Welcome one and all to my year end list! Overall, this was a fantastic year for metal. We saw the rise of sludge based metal bands inspired by the great success of Mastodon (whom has appeared on some mainstream end of the year lists), such as Baroness and Pelican, bring a strong sense of sophistication to the music that really hasn’t felt a dramatic presence in the American mainstream. I think with this new sophistication, the bar has been raised in terms of many people’s expectations of what it takes to be a solid metal band, but at the same time, I sense that many new fans don’t have roots in the storied history of this music to really understand the breadth of what constitutes metal. Power metal, as with much of this decade, has been stagnant in America with very few real artists popping up to fill that void of traditional melodic metal. Luckily there have been some aggressive death metal based bands with have seamlessly melded power metal stylings with their heavier origins (i.e. Fallen Martyr, Mercenary), to give listeners whom might have avoided power metal, a chance to take in a form of metal that they would have shied away from otherwise. It’s also worth noting, that back when I revied Time Waits For No Slave by Napalm Death, that I predicted that deathcore would be a dying sub-genre by the end of the year seeing as true death metal (mostly in the form of modern tech death like Revocation), had been showing a strong front. Well, while deathcore really hasn’t waned as much as I had hoped, it’s very clear that it has reached its saturation point with several fans and critics slowly beginning to turn on the banality of it all. I sincerely hope that we can mop up that mess in 2010, and move on with our metal lives to more productive forms of death metal.

So without further ado, here is my personal list of the best and worst albums of 2009.

BEST OF 2009

Honorable Mentions:

Hammerfall – No Sacrifice, No Victory
Vader – Necropolis
Scar Symmetry – Dark Matter Dimensions
Mystic Prophecy – Fireangel
God Forbid – Earthsblood
Vision Divine – 9 Degrees West of the Moon
Nile – Those Whom the Gods Detest
Blood Red Throne – Souls of Damnation

10. Skeletonwitch – Breathing the Fire
The follow up to their break out album Beyond the Permafrost really exceeded my expectations for some reason. Breathing the Fire is essentially the same exact style as the band’s previous effort, just a bit more golden and refined. As of 2009, Skeletonwitch is really the quintessential example of blackened thrash metal with a close second being Absu, who also released a noteworthy album this year.

9. Megadeth – Endgame
Dave Mustaine has been the butt of the joke for sometime now by many in the metal community. Ever since the band’s comeback, we have been exposed to one album after another, that while each being an improvement over the previous, hasn’t been the Megadeth of old. However, this year with the release of Endgame, Dave has knocked the metal community on their collective asses. This is a stunner of an album, and the best Megadeth since Rust in Peace, bar none. This is about as good as a comeback can get folks, so eat it up now.

8. Artillery – When Death Comes
I am a sucker for thrash metal, so when I heard that Artillery was releasing their first full length since 1999’s B.A.C.K., I gleefully sought out this new album for my listening pleasure. Upon reading up on the album prior to listening to it, I discovered that longtime vocalist Flemming Rönsdorf was being replaced by Søren Nico Adamsen. This new fact made me very apprehensive, as Flemming was a huge part of my draw towards the band’s old albums. However, after finally listening to When Death Comes, I was blown away by the Søren’s ability to fill Flemming’s immense shoes. This, combined with the monstrous, intricately played riffs, made me a revitalized fan. This is, hands down, the best thrash album of the year.

7. Napalm Death – Time Waits For No Slave
The album that I predicted would beckon the downfall of deathcore. I wasn’t quite on point by the end of the year, but the utter raw impact that Time Waits For No Slave has had on the metal community is undeniable. This is possibly the band’s best effort to date, and really shows all the wannabe paint by numbers grind bands how its really done.

6. Epica – Design Your Universe
Epica has never tasted the admiration of being an original band. This is a group that has persisted over the years as being another female fronted band that can subsist on the fans of the genre, who seem to gobble up whatever band can put out a well produced album with talent to back it up, regardless if they had heard the same shit before. I will be honest, I have never been a huge Epica fan prior to this album (and their wonderful live album also released this year), but Design Your Universe has clearly set the band ahead of the pack with a combination of the standard power and symphonic metal, with a strong dose of death metal. Death metal vocals and riffs have simply not been popularized by any band like Epica, but the seamless combination here has brought fans a masterpiece that will set the standard for not only future Epica releases, but every other album that comes out in the same genre.

