(Above: DragonForce - #86 on the list.)

I admit it: the tone of my journey through Decibel's list of the 100 best metal albums of the 2000s might have gotten somewhat testy 'n' negative at times. Consequently, and because some folks I know asked me if I was going to, I have chosen to counter them with a list of my own. This is not at all scientific, because nobody voted but me - it's based entirely on stuff I like enough to keep in my 160GB iPod, which goes everywhere I go. So here are my personal choices for the 100 Best Metal Albums Of The 2000s, #s 100-81.

100. Annihilation Time, Annihilation Time III: Tales of the Ancient Age - A blazing mix of Thin Lizzy-esque dual guitar leads and Black Flag-style rawness and fury. This was released in 2008 and could have come out at any time in the mid '80s; it has the basement recording values of the best hardcore, with the crushing riffs of great thrash.

99. Intronaut, Prehistoricisms - Technically proficient, progressive metal that combines slablike doom riffs with dissonant, arty guitar noise, psychedelic adventurousness and occasional bursts of melody to boot. Impossible to pin down to one subgenre, but heavy and impressive as hell.

98. Spawn of Possession, Cabinet - This Swedish band's 2003 debut disc managed to mix head-spinning technical skills with a surprisingly human feel. It was easy to picture four dudes in a room making this music, even if the idea of even trying to emulate their achievement would probably make most aspiring guitarists or drummers weep with frustrated rage.

97. Wolf, Black Wings - Another Swedish act, this one devoted to the NWOBHM sound of the early '80s. If you like the first couple of Iron Maiden albums, you're gonna get a huge kick out of Wolf.

96. Dir en Grey, Uroboros - These Japanese freaks are a little bit Goth, a little bit screamo, a little bit noise-rock, a whole lotta arty, and phenomenal live. This is their most recent album, and the result of what they've been building to for about a decade. Emotionally raw, musically complex, and cathartically powerful.

95. Cavalera Conspiracy, Inflikted - Max and Igor Cavalera, the brothers who co-founded Brazilian death metal legends Sepultura, hadn't spoken in over a decade when, seemingly out of the blue, they re-teamed for this bottom-heavy, grinding thrash album that was better than anything Sepultura had done since Max's departure, or anything Soulfly had ever done, period.

94. Bolt Thrower, Those Once Loyal - British death-grind institution Bolt Thrower's last album (so far) didn't break any new ground - all the songs had bass-heavy, savage riffs and lyrics about war - but it was them doing their thing at the top of their form, and that's more than enough.

93. Megadeth, Endgame - Dave Mustaine's newest band is his best since the early '90s, and the album he put out this very year is his strongest in over a decade. Packed with shredding guitars, high-tech riffing and his usual clenched-teeth vocal snarl, it's a Megadeth album for the ages, the first (and we hope not the last) of this millennium.

92. Blessed by a Broken Heart, Pedal to the Metal - A bunch of kids with goofy haircuts and goofier clothes make an album packed with metalcore riffs, bellowing hardcore vocals, '80s rock radio synths, disco beats, and more fun per second than almost anyone else on this list. Half these songs sound like the ideal soundtrack to a training montage in a Sylvester Stallone movie, and that's not a bad thing.

91. Nervecell, Preaching Venom - Were you expecting a kick-ass death metal band to come from Dubai? Me either, but Nervecell rose out of the desert like a sandstorm in 2008 (with guest drumming from Psycroptic's David Haley) and tossed one of the most brutal tech-death discs of the year into the laps of the decadent West.

90. Enslaved, Isa - I think I talked about this album when digging into the Decibel list. Their psychedelic, progressive version of black metal (with Viking metal lyrics) is pretty much unique in the world, and this is their best album.

89. Suffocation, Blood Oath - This Long Island, NY-based death metal institution are, astonishingly, making music now that's as good as they ever were - Blood Oath more than holds its own against classic earlier titles like Pierced From Within and Effigy of the Forgotten.

88. The Ocean, Precambrian - "Ambitious" isn't even the word. This oversized German ensemble released this double CD in 2007, and the music spans everything from orchestral instruments and delicate piano to bulldozing, Neurosis-style riffs, plus a mind-boggling array of guest vocalists.

