2016
fucking ruled for metal, so there were a LOT of albums to sort through...let’s
just get after it. My EP of the year
list contains a top 10, plus 5 honorable mentions. My full-length of the year list contains my
top 50 albums of the year, plus 25 honorable mentions.
Top EP’s of
the year
5 Honorable
Mentions
Humanity’s Last Breath
– Detestor
Genre: Deathcore/Oooof
Preview: Full album
Eye of Horus –
Obsidian
Genre: Technical Death Metal
Preview: Full album
Dream Void – Deceptive
Dreamscape
Genre: Technical Death Metal/Deathcore/Insanity
Preview: The Grandest
Anticipation
The Healing – Elevate
Genre: Progressive MEtalcore/Subliminal
Groove/Entitiescore
Preview: Aether Eyes
Cognizance – Illusory
Genre: Technical Death Metal/RIFFFFFFS
Preview: “Spectrum”
Genre:
Metal/Groove
Preview:
Sin
Incarnate (feat Ryan Kirby)
Genre:
Technical Death Metal
Preview:
“Alchemic
Web of Deceit”
Genre:
Instrumental/Experimental Death Metal
Preview:
“Samsara”
Ne Obliviscaris meets Beyond Creation meets
Hadal Maw. Probably the best
instrumental album of the year.
Genre:
Technical Death Metal / Grind
Preview: “Termination Redux”
The kings are back at it.
Genre:
Technical / Progressive Death Metal
Preview: “The Royal
Order”
Fucking epic.
Gener:
Technical Deathcore / The Crimson Armada-core
Preview: “Triangulum”
Genre:
Technical Death Metal
Preview: “Ending”
This’ll more than scratch that Beyond Creation itch
you’ve been feeling.
Genre:
Progressive / Technical Death Metal
Preview: “Of Vile and Bliss”
These guys clearly listen to a lot of Fallujah.
Genre:
Progressive Metal
Preview: “Tidal”
PTH can do no wrong.
Genre:
Death Metal / Black Metal / Atmosphere
Preview: Full song
Not only does this album have one of the
coolest themes of the year – the fall of the library of Alexandria – but it’s
also some of the best-composed, most dense and atmospheric pieces in recent
memory. Fucking outstanding.
Top Full
Lengths of the year
If
you don’t see your favorite album, just remember that this year had like 100+
entries on my potential contenders list.
25 Honorable
Mentions
Hands of Despair –
Bereft
Genre: Symphonic / Atmospheric / Melodic Death Metal
Preview: “Veil”
Caecus – The Funeral
Garden
Genre: Deathcore / Death Metal
Preview: “Perpetual Nightfall”
First Fragment –
Dasein
Genre: Technical Death Metal / Shred / Frenchness
Preview: “Dasein”
Lamentations – Echoes
in the Wind
Genre: Progressive / Atmospheric Death Metal
Preview: “Fortress”
Destrage – A Means to
No End
Genre: Progressive Metal / Experimental / Craziness
Preview: “Symphony of the Ego”
Obscura – Akroasis
Genre: Progressive / Technical Death Metal
Preview: “Sermon
of the Seven Suns”
Still Falling – Free of Avidya
Genre: Progressive Death Metal
Preview: “Free of Avidya”
Auras – Heliospectrum
Genre: Progressive Metalcore
Preview: “Waterstone”
The Schoenberg Automaton – Apus
Genre: Experimental Deathcore / Death Metal / Math
Metal
Preview: “Vengeance”
After the Burial – Dig
Deep
Genre: Progressive Deathcore
Preview: “Laurentian Ghosts”
Circle of Contempt – Structures for Creation
Genre: Progressive Metalcore
Preview: “Filth”
Textures – Phenotype
Genre: Progressive Metal
Preview: “Shaping a Single Grain of
Sand”
Inter Arma – Paradise
Gallows
Genre: Blackened / Atmospheric Death Metal / Post
Metal
Preview: “Transfiguration”
Fleshgod Apocalypse –
King
Genre: Symphonic Death Metal
Preview: “The Fool”
Shadow of Intent –
Primordial
Genre: Symphonic Deathcore
Painted in Exile – The
Ordeal
Genre: Progressive Metal
Preview: “The Bazaar”
Katatonia – The Fall
of Hearts
Genre: Progressive Metal / Beauty
Preview: “Old
Heart Falls”
Probably one of the most
beautiful songs of the year, and definitely one of the best lyric videos you’ll
find.
