As you are probably getting the distinct impression, I adore music that confounds expectations. Black Country New Road absolutely floored me last year with “For the First Time”. It was a non-linear delight where the closest comparison I could get was The Fall goes new jazz. “Ants from up There”, sees the band try to restrain their anarchistic tendencies a little. It has more structure and is certainly significantly more commercial than its predecessor. They have swapped their Mark E Smith obsession for a serious crush on Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene.

What it does share with its brethren though is oodles of inventive creativity. Nothing feels formulaic here, instead, every track routinely forges new ground and makes its own set of rules. There are points where it all feels very disparate and then it all blends together to actually become a single melodic whole. A stunningly innovative album that once again gives me a lifeline that there are young people out there who want to do something significantly different with music.

Read More

Amon Amarth are the very definition of tenacity. It has taken them thirty years to finally claim the seat at metal’s top table that they now hold. Their story is the complete antithesis of overnight success and they have spent twenty years earning their dues by slaving away in early afternoon festival appearances and pointless support slots.

They have also released an awful lot of music (The Great Heathen Army is album number twelve). Some of it great and some of it, to be brutally honest, not so great. You may think by now they have run out of Norse mythology to mine, but no they are back with yet another collection of unashamedly Viking-obsessed ditties. You do need to take your horned helmet off to Amon Amarth for keeping their one-trick pony going for so many years and still making it feel fresh and exciting.

Lyrically there really is nothing new here. It’s still all tales of serpents, longships, and daring deeds done before breakfast. However, musically they take a step back to their roots. They have brought back into play the authentic melodic death metal template that they put into storage about a decade ago, when they started to really push for commercial success. This is undoubtedly a heavier and harsher record than they are made in a long time and that change in tempo results in it being far more interesting than the last couple of releases.

Read More

One of the many joys of compiling this list is that it connects me into bands that I may hitherto have overlooked. Cave In are a veritable institution but one, if I am honest, that I have not visited before. They are very much part of that post-hardcore fraternity that, as I already said, seem to exist in parallel rather than part of my world. “Heavy Pendulum” is a magnificent amalgamation of mind-altering prog and searing hard-core.

The vocals oscillate between gruff and clean and the music has a stellar, almost spacey feel to it. It’s all very big and transcendental and designed to enable you to think big thoughts about the state of the universe. Aside from the occasional gargled vocal, it is actually a very smooth and reflective album full of wonderfully contemplative refrains. Far far more complex, intricate and ornate than I was expecting.

Read More

There has been a fantastic Placebo album released this year but it is not by Placebo. “Melodoria” is how I remember late nineties and early noughties alt-rock sounding. Full of insanely catchy hooks and sail-away choruses but backed by a crunchy underbelly that stopped it simply fading away. A time when they actually wrote songs rather than throwing together random melodies and hoping that they form some sort of cohesive whole. “Melodoria” is brim-full full of tunes, tunes that engage, tunes that entice and tunes that enrich. It has made me realise that sometimes you need something that is catchy as hell.

Read More

Curveball number three. You remember Skid Row? 18 & Life? Sebastian Bach, a blonde bombshell of a walking cheekbone? The last hair metal band to make it big before Grunge swept all the scum off the street? As the last in, they were the ones that took the brunt of the impact when the walls tumbled around Glam Metal’s seemingly impenetrable fortress. Within mere years they went from arena botherers to a band that could not fill a club. Then followed a further two and half decades of terminal decline, line-up hi-jinks, lead singer merry-go-rounds, and a plethora of awful albums. They seemed to only exist so that we could scream along to ‘Youth Gone Wild’ every now and again.

This is one hell of a rebirth. They have brought in former HEAT vocalist (and winner of Sweden’s answer to Pop Idol) Erik Grönwall on vocals and have got serious about making a decent album. “The Gang’s All Here” is simply revelational. It is like the last thirty-three years never happened and someone left the tape running at the end of the sessions to record their astounding self-titled debut. It shares that same DNA that made their first record such a monumental piece of vinyl. It balances slick production values with a sense of danger and unpredictability. It is unashamedly commercial but that does not mean it underplays the grit and grime.