87. Antigama, Resonance - A Polish grindcore outfit with the skills and desire to blow their chosen genre's boundaries wide open, encompassing everything from drum solos to jazz-funk interludes. Brain-twisting one second, lung-poppingly brutal the next, this is eclecticism that actually kicks ass instead of just being a demonstration of the bandmembers' satisfaction with themselves.

86. DragonForce, Inhuman Rampage - I shouldn't have to defend my enjoyment of this album, but I probably do. Look, their lyrics are nonsense, their "songs" are a string of solos with the bare minimum of structure pasting them together - I get all that. And nobody needs more than one DragonForce album. But this one's a fucking blast.

85. Prostitute Disfigurement, Descendants of Depravity - Bare-bones (no pun intended) death metal. I first heard about this album when I read one of the greatest music reviews ever written by anyone, and it totally lives up to that hype.

84. Slayer, World Painted Blood - I've talked a lot about this album already. It rules and you know it.

83. Halford, Crucible - A lot of people were so glad to see Rob Halford back with Judas Priest that they put his in-between projects out of mind, but both Fight and Halford released some good, headbanging songs, and this album is jammed with 'em. Somewhere between Priest and Pantera, Halford was a seriously heavy power metal band worth your attention.

82. Insect Warfare, World Extermination - Originally released on the tiny label 625 Grind in 2007, and reissued by Earache last year, this is the only full-length (and at 20 tracks in 22 1/2 minutes, it's barely that) release by one of the noisiest, most hate-filled grindcore bands ever.

81. Sunn O))), Oracle - a limited-edition EP that sets the stage for their awesome 2009 release Monoliths & Dimensions, Oracle combines Sunn O)))'s usual ultra-downtuned waves of guitar with actual jackhammers. If you're into the industrial/junkyard music of Einstürzende Neubauten, you'll like this a lot.

That's all for today! Back tomorrow with #s 80-61! 

(Above: Lamb of God, who did not make the list.)

And so at last we come to the end. Today we discuss the 20 albums Decibel magazine considers the best of the decade (the special issue containing their whole list is available here). And it's a very problematic 20. Shall we?

20. Agalloch, Ashes Against the Grain - The word "atmospheric" describes Agalloch perfectly, for good and ill. Sometimes their music conjures a very strong mood - an atmosphere, if you will - of wandering in barren woods at night; other times, it drifts past you, making no impression - like the atmosphere itself.

19. Melt-Banana, CellScape - Another non-metal band. Melt-Banana are good, but they're not metal. If you've never heard them, they're a spasmodic Japanese art-hardcore band (think early Boredoms, or John Zorn's Naked City project without the genre-hopping virtuosity) with a shrieking female vocalist. They do have a connection to metal, in that Dave Witte of Burnt By The Sun and Discordance Axis drums for them. But they don't belong here.

18. Neurosis, A Sun That Never Sets - It's a toss-up whether this or The Eye of Every Storm is the most boring album by this intensely boring, overwrought and overrated band.

17. Converge, Axe to Fall - An excellent album by a band that's already been extensively discussed in previous entries.

16. The Red Chord, Clients - These guys make intricate, highly technical metalcore with arty, conceptual lyrics. I don't like 'em, but lots of other people do, and there's no denying their metal-ness.

15. Pelican, The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw - Pelican seemed promising at first on their self-titled EP and Australasia. But their heavy instrumental rock doesn't change enough from album to album, and frankly they're long past the time when they should have broken up.

14. Napalm Death, Enemy of the Music Business - Another example of "great band, wrong album." Enemy is a decent record, but its successor, Order of the Leech, was better, and like I mentioned earlier, their 2006 disc Smear Campaign absolutely belongs on this list.

13. Baroness, Blue Record - I like this album a whole lot. It's gonna wind up right near the top of my 2009 list. No complaints.

12. Discordance Axis, The Inalienable Dreamless - This is a surprising but very, very welcome pick. Discordance Axis were one of the greatest grindcore bands ever, and this, their third and final full-length album, is their masterpiece.

11. Torche, Meanderthal - I don't really like these guys. They play melodic stoner-rock in the spirit of Queens of the Stone Age, and they're good at it. But it doesn't really hold my attention. So whatever.

10. Electric Wizard, Dopethrone - I have long maintained that this album is revered as much for its cover art (a painting of Satan doing bonghits) than its musical content, which is admittedly pretty awesome but, for me, falls short of its predecessor, Come My Fanatics.... But enough people have been worshipping it for long enough that I accept that mine is a minority opinion.

