Active since the mid-nineties, Orden Organ have only really broken in the collective consciousness in the last five years. “Final Days” is an apocalyptical concept album about the final destruction and evacuation of planet Earth. Ironically, its release was delayed by our very own mini apocalypse last year and it finally saw the light of day in March. This is an ambitious and expansive album that manages to eloquently balance songwriting and storytelling.

It is Power Metal but manages to avoid the excesses and flagrant cheesiness of the genre. Instead, we get ten beautifully constructed tracks that mix flare with slick commerciality. Everything is in the right proportion; the songs are catchy and sing-able, but they have weight and depth to them as opposed to be vacuous and convoluted. The album works as a compelling narrative but is also sounds wondrous and shows with a bit of restraint and vision what is possible with Power Metal.

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I suspect that it is just me that lies awake at night and wonders were Blackgaze goes next. We have had a number of diverse examples of this most divisive of spliced genre’s and here comes another. Only it’s not, as these plucky Danes seem to have moved beyond the confides and into, well I’m not sure but god it sounds amazing. There are points where “Diorama” is pure Black Metal but then as soon as you get comfortable it shifts. It is like try to juggle water as the album seems to keep altering it shape and style with no logical progression or plan. It is that constant shifting of musical axis that make its so fascinating, as what is actually important here is what is happening under all the noise. The Metal here is actually a protective crust, sheltering within it the most delicate and exquisite of melodies. It seems perverse to call a Black Metal album beautiful, but Diorama is just that. A sumptuous and fragile being encased in a rough exoskeleton. Divine.

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So where do you go after you have created one of the most extraordinary records ever made? “Magma” transcended Metal completely and became something else. Still heavy as buggery, it managed to sound unlike anything that had come before it or frankly after it. Five years later it is still revealing its secrets a little at a time. So, with that sort of milestone around your neck and weighed down by the expectations of millions, where do you go? Well, Gojira has chosen to go sideways. “Fortitude” is not a direct continuation or evolution from “Magma”, it does not even attempt to move their distinctive pristine sound forward. Instead, this is a bold and incisive step to the right.

The trick that “Magma” pulled off was to achieve perfection with effectively very little indeed. The star of the show wasn’t the precision riffs, it was the space around them. “Fortitude” has the most going on in it of Gojira’s seven albums. They have sacrificed the bare minimalism for something else. The searing curt minimal riffs, which are Gojira’s signature sound, are still there but “Fortitude” adds a sheen of commerciality and a more proggier feel. There is a lot going on here and that is not something you expect in a Gojira album.

“Fortitude” works because it feels distinctively like Gojira, but also different. It is more accessible and more political. They have always been socially and environmentally aware, but “Fortitude” feels like a desperate call to arms. A final rallying cry for a dying world. “Fortitude” manages to not be in “Magma’s” shadow by stepping far enough away from it so that it can viewed for its own brilliance.

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This is Goth Metal at its most fragile and intricate. This a wonderous and beautiful album, full of emotive spirituality. The Death and Black Metal’s that they used to dabble in have been distilled right down in order to create an atmospheric and ethereal cauldron of raw passion and emotion. This is a tender and delicate album that uses the splendour of Goth and the muscle of Metal to convey the sensation of loss. This is the sound of a heart breaking articulated over 10 exquisite tracks.

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Carcass are one of the most important, if not the most important Metal band of all time (its my opinion, but just so you know I am right). Between 1988 and 1996 they created the template for modern Metal. Everything that came after was influenced by what they did during that eight-year period. They may never have headlined arenas (or even medium sized halls) and they may never have sold a truckload of albums, but they changed everything.

Comeback album “Surgical Steel” showed that they were still capable of throwing Metal’s precious conventions up into the air and coming up with something no one else had ever tried before. “Torn Arteries” comes a good eight years later (the same timespan in which they released their first five genre defining albums) and see’s Carcass sound distinctly like Carcass, but also managing to once again jump defiantly into the unknown. “Torn Arteries” is less slick and less precisely poised than its predecessor. It has more jagged edges and there is almost a return to the raw primordial ooze of the first two records.

What “Torn Arteries” has is a fire in its belly, its impatient, driven and in some places, possessed. Bill and Jeff may well be in their mid-fifties, but they have not lost their compulsion to be as repulsive and disruptive as possible. They and Carcass are happy to grow old disgracefully and “Torn Arteries” is yet another attempt by them to upturn the apple cart and challenge perception.