It also realises that you may be the prettiest kids on the block, but it doesn’t mean a dime if you don’t have the songs. For four decades they have traded on twenty-two pieces of genius that they crafted in their collective early twenties. Inexplicably it is only now that they seem to have found the ability to mould songs that live up to their legacy. A complete and utter Curveball. Who knew Skid Row still had it in them?

Read More

Sporting my favourite album title of the whole list, this is a frantic protest album via Glasgow. It is a breathless tirade against economic inequality and the ills of capitalism. Its origin is Black Metal, but it uses it more as a base of operations as opposed to a template rigidly to be stuck to. Instead, we get a frequently disturbing feast of spoken word, distorted violin, and swirling misshapen melody. It is not comfortable listening, but the fury and inconsolable anger veraciously come to the fore. Not pretty, but they evocatively use their musical palette to perfectly illustrate the social issues they scream about.

Read More

Kurt Cobain used to go on incessantly about Cheap Trick being his favourite all time band. So Puppy have done the only sensible thing you can do with that and that is to splice the bubble-gum pop of the mighty Trick with grunge’s minimal tones. This is album number two for the London upstarts, and they seem in no hurry to abandon their quirky but very quaint take on metal.

It’s another banquet of slick pop goodness, which they have then gone and sprinkled a bucket load of Metal’s nihilism over. The competing styles should curdle together to create an ill-fitting mess, but in the hands of these consummate musicians, it instead blossoms into a fragrant and quite wonderful mutation. “Pure Evil” is brim full of catchy refrains and polished choruses that are precession engineered to be earworms. But the driving rhythm section keeps it all firmly within Metal’s wheelhouse. Reassuringly different and all the better for that!!

Read More

Cage Fight are very clear that they are not the side project of Tesseract guitarist James Monteith. They hold equal status to the math-metal behemoth’s and there is nothing “side” or additional about James’ involvement. They are a full-time entirety that has a lot to say. This is incendiary, incensed hardcore. It drips with violent dissent, disruption, and disillusionment.

It screams at the inadequacies and inequalities it sees all around and makes a valiant rallying cry for us all to do something about it all. Musically it is direct, confrontational, and jagged in all directions. Short, punchy but highly effective. It may be filtered through a core of muscular metal but at its heart, this is pure hardcore punk.

Read More

Authentic Scandi-death that sounds like it was created by bored disenfranchised teens in the early nineties. Actually, is the product of middle-aged musicians keen to recapture the music that first inspired them in their youth. Initially the musical refugee for Opeth Svengali Mikael Åkerfeldt, for the last decade the torch has been held by Jonas Renkse and Anders Nystrom of Katatonia, aided by indomitable Nick Holmes of Paradise Lost. In fact, his stint as chief growler in Bloodbath has in turn heralded the return of rough vocals within his day job.

“Survival of the Sickest” is deeply reverential about the musical form that it adopts but it is certainly not poe-faced. Bloodbath have deduced that Death Metal is at its very best when it has its tongue shoved in its (decaying) cheek and what made it so attractive to the disaffected masses was the way that it piled on the gore without any thought of what the boundaries of good taste were. This is a simplistic, puerile love letter to the music that inspired them.

Read More

More irreverent Death Metal. This is another slice of primal unrefined noise that embraces the utter nastiness of the whole thing. It’s pure escapism nonsense and sometimes that is all you want from life. No political discourses are to be found here. Instead, this is the aural equivalent of the Evil Dead movies. Backed to the gills with resplendent repulsive subject matter and revealing in the beauty of poor production values. This is fun for those whose idea of entertainment is dragging entrails.

Read More

Rammstein don’t actually need to make any more records. They have forged a reputation as the most incredible live band on this planet and they have enough bangers already to soundtrack their utterly bonkers presentations. They are a foreign language band headlining stadiums in the United States, they have made it. They do not need to do anything else. And to be honest they were not planning to. Their current stadium show is a piece of pure and utter genius. A behemoth of a stage that is designed to create a warm and intimate experience for all punters.