9. Pig Destroyer, Phantom Limb - Another good album, but I would have preferred to see Terrifyer here, and this one down at the bottom.

8. Iron Maiden, Brave New World - Iron Maiden have only ever released two really bad albums, and both of those came out right before this one. Brave New World, which features Bruce Dickinson's return to the vocal spot, is a very good record. I might prefer the sprawling, musically expansive A Matter of Life and Death, but I can't argue with seeing Maiden this high on the list.

7. Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf - I thought the Queens' debut disc was okay; it was about as good as Kyuss's half-assed farewell, ...And the Circus Leaves Town. But everything they've done since has left me cold, and this album is no exception.

6. Katatonia, Last Fair Deal Gone Down - These guys do an arty, moody doom thing with tinges of electronic music here and there, and many more clean vocals than death growls, which is a very good thing in my book. If you haven't heard these guys, and you like Opeth's gentler moments, you should by all means check them out.

5. Mastodon, Remission - Mastodon's first full-length is more of a hint that great things are on the way than a truly great album. This and Leviathan should have had their positions switched.

4. Isis, Oceanic - Okay, this is deserved placement. Their second and best full-length, it expands their sound (which was originally kind of a Godflesh knock-off) into something unique that truly lives up to the album's title. This is an album you could sink into and float away.

3. Opeth, Blackwater Park - This was the album that kinda broke Opeth to a wider audience than they'd reached before. It's a really strong combination of the progressive death metal they'd been playing all along and psychedelic melodies (some credit for this was probably due to the influence of producer Steven Wilson of UK prog-psych act Porcupine Tree). I still think their 2008 release Watershed belonged on this list somewhere, but Blackwater Park deserves honor.

2. Cave In, Jupiter - Cave In were a metal band on their first two releases, Beyond Hypothermia and Until Your Heart Stops. With this disc, they moved in the direction of progressive hard rock a la Rush, and after this, they were never even remotely metal-related again. I like this album; I think it's their best work, and the dropoff in quality after it has been steep. But is it the second-best metal album of the 2000s? You've gotta be kidding me.

1. Converge, Jane Doe - Speaking of "you've gotta be kidding me"... Every single album Converge released in the last decade made this list. That's absurd. On pure artistic merit, this album is not even Converge's best, to my ear - Axe to Fall is. But this is the one everybody seems to love. Is it good? Absolutely. Does it deserve this spot? I don't even think the members of the band would make that claim.

I must confess great disappointment with this list. It was the product of a select pool of voters, but based on these results, that's a pool that should obviously have been expanded quite a bit. No power metal, no thrash to speak of, barely any doom or industrial...this is an extremely parochial and painfully underground-centric view of metal in the 2000s. And that's without even discussing the vast numbers of hardcore and non-metal releases. The weird thing is, I don't think this even provides an accurate representation of the range of music Decibel covers. This was a good idea, extremely poorly executed. 

(Above: Motörhead, who did not make the list.)

We're now into the middle stretch of our trawl through Decibel magazine's Top 100 Greatest Metal Albums Of The Decade (special issue available here), and I've got almost as many problems with #s 60-41 as I had with the ones below it. Let's get started.
60. Napalm Death, Time Waits For No Slave - This is, indeed, a very good album. Napalm Death are for the most part consistently awesome, and they've thrown a surprising number of curveballs at their fans over the years. But is this disc better than 2006's Smear Campaign? I submit that it is not, and that SC should have gotten this spot.

59. Dying Fetus, Destroy the Opposition - DF are a decent death metal band with relatively knowledgeable, politically aware lyrics that sometimes go beyond mere sloganeering into actual thought. So while I'm not a big fan, I can see how they'd belong here.

58. Disfear, Live the Storm - Now this I have no problem with at all. Disfear take the "D-beat" punk rock aggression created by UK legends Discharge and give it a serious adrenaline injection. This album kicks all kinds of ass.

57. High On Fire, Death is This Communion - Again, you're never gonna hear me say anything remotely negative about High On Fire (other than advising singer/guitarist Matt Pike to please put a shirt on). I like this album's predecessor, Blessed Black Wings, a little better, but High On Fire has never been less than awesome.