Xoth – Invasion of the Tentacube
Genre: Technical Death Metal / RIFFFFFS
Preview: “Tentacles of Terror”
Black Crown Initiate –
Selves We Cannot Forgive
Genre: Progressive Death Metal
Preview: “Selves We Cannot Forgive”
Probably the biggest
disappointment of the year for me considering how good “Wreckage of Stars” was,
but still a pretty excellent album.
Setentia - Darkness Transcend
Genre: ULCERATE LITE
Preview: “Darkness Transcend”
Omnium Gatherum – Grey
Heavens
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Preview: “Frontiers”
In Mourning –
Afterglow
Genre: Melodic / Atmospheric Death Metal
Preview: “Below Rise to the Above”
Until We Die – Before
the Decay of Time
Genre: Technical Deathcore
Preview: “The Conquerors (feat. Dan
Watson)”
Infant Annihilator –
The Elysian Grandeval Galeriarch
Genre: Technical Deathcore
Preview: “Neutered in Utero”
I know, I’m as surprised as
you that I enjoyed this, but fuck if Infant Annihilator didn’t make an album
with some absolutely killer moments.
Wormed – Krighsu
Genre: Brutal Death Metal / Science / FFFFUCK
Preview: “Computronium Pulsar
Nanarchy”
Top
50 Full Lengths of the year
50. Deviant Process –
Paroxysm
Genre:
Progressive / Technical Death Metal
Preview: “Narcissistic
Rage”
49. Allegaeon – Proponent for Sentience
Genre:
Technical Death Metal / Science
Preview: “Demons
of an Intricate Design”
Probably their best, most ambitious work yet.
48. Harakiri for the Sky –
III: Trauma
Genre: Post
Metal / Atmospheric Metal
Preview: “Funeral
Dream”
47. Ideology – Ideology
Genre:
Progressive Metal / Protest the Hero
Preview: “Oxygen”
46. Hands Like Houses –
Dissonants
Genre: Pop
Punk / Pop Metal?
Preview: “Colorblind”
Catchy as all hell.
45. Atlantis Chronicles –
Barton’s Odyssey
Genre: Death
Metal / Extreme Metal
Preview: “Within
the Massive Stream”
Genre:
Technical Death Metal / Blast Beatssss
Preview: “Titanomachy”
This band from the dudes of Trigger the Bloodshed are
still bringing it. God damn this album
goes hard.
Genre:
Progressive Death Metal
Preview: “On Strange
Loops”
Behemoth goes prog?
Genre:
ABSOLUTE CHAOS / Blackened Death Metal / Grind / Extreme
The most chaotic album of the year. You won’t find anything more blisteringly
heavy than this, if you’re just looking to have something take a chainsaw to
your skull.
Genre: Melodic
Death Metal
Preview: “Ascendancy”
One of the most criminally overlooked albums on
everybody’s year-end lists this year.
Genre:
Symphonic / Blackened Death Metal
Preview: “Novus Ordo
Seclorum”
One of the best-composed death metal albums of the
entire year...the only reason this isn’t way high up on the list is because
none of the songs really “grabbed” me, but a phenomenally written album
nonetheless.
Genre: Metal /
Groove
Preview: “Blue”
Headbang city.
Genre: Death
Metal / Atmospheric / Post Metal
If you like Ulcerate or Gorguts as much as I do, you
have GOT to get in on this party.
Genre:
Symphonic Death Metal / Extreme Metal
Preview: “Catabolic (I Am)”
Sven from Aborted is the vocalist, and there are some
absolutely STUNNING female vocals on here...an amalgamation of some of my
favorite metal genres together forms something that sounds altogether different
than any album you’ve ever heard before.