They were merrily dragging it around the world when the pandemic hit, and the aforementioned stage had to be mothballed for two consecutive summers. Instead of twiddling their thumbs, they got creative and the album that wasn’t meant to happen, happened.

“Zeit” does not stray too far from what makes Rammstein, Rammstein. Big choruses, easily chantable lyrics, and lots and lots of lavish keyboard flourishes. It is all wonderfully over the top and is all wonderfully Rammstein. But they have not stagnated, “Zeit” doesn’t feel like a filler or a “will it do” moment. There is real evolution here and the overriding sense is of a band that is still creatively thirsty.

Read More

We are back in France, and we are back in the domain of the utterly bonkers and Avant-Garde. The closest thing I can come to the description of this, is Phoenix (the twee French indie band) does hardcore. This is a madcap album that does not stand still and seems to be intent on going in all directions that you do not expect it to. It is like an ADHD explosion in a bubblegum factory. A sugar rush of discombobulated riffs and snarled delivery. Harsh in flavour, but also packed with Day-Glo saccharine bombs that explode on the tongue. It is all over the shop and all the better for that.

Read More

There is extraordinarily little power metal on this list. Given that I probably love power metal more than I love death or black, it has been woefully underserved within this countdown. For the uneducated, power metal is the most Marmite of metal’s many many subgenres. Those in the more serious or extreme territories (such as black and death) look down their noses at both its bombastic nature and its cheerful disposition. Those who like their riffs jagged and crunchy, point and snigger at what they see to be its lightweight and cheesy connotations.

However, there are those who adore its idiosyncratic flourishes and simply live for the choruses that you could land the entire Air Force on. I am one of those and I unashamedly love power metal. I unashamedly love its pomposity. I unashamedly love its grandiose nature and I unashamedly love its fantastical obsessions. Stratovarius are a veritable institution in the power metal world. They have been in existence in some form or another since 1984 and this is album number sixteen.

It is a glorious celebration of all that is wonderful about power metal. It revels in its own pretension and pageantry. Everything is dialled up to the maximum and there is no subtlety to be found and nor do we want any. This is just beautifully crafted grandiose showboating metal. Catchy choruses, soaring keyboards and enough widdly widdly solos to fill the Albert Hall. They are bringing nothing new to the party here but frankly, they don’t need to as it is simply a sumptuous and indulgent record.

Read More

The bastard child of ABBA and Metallica, Ghost are currently modern metal’s biggest draw. They have made a career out of cliché and have carved out a very specific niche for themselves in the market in terms of being the most flamboyant of the flamboyant. This is occult rock goes to Broadway and it quite easily could be the soundtrack for an elaborate West End musical. Fed up with being in one deadbeat death metal band after another, Tobias Forge realised that people love concept and people love big, really really big. With Ghost, he has captured the collective imagination and proved once again that there is a market for bands that blatantly raid the dressing-up box.

But a cacophony of costume changes does not automatically mean success and what makes Ghost stand out from all the other bands screaming for attention is that they have got the songs. “Impera” is stuffed full of high production numbers full of garish pomp and decadent splendour. Every song sounds like it could be a closing number and it is a sweet jar full of extravagance and opulence. A glorious celebration of being alive.

Read More

Slight and uninvasive post-metal, which is brim-full of evocative and creeping beauty. It is not an immediate album, instead it is one that starts to show its real face after a number of listens. Return visits are rewarded with access to a swirling and textured world, nuanced and insular but also utterly entrancing.

Russian Circles have been doing this for years without much fanfare or hyperbole. With every release they hone their sound a little bit more and whilst “Gnosis” doesn’t see them deviate much from the template, it does feel much sharper and more defined than their previous releases. Post-metal can be a little scattergun in places, but here everything feels very orchestrated and structured. For a genre that is known to wander all over the shop, “Gnosis” is atypically short and this means it never outstays its welcome. Really wonderful.

