10 
Impetuous Ritual - Relentless Execution Of Ceremonial Excrescence
A hot mess of raw and uncut pure black bile. This is the dregs of DM.
Fuzzed and fizzed; drop-droptuned like they're playing with one pick in
hell and one stick in the thick, desperately trying to get out.
Frightening.
9 
Man Must Die - No Tolerance For Imperfection
Commands your attention like no other Technical Death Metal album this
year because the jag-offery doesn't take precedent over the
songwriting. Kill it, Skin it, Wear it = this album.
8 
Absu - Absu
This did it for me. The self-titled met Tara with full force. It's everything that I wanted eight years pent-up to sound like. Absu tears through the fashion accessory of status quo American BM.
7 
Ulcerate - Everything Is Fire
My comrade Mr. McDonald said it best in his glowing write-up of these furious New Zealanders: "Imagine the leering dissonance of Deathspell Omega channeled through the overactive maelstrom of Gorguts and delivered with the off-kilter savagery of Immolation, and you have at least a basic idea of what to expect". 'Nuff said. Bleak and blissful.
6 
Obscura - Cosmogenesis
This came unto 2009 in the spirit of the Necrophagist that never showed up. Twiddly Prog-Tech-DM featuring an ex-Necrophagist guitarist, an ex-Necrophagist drummer, and an ex-Pestilence bassist. Go figure. Fretless-bass dorks take note.
5 
Napalm Death - Time Waits For No Slave
Because they're Napalm-fucking-Death,
that's why. And I've been following them blindly since I was eleven
years old, and they've never once let me down. Grind band of the
century.
4 
Baroness - Blue Record
Their Red Album
left me extremely unimpressed while standing in a pile of everybody
else's drool, so naturally I thought that there was something wrong
with me. But it turns out that I sorely needed this weighty chunk of
melody and songwriting light years ahead of themselves to convert me.
I'm in.
3 
Funeral Mist - Maranatha
The charming output of yet another lone soldier, Maranatha has a punk rock stink and a whiff of psychedelia all over its Black. This was the feel good spit of the summer.
2 
The Ruins Of Beverast - Foulest Semen Of A Sheltered Elite
One-man armies are quickly becoming my favorite BM technique. Elite
is a bit more forgiving than its predecessors, but listening to Mr. von
Meilenwald further explore the chilling effectiveness of major guitar
chords is priceless. Foulest Semen Of A Sheltered Elite is a rush of warmth underneath the grim and frosty.
1 
Unholy Matrimony - Croire, Décroître
Vladimir
Cochet is 2009's Minister Of Sinister. I could have given this the
perfect "10" when I wrote this up not so long ago, but I so very much
believe that he can top this impeccably composed piece of Technical
BM, and if I had sent him to the roof with Croire, Décroître, there wouldn't be much more room to move. Here's to a perfect hell in '12 or so.
The Rest Of The Best...
Alice In Chains - Black Gives Way To Blue
Ruins - Cauldron
Revocation - Existence Is Futile
The Red Chord - Fed Through The Teeth Machine
Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Agorapocalypse
The Firstborn - The Noble Search
Hypocrisy - A Taste Of Extreme Divinity
Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs
Ava Inferi - Blood Of Bacchus
Saviours - Accelerated Living
Posted
Jan 05 2010, 10:20 PM
by
CrypticSlaughterer