Metal should not be safe, sedate or house trained and “Torn Arteries” knows this. It has no intention of trying to fit in or to be part of a particular style or scene. It is unapologetically nasty and barbed and that is the beauty of Carcass. By resolutely refusing to compromise they have made modern Metal what it is. “Torn Arteries” carries on that traditional on by screaming at the listener “We are Carcass, if you don’t like it, fuck off.”

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One of my intentions with this list is to persuade none Metal aficionados reading it that their perceptions and assumptions about my most beloved of genres are wrong and miss-appropriated. The general view is that Metal is a knuckle-dragging neanderthal style of music that hasn’t the intellectual capability to tie its own shoelaces. This, as those of us who are immersed in the scene know, is as far from the truth as you can get and “Etemen Ænka” is one of those albums that prove our point.

This is a highly complex and clever record. It is cramped full of ideas and inspirations and manages to tread a fine line between refined and rugged. There is a lot going on across its sprawling hour and five-minute length, but it is presented in a way that actually makes linear sense. The best way to describe it as Tool if they nicked Mastodon’s guitar sound, but even throwing around those comparisons with exemplary dispensaries of this type of music actually undersells what Dvne have achieved.

“Etemen Ænka” may well be made up of layers of different variants of sound and textures, but Dvne have managed to merge it all together so that feels like a solid defined whole. It flows as an album and feels like they are taking the listener on a sonic journey. “Etemen Ænka” confirms these plucky young Scots as masterful storytellers and as I keep asserting I am pretty sure that in any other year this would have topped the pile, but there are still fourteen other albums to go…..

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Transatlantic isn’t just a prog supergroup, it is a roll call of some of the, if not the biggest names in Prog. It is (deep breath) Neal Morse (ex–Spock's Beard), Roine Stolt (the Flower Kings), Pete Trewavas (Marillion) and Mike Portnoy (ex–Dream Theater). That is akin to Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, Ringo Starr and Sting forming a band. This is their fifth album in 22 years of producing music together in-between the demands of their respective day jobs.

Actually, they have produced two albums here, an extended and abridged version of their apocryphal vision of life in the 21st century. But the abridged version isn’t just a callous edit it is a completely reshaped alternative version of the concept and story with new sections not found in the extended version.

The band are very clear there is no definitive version of this album and the version you choose is up to you and your personnel preferences, both are valid, and both are complete tales. For the playlist I have plumped for the 64-minute abridged version (entitled Breath of Life) simply because when you are trying to get in 100 albums before Christmas every minute is crucial. However, the 94 minute Forevermore version is also a valid entry and alternative.

The fact is that both are sumptuous, sprawling epic records that shows how expansive and wondrous prog can be when done right. It just drips with quality and utter musical perfection. Every note is perfect, every flourish is expertly crafted and every shift in gear feels well oiled and precisely perfect. It is a luscious record that is designed in such a way to entrance the listener. It doesn’t matter whether you choose the shorter or longer versions; you still find yourself lost in the story and mesmerising musicology. Pure Prog and pure brilliance.

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Eighty-five minutes long (yes you read this right eighty-five minutes long) this is a post-black masterpiece that decides to not go down the noodling self-indulgence route. It would have been easy to fill these eighty-five minutes with endless atmospheric solos or long drawn-out ambient interludes, but Harikari for the Sky have other ideas. They have managed to create a long, convoluted record that avoids becoming bloated or entangled in his own ideas and ambitions.

Whilst distinctively post Black Metal it is still very much a Metal record. There are crunching riffs, screaming guitars and guttural vocals agogo and for such a lengthy record it manages to maintain a sense of urgency. It is heavy and uncompromising, but also manages to stretch and contort what we understand Metal to be. The ultimate acclaim however is the fact that no matter the astronomical length, when it ends you want to go straight back.

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You will have noticed that the majority of the Metal entries at this stage in the countdown are here because they are convoluting and twisting the perceived rules and confides of the genre. I love Metal that refuses to stay in its box and forthrightly pushes hard at the sides of its envelope. Omnium Gatherum have been doing melodic Death Metal for twenty-five years and across nine albums. They have carved themselves a nice little niche with a small but committed fanbase. However out of the blue with album number ten they have set their ambition level to maximum and gone for broke.