Genre:
Progressive / Technical Death
Metal
Preview: “Dimensions Divide”
Preview: “Dimensions Divide”
These guys listen to a lot of Fallujah, and I’m
pretty OK with it.
Genre:
Progressive / Technical Death Metal
Preview: “Ghostgate”
Genre:
Technical Death Metal
Preview: “Earth Reciprocation”
The riffs on this album don't fuck around.
Genre:
Symphonic Death Metal / Epic
Preview: “Nemesis”
Another criminally underappreciated album this year.
Genre:
Technical Death Metal
Preview: “The
Crypts of Sleep”
Probably my favorite straight-up tech death album of
2016.
31. Into Infernus –
Grimoire
Genre: Symphonic
Deathcore
Preview: “Symphony
of Flames”
30. Vale of Pnath – II
Genre:
Technical / Melodic Death Metal
Preview: “Heart of
Darkness”
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29. Haken – Affinity
Genre:
Progressive Metal
Preview: “Initiate”
Like Dream Theater, but better.
28. Meshuggah – The
Violent Sleep of Reason
Genre:
Progressive Metal / It’s Meshuggah
Preview: “Born in Dissonance”
Preview: “Earthwork”
Another band that listened to a lot of “Harvest
Wombs”-era Fallujah, and I’m not mad at it.
26. Silent Planet – Everything Was Sound
Genre:
Progressive Metalcore
Preview: “Panic Room”
These guys are probably some of the best lyricists in
the game. So many beautiful songs about
so many vitally important topics. The
preview song, for example, is written about the horrors that happen inside a
soldier’s head after he returns home from war.... “Praise me for my valor, lay
me on a crimson tower – justify my endless terror as my ‘finest hour’” Probably my favorite line of lyrics of
2016. If that line doesn’t get to you, I
can’t help you.
25. Anciients – Voice of
the Void
Genre:
Progressive (Death) Metal
Preview: “Buried in Sand”
One of the most dynamic and far-reaching albums of
2016.
24. Plini – Handmade Cities
Genre:
Progressive / Instrumental Metal
Preview: “Cascade”
I never thought in a year this good for metal, an
instrumental album would be this high up on my year-end list, but here we
are. Plini has created a beautiful,
emotional masterpiece.
23. Invent Animate –
Stillworld
Genre:
Progressive Metalcore
Preview: “Indigo”
22. The Zenith Passage – Solipsist
Genre:
Technical Death Metal / Soreption / The Faceless
Preview: “Deus
Deceptor”
As a fan of Soreption and The Faceless, this album
tickled me in all the right places.
21. Entheos – Infinite
Nothing
Genre:
Technical Metal / Groove / Funk
Preview: “The Infinite Nothing”
Malcolm Pugh at it again, along with Evan Brewer at
the top of his game.
20. Oni – Ironshore
Genre:
Progressive Death Metal
Preview: “The Only Cure (feat.
Randy Blythe)”
19. Aborted – Retrogore
Genre:
Technical Death Metal / Deathgrind
Preview: “Divine Impediment”
Of all vocalists this year, I’m pretty sure Sven had
the best year – Aborted came out with a new EP, as well as an insane new album,
and he also was the lead vocalist on Oracles’ album...all 3 of which are on my
year-end list. But fuck, this is Aborted
at their best, and that’s saying something.
18. Cyborg Octopus –
Learning to Breathe
Genre:
Progressive Death Metal
Preview: “Epiphany”
Conducting from the Grave meets Between the Buried
and Me?
17. Oathbreaker – Rheia
Genre: Black
Metal / Psychological Torture
Preview: “10:56 / Second Son of R”
Jesus fucking Christ this album takes you so many
places. It’s abrasive. It’s hard-to-listen-to. It's emotionally-draining. And it couldn’t make me any happier.
