Death is June - The Top 50 Death Metal Albums of All Time : 50 to 41

In 2016 I wrote an article called "What is Good Death Metal" , the link is below

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/07/what-is-good-death-metal.html

 My thought on what makes for effective death metal has not changed in the past 4 years. This is reflected in the albums that will be listed here. Normally I try to limit it to one album per artist. With death metal it tends to unify around certain works, so you might have hundreds of bands trying to be Morbid Angel. This means that some artists are more impactful. They made an impact because of the quality of their work so if they have released abums that are so dominating to the genre that they deserve multiple slots, only two bands got three slot, four other bands took two slots. There is a wide array of sub genre's represented here, granted this is my list so darker more satanic death metal and progressive death metal might out number tech death or grind core. Not al ofthe bands remained death metal bands , but they made a death metal album deserving of this list. If I have reviewed said album then I will include the link to the review.  Ok, it's death metal not quantum mechanics , so here we go .

50- Terrorizer- "World Downfall" 1989

 Pete from Morbid Angel blasted into one of the earliest meetings of grind core and death metal with help from the vocalist of Nausea.

 
49- Withered - Grief Relic" 2016 At the time I reviewed this four years ago, I gave it an 8.5 , needless to say it grew on me. https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2016/05/withered-grief-relic.html



48- the Faceless - "Planetary Duaity 2 " 2008 


 This progressive death meta band is one of the few new school technical death metal bands that is going to be on here. There are some Myspace like break downs but it is balanced out by lyrics about aliens .


 


47-Arsis- "A Ceebration of Guilt" 2004 


 This album found the band both tightly coiled and angry, they would eventually go in more of a thrash direction , but this album has a catchy snarl to it.



 



46-Dismember- "Like an Everflowing Stream" 1991


 Rough edged Swedish death metal before all the death metal bands coming out of Sweden sounded like this .


 


45 Six Feet  Under- "Haunted" 1995

 When Chris Barnes left Cannibal Corpse he had something to prove. More mainstream metal moments occur hear, but it stands shoulder to shoulder with Cannibal Corpse in terms of songwriting. 







44- Disma - "Towards the Megalith" 2011


 One of the heaviest albums ever made. Boasting members of Incantation, they pretty much pick up where "Onward to Galgotha" left off.



 





43- Assuck- "Misery Index" 1997

The most grind core album on the entire list, but it is still firmly rooted in death metal, so all those crust punks with these patches really just listen to death metal.


 

42-Sentenced -"North From Here" 1993 

Moving a more melodic direction this band from Finland carried the agression of the first album and continued to refined it.

 



41-Dethklok- " the Dethalbum" - 2007


 This belongs here if for nothing else ...Murmaider"



 

The Top 50 Metal Guitarists - 50 to 41

It's not a good year to have played guitar with me. The loss of my bud Shaun Dunn, marks the second guitarist I have lost in the past year. This turned my thoughts to what makes a good guitarist great. Metal finds the stakes for guitarists high. Shredding can come before playing a fucking song. While all of these guitarists can play a solo, I was also looking for tone, impact on the genre as a whole and how their personalities came through in their playing. So this list of the top 50 Metal Guitarists, is dedicated to Chris and Shaun, you two both talked about a few of these guys with each other and your favorites both made the list.


 50- Richard Z Kruspe

 He adds inspired texture and melody to the machine like grind of his employers.




49-Jason Weirbach

 One of the darkest heaviest and most interesting tones in the game. Much more muscle behind it than your typical tremolo picked black metal playing yet it still possess the hypnotic throb.





48-Steven Russell


 His two projects greatly differ one is atmospheric sludge the other is blackened thrash so this speaks to how he is versatile enough to shift his playing.





 47-Jon Schaffer

 His band has gone through various "lead Players" so he might be the only so called rhythm player on this list, but his tone and command of this instrument serve the song and power his band's sound no matter who is behind the mic or playing the solos. Though I prefer Matt Barlow handling the mic

.



 46-Oystein Garnes Brun

His band juggles so many vocal part and shifts in dynamics, he proves himself in one song being able master both epic almost power metal riffing and then dig into fast tremolo picked black metal. One of the most under rated prog metal guitarists out there.





45-Michael Keene


He has the worst tone of anyone on this list, but is fleet enough of finger to compensate for it , though live the sound was rather thin.



44- Justin Hartwig

On his band's last album he really stepped up to the plate and delivered stellar playing that should elevate this reputation beyond just playing in a funeral doom band.





