It’s one thing to talk about the Armageddon it’s more impressive actually creating it.Ġ6 YOB – The Great Cessation There’s so much going on here… I liked Marduk’s Wormwood, but came back to Maranatha and found more in it, more often in 2009. Jesus! After a six year pause, Sweden’s Funeral Mist, aka Arioch, aka Mortuus, aka aka Daniel Rosten, aka the current vocalist for Marduk, returned with a staggeringly intense, violent, eccentric, chaotic collection that features more gonzo riffs and hooks and truly unhinged vocal performances than you’ll find on a dozen records filed under the name “one-man black metal.” This is what is sounds like when someone finds a way to drip actual songs into a whirlpool. Endless boogie, for sure.īlut Aus Nord – “The Meditant (Dialogue With The Stars)” Memoria Vetusta II does what it promises, creating an hour’s worth of sky-shooting epics (fluid guitar solos, repeating motifs, etc.) that move from fragile and meditative to blistering in a heartbeat and really do feel like they’re talking to the constellations. On their seventh album the shape-shifting French trio unfurl the coiled angles of 2006’s MoRT and extend the more straight-up black metal of Odinist: The Destruction Of Reason By Illumination’s to venture into an expansive psychedelic reverie. I looked at my iTunes and was shocked how many times I listened to this fucking thing this year.Ġ8 Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With The Stars It’s polished, yeah, but the guitar tone, the layers of keys, and those fucking hooks are pretty undeniable. Nick Holmes turns in a muscularly anthemic vocal performance: The other day while listening my lady came in and asked if I was listening to Metallica. The 12th album from the doomy British institution is my favorite since their best salad days albums ( Gothic, Lost Paradise, Draconian Times). Not even the 15-minute stroll out the door “Demon Advance.”Ġ9 Paradise Lost – Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us Īnother comeback of sorts. (If I was into meditation…) It’s an extremely tight 45 minutes: They don’t waste a moment. They also thread their dark ambient findings into the meditative endless riffing: You’ll find acoustic interludes, nature recordings, group chants, throaty gurgles, doom-like heaviness and sludge, and undeniably catchy and hypnotic grooves. have located a heaviness and solidity to back up the anger. The collection opens with a statement of purpose in “Axiom Heroine” - one of my favorite songs of the year - that this document exists because, well, “I just fucking hate this world.” They clearly don’t hate Celtic Frost. The Finnish horde’s first album since 1995’s Electric Doom Synthesis, and their first non dark-ambient album since 1993, is an expansive slab of blackened filth. In addition to my top 30, I gathered lists from dozens of musicians (and some metal writers) including members of Converge, Celestia, Cobalt, Atlas Moth, Nachtmystium, Gates Of Slumber, Fuck The Facts, Krallice, Krieg, Ludicra, Saros, Magrudergrind, Khanate, Portal, Genghis Tron, Salome, Slough Feg, Tombs, Zoroaster, etc.Ģ9 Asphyx – Death…The Brutal Way Ģ7 The Atlas Moth – A Glorified Piece Of Blue Sky Ģ6 Merrimack – Grey Rigorism Ģ3 Impetuous Ritual – Relentless Execution Of Ceremonial Excrescence Ģ1 Culted – Below The Thunders Of The Upper Deep Ģ0 Arckanum – ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ ġ9 Amesoeurs – Amesoeurs ġ8 Katharsis – Fourth Reich ġ7 Ruins Of Beverast – Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite ġ5 Mournful Congregation: The June Frost ġ2 Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough ġ1 Katatonia – Night Is The New Day As far as trends? At least according to my top 30, it was the year of the comeback, the old timer, and folks who like fucking around with black metal. The calculations seem endless this time around. In fact, since we posted the Decibel Top 40 Albums Of 2009 and I claimed we shared four of the same top 10 records, one of my selections took a nosedive. Which made it more exciting (and exhausting) for me. (In 2008 it was Nachtmystium’s Assassins and in 2007 Watain’s Sworn To The Dark.) This time there was no obvious forerunner: The albums I loved I loved for very different reasons. 1s, albums I saw at the top spot before I even began tabulating. Whatever the case, it was hard coming up with a Top 30 Of 2009: I liked a ton of stuff, though I didn’t love all of it.
Every year I’m tempted to - and sometimes do - say “this has been a great year for metal.” It’s a toss-away idea: If you consume the genre obsessively, every year seems sort of great, the chaff turning fuzzy and falling into the background, the favorites cementing themselves in your brain and eardrums.