10

1. Decapitated - Organic Hallucinosis - Sauron finally ditched and his generic death grunts aren't missed at all. They bring in some new kid named Covan who sounds remarkably like Barney from Napalm Death. That implies that he’s also really good. This thing grooves the hell out of the shed and is heavier than Satan the Hutt.

2. Mastodon - Blood Mountain - They're the new Zeppelin.

3. Gojira - From Mars to Sirius - It might have been released last year but that was only in Europe and I don't live there. It came out here this year so I'm putting it on this list. These frenchies knocked it out of le parc with a load of greenpeace whale sludge and the production is incredible.

4. Enslaved - Ruun – Aside from a few exceptions Black metal may be pretty much dead seeing as the only reason most bands play it these days is to have an excuse to wear corpse paint. Thankfully these guys keep recreating the genre by completely avoiding everything that’s so lame about it.

5. Urkraft - Inhuman Aberration – This record can sometimes be pretty generic melodic thrash but the performances are perfect and the riffs are never predictable. They're almost always rolling over the fourth beat and ending up somewhere only Danish people seem to understand.

6. I - Between Two Worlds - Heavy fist pumping rock metal with Abbath on vocals? Duh.

7. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale - I used to dislike his voice on the wu-tang records, I thought it was too whiny. I was so much younger then and too stupid to realize how insanely good he was.

8. Lamb of God - Sacrament - We're not supposed to like them anymore. What did Sloan say? That's rhetorical as I know the answer. They said it's not the band I hate it's the fans. Meatheads across the land may love beating each other up while listening to them (aka looking for an excuse to grab at each other) but to be honest this record is still with me. There’s enough of an evolution to keep me interested, the songs are heavy and catchy and Chris Adler is always entertaining.

9. In Flames - Come Clarity - Hell sometimes I like pop music.

10. Intronaut - Void – I’ve heard it enough to know that it’s top ten worthy. It will likely take many more listens to fully appreciate it’s denseness and weight. Next year I’d be disappointed with myself if I hadn’t included it.

ANOTHER LESSON IN VIO-LISTENING

When a supreme talent arises in the metal community it can often be ignored by even more seasoned listeners because at times with this talent comes the desire to create the most caustic racket possible. In cases such as these the average to even advanced music fans are unable to digest what has been laid to .wav. In this case we're going to focus on Necrophagist. A band who falls into the commonly known metal genre as one of the many with too many names to bother attempting to label. Death, tech-death, math-tech, death-math, pyro-tech, ok so I'm starting to make these up but everyone else does so it's not even important. What is important is that if you can get passed the destructive drumming and grunting you'll find, in Necrophagists case, a guy who instead of applying his advanced brain to building a space station decided to pick up a guitar and almost single-handidly recreate the blast-math-being set on fire and put out with rock salt genre.

The band was originally a one man operation helmed by Muhammed Suicmez. His first full length record was called Onset of Putrefaction and he recorded the entire thing alone. If you have any desire to create music like this you'll probably want to start honing your drum machine abilities as it's unlikely you'll find someone who'll ever be able to replicate it live. Unless of course you're Suicmez and your first record does well enough to give you access to the impenetrable fortress where they keep the drummers that aren't accessible to the public unless you've proven your worth.

Another example of a similar band I've endorsed before on here is Decapitated. If you like them at all they can be a good starting point for Necrophagist. Well, Decapitated and say, Eat 'em and Smile by David Lee Roth. I say this because if it wasn't for the vocals you could almost be convinced that this album was recorded by Vai and Sheehan. That being said he did actually manage to put a band together and the newest record, 2004's Epitaph, is a tight and clean shred-fest in every way.

Symbiotic in Theory is a good example of all that this band is. The fast parts rip, the slower sections grind and the instrumentation is mind-boggling.