43-Eddie Clarke

He is more of a rock n roll player who did just enough rough living to give his music a burly enough edge to be embraced as metal, He doesn't compete with the snarl of Lemmy's bass and occupies the right jagged mid range to cut through the blitzkrieg of bass and drums.




  42-Nergal

He has a dark dense tone, but I find his more melodic touches and more tender bits of musicality more impressive. Not the biggest fan of "the Satanist" , but trying to get over that and return to their earlier work that I did enjoy.




41-Hasjarl

His odd angular playing might barrow from Emperor, but I think his band is impressive in how chilling and dissonant they keep things, which lies in his ability to not over play despite playing very technical odd timed black metal.

 

the Top 10 Progressive Rock / Metal Albums of 2017

 If you are looking for a bunch of noodling prog then you are reading the wrong blog. But noodling is not progressive because that along doesn't bring progress to your sound. Bands that stick to the same formula and just shred...also not progressing. So these bands all made albums that thought out of the box and took their sound some where else. They to have some very precise playing and some guitar solos too, but I need dynamics and songs that make me want to return to them. This list is by and large ranked according to what LastFM said I listened to the most , but might have the most deviance from this all of the lists I have done so far. I also added why the band beat out the band below them in case you were wondering, just like you are wondering why I have images of hot girls over these lists, it's just images that this music makes me think of of represent the feeling of the music. Prog is normally the lest sexual of all genres, but oh well it's my fucking blog.

10-The faceless - "In Becoming a Ghost"

 Representing the modern metal core side of progressive heavy music. These guys have found a decent balance of showing off and writing something for the vocals to make sense of over. So this album is a hug improvement over the last one.

 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-faceless-in-becoming-ghost.html

9- Elder -"Reflections of a Floating World"

 The guitar heroics really take the spot light three and half minutes in. The layered production is very lush and it's clear these guys are not far removed from progressive rock.< Six minutes in and you are getting more surreal passages no quite Pink Floyd like in their trippy endeavors , but a slight hint they are wanting to steer the ship in that direction. They punch back in strong and you can already tell this album is going to be filled with interesting guitar tones. Why they beat out the Faceless, well it just flows better, the whole scene the Faceless comes from makes it feel a little stiff, this feels more natural.


http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/06/elder-reflections-of-floating-world.html

8-Shores of Null- "Black Drapes of Tomorrow"


This Italian metal band often finds itself falling close to black metal if we are still referring to the new Enslaved as black metal. This is the band's second album, and it is very cleanly recorded. The mix is impeccable. The vocals are the first thing that is very different. The are a tightly harmonized baritone that I can understand why someone might compare it to Alice In Chains. They do drop into a lower goth-like tone. The gruff vocals that eventually come are not as interesting as the sung vocals. One of the more unique metal albums I have heard this year, which is why it trumps Elder


http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/05/shores-of-null-black-drapes-of-tomorrow.html

7- Apocalypse Orchestra- "the End is Nigh"


Folk metal can too happy and basically just drinking songs or they try to over do it and it turns into nu-metal with folk instrumentation. This band from Sweden, seems to have all of that balanced out pretty well. This is progressive in the sense it steps beyond the normal boundaries of folk metal or doom metal and takes you on more of a journey. It trumps Shores of Null, because I think the vision of this album is more focused.

 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/10/apocalypse-orchestra-end-is-nigh.html

6-Solstafir - "Berdreyminn"


I am a sucker for band's taking bizarre artistic turns like Disco era Kiss and New Wave era Alice Cooper. I like even the glam rock days of Celtic Frost. So this a weird shift for the Icelandic band to sound like the Cure and Neurosis colliding, is fine by me. So what you have is a very wide range of melodic dynamics and here is where the progress is made. It beats out Apocalypse Orchestra because the songs are more concise and draw you in.

 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/05/solstafir-berdreyminn.html

5-Junius- "Rituals For Accretion of Light"

 There are large doses post-rock flirting with the more rock side of metal in it's drive. They are generally very emotionally charged with a darker undercurrent. In the few places where they return to their Deftones fixation it is balanced out by synths or wandering out of the normal song structure. They beat Solstafir because they are darker and better song writers.