“Origin” is nothing short of stadium melodic Death Metal. Usually, this hybrid genre splices death growls with Maiden like galloping guitars to create its signature sound. “Origin” takes this blueprint and swaps in the slick commercial riffs of Def Leppard. This is Death Metal but with its doors blown wide open and with a sheen of accessibility. It feels big, it feels buoyant and it feels utterly resplendent. This an arena friendly version of melodic Death Metal and it sounds divine.

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With 2019’s “Pitfalls”, Leprous exited Metal completely and produced an album that sounded like Radiohead. It was good but it missed something. “Aphelion” makes me realise what it lacked, namely Metal. Now don’t think they have gone back to their progressive black of earlier albums, because they haven’t. But “Alphelion” does have a crunch and a heftiness about it that in retrospective was absent last time out.

What works really well is how sparingly the Metal is used. It is there and it provides a solid foundation to build from, but “Alphelion” is not at its heart a Metal album. It is actually many things and the band seem to be having a ball using the solid core of spitting guitars to wander off in many directions. There are splinters and shavings of so many different styles and approaches in here but in the end it simply revels in its uniqueness. By not trying to be anything Leprous have produced the album of their career.

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An extraordinary record. Tight, taught, and caustic but also beholden of sparks of pure groove. This is extreme music reimagined. It is heavy and crushing but has enough intelligence and nuance in its song structures to appropriately and cleverly channel that harshness so that this is white noise you can sing along to. There is a spirit of the Ramones in what Pupil Slicer are doing, short and sharp grenades of primal energy that pummel your brain and then evaporate. Utterly exhilarating and so fresh and invigorating. Anger has never sounded so invigorating!

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Emerging from the ashes of the much fancied but ultimately doomed Hang the Bastard, Urne seem to have written a list of all things they like in modern Metal and thrown that into a melting pot. The result is a peerless record that exists simultaneously within everyone of Metal’s many and varied sub-genres and none of them (like a hybrid hardcore Schrodinger’s cat). Each of its eight tracks exists within a different plane of Metal’s vast multi-universe, to the point where I had to not once, but on four separate occasions check I was still listening to the same album.

The variance and diversity between numbers is simply extraordinary as “Serpent & Spirit” morphs and transmogrifies in front of your very ears. It is a rollercoaster of an album; it straps you in and then launches you into a non-stop journey through Metal’s many lands. The ambition and vision of this record is simply astounding, and my overall impression is that this is an album that will talked out in hushed reverential terms for many years to come.

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In hindsight, there is a lot of Prog on this list. There has been the old school luscious melody of *Frost and Big Big Train and the technical precision of the new generation via Between the Buried and Me and Wheel. However there has been nothing that sounds like “Void”. This is an incredible record, even more incredible when you realise how young these guys are. “Void” is a head on collision between the warm and deep prog of the seventies and its technical precision highly engineered 21st century counterpart.

The two styles intertwine, meaning that “Void” is a constantly changing art-form continually contorting its shape as you listen to it. It is built on an interspersion of sharp angular riffs counterbalanced with warm waves of luscious prog flourishes. The two approaches merge and meld so well, that “Void” feels like neither an old or new prog album but instead like a record that exists out of time. Unlike anything I have heard this year, in fact, unlike anything I have ever heard, “Void” is nothing short of extraordinary.

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This is more audio book than actual record. It recounts the tragic true tale of a fleet of unidentified ships discovered in Northern Russia in 1930. Their respective crews were frozen perfectly in time, taking to their icy graves the explanation of how they got there. Kauan use a ghostly mix of post Metal to imagine the journey of the boats and the circumstances that lead to their collective horrific fate. In doing so, they have created the most evocative piece of storytelling.

This is not a concept album, it much more evolved and intelligent than that. This is a haunting ethereal novel, just set to music rather than transcribed onto the page. What is even more extraordinary is the fact that get across the struggle and hopelessness of the tale even though all the lyrics are in old Finnish. Whilst you don’t quite understand what is being sung, the emotion and the ethereal atmospherics carry you along with the narrative.

The music here is slight and nuanced, it is pure world building as the mournful guitar and lingering melodies build the illusion of frozen wastes and utter despair. It is a mesmerising record that captures you from the off and draws you down into the tale. The way that tempo builds and falls means that you feel you are there with those sailors, trapped in their icy hell. An utter triumph of a record and a highwater mark in musical storytelling.

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If Carcass are Metal’s most important band, then “Slaughter of the Soul” is its most important record. A 34-minute tour de force, it brought the savagery of Death Metal and the technical prowess of traditional Metal together in way that 26 years later is yet to be equalled. It is a minimal masterpiece that illustrates the pure ashamed beauty of vibrant Metal.

