15 Favorite Albums of 2015

15. Beaten to Death - Unplugged

Spastic, sarcastic grind of the finest kind. Eccentric guitar tones, live vibe, random for-reals melody. Album the third is worthy.

14. Maruta - Remain Distopian

Diseased grind of the mechanized mind. Pugilistic anti-grooves, rogue waves of riff-carnage, crashing sheets of lead rain. Utterly unpredictable, perfectly mesmerizing.

13. Captain Cleanoff - Rising Terror

Grooved, wriggling slabs. Blasts at my frequency; the crunch I crave. Pointillist precision and cohesion. All the speeds, dirty deeds.

12. Lychgate - An Antidote for the Glass Pill

Grotesque, organ-driven decompositions. Bombastic, post-apocalyptic blackened prog, as if the lamb laid down on Broadway and died. Fascinating intricacies and virtuosic cathedral crushing.

11. Hooded Menace - Darkness Drips Forth

Another funeral with the riffs served up raw and screaming. Doomed horror most excellent, sinister melodies for sustenance. Grooves carved with an axe, dirges penned with panache.

10. Horrendous - Anareta

Evolution complete; a beast has been born before our very eyes. Beyond SweDeath towards a singular, spectacular vision. Sweet riffs dominate fluid dynamics; these guys make it look too easy. All the goddamned leads.

9. Cloud Rat - Qliphoth

Cross section of impossible rage, impossible hope. Blinding perspective, putrescent reality. Hyper-focused glimpses of beauty amidst the inexorable. Shifts from grinding chromaticism to gripping melody, subtle and sublime.

8. Obsequiae - Aria Of Vernal Tombs

Baroque beauty forged from soaring death-black melody. Streams of interweaving narrative crafted with impossible attention to detail. Medieval instrumentation tells tales of unremembered grandeur. A searing balm.

7. Heaving Earth - Denouncing the Holy Throne

Intricate, staccato death of the Immolative sort. Distinctive, devastating, memorable paroxysms. Riles the blood, begs for banging.
Original review here.

6. Bosse-de-Nage - All Fours

Leviathan articulations of derangement. Noise refracted though a lens of tremolated melody and utterly unhinged animosity. Percussive brilliance holding together unbridled chaos. Soothe your paranoia with apocalyptic cacophony.

5. Crom Dubh - Heimweh

Black metal most viciously triumphant. Requires a raised fist, begets banging of the head, elevates your damned soul. Melodious movements propelled by devastating drums, hellacious screams. Charismatic darkness.

4. Slugdge - Dim and Slimeridden Kingdoms

Shines Sunlight sound on the sad plight of space slugs. A goddamned death metal classic. Wide ranging journeys though sonic ichor. Tremendous songwriting, mastery of all the riffs, grooves galore. Clean vocals that complement the epic orations at hand. Dismember weirding through caverns of Withered runes, slipping in the slime covered remains of Gojira.

3. Nachtreich/Spectral Lore - The Quivering Lights

Classical chamber music bathed in melodic black metal blood. Piercing piano and string compositions. Extraordinary, collaborative coagulations. Thematic interplay borne on black wings. Masterpiece.
Original review here.

2. My Dying Bride - Feel the Misery

The Bride abides after all these years. Doomed riffs ring true, morose melodies rend the earth with crooked hooks. Glorious Gothic symphony of death. Aaron Stainthorpe, crystal clear clarion call of agony. The misery, I feel you.

1. Sarpanitum - Blessed Be My Brothers

An incarnation of triumph complete. A vulgar display of majesty. Seething death-divine. Swarming darkness elevated by exultant melody. Unrelentingly original, a cohesive vision executed with precision and skill. Unreal, addicting, gratifying slaughter.
Original review here.