 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/03/junius-eternal-rituals-for-accretion-of.html

4- Mastodon - " A Cold Dark Place"


Taking another step away from being a metal band, this e.p is comprised for tracks left over from sessions from their past two albums, though according to Hinds the songs were written when he was going through a difficult break up which might explain the undercurrent linking them. I was more impressed by this than "Emperor of Sand" and think it goes more places emotionally and is more progressive.All reasons this also beats out Junius.

 http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/09/mastodon-cold-dark-place.html

3-Pain of Salvation-" In the Passing Light of Day"


Prog rock in it's most conventional form is no longer my bread and butter like it used to be, I think because their idea of heavy and mine never align and the cheese filled wanking seem to be the mission of the day. That is not really the case with these guys, and while a ten minute song opening the album feels over indulgent to me the song is not half bad despite the heavy drama on the spoken word section. This is not their best album, but it is better than what most of the so called prog rock bands are putting out these days. Beat out Mastodon because it cover s wider scope.

http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/01/pain-of-salvation-in-passing-light-of.html





2- Leprous- "Malina"


Not sure why I didn't cover this album, I guess I thought main stream metal culture would be covering this enough.It is however a solid album like Muse but from the perspective of Scandinavian metal. More compact and marginally less pretense than Pain of Salvation is what puts them here.

1 Igorrr- Savage Sinusoid

This project from France is collective that would like be beyond categorization, and while they can be broken down to the death metal sum of their parts they progress beyond metal and throw a collage of electronics and operatic vocals at you. I just trusting Last Fm on this as the top three albums are pretty neck and neck.

http://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2017/10/igorrr-savage-sinusoid.html

the Faceless : "In Becoming a Ghost "

I used to love "Planetary Duality" then the album after that sucked harder than a Tom of Finland portrait, what was even worse however was when I saw them on a Summer Slaughter tour and the clean vocals came across thin and out of key and the over processed guitar tone was weak. "Digging the Grave' strikes me a being a step in a direction away from the suckage that was "Autotheism" is certainly goes in a proggier direction by the end of the song.I don't care for shredding one way or the other, but this is how to do it if that is where you going.

There is the line-up changes to talk about. Lets face it Micheal Keene is the only original member so clearly it's his show. The only members of note to speak of would be former Oceano drummer Chas Westmoreland, who plays drums on this album, but not listed as a member of the band. Then there is Abigail Williams alumni Ken Sorceron who is handling all the harsher growls with Keene still handling the clean vocals which are split about fifty fifty on this album. There is a more of a darker quirk to the jerking motion of "Cup of mes". The brief burst of electronica makes me think these guys have heard Igorrr. The clean vocals are lower and have a little more resonance to them. The bass lines were all recorded by Keene, so while they wind around the guitar patterns with some mimicry they are better than what you think of typically coming from a guitarist who is playing bass.

"The Spiraling Void" finds them spiraling down into some Dream Theater like masturbatory excess.They redeem themselves with an unexpected cover of "Shake the Disease". There is a slight hint of Mike Patton to the clean vocals at the chorus of "I Am". Thankfully the instrumental that follows is kept to under three minutes. The clean vocals on "the Terminal Breath" have a almost more of a punk bite to their initial sneer and later smooth out into a croon. Musically it's a decent balance of showing off and writing something for the vocals to make sense of over. So this album is a hug improvement over the last one I'll give it a 8.5.

Summer Slaughter Tour @ the Masquerade

This was my first Summer Slaughter experience, normally package tours aren't my thing as the rarely have more than two bands I like , this year broke that streak so I ventured out. The crowd was pretty much what I expected from Atlanta a blend of the school battle vest metal hipsters mixed in with more trailer park elements with a few bros on the side, the high death metal quota eliminated the more awkward prog metal geek types. So basically Business as usual and business was good.

The doors were way early, I think I just finished getting a prescription filled when they opened. I milled around looked at merch and checked schedules, set up interviews and such, before I wandered into catch Goatwhore. This was my first time catching them, despite being an avid Acid Bath fan, the stars just never aligned. I have most of their albums, so was pretty familiar with their material. Even then these guys were caught me by surprise and we the most fun I had all night, coming in tied with Morbid Angel for being the best act of the night. They possessed a ton of energy, Louis's stage persona, was down to earth, he rocked with you not at you, but still maintained the needed air of metal majesty to control and command the crowd. Sonically, they had great tone, were not a bunch of booming loudness, but their riffs were very distinguishable. At times the transported me back to my days as a kid seeing classic thrash bands like Testament, Vio-lence and Overkill. The black metal elements were not as prevalent live and there was not a sense like when seeing Watain that something evil was coming your way. They are trying to have fun not open any portals and that worked for me. Next up I caught locals Death of Kings. They played to a much smaller crowd on the mid level stage. The was iffy, they did not have the clarity in their riffs Goatwhore had due to this. Having seen them before, the Iron Maiden elements were toned down. They sometimes came off like thrashy death metal. The singing much more high end screeching , than their last 7 inch suggested. This gave it a more Laaz Rockit feel. The drumming continues to be a strong point. My girl friend felt that their song writing was geared to focus on the shreddy sections of soloing. I don't really see them as a shred band, as they tend to hit the frequent soloing with a more Kerry King wild abandon than anything technical.They seemed to go over well with the crowd that did catch them and are worth checking out if you like a more bombast take on thrash. The Faceless lost me on their last album which was too much like mall metal for my tastes. I liked "Planetary Duality", but the last one seemed like djenty mall metal. They continue to rock the suburbs live, as their tone is so processed to shred that it lost any balls and for all the break downs in the world, they could not convince me they were heavy. Guitarist Micheal Keene's attempt at clean vocals was pretty sad, they were weak and even being heavily auto tuned, the pitch elements shone through the layer of effect he tried to hide them behind. It seemed that not only Goatwhore have a bigger crowd, but the crowd was more into them, so good music won out for once.

