2017 was a shit waste of a year when it came to metal music. Yet with a whole generation of useless neckbeard millennials frantically trying to pursue a career in metal journalism via a desperate pursuit of vindication from that $40,000 of communications-degree student loan debt we have hundreds of “best metal albums” lists every year.
Because there are thousands of metal releases each year hundreds of shitty musicians and journalists are somehow convinced that their opinion matters and that people care about their lists, we now have list after list with totally different picks because no one can possibly sit through a listen of thousand releases ever year. Where the commonality lies is that all of the number one picks are fecal matter on toilet tissue, usually not metal and certainly not even worth listening to.
Let’s cremate the foul miasma of 2017 with a funeral pyre of epic proportions: a sadistic metal review carbonization of #1 picks from the fakest of the fake metal news outlets…
Decibel Magazine’s #1 album of 2017:
Paradise Lost – Medusa
Paradise Lost is the only band named after their career. Originally a great doom/death outfit, the band quickly pursued a radio rock career in search of Metallica stardom. Jumping aboard the retro train on Medusa, Paradise lost begins this album with several minutes of D-grade funeral doom before reminding all of us that they are the same band that recorded the super-futuristic Orgy/Nine Inch Nails worship album Host (complete with a cover jacked from P.O.D