Pitchfork‘s Brandon Stosuy lists his top 40 metal albums of the year (and then some) in the latest installment of Show No Mercy: I’ve been making these sorts of lists long enough to know they’re not an exact science, and they don’t please everyone. In the end, they’re snapshots that remind the individual stressing out over said list about what was important to them within a particular time span. They’re also fun to argue about. So read on for my Top 40 Metal Albums of 2011, along with a slew of Honorable Mentions and explanations as to why bands including Liturgy and Leviathan did not make the list.
10. Primordial: Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand [Metal Blade]
You won’t hear many things as demanding of lighters (or armor) as the pagan Irish group Primordial’s seventh album. Charismatic vocalist A.A. Nemtheanga– sort of the bald, heavy metal Daniel Higgs– could make a shopping list feel like an battle cry about a huge, bloody war. In this case, he’s bellowing over the best songs of the band’s two-plus decades– folk and black metal-inflected classic metal that spirals and extends and, somehow, keeps getting bigger. This thing has a way of making slowly rotting in front of your laptop feel epic.
09. In Solitude: The World, the Flesh, the Devil [Metal Blade]
In Solitude’s young frontman Pelle “Hornper” Åhman doesn’t slather as much facepaint as fellow satanic Swedes Ghost, but his twin-guitar-toting, classic cult metal-invoking Uppsala-based quintet’s vintage-sounding second full-length The World, The Flesh, The Devil should be even more appealing to fans of Mercyful Fate. (As a bit of trivia, the title track was the first song to make my son throw the horns– he was six months old at the time.)
08. Yob: Atma [Profound Lore]
Oregon trio Yob’s “comeback” album The Great Cessation landed at No. 6 on my 30 Best Metal Albums Of 2009. At the time, I mentioned mainman Mike Scheidt’s masterful “Wino-on-Deathspell Omega” vocal performance plus those endless doom riffs equaled pure American doom gold. Two years later, the five-song, 55-minute Atma is a crustier, sludgier, dirtier, more in-your-face collection that manages to feel both down-to-earth intimate and outer-realms airy by the time you reach the end of
Continue reading: Show No Mercy: The Top 40 Metal Albums of 2011 | Features | Pitchfork
Tags: 40 Watt Sun, Blut Aus Nord, Brandon Stosuy, In Solitude, pitchfork, Primordial, Show No Mercy, Tombs, wolves in the throne room, yob
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2011 at 8:47 am and is filed under 2011, Playlists, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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