This was my 6th time seeing Morbid Angel, so you would think it would be o.k here we go again, but they really impressed me. The last album that drew so much internet back lash did not make me tuck my forked tail and run, but I am glad that it doesn't appear from the live show that we are going to have to have an industrial era of Morbid Angel like we had a disco era Kiss...though truth be told I like both disco Kiss and Vegas Elvis... and can also tolerate cock rock Celtic Frost. This was my first time seeing them without Pete the feet, but they held up and even kicked ass. Hearing "Fall From Grace" in and of it's self made me happy as "Blessed Are the Sick" is my favorite album by them. David Vincent sounded great holding down his goth clean vocals as well as his growls, there was a moment when early on he stopped playing bass to make a rock star posed and I yelled for him to play his fucking bass, but other than that brief stage indulgence they were great and inspired me to dig up all the old albums. Overall this package had less of a mall metal feel and is recommended to check out when it hits your town. If you are in Europe and abbreviated version with Dying Fetus , Goatwhore and Fallujah is coming your way this winter.

The Faceless :Autotheism

The first thing standing out is it's blatantly the bands most accessible work to date, from the Alice in Chains ...and that's me being kind to not draw Metallica comparisons on the vocals. The very organic feel of the production doesn't play into what I consider the bands strength. The guitar sounds very thin on the faster propeller picked riffs. I be more initially impressed if I hade never heard them before, the Devon Townsend worship gets carried a well as well. The clean vocals really don't get this album off to a good start for me, there's a protest the hero vibe going on as well. The guitar solos which normally don't woo me away from a bad taste a song puts in my mouth sweep pick in to save the day, so if you are into shredding you have to own this one.

This Autotheist trilogy is pretty smooth sailing if the guitar tone when not soloing doesn't irk you and the sappy over wrought prog vocals aren't too much. Before I knew it I was already on the third movement . If ihsahn did this , it would sit better for me because it would be transistionally consistent with the direction he's been heading, these guys took a leap that will have the brootal brood screaming sell out. Right off the bag I liked the anti religious nature of the lyrics which are more biting than the other neon hoodie wearing kids doing this kind of thing.

It is my first listen to the album, maybe the sound varies dramatically when listened to on head phones. As far as the non trilogy songs go, "accelerated evolution" doesn't wow, me and is kinda boring , I guess it could fall somewhere near the ounces of what is considered djent, but to be honest feels empty and the heavy element isn't that convincing.

The metal core, good cop bad cop vocals which were all the rage in the days of maybe loose their effectiveness. I normally prefer melodic singing but think for these songs harsh is better and the cleans are so prevailent they need to be balanced. The solos have started to lose their flare midway into the album.

Will kids fall for this is what I find myself asking. Will the metal press pander to kids and try to act like this is a masterpiece ? The punches of the strummed guitar are pretty cool but it's one of the few well that was different moments. If you are well versed in metal then you will be able to pick out the blatant winks at their idols on this. Which is shocking to me because I was under the impression these guys were on the level with wanting to create new music which combined with their chops put them ahead of all the other tech metal with hardcore hair cut MySpace scene kids.

If I am going to be honest all this disappointment of an album has is a collection of a few moments bookended by a bunch of over but not well produced nonsense so it's easy for me to give it the three it deserves, I'm sure the ignorant fools...called teenagers who don't have an education in metal and like stuff like periphery will be into this. if you are a guitarist who whats to hear a few great solos add a point and a half as you will block out everything else around them. I can't wait to start working on another review as I feel like I need to shower with real metal to was this crap off.