Best albums of 2021?

[Keenan]

2021 is now over (thank god) so I figured it was time for a best albums of 2021 thread. Feel free to contribute!

I didn't really buy a ton of music this past year, but my personal top five is :

5) Leprous - Aphelion
4) Liquid Tension Experiment - LTE3
3) Dream Theater - A View From the Top of the World
2) Soen - Imperial
1) Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Non-metal stand outs being the soundtrack for the PS5 game Deathloop and "Faded Touch" by Timecop1983.

I think the biggest theme for me this year, metal-wise, was disappointment. New Gojira, Evile, Cynic and Iron Maiden were disappointing in some degree for me.


Best songs of the year are both the closing tracks for the top two abums.





Hopefully 2022 is a better year for everyone all around!

 

[zerostatic]

2021 is now over (thank god) so I figured it was time for a best albums of 2021 thread. Feel free to contribute!

I didn't really buy a ton of music this past year, but my personal top five is :

5) Leprous - Aphelion
4) Liquid Tension Experiment - LTE3
3) Dream Theater - A View From the Top of the World
2) Soen - Imperial
1) Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Non-metal stand outs being the soundtrack for the PS5 game Deathloop and "Faded Touch" by Timecop1983.

I think the biggest theme for me this year, metal-wise, was disappointment. New Gojira, Evile, Cynic and Iron Maiden were disappointing in some degree for me.


Best songs of the year are both the closing tracks for the top two abums.





Hopefully 2022 is a better year for everyone all around!

Where is the Evile album, Keenan?

 

[Keenan]

Near the bottom, sadly.

 

[zerostatic]

That's tough, but fair. Was it the vocals that brought it down for you?

My top ten looks like this:

1) 1914 - Where Fear And Weapons Meet - Mixture of Black, Death, Doom metal focusing on the horrors of the War to End all Wars. Truly a work of art, I don't know how they will top it, but I hope they try.

2) Carcass - Torn Arteries - A slight step down from Surgical Steel, but still a strong album. Wake up and Smell the Carcass and The Scythe's Remorseless Swing are two killer songs.

3) Cannibal Corpse - Violence Unimagined. A return to gory album covers and a return to greatness for CC. Hard for them to have any violence left unimagined at this point their career.

4) Enforced - Kill Grid - High energy thrash reminds me of Powertrip.

5) Wraith - Undo the Chains - Blackened punk/thrash. Toxic Holocaust is going to be pissed that Wraith is copying their sound.

6) Nekromantheon - Visions of Trismegistos - Another killer thrash album.

7) Silver Talon - Decadence and Decay - this got a lot of listens this year. Has some former members of Spellcaster.

8) Angelus Apatrida - Angelus Apatrida - More mind melting thrash from Spain. These guys are on a major label, but seem to have zero presence or marketing in the USA. They continue to release thrash albums like clockwork every three years and this one may be their best.

9)Asphyx - Necroceros - More death/doom from Asphyx with some brutal, crushing riffs and killer tunes. This isn't getting a lot of praise in year end lists. Maybe due to its early release in January of 2021? I think if they were new comers on the scene from Quebec and released this on 20 Buck Spin it would be hailed as one of the top 5 of the year.

10) Bestial Invasion - Divine Comedy: Inferno - Who needs Virgil as a guide through hell when you have this album? 9 tracks of thrash metal with more powermetal vocals. If I spent more time with this it might be higher on the list. I recommend checking it out.

Honorable Mentions:
Evile - Hell Unleashed - I am thankful we got new Evile tunes, but those vocals are still tough to get used to. Top songs for me after many months of listening to it are Control From Above, Gore, War of Attrition, Disorder, and The Thing.
Hooded Menace - The Tritonius Bell - Love the artwork and the incorporation of more heavy metal.
Krossfyre - Rites of Extermination
Flotsam and Jetsam - Blood in the Water
Obscura - A Valediction
Cynic - Ascension Codes
Pathology - The Everlasting Plague
Exodus - Persona Non Grata
Worm - Foreverglade
Morgul Blade - Fell Sorcery Abounds

Greatest Disappointment:
Iron Maiden - Senjutsu - From the uninspired album to the long tedious songs this was a huge let down. I gave it several spins and still have not gotten into it. I think at this point in their career, Iron Maiden is writing songs for Iron Maiden without regard for the fans.

 

[Keenan]

The vocals were the main part, yeah. I also disliked the.... regression(?) back to just "basic" thrash metal. They started getting more and more experimental and technical with Nations through Skull, which I loved. Hell Unleashed was just straightforward sprinting to the finish line kind of stuff which just felt like a step backwards.

I wish I liked it, I really do, but I don't.

Was curious about that band 1914 you keep posting about. Checked out the new album last night and I can see why you think it's album of the year. IT'S SO GOOD. MY GOD. WHY HAVE I NOT CHECKED THEM OUT BEFORE!?

 

[zerostatic]

The vocals were the main part, yeah. I also disliked the.... regression(?) back to just "basic" thrash metal. They started getting more and more experimental and technical with Nations through Skull, which I loved. Hell Unleashed was just straightforward sprinting to the finish line kind of stuff which just felt like a step backwards.

I wish I liked it, I really do, but I don't.

Was curious about that band 1914 you keep posting about. Checked out the new album last night and I can see why you think it's album of the year. IT'S SO GOOD. MY GOD. WHY HAVE I NOT CHECKED THEM OUT BEFORE!?