56. Cult of Luna, Somewhere Along the Highway - Again, no real complaints from me. I frequently like Cult of Luna more than Neurosis or Isis, the two bands to which they're often (and unfavorably) compared. So good for them making it this high up the list.

55. Enslaved, Below the Lights - Another good choice. This might indeed be these Norwegians' best album; it's a toss-up between this one and the follow-up, Isa.

54. Jesu, Jesu - I really don't like Jesu. It's Justin Broadrick of Godflesh exposing his soft, psychedelic side, and it bores the pants off me and is in no way metal. If this is metal, then so are My Bloody Valentine and Lush.

53. Isis, Celestial - Their first full-length. Better than recent efforts like In the Absence of Truth or Panopticon (heavier, too), but these guys don't deserve more than one spot on this list, and that spot belongs to their second album, Oceanic.

52. At the Drive-In, Relationship of Command - Not metal. Moving on.

51. Ludicra, Fex Urbis, Lex Orbis - Avant-garde black metal. Supposed to be quite good, but I've never heard 'em, so no comment.

50. The Dillinger Escape Plan, Ire Works - This is a very good album by a band that's changed a lot since the ultra-intense, hyper-complex mathcore of their early days. Now they're willing to throw electronics and other jarring noises at the listener, and even write a few songs that are almost catchy. I do actually think this is their best record.

49. Arsis, A Celebration of Guilt - I sometimes really hate James Malone's vocals, and the band's attempts to make death metal catchy sometimes run aground for precisely that reason, but I have tremendous admiration for their all-American approach to technical death metal with a big dose of thrash, so okay.

48. Mastodon, Blood Mountain - I love Mastodon, but this is their weakest album, and Crack the Skye should probably have gotten this spot.

47. Electric Wizard, WItchcult Today - The most recent album by these pot-fogged UK stoner-doom masters. It's pretty good, especially compared with its half-assed predecessor, We Live, but honestly, their second full-length, Come My Fanatics..., is really the jewel of their discography.

46. Evoken, Quietus - This New Jersey band plays funeral doom; long, ultra-slow, depressing stuff. I haven't heard this album, but I think I might check it out, so points to Decibel for bringing it to my attention.

45. Between the Buried and Me, Alaska - I really don't like this band. They try to blend prog-metal and crunching post-hardcore, but I always wind up feeling like they wrote a bunch of riffs and forgot that that's not the same thing as writing a song.

44. Watain, Sworn to the Dark - Watain again? One spot, low on the list, was enough for this band. Someone else should have been put in here.

43. Nile, Annihilation of the Wicked - As long as that someone else wasn't Nile. The love for this Egypt-obsessed death metal band has eluded me forever. Sure, their concept is kind of cool, and Karl Sanders is a better-than-decent guitarist, but their albums (and especially their live show) are crushingly boring.

42. Opeth, Ghost Reveries - I love Opeth, but this is their weakest album of the 2000s. It was basically just them running through their Still Life/Blackwater Park/Deliverance sound one more time before making the vitally necessary, and creatively invigorating, left turn of their brilliant 2008 album Watershed.

41. Primordial, The Gathering Wilderness - Primordial, Ireland's contribution to the pagan/folk death metal scene, are okay, but should they be this high? No, they should not. And frankly, a list that doesn't include Amon Amarth should have no room for Primordial. Sorry.

Back tomorrow with the first half of the Top 40! 

Today, December 8, is the fifth anniversary of the murder of Damageplan and former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. I have tremendous respect for the guy's playing; I haven't heard the early stuff, but every single Pantera album from Cowboys from Hell through Reinventing the Steel has riffs on it that'll make you wanna shove your head through the nearest wall. (It's not a majority opinion by any means, but Reinventing the Steel might be my favorite Pantera album.)

Anyway, I can't think of any more fitting tribute than this truly horrifying Photoshop atrocity which someone pointed me to online. RIP Dimebag Darrell, and thanks, anonymous benefactor!

 

(Above: Megadeth, who did not make the list.)