It also tore the band apart and it was eleven years until they played together again and 19 years until they recorded another album. 2014’s “At War with Reality” and 2017’s “To Drink from the Night Itself” saw them stick pretty close to the style they had perfected over twenty years go. They were both essentially melodic Death Metal albums, full of gigantic riffs and guttural riffs.

With their legacy and pedigree no one was expecting At the Gates to go off and experiment in a whole new genre, but that is exactly what they have done. “The Nightmare of Being” is a daring and ambitious grenade lob of an album, which sees them abandon the safe and secure shallows of repeating the same trick over and over and instead head off into the deep waters of the unfamiliar.

Now, they haven’t gone and made a Venezuelan flute music record but its close. “The Nightmare of Being” is a dark claustrophobic album that sees them slow-down from their usual gallop. The tracks are brooding and full of malignant evil and the guitars creep like vengeful spiders rather than rush towards you at a hundred miles an hour.

But it isn’t just the lack of speed and the lethargic delivery that makes “The Nightmare of Being” such a shift in styles, Tomas Lindberg ditches his trademark death growls for an almost Scott Walker rasped vocal style that sounds sinister and discombobulating. But that is not all, there are saxophones, yes! saxophones! on an At the Gates record. “Heresy!” I hear you cry and normally all of this would get you thrown out the Metal fraternity and your battle jacket ripped up in front of your face.

But you know what? It works, it bloody works. “The Nightmare of Being” is an extraordinary record that has layers upon its layers. For a band that created a game changing album to come back with another one 26 years later is unheard but “The Nightmare of Being” is that good and once again they have single handily moved Heavy Metal’s axis.

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Moonspell have been doing what they do for thirty years now and are Portugal’s biggest Heavy Metal band. Huge over there (and in Germany) they are still (three decades down the line) pretty much an unknown quantity over here. This is of course a crying shame as they do what they do really well. Unfairly described in some quarters as a Paradise Lost lite, they are actually a highly atmospheric and endearing act that use their signature blend of goth and Metal to weave resplendent soundscapes.

“Hermitage” is album number twelve and whilst possibly being their most sedate offering, is certainly their most complex and wonderous. This is a beautifully textured album, full of brooding melancholy and smooth soft instrumentation. The aggression is dialled back and instead we get a restrained and contemplative approach that allows “Hermitage”’s melodic side to shine through.

This is a thoughtful and reflective piece of work that does not feel in a great hurry to get anywhere. It uses its dense musical arrangements to paint aural pictures, taking time and care in its composition. Whilst “Hermitage” is packed full of luscious orchestration it never explodes in a flurry of activity. Instead, it is sparing in how its uses its extrovert tendencies, content to be measured and moody rather than spectacular and gregarious. However, the key point is that it sounds divine. Beautifully structured, beautifully presented and an utter joy to listen to.

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I have used the term “reinventing the rules of Metal” a lot on this list. In fact, the casual reader would think that every Tom, Dick and Kerry King are busy reinventing the rules on a daily basis. It has become rather “Boy that cried Wolf” in that it probably feels like I am shouting out every other record as being a bold rebirth for this genre. Well in the words of David Coverdale, ‘Here I Go Again’…. “The Work” is a stunning recalibration of a genre that I thought I knew. It is a hive of creativity that takes an art form I was sure I had pretty sussed out and turns it ninety degrees.

The launch pad here is melodic Death Metal but it is so so so much more than that. It twists, it turns, and it continually defies expectation. It is heavy and brittle, but then transmogrifies it something soothing and encapsulating. But rather than be clever for clever’s sake it uses that ever-changing form to create a universe that feels immersive and fully formed. It is an album that drags you in and then surrounds in in ethereal tones that are both recognisable but also new and enticing.

I still can’t get my head around what they are doing with a musical style that I considered to be pretty much nailed down and anchored to the spot. Like a modern-day King Arthur they have moved the unmovable sword and run with it screaming “right we are going to defy conventions and move the goalposts over here”. “The Work” is just incredible. Inventive, unique, peerless and utterly incredible.

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Albums released in late November don’t usually fare well on this list. By that point in the year, I have usually pretty much nailed everything into place and I look rather unfavourably at bands that dare to release their new wares so late in the day.

Swallow the Sun are yet another member of the Album of the Year alumni. I knew they had a new record incoming and that it was due for release long after I had planned on closing the list. I hedged my bets and reserved it a berth at number 80 thinking that lightning was not going to strike twice and that there was no way on this good earth that they were going to match the majesty of 2019’s “When a Shadow Is Forced into the Light”. Well, that plan went south pretty darn quickly as they seem to have achieved the impossible and made a record even better than their melancholic masterpiece.

“Moonflowers” continues their treaties on loss and grief. Two years have passed since Juha Raivio documented in wonderous song his emotional journey on losing to cancer his beloved life partner Aleah Stanbridge. In many ways, this is actually a darker, more contorted record. The flashes of redemption and recovery that made “When a Shadow Is Forced into the Light” such an uplifting experience are fewer and further in-between. If its sister work was about recovering from grief, then “Moonflowers” is about living with it.

This is a haunting mournful album that uses a light touch to paint its dark, depressive picture. It illustrates with great sorrowful flourishes the anguish of going on with life without the one you love. That sombre despondence is conveyed with great beauty and grace. This may be intrinsically a sad record, but it still sounds gorgeous and sumptuous. By building on their inspirational use of interspersing light and shade, Swallow the Sun have created a textured tour de force that eclipses anything they have achieved before. Evocative, honest and emotional, this is an absolute triumph, even if it did lead me to have to reorganise my whole bloody countdown.

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They hinted at it last time out, but with a wonderful flourish Deafheaven have exited the Blackgaze completely. There is no Metal to be found at all on this record. It is ethereal, haunting shoegaze from the start to the sumptuous finish and it is utterly incredible. This is an intricate, uplifting, engulfing masterpiece of a record. It is so well constructed. Not a note is misplaced, and every chord is utilised. Each and every track is built of layer upon layer of exquisite textured melodies. The music is transcendental and uplifting and just soars out of the speakers.

In many ways, it is not that Deafheaven have stopped doing Metal. What they have done is polished and softened what they were doing before, to the point where it has gained a level of harmonious beauty. They shift is there, but it still sounds like Deafheaven but with rounder cleaner edges.

It seems very simple way of describing it, but every song on “Infinite Granite” sounds utterly divine. I have thrown a lot of hyperbole superlatives around because this is such a special record. It is a luscious, ornate collection of songs that submerges the listener in a sensory overload of gorgeous sound. It is like being bathed in the purest warmest water, an aural explosion that nourishes the soul. Unparalleled.

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And we reach the top of the pile. My favourite album of the year. And I will say once again this has been an unparalleled year for decent albums. So this is not just album of the year, but could be in the running for album of the decade.

However, our winner has humble beginnings. Its creator, Employed to Serve, never planned on going back into the studio so soon. They only released their last album, “Eternal Forward Motion” in 2019 and they were only at the foothills of their proposed campaign to prompt it. Then Covid happened, their UK tour was truncated and their European shows abandoned completely. For a young band reliant on the traction and promotional oxygen that consistent touring provides, this was a major body blow. Rather than sit it out and twiddle their thumbs hoping that normality would resume, they decided to get creative (it was either that or Tiger King).

“The Conquering” was written during the first lockdown and then recorded in the short break we were afforded before the second country wide shut down crashed down upon us. The remarkable thing about “The Conquering” is that it sees Employed To Serve radically reassess their sound and go Metal. But this isn’t just a Metal album, it is a definitive statement in Metal. If it was decided tomorrow to disregard the last fifty-one years and to reboot and start Metal up anew, this would be the album used to restart the whole shebang.

It is an extraordinarily coherent and concise record that decides to boil Metal down to its core essence. It is heavy and driving, but has a groove at its heart that makes your feet and fingers twitch. Good Metal should make you feel like you are being possessed by a spirit. It should make you sway, it should make you convulse, it should make you move. This is what this album does extraordinarily well, it burrows into your heart and soul, but also your arms and legs and claims squatters rites.

Every track here is an anthem. They have managed to keep the venomous power that they had as an incendiary hardcore band, but wrap it up in an arena friendly sheen. Employed to Serve are still firing out caustic balls of righteous anger, but they are now refitted with massive choruses and refrains for a thousand voices to scream back at them.

In many ways this is the perfect Metal album. Heavy but accessible, brittle but bombastic, angry but anthemic. Its energy and intent is derived from small clubs but it is built for arenas and stadiums. It is quite simply an astonishing achievement as it is such a complete piece of work. There are no duff notes and no blemishes. Just utter perfection. And very much my album of the year. I’ve been Stewart Lucas, thank you and good night.

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