You can abuse it all you want, but metal and its varied sub-genres and offshoots continues to be the most creative pure "rock" style of music out there. Bands continue to push the envelop of how you can define music and a song. Others rediscover old styles and mix them with the new (or try to keep them pure), to create thrilling sounds that sound fresh and familiar.
Top 10 albums:
1. Pig Destroyer Phantom Limb
Pig Destroyer added a fourth member this year, but it wasn't the long-expected bass player. Instead, it was someone in charge of electronic noise. Meanwhile, guitarist Scott Hull continues to do massive work, doing as much as a dozen six-string slingers (and a bass player or two) could do.
2. High On Fire Death is the Communion
Mixing aural sludge with punk intensity, High on Fire could be the Motorhead for the century (providing, of course, Motorhead ever goes away. I think death and the devil are scared of Lemmy.)
3. Witchcraft The Alchemist
An album that literally sounds like it was put to tape by a bunch of hairy dudes in the pot-soaked summer of 1969, not by some hairy dudes from coldest Sweden.
4. Baroness Red Album
There was no Mastodon album this year, but plenty of bands have taken up the mantle of epic hard rock. Baroness is among the best. So good, in fact, that groups in the future may be described as "Baroness-inspired."
5. Mayhem Ordo ad Chao
The blackest of the black metallers get back to their roots, creating music that perfectly replicates the mental state of an H.P. Lovecraft character who has just met one of the Great Old Ones.
6. Jesu Conqueror and eps
Justin Broderick may not be any older than myself, but he's an elder statesmen in punk and metal circles, having been at the game for 25 years, first with Napalm Death, then with the crushing Godflesh and now with the beautifully jagged Jesu. It took just a touch of melody to move his songs to a new level.
7. Rotting Christ Theogina
More blackish metal, this time from Greece. You may come for the blasphemous band title, but you'll stay for the blistering playing and (yes) raw intelligence behind the lyrics.
8. Pelican City of Echoes
Actually not as god as their last album (The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Fall) but still a marvelous and soul-affirming collection of epic instrumental guitar rock.
9. Behemoth The Apostasy
The last of our international black/death metal tour (these boys are from Poland). Behemoth again digs for something a bit more intelligent than the "Kill Jesus" of much of the genre. Not that this album about temptation and religion makes much of a case for traditional religion.
10. Dillinger Escape Plan Ire Works
Massive and seemingly continual line up changes can't keep this band down. In a year when most hyper technical records left me cold (come on guys, find a groove already; I don't care if you can play 25 different riffs each minute) this album stood out from the masses.
Bonus: The return of thrash
Just hanging outside the top 10 were a pile of neo-thrash albums. Considering I had thought the genre long dead (killed by overexposure and crappy albums by Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax), it was more than a welcome return. If you want to get your shredding on in a 21st-century kind of way, check out:
Municipal Waste The Art of Partying
SSS Short Sharp Shock
Skeletonwitch Beyond the Permafrost
3 Inches of Blood Fire Up the Blades
Tomorrow: The year in punk
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