Today, we're going to go through #s 80-61 on Decibel's list of the Top 100 Greatest Metal Albums Of The Decade, which they published in a special issue you can purchase at this link. Yesterday, I did a fair amount of griping about non-metal bands being on the list, and that's going to continue today. Here's the thing: I know that Decibel doesn't cover just metal bands. Like the UK magazine Terrorizer, they see their territory as covering all of "extreme music," with a focus on metal. But they called this a list of metal albums. And if metal can be anything, then it's really nothing at all. Without definitions, there are no genres. Throwing a trumpet solo into the middle of a Judas Priest song doesn't make it a jazz piece, and art-punk isn't metal just because some metal fans happen to like it. You can't say "I'm a metal fan" without finding some way to define "metal" beyond "music I am a fan of." That's boneheaded tautology, not critical thinking.

Anyway, on to the list!

80. Warhorse, As Heaven Turns to Ash - As doom goes, this is a pretty good album. It's slow, heavy and blisteringly loud. I don't know that it's exemplary within the genre, but it's not particularly objectionable.

79. Akercocke, Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone - I really like this album. Akercocke are a mystically-minded progressive death metal act from the UK who add psychedelia and the occasional Middle Eastern influence to their music, and I think they don't get enough recognition in the U.S. So good for Decibel finding room for them here.

78. System of a Down, Toxicity - I'm genuinely surprised to see this on the list, not because it's bad (it's actually a really good record), but because it was a big mainstream success and for the most part this has been an undergrounder-than-t​hou parade so far.

77. Taint, The Ruin of Nova Roma - These guys play uninspired stoner doom/sludge, and I wouldn't have predicted them making this list at all, let alone making it out of the bottom ten.

76. Neurosis, Given to the Rising - I don't like Neurosis. Lots of other people do, but I find them pompous and boring and depressingly influential on lots of other bands, who are equally pompous and boring without even offering a modicum of originality (if nothing else, Neurosis were original) to back it up.

75. Fucked Up, Hidden World - An arty punk band from Canada. Has no business on this list.

74. Nasum, Human 2.0 - I love me some grindcore, but Nasum's ultra-clean style is like the Ikea of grind. Streamlined and crisp, for mass production and global distribution. This album is a fine example of their work, if you like your grindcore glossy and slick, instead of punky and noisy.

73. Immortal, Sons of Northern Darkness - I love this album. I probably would have tried to find room for it in the top fifty. Immortal are masters of riff-heavy, anthemic black metal, and this album, seen as their farewell gesture at the time of its release, really encapsulated their greatness.

72. Nachtmystium, Assassins: Black Meddle Part I - This disc got a lot of favorable response upon its release in 2008. Basically, these Chicagoans expanded their sonic palette from the raw black metal of their early days to include lots of psychedelic production and progressive songwriting. Good stuff, but it doesn't feel like the end of a journey - they've got a way to go yet.

71. Deathevokation, The Chalice of Ages - This is the kind of album these lists were meant to highlight. An ultra-impressive debut by an American death metal band with an old-school feel but with plenty of modern touches thrown in. Deathevokation are destined to be underground forever, but more people should know about them. A great choice.

70. Trap Them, Seizures in Barren Praise - These guys are an excellent grindcore/death metal band, noisy and punishing but heavy as hell, too. A really good album that deserves its spot.

69. Rotten Sound, Murderworks - I don't necessarily love these Scandinavians, but they're good at what they do. Not sure I'd put this album in the top 100 of the decade, though.

68. Thorns, Thorns - A really interesting blend of black metal and industrial/electroni​c sounds and production effects. This is fine where it is.

67. Meshuggah, Catch 33 - I think this should maybe have been a little higher. It's a tough album to listen to, because it's one long song divided into a bunch of "movements"; it's probably Meshuggah's magnum opus, though that doesn't necessarily translate to being their best album, just their purest. But I love it and it deserves to be honored as an artistic achievement.

66. Leviathan, Tentacles of Whorror - The one-man-band school of "bedroom black metal" is pretty weak stuff, generally speaking, but within that subgenre, the two big names are Leviathan and Xasthur. I'm surprised Xasthur hasn't popped up on this list yet, because while I don't actually like him or Leviathan that much, I definitely think the X-man is the better of the two.

65. Withered, Memento Mori - I guess these guys' mix of black and death metal is pretty good. I saw them open for Marduk in April and they were solid performers, but I couldn't recall a single riff or chorus with a gun to my head.

64. Hatebreed, Perseverance - Man, am I not a Hatebreed fan. I respect their achievement - crossing knuckle-dragging, thick-necked hardcore over to a sizable semi-mainstream audience - and frontman Jamey Jasta's a nice guy, but their music just bores me. Also, hardcore ≠ metal. I recognize their importance to metal culture, though, so I'll give this one a pass.