Glad you are enjoying it! Their last album, The Blind leading the Blind, is also a great listen.

 

[Darkofeden]

Now that we're a week into 2022 might as well finally get this list out of my head. Long post incoming. Here's my top 4

4. John Carpenter- Lost Themes III: Alive After Death. Always been a MASSIVE fan of his but it wasn't until September that I became aware that he's been doing solo work for a while now so I checked this out since it came out earlier this year and WOW. This was such a fresh breath of air for me. It's exactly the type of shit that I want to be making myself, and it even seeped its way into the final song I made for my album (castle in the sand.) As for negatives i'd probably say that the stretch from track 3-4 I sometimes will zone out since they're two slower songs in a row but that's the only real negative thing I have to say. Check out "Weeping Ghost" and "The Dead Walk", they both rip.

3. Billie Eilish- Happier Than Ever. I definitely 0% expect anyone on this forum to agree with more or also have really taken the time to listen to it which is totally fair, but I'm always willing to argue that she's absolutely fantastic and doing really great shit on here. Absolutely fantastic production all the way through, and love pretty much every song. Only negative I have about it is that I LOVE the title track and think it's a fantastic way to end the album but then she puts one after it that just isn't as strong to me. Bothers the heck out of me. Favorites are probably "NDA" and the title track.

2. Evile- Hell Unleashed. As I've probably said somewhere on this forum I was definitely worried that I wouldn't like this album but man once I let my weird expectations go I really started to love this one. "Paralysed" is one of my absolute favorite thrash songs and just such a ridiculously strong opener to me. I was also scared that the "Zombie Apocalypse" cover would be awful because yikes I hate the original version of this song but i'll be damned if it's not one of my favorite tracks on there. Also love the Death inspired places that "Control From Above" goes to. For negatives I have two. One, Ol's vocals are definitely a work in progress because some times I love them (there's a specific run in the opening track that absolutely rips), and then there's times where it's not so great but I know in time it'll get better. Second thing being that it has a similar problem to me that I had with Infected Nations when that first came out where I feel like essentially the whole album is the same tempo so sometimes if I'm not paying attention i'll just zone out and have no idea where I am. FST is still the king to me when it comes to song variation. That being said, still my second favorite of the year. Lot of really great riffs on this, "Paralysed" and "Disorder" are the ones i'd probably recommend most.


1. Mastodon- Hushed and Grim. Now THIS is the album I've been waiting for from them. As someone who loved Emperor Of Sand, I will admit that I had to grow to love Emperor over time but for me I loved this one on first listen. Just back to back to back to back slammers. Non stop. Starting with "Pain with an Anchor"???? Chefs kiss. The fuckin ending solo to "Gigantium"????? Get the fuck outta here, how can anything touch that? After listening to this essentially non-stop since October I really have no idea how they're gonna top this one. Hard to believe that they finally have something that honest to god rivals Crack The Skye (I am not one of those people who hates everything they've done since, I just think that to me that's their magnum opus so it's hard to compare anything else.) Extremely rare to have a 15 song album these days where you don't think "Oh, if I was in charge i'd rip a bunch of these out." At the moment, I really have no actual negatives. The only "negative" I have is that I wish they had found a way to put Scott Kelly on this album because his harsher vocals always add to whatever song they put him on but unfortunately he just wouldn't really fit anywhere on here so I can't actually count this as a negative. Favorites are "Pain with an Anchor", "Sickle and Peace", and "Teardrinker"

Was listening to songs from each album while writing this all out and i'm listening to "Teardrinker" and man that chorus hits a little too close to home

Honorable mention albums/songs, the new Gojira album is my fifth favorite of the year I just honestly didn't feel like typing anymore than I already have, the new Tyler, The Creator album is really great but not as good as Igor so I didn't include it on here, even though I guess it's not really an album I would still say that the music to that new Bo Burnham special was fantastic and gets caught in my head so easily, also not an album but the new Sylosis single "Immovable Stone" fucking RIPS.

Biggest disappointment is a tie between the new Architects album and the new Whitechapel album. I LOVED "Holy Hell" so I was very excited for the new Architects but man... I am not feeling it. "Black Lungs" and "Animals" are great songs though. Then, the new Whitechapel also hurts because I will fight to the death in defense of their work since their self titled album turned things around but man. I am also not feeling this one. Has a similar problem to me that the last Ghost album had where after a certain point I just checked out because it's so so so boring. Only song I'd really recommend from it is "A Bloodsoaked Symphony", now that's a good one.

 

[Podgie]

I've been so detached from new releases this year, not paying much attention and putting off listening to new albums from bands I actually quite like (Unanimated, Cradle of Filth, Carcass and Unleashed, come to mind).

But the few I do remember really enjoying off the top of my head are,

Asphyx - Necroceros
Enforced - Kill Grid
Dungeon Serpent - World of Sorrows
Evile - Hell Unleashed
Act of Denial - Negative

 

[SonOfNun]

It's been a long time since I made a proper list. I didn't focus much on new music so it'd probably take me half the year to figure one out. These are some of the 2021 releases I have that would be under consideration:

Crowned in Sorrow - In Memoriam
Wheel - Preserved in Time
The Hounds of Hasslevander - Another Dose of Life
Grief Collector - En Delirium
Gospod - Israel's Exodus
Empyrium - Uber den Sternen
Elgibbor - Corruptus Vindicta
Anima Mortuum - The Throne
Morgarten - Cry of the Lost
Pantokrator - Marching Out of Babylon