Read More

The return of probably the finest death metal band this country currently has to offer. Venom Prison had taken hardcore’s no-nonsense and fiercely political ideologies and transferred those over to Death Metal. They hold no truck with the gore-obsessed patriarchy that has ruled over the genre for decades and instead they use its carnal intensity to make great sweeping statements about the ills and injustices they see all around them. This is Death Metal reinvented as protest music, full of bile, anger, and utter insurrection.

“Erebos” highlights a band much more confident in their identity, their politics and their musical abilities. There is more space in this this record, they seem to have decided that in order to make a point they don’t need to stuff every song full of as many malicious riffs as possible. Instead, minimalism is the key and “Erebos “ is at its most evocative when those buzzsaw guitars are allowed space to breathe.

It is heavy, it is crushing, and it wears its heart very much on its sleeve. It tears away from Death Metal every trace of the toxic masculinity that has haunted it for nearly four decades and what we are left with is an incredibly powerful musical force full of pathos, passion, and righteous anger.

Read More

This is a luscious dollop of sensual doom. Ethereal, atmospheric, and full of sumptuous orchestration. It flirts with commerciality, but it has enough individuality to feel distinctly different from the other bands doing this type of thing. It’s potent and heady as opposed to being explicitly heavy and it prefers to be bewitching rather than overtly aggressive.

Gwyn Strang possesses an alluring and all-consuming set of pipes. Her soothing tones have a tint of maleficence to them, that shrouds the whole album with a veil of uneasy portent. A haunting and enthralling record that siren like draws unsuspecting listeners in.

Read More

This is the long rumoured Black Metal project from Matt Heafy of Trivium. It’s gestation period has been over a decade and it was originally positioned as a collaboration with Ishan of Emperor. However, what it has transpired to be is a deeply personal record that features a number of collaborations (including Ishan) but is distinctively a solo endeavour by Matt, exploring his Japanese heritage and cultural identity. In many ways, it is not the love letter to 90s true Norwegian black metal that we expected and in many ways, it is much the better album for that.

It uses Black Metal’s vivid and atmospheric tones as a palette to then delve deeper into the legacy of Matt’s dual heritage upbringing and his eastern roots. It is beautifully constructed and full of smooth sweeping edges which contrast with the usual harsh jaggedness of this genre. The subject matter draws heavily from Japanese mythology and folklore, and it is obvious that he is using this as a way of reconnecting with this part of his identity. What could have been a mess of contrasting styles instead blends together perfectly. A surprisingly sensitive album that sees Matt reveal much more of himself than he has ever been able to do so in his day job.

Read More

John Mitchell is one of Modern Prog’s journeymen. He is the current frontman of long-standing Progioneers It Bites and he also turns up in Arena, Frost* and Kino. Basically, where luscious eighties-esque Prog to be found he’s probably got his hand in it. Not content with all of that, he also has a side project entitled Lonely Robot. This is album number five and whilst it is distinctly a one-man band affair, it does still have a sumptuous and expansive feel.

All the way through, his voice is very indicative of solo era Peter Gabriel but backing a distinctly 80s-tinged Genesis. The whole thing is a throwback to the days of shoulder pads and slacks, but it manages to recall the “brilliance” of early 80s prog without actually feeling dated or derivative.

Instead, it comes across as a warm and heartfelt tribute to the music that obviously hugely influenced him. The term inoffensive can be used in a negative connotation, but this is exactly what this is and it revels and excels in its inoffensiveness. It is essentially a wonderful throwback to the way things once were and to be honest in this uncertain world I can’t think of a better way to spend an hour.

Read More

Let’s have a slice of progressive Italian Death Metal. This is a deliciously disconcerting album, reminiscent of an Opeth pre-prog phase , in the way that it uses rapidly changing time signatures. Musically it is off-kilter and disconnected in its approach and by doing so it offers up a refreshingly different take on this rather conservative genre.

Every track has multiple movements which jump all over the place and seem specifically designed to stop the listener from getting bored. Inventive and exhilarating, I found myself pleasantly confounded on numerous occasions by this record. Not what I was expecting at all, in a very very good way.

Read More