16. Mechina – Progenitor
Genre:
Symphonic Death Metal
Preview: “Cryoshock”
Mechina never cease to amaze me, and this is probably
my favorite album of theirs to date. As
one of the bandcamp reviews says, “Cryoshock is one of the most cold and
haunting metal tracks I’ve ever heard”.
15. Insomnium – Winter’s
Gate
Genre: Melodic
/ Atmospheric Death Metal
Preview: Full Album
All these years, and Insomnium is still showing the
world how to play melodic death metal.
14. Serpentine Dominion –
Serpentine Dominion
Genre: Death
Metal
Preview: “Sovereign Hate”
Finally, at long last, the supergroup with George
Corpsegrinder Fisher, Adam D from Killswitch Engage, and Shannon Fucking Lucas drops. Who knew that Adam could play death metal so
damn well? This album is what would
happen if Cannibal Corpse suddenly started writing interesting tunes again, and
then got better at their instruments again.
13. Shokran – Exodus
Genre:
Progressive Deathcore / Egypt
Preview: “Creatures
from the Mud”
Genre:
Black / Light Metal / Atmospheric / Dreamgaze?
Preview:
“Air”
This album never grabbed me like it seemed
to grab everybody else this year, but I still appreciate it for what it is –
there’s never been an album that sounds quite like this before, and I always appreciate
trailblazers in the craft.
Genre: Progressive Metal
Preview: “The Way the News Goes...”
Probably
Periphery’s best album, and that’s saying something.
Preview: “Untouched”
No other album in 2016 took me on an emotional
journey like Kodama. If you have a soul,
you simply MUST listen to this, and get yourself carried away.
9. Dance Gavin Dance – Mothership
Genre:
Progressive Rock / Pop Metal?
Preview: “Inspire the Liars”
I know, I’m as surprised as you are. DGD’s last two albums have been veritable
masterpieces.
8. Aesop Rock – The
Impossible Kid
Genre: Hip Hop
Preview: “Mystery Fish” / “Kirby”
For my money, the best hip-hop album I’ve ever
heard. While other rappers are writing
songs about dancing in the club, strippers, sex, etc, Aesop is writing jams
about his cat...and absolutely KILLING it while he does. Unreal.
Even if you don’t like hip-hop (which I usually don’t), give this album
a shot. It might change your mind.
Preview: “Charging The Void”
The hype was real.
This album was a fucking experience.
6. Be’Lakor – Vessels
Genre:
Atmospheric / Melodic Death Metal
Preview: “An Ember’s Arc” / “Withering Strands”
For my money, this is probably one of the best
melodic death metal albums ever created.
If you’re a fan of the genre, I can’t imagine you not falling in love
with “Vessels”.
5. Ulcerate – Shrines of Paralysis
Genre: Dense /
Dark Matter / Black Hole / Neutron Star
Preview: “End the Hope”
Ulcerate are simply the kings of death metal right
now (at least in my mind). No other band
takes me to such dark, deep places as Ulcerate.
4. Napoleon – Newborn Mind
Genre:
Progressive Metal / Math Metal / Metalcore
Preview: “Afterlife”
No other album this year had as many incredible,
catchy riffs as Newborn Mind.
Genre: Progressive Metalcore
Preview: “Luminesce” / “Skyline”
The kings of modern metalcore. Enough said.
Genre:
Progressive / Technical Death Metal
Preview:
“The Void Alone”
That
preview song might be one of my top 5 favorite metal songs ever....goosebumps
the second it comes on.
Genre: Progressive Death Metal
Was there
ever really any other candidate for the top spot, once this album dropped?
Dense. Overly-theatrical, bordering on
pretentious. Impenetrable. Deeply complex lyrics, themes, and
philosophical implications that can be at times impossible to untangle. All of these apply to “Odyssey”, but damn if
Slice the Cake haven’t gotten to the heart of what music is truly supposed to
be (at least in my eyes) – a profound exploration of the human condition
through metaphor and sound. It will take
years to fully understand everything going on here, just as it’s taken years to
create. Every band member poured their
hearts and souls into this work, and it wound up tearing the band apart for
reasons we won’t get into here. A true
master-class in musical composition.