5. HYPNO5E – Des Deux L’une Est L’Autre
This French band has defined the term “art metal” more than perhaps any band before them. HYPNO5E not only play thought provoking, avant garde metal, but they combined their riffs well thought out film soundbytes and stunning visual imagery in their live performances and videos that bring a three dimensional life to a simple song. This is a breakout artist that should be following in the grand footsteps set by their fellow countrymen in Gojira.

4. Mastodon – Crack the Skye
This is the, by far, 2009’s golden child of metal. Everyone and their brother likes this album, and if you state otherwise, you are a communist and will quickly be put to death. Mastodon is one of those bands that breaches the walls of the common metal denominator, to bring our dark riffs to the listener who usually wouldn’t give metal the time of day. This is truly the people’s metal band now, and is a large piece of education to those who still thought that metal consisted of only Maiden, Priest, Metallica and Pantera. Unfortunately, it has ushered in the age of hipster-dom in metal. Blech.

3. Shrinebuilder – Shrinebuilder
Doom metal has been the essential breeding ground of some of today’s biggest metal artists, but the traditional style hasn’t seen very much mainstream attention this year…that is until Shrinebuilder came album. This self titled debut is filled to the brim with vets who can essentially cave in the human skull with unbelievable riffs. This is an album that resonates the true doom metal spirit in a major way.

2. Delain – April Rain
Female fronted bands can be one of two things: a cash grab, or a legit display of vocal talent. Delain clearly falls in the latter category. Singer Charlotte Wessels is young, but clearly stands out as one of the best female vocalists in metal with a style that flies in the face of the traditional operatic style much like new Nightwish vocalist Anette Olzon. This isn’t a band who displays awesome technical chops, this is a band that brings forth melodies one after another, built upon impactful riffs. Many will disagree with this being in a top 10 list at all, but being able to write a good melody is sometimes harder than melding a technical riff. Every single song on this album has its own identity and display of emotion, which is more than can be said for most death metal albums.

1. Between the Buried and Me – The Great Misdirect
It’s Between the Buried and Me, I mean come on. If you haven’t discovered these guys yet, you haven’t witnessed the new breed of metal musicians, simple as that. Alaska was groundbreaking, and The Great Misdirect has blown the whole damn thing wide open. BTBAM is almost universally accepted as the next great metal band, and as a clear example, when The Great Misdirect came out, people suddenly realized that Crack the Skye wasn’t quite as Godly.

WORST OF 2009

10.Municipal Waste – Massive Aggressive
9. Lamb of God – Wrath
8. Bloodline – Hate Procession
7. Magnum Carnage – More Unreal Than A Box of Precious Metal and Radioactive Ore
6. Sinking Soul – Sinking Soul
5. Alestorm – Black Sails At Midnight
4. Queensryche – American Soldier
3. Opprobrium – Mandatory Evac
2. Darkstars – Night Electric Night
1. Factory of Dreams – A Strange Utopia

Check out the following blogs for their best of lists for hard rock and heavy metal of 2009!

Bring Back Glam — http://bringbackglam.squarespace.com/

Hair Metal Mansion — http://hairbangersradio.ning.com/

Hard Rock Hideout — http://hardrockhideout.com/

Heavy Metal Addiction — http://heavymetaladdiction.com/

Heavy Metal Time Machine — http://metalmark.blogspot.com/

Imagine Echoes — http://www.imagineechoes.com/

Layla’s Classic Rock — http://laylasclassicrock.blogspot.com/

Metal Excess — http://metalexcess.com/

The Metal Minute — http://rayvanhornjr.blogspot.com/

Metal Odyssey — http://metalodyssey.wordpress.com/

The Ripple Effect — http://www.ripplemusic.blogspot.com/

Rock of Ages – http://rockofages.wordpress.com