63. Converge, No Heroes - Here's another non-metal band on the list. I like Converge a lot, but they owe more to Unsane and other noise-rock outfits than they do to Slayer or Metallica. And No Heroes is a decent holding-action album between You Fail Me and this year's awesome Axe to Fall, nothing more. This doesn't belong on the list.

62. Botch, An Anthology of Dead Ends - Remember the Coalesce entry I talked about yesterday? Here we have the same thing happening again. Botch was one of the greatest American bands of the late '90s; unfortunately, they released their last real studio album, the mind-roastingly awesome We Are the Romans, before the cutoff for this list. So the Decibel voters tossed in this leftovers anthology instead.

61. Deftones, White Pony - This is System of a Down all over again; a really good, mainstream-accessibl​e record that deserves its spot, yet somehow surprises me by being here. I love White Pony. I'd have put it in the top 30 of this list, easy. I feel bad for Deftones that they have to keep trying to top it - they must know on some level that they never will.

That's all for today, folks! See you tomorrow for #s 60-41! 

Before we embark on Day Two of my run through the Decibel Top 100 Greatest Metal Albums Of The Decade, here's "Ice Worm," the new video by Indianapolis-based doom/biker-metal band The Gates Of Slumber. If you haven't heard their album Hymns Of Blood And Thunder yet, by all means pick it up - it's ferocious.

Enjoy!

 

(Above: Amon Amarth, who did not make the list.)

Remember what I said the other week about the end of the year (and the decade) spawning a bazillion crappy lists? Well, Decibel has released a whole issue devoted to the 100 best albums of the 2000s (buy it here), and, well, if you thought I had problems with their Top 40 of 2009...

I'm gonna spend this week going through the list, 20 albums at a time. Feel free to comment on the list, or what I have to say, below.

100. Slayer, World Painted Blood - This is the only Slayer album on the list, and it's in a weirdly tokenistic spot. A very good album, but a bad start for the Decibel voters.

99. My Dying Bride, The Dreadful Hours - I haven't heard this album, but it has songs with titles like "The Raven and the Rose" and "The Deepest of All Hearts," so I doubt I ever will. Frilly-shirt doom metal? No thanks.


98. Cobalt, Gin - These guys are overrated, but their mix of black metal and raw, hate-filled noise-rock is actually pretty powerful stuff. I don't have a problem with this album being on the list, as long as it's down here near the bottom.


97. Battle of Mice, A Day of Nights - This is the first album on this list to demonstrate a major problem with Decibel's lists in general: the presence of non-metal albums that consequently push out deserving metal records. Battle of Mice make sludgy noise rock with a crazy, shrieking female vocalist. And that's fine in small doses, but they're not a metal band.


96. In Flames, Clayman - I'm not a big In Flames fan, but they are undeniably a metal band, and this is pretty much their best album of the 2000s, so okay.


95. Coalesce, Ox - Two problems here. First, Coalesce are not a metal band; second, this is a 2009 release. I get that the former hardcore dorks on the Decibel staff missed Coalesce terribly, and were gonna jump at any chance to put them on this list, but really, this is another wasted spot.


94. Decapitated, Nihility - Decapitated were one of the best technical death metal bands on Earth when they made this album. It should be ranked much higher than it is.


93. The Paper Chase, Now You Are One of Us - Again, not a metal album. The Paper Chase are a Jesus Lizard-esque noise rock band. Which is fine. But this means a deserving metal band lost their spot.


92. Cathedral, Endtyme - The next-to-last album by a band that pretty much peaked by album #2.


91. Godflesh, Hymns - The final album by a band that peaked on full-length #2 (1992's Pure). Again, this feels like the Decibel voters just wanted to wedge a Godflesh disc in any way they could out of love for Justin Broadrick (a love I share, by the way, with the exception of the terribly boring Jesu).


90. Asunder, Works Will Come Undone - A funeral doom album with two songs on it; the first is 22 minutes, the second is over 50. Frankly, that sums up my problem with funeral doom as a genre, but I guess if you dig the style, these guys really hammer it home.


89. Cryptopsy, ...And Then You'll Beg - This is the only Cryptopsy disc on the list, and it's far inferior to 2005's Once Was Not.


