GMD Poll: Top Ten Albums of 2012

[CiG]

...this is one of shittest years in metal history...

Allow me to make it slightly worse; that Trial album actually came out in 2011.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Top Ten Metal Releases of 2012
10. Over Your Threshold - Facticity
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this is a 3.75 star album, which is to say it isn't really worthy of an end of year list, but this is one of shittest years in metal history and despite burrowing deep into the 2012 weeds i'm just not that enamoured with the other candidates either. i'd recommend it to those who fuck with clean, fluid tech death with great performances and off-kilter riffs galore. could just as easily have chosen altar of oblivion or testimony instead, or filipino prog-power band lavos beckon if only because they had a (merely decent) song based on the claymore animé/manga and that probably gave me the biggest rush of excitement of anything i discovered from this year.

9. Necrovation - Necrovation
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90% of the time when a savage death metal band goes cerebral they end up sacrificing the riffs and spirit, but these guys did progressive evolution the right way and came up with something classy and adventurous while remaining crushingly heavy and sinister. i'm not sure it ever hits truly great heights but it's almost always doing something cool or surprising.

8. Thy Darkened Shade - Eternvs Mos, Nex Ritvs
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speaking of which, this is a band better known for its even better, more expansive later work, but their debut is simply a fucking black metal riff machine churning out 42 minutes of infernal whiplash-inducing goodness with no let-up.

7. Acrimonious - Sunyata
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these guys don't exactly reinvent the wheel but they're superior songwriters among the 21st century black metal hordes, taking the conventions and weaving them into suffocatingly dark, intense, winding compositions that i find extremely immersive. the only knock is that, like a lot of bands i'm mentioning here, they'd get better later--eleven dragons is one of the best BM albums of this century for my money, and i wouldn't go that far here, partly because the production is more muted and partly because the songs are more atmosphere-based.

6. Wrathblade - Into the Netherworld's Realm
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again we have an album that tends to be overshadowed by its successor, but even at this stage they stood alongside doomsword as one of the best operating in this style. this would actually be one of the first bands i'd point to across the entirety of metal history as defining what 'epic metal' means, it's just a pure undiluted expression of that sound.

5. Trial - The Primordial Temple
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yes, another band better known for later releases, but in this case i think they may have peaked here; there's a little more freedom and heedlessness which combines real well with their bleaker, tenser side. has a bit of a quiet start but from track 3 onwards it's wall-to-wall excellent moody trad which nods to mercyful fate without trying to ape them.

4. Colossus - ...And the Sepulcher of the Mirror Warlocks
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these guys weren't on my radar back in 2012, but have since become one of my favourite modern trad bands, and it's surprising how little their sound has changed between this and 'showdown'. that album had indiana jones, face/off and mad max: this one has three songs based on dune and a gem based on the secret of nimh of all things. it peaks lower but also troughs higher (one stray miss aside); i at least minor key love 5 out of the 6 songs here.

3. Athanatheos - Alpha Theistic
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dammit, the dream of ten perfectly sized covers is over (shame 'cause that art kicks ass), but that's just a testament to how sadly underappreciated this album is online. it's basically what morbid angel would sound like filtered through the sneering, grandiose anti-religiosity of immolation and the runaway compositions of the chasm, which is obviously gonna be my jam. a couple of the songs are overreliant on angsty chugging, but the rest of the time it's a modern classic finishing on a crowning 16 minute epic that in a just world would be the stuff of legend by now.

2. Urfaust - Ritual Music for the True Clochard
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i had no intention of including this as it's a compilation, but the year just sucks so much ass i needed it to bolster my list (i did draw the line at including the timeghoul comp though). it is at least arranged to be a proper album, combining four remastered tracks from a previous record i haven't heard and a bunch of stray songs from splits. the result is an example of what atmo-black might've been had it taken more cues from early burzum and less from the likes of ulver and enslaved, an equal parts unnerving and spellbinding howl from the depths which only an orc with a kaleidoscope of mental disorders could come up with.

1. Inanna - Transfigured in a Thousand Delusions
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maybe the truest successor to the chasm, inanna have become canonised in record time over the past half-decade and they deserve every one of the plaudits that's gone their way. this is in some ways a transitional record but it may also be the one which best showcases the breadth of their talents: it's emotional, it's vast and cosmic, it's thrashy and riffy, it's weird and obscure, and it's the only 2012 album under serious consideration for a 4.5 star rating from me.​

you call it a shitty year yet you didn't include a single album from cronopio's list, clearly your exploration has been lacking

 

[Cronopio]

you call it a shitty year yet you didn't include a single album from cronopio's list, clearly your exploration has been lacking

I'm not sure as how to interpret this.

 

[CiG]

I'm not sure as how to interpret this.

Ignore him, he couldn't even wrangle up enough for a top 5.