are missing out on some dark, gothy, doomy metal. Pay attention.

-VN

We haven’t spent nearly enough time here talking about Paradise Lost’s excellent new album Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us; actually, we haven’t spent any time talking about it here. And none of you have emailed or commented to excoriate us for this glaring omission. Shame on all of us.

Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us was recorded in Sweden with producer Jens Bogren, so you know it’s gonna sound delicious and luscious; the album drops on September 28 in Europe and October 6 in the States. The new video for the album’s title track is a weird / cool idea for a music video and it doesn’t feature the band playing in an abandoned warehouse, or playing anywhere for that matter — the band members don’t even appear in the video. Instead, there’s some creepy girl mouthing all the words of the song to the camera and some creepy guy cutting off her hair bit by bit. I was hoping for some kind of climax at the end, but perhaps the video is all the more unique for the lack of a cliched video ending. Watch it below.

-VN

It may be 80 degrees and Sunny today, but it’s not too soon to start thinking about the gloomy darkness of Autumn and the doomy goodness that the 2009 season is going to bring; Swallow the Sun and Paradise Lost both have new records on the way.

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