Your Favorite Releases From 2016

[tuonelan]

However many. No ranking necessary. What impressed you? What did you play the crap out of? What caught your attention? For me...:

Borknagar - Winter Thrice
Fallujah - Dreamless
Moonsorrow - Jumalten Aika
Gorguts - Pleiades' Dust
Be'Lakor - Vessels
Insomnium - Winter's Gate
Opeth - Sorceress
Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep of Reason
Anciients - Voice of the Void
Wardruna - Runaljod Ragnarök
Sig:Ar:Tyr - Northen
Ereb Altor - Blot Lit Taut
Oceans of Slumber - Winter

 

[requiem]

Borknagar - Winter Thrice
Rotting Christ - Rituals
Fleshgod Apocalypse - King
Katatonia - The Fall of Hearts

These four are easily the masterpieces for me, although I haven't heard a lot of albums that I really would expect to love, such as the new Insomnium and possibly Moonsorrow (although I prefer their older material).

I haven't explored a lot of new music this year to be honest. There's already too much great music from the past that takes my attention!

 

[Luoto]

Insomnium - Winter's Gate (album of the year)
Thrawsunblat - Metachthonia
Astronoid - Air
Be'lakor - Vessels
Oddland - Origin
Embreach - The World that We Have Lost
Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

Those are at least 8/10. I discovered the Thrawsunblat album just recently, some very nice blackened folk metal. Astronoid is something... different.

 

[Nokkakolari]

I know, nothing from the usual suspects, but...

* Katatonia - "The Fall of Hearts"
* The 69 Eyes - "Universal Monsters"
* Steve'n'Seagulls - "Brothers In Farms"

 

[tuonelan]

Also, I just have to note how much of a role expectations play in these year end lists. It's really clear this year when so many lists at so many media outlets have Metallica's solidly mediocre Hardwired...To Self Destruct on their year-end list simply because it a) is Metallica and b) is modern day Metallica that bucked the odds and somehow managed to not suck (and usually completely ignoring the fact that Sodom, Testament and Death Angel all put out better thrash albums this year) . Meanwhile Opeth's Sorceress, while not their best album, gets dumped into people's "disappointment" lists on the basis of it being a perfectly fine album but not being the breakout that listeners had hoped for coming on the heels of Pale Communion.

 

[Pitiless Wanderer]

so many awesome albums this year. in no order, these are my favorites:

mithras
schammasch
wandering wind
vredehammer
waldgefluster
astronoid
vex
violet cold
ultar
an abstract illusion (amazing stuff)
violet cold
oak pantheon
grift
in the woods

 

[Eurynome]

Skálmöld - Vögguvísur Yggdrasils
Borknagar - Winter Thrice
Naðra - Allir vegir til glötunar
Insomnium - Winter's Gate
Moonsorrow - Jumalten Aika
Trees Of Eternity - Hour Of The Nightingale
Skuggsjá

Listening to Sorceress as I type but still don't find it to be more than a pleasant background. Another release that didn't live up to expectations was Omnium Gatherum's "Grey Havens". On the other hand, there's several recent releases that might have ended up in my favorites list if I they hadn't been forgotten on my list of stuff to check out (Brymir, Saattue, Kypck, Oranssi Pazuzu, Ihsahn, Amon Amarth, Be'lakor, Ereb Altor...), will try to lend them an ear before the winter is over....

 

[tuonelan]

Okay, add Alcest - Kodama on to mine as well, just under the wire.

Been listening to shoegazer stuff all day as it was and Alcest finally clicked for me.

 

[Brell]

In no particular order:

Devin Townsend Project - Transcendence
Moonsorrow - Jumalten Aika
Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep Of Reason
Fallujah - Dreamland
Gojira - Magma
Deftones - Gore
Ghost - Popestar
Anal Trump - That Makes Me Smart
Brujeria - Pocho Aztlan
Aborted - Retrogore