1) Baroness – Blue Record
I’m not the first person to put this album at number one on a year-end list, but it really deserves all the hype. If you want to know my full opinion, read my review here (http://themusicarium.blogspot.com/2009/11/baroness-blue-record.html).
2) Mastodon – Crack the Skye
This album was my # 1 from the moment I listened to it the whole way through, up until the release of Blue Record. I listened to this album more than any other full album this year, and with two 13-minute epics, that’s really saying something. Full review found here (http://themusicarium.blogspot.com/2009/04/mastadon-crack-skye.html).
3) Alice in Chains – Black Gives Way to Blue
Comeback album of the year, by far. Say what you want about AiC carrying on without Layne, but the music is undeniable. Proof that AiC’s music will always be timeless, regardless of whatever trend or craze might be “hot” in the music industry. Full review: http://themusicarium.blogspot.com/2009/10/alice-in-chains-black-gives-way-to-blue.html.
4) Dave Matthews Band – Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King
Yeah, yeah, I know. One of these things is not like the other. Screw you. I’ve been a big DMB fan since 1995, and I haven’t enjoyed a full album by them since 1998’s Before These Crowded Streets, until now. DMB haven’t sounded this alive or inspired in the studio in a long, long time, and the songs are solid all the way through. If you can’t appreciate the groove of “Shake Me Like a Monkey” or the melodies of “Lying in the Hands of God,” I don’t know what to tell you.
5) Revocation – Existence Is Futile
On their Relapse debut (second album total), Revocation released one of the sickest, heaviest, catchiest, riff-godliest balls-out metal albums I’d heard in a long, long time. Take the technical thrash of Sadus and combine with the winning songwriting of early Megadeth or Metallica, add in guitar wizardry via early Testament, and add in some early Death-inspired vocals, and you have an album that wears its influences on its sleeve, but still sounds totally original and inspired. And from a trio, no less!
6) Katatonia – Night Is the New Day
I had to listen to this album 3 or 4 times before the songs really started to stick, but once they did… wow. This is by far Katatonia’s gloomiest record since Discouraged Ones, with no real uplifting rockers like they’ve had in the past couple of releases. The band has taken the darkest elements of The Great Cold Distance and expanded them with some more keyboard work, moody guitar lines similar to older releases, and Jonas Renske’s always depressing lyrics and vocal work. Renske gives probably his best vocal performance ever on this release, and that’s saying a lot for me, considering Last Fair Deal Gone Down was always their ultimate album, in my opinion. I can’t tell where I’d rank this among the rest of their catalog, but it definitely stood out to me as one of the best of this year.
7) Slayer – World Painted Blood
Slayer’s last couple of albums have been very hit-or-miss, with some great tracks (“New Faith,” “Disciple,” “Cult,” “Flesh Storm,” “Jihad”), but a lot of crap, too (“Here Comes the Pain,” “Skeleton Christ”). World Painted Blood starts out with the mid-paced title track, something the band hasn’t really done since 1994’s Divine Intervention, usually picking a faster track to open things up. And it’s the mid-paced tracks on World that really stand out the most, featuring a lot of inventive riffing and some of Tom Araya’s best creepy vocals, recalling “Dead Skin Mask” and “South of Heaven.” On the whole, the album is solid all the way through (minus “Americon,” which sounds like a riff a 12-year-old would come up with), something I haven’t been able to say about a Slayer album since Seasons in the Abyss. Full review: http://themusicarium.blogspot.com/2009/12/metal-by-steele-1.html.
8) Lamb of God – Wrath
Lamb of God are, in a lot of ways, the 2000s answer to Slayer. They have a signature sound that they rarely stray from, a die-hard fan base that listens primarily to them and them only (although I’d say LoG die-hards listen to more different metal bands than most Slayer lifers). Wrath isn’t their best album, that’d be 2003’s As the Palaces Burn, but I enjoy it better than their last effort, 2006’s Sacrament. It sounds like, well, a Lamb of God album, with a few new touches (blastbeats, clearer vocals on some tracks, acoustic interludes), so if you’re a fan like I am, you’re satisfied.
9) Shadows Fall – Retribution
After their major label misstep (according to most; I actually liked it), 2007’s Threads of Life, Shadows Fall returned in 2009 with an album that took the melody and streamlined songs of Threads and applied it to the aggression and ferocity of earlier releases like Of One Blood and The Art of Balance. The choruses are catchy as hell, and the highlight of the record has to be “King of Nothing,” featuring LoG’s Randy Blythe on guest vocals. The bonus edition with the cover of “Bark at the Moon” by Ozzy Osbourne is pretty rad, too. Solid step back in the right direction for these self-described Massholes.
10) Killswitch Engage – Killswitch Engage
You either like Killswitch Engage’s newer stuff or you don’t. A lot of their metalhead fan base ditched them after 2004’s The End of Heartache, more specifically when they released an album that sounded, well, almost exactly the same in 2006 with As Daylight Dies. Utilizing an outside producer for the first time – Brendan O’Brien, of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains fame – the band’s songwriting style hasn’t changed much, but their overall sound has… at least, it has a little. There are a lot more vocal harmonies on this album than on any past KsE release, and the production has more of a big rock sound than a clear, crisp metal sound. These guys stick to a formula, for sure, but at least the formula sounded a little different this time around. Plus, “The Reckoning” is probably the best song they’ve done since Alive or Just Breathing.
Matt Steele
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