Music
Top 10 Metal Releases: 2011
by Tyler Munro
2011 was a year. And like years before it, people released albums. And like those other years, we ranked what we thought were the best of the respective genres we cover — Indie/Pop/Rock, Hip-Hop, Pop, Metal, Punk, and Electronic.
We also reached out to as many of the artists featured here as we could to get lists of their own. Click on a name to check out our best-of the year’s best-of the year’s.
Top 10 Metal Releases: 2011
10. Mastodon – The Hunter
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After the mess that was Blood Mountain Mastodon set on a straight-faced correction course, and with The Hunter they’ve crafted their most coherent album yet. While it’s hard to say this is better than Crack the Skye, it’s easy to see why the argument is possible. These songs are great, and while not as uniquely punishing as the band’s earlier material, they still pack a considerable, progressively percussive punch. |
9. Ulcerate – The Destroyers of All
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Taking technicality to terrifying heights, The Destroyers of All places itself firmly in Gorguts’ throne as we wait for a return from the Canadian kings. Better yet, it gives them something to strive against–competition for a new generation. The Destroyers of All is fast more often than it’s not, its drums often blasting through with precious and pace that’d make Dave Lombardo blush, but its droning, buzzing riffs keep the tempos distant and disorienting here. Though it’s been burdened by comparisons since starting the year off back in January, The Destroyers of All survives on its own merits. Find an album worth comparing this to and you’ll end up with a list of the genre’s bests. Sometimes being reminiscent isn’t a bad thing. |
8. All Pigs Must Die – All Pigs Must Die
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Ben Koller finally steps out of Jacob Bannon’s shadow to more fully embrace his metal backbone, and All Pigs Must Die crushes its lofty expectations as a result. These 8 songs show that you don’t have to be slow to be sludgy. |
7. Wormrot – Dirge
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Singapore puts out the best grindcore album of the year and does it for free. Dirge is never sure how far it wants to lean on either side of punk or metal influenced grindcore, which is why it rushes through 25 songs in 18 minutes switching styles and tempos as often as you can blink. But it’s far from a blur; these songs might blend together, but they’re far from a mess. This is a calculated demolition of your eardrums and expectations. |
6. Vader – Welcome to the Morbid Reich
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Two decades after forming and Vader has finally found its niche. Welcome to the Morbid Reich isn’t just the best in their catalogue–it could be the best the genre’s seen all year. Not even Piotr Wiwczarek’s accent can distract from how solid the guitar work is on this album, and even then his bark is as biting as ever. |
5. Hammers of Misfortune – 17th Street
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Bordering on over-melodic, 17th Street tells the tale on two sides, recorded as a record album front to back broadening itself between the band (and its members) thrashier roots and their increasingly theatrical bent. Joe Hutton’s remarkable vocals stand as the middle-ground to both sounds, his soft-tone and tempered cadence working just as hard as his occasional gruff. With organs not keyboards and riffs that build songs instead of save them, here’s the rare progressive metal album that survives with its flashiness instead and not because of it. |
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Hardcore, metal or both, Bacchus plays an ear shattering style of crust that rumbles along with such ferocity that it can’t settle long enough for the argument to develop. These songs smash through your ear drums with a rhythmic precision that’s matched only by the bleakly sharp aesthetic carried throughout the 35 minute runtime.
(Read Bacchus’ own year end list) |
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Scurrilous gets rid of the growls, tightens the hooks and turns the technicality up to twelve, somehow managing to do everything their fans asked for and everything they asked against. Like their last two albums, Protest the Hero’s third cut is going to fall into the love it or hate it camp, but fans of Rody Walker’s vocals will love his evolution into a Canadian Dickinson while anyone looking for the mythology driven lyrics of Fortress will be put off by the piss and shit jokes scurried throughout the album. For what it’s worth, Scurrilous is both their most coherent and most technical album yet, and rounding the thing out with a Chris Hannah (Propagandhi) guest spot certainly doesn’t hurt.
(Read Arif Mirabdolbaghi’s own year end list) |
2. Amebix – Sonic Mass
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Their fourth album in nearly 30 years, Sonic Mass continues Amebix’s dominating stance on the crust world all the while never really sounding much like a crust album. Never ones to be remembered just for the jacket patches, Amebix have crafted one hell of an album here. Sonic Mass builds off itself, snowballing crescendos and riffs into themselves for one of the most tightly written albums of the year. |
1. Mitochondrion – Parasignosis
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Parasignosis is an album caked in atmosphere, masking some of the technicality found on Archaeaeon in favour of a more wholly suffocating aesthetic. At times the songs on Parasignosis will be but a blur, a wash of noise and dissonance; others, its an angular, tightly crafted weave of layered, tortured growls and unforgettable riffs. Rhythmic and pulsating, Mitochondrion’s is one of the more terrifying sounds coming out of Canada right now. |
Runner Ups: Runner Ups – Craft’s Void, Antediluvian’s Through the Cervix of Hawaah, KEN Mode’s Venerable, Manilla Road’s Playground of the Damned