88. The Haunted, The Haunted Made Me Do It - The Haunted are a good band; this is a good album. I guess this placement is okay.


87. Psyopus, Ideas of Reference - Wow, do I hate this band. Pseudo-jazzy, crudely psychedelic art-grind by a bunch of jagoffs who think writing eight riffs that have nothing to do with each other is the same thing as writing a song.


86. Killswitch Engage, The End of Heartache - These guys are huge, and extremely influential on younger bands, and this was their breakthrough album. I don't like 'em that much, but this should be a few spots higher than it is out of sheer impact on metal as a whole.


85. Watain, Casus Luciferi - This is in fact a very good black metal album. It's hard to do something truly interesting with black metal, a genre that throws obstacles (deliberately bad/noisy production, goofy visuals) in its own path, but without getting all avant-garde, these Swedes have succeeded in keeping their chosen genre vital. So okay.


84. Pig Destroyer, Terrifyer - This I have a problem with. Most critics and many fans think Pig Destroyer's Phantom Limb is their best album; I strenuously disagree. Terrifyer truly lives up to its title, caroming from one ferocious song to the next without a break except for truly nerve-wracking field recordings and samples. Plus, the sound is red-hot, where Phantom Limb is excessively sludgy. This album should have been somewhere in the mid-20s, not in the bottom fifth of the list.


83. Drowningman, How They Light Cigarettes in Prison - Again, not metal. Drowningman is a noisy hardcore band given to long, sarcastic song titles. Bore me a little more, why doncha.


82. Gojira, From Mars to Sirius - Like Terrifyer, this is a really good album that deserves to be much higher on this list than it is. I would have put it in the mid-30s or thereabouts, if not higher. This is a record I listen to all the time, from a band I believe will be pushing metal forward for some time.


81. Mayhem, Chimera - This is a pretty good record, but it's their most conservative of recent years. I would have voted for 2000's experimental and quite fascinating Grand Declaration of War or 2007's crunchy, arty Ordo Ad Chao over this album, which strikes me as Mayhem's attempt to hold onto aesthetically closed-minded black metal fans by deliberately dumbing down their music.

That's it for today! Back tomorrow with my responses to #s 80-61! 

Swedish progressive death metal band Opeth will commemorate their twentieth anniversary in spring 2010 with six exclusive shows in Stockholm, Sweden; Essen, Germany; Paris, France; London, UK; New York City, NY; and Los Angeles, CA.

Frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt said, "I can’t believe it, but... fuck, we’re celebrating 20 years. I’ve been in this band ever since I was 16. It’s insane. As far as I remember, we’ve never had a release party, never celebrated anything officially. Well, now is the time, you hear? We’ve set up a string of shows, six of them actually, around the world. To say that they will be super-exclusive is beyond an understatement. We’ve discussed the set list already and it seems like we’ll pull out a few songs we’ve never played before, some of which fans all over the world have been demanding to hear for years and years. Our main agenda for these shows is to have ‘fun’ whilst trying to blow your fucking minds. You could say business as usual, but really, it’ll be special. I can’t stress enough how exclusive this will be. We will not add any more shows on top of the six that we’ve confirmed already, so please make up your mind early on whether you want to go or not - of course you fucking do- as I would assume there’s quite a few of our fans that might be interested in seeing a thing like this."


The band will be performing two sets each night. The first set will be a run-through of their Blackwater Park album in its entirety, while the second will span their entire career. The band will offer exclusive VIP ticket packages to all shows which will include a laminated VIP pass exclusive to each show, access to sound check, a meet ‘n' greet with Opeth, a T-shirt exclusive to that particular show, a signed tour program and a special edition CD/DVD of Blackwater Park with a 5.1 mix and a 30-minute, never-before-seen documentary in a hardcover digipak. All the Opeth loot will be included in an Opeth rucksack. The VIP laminate will also allow early access to venues without seat allocation so that VIP’s can get the best seats in the house.

Dates are as follows:


March 30 – Cirkus – Stockholm, Sweden
April 1 – Lichtburg – Essen, Germany
April 3 – Bataclan – Paris, France
April 5 – Royal Albert Hall – London, UK
April 7 – Terminal 5 – New York, NY
April 9 – The Wiltern – Los Angeles, CA