28. Parkway Drive - "Darker Still"

This is this generation’s “black album”. The moment that an underground hero breaks out into the mainstream and becomes an all-consuming juggernaut. It will be the release that will see Parkway Drive replace Metallica as the alpha male of all metal bands. In decades to come people will speak about this being the album that introduced them to the joy and ecstasy of this genre. It will top lists and it will be spoken of in hushed reverence. 

It is vibrant, bold, and anthemic. Every track is a technicolor juggernaut, highly polished and packed to the gills with vim and vigour. Every song is designed to be screamed along to arenas by a frenzied evangelic fanbase. This is commercial metal at its most accessible and its most expansive. 

At this point you’re probably asking yourself if I think this album is so important and will have such an impact on our world, why have I deemed there to be another 27 albums this year better than it? 

The simple point is as good as I think it is (and it is very good indeed) and as much as I can see its ground-breaking dominance and brilliance, it is, to my tastes, a little too slick and overproduced. I love its opulence and I love its wide-screen spectacle. But I like my perfection packaged with a little grit and imperfection and this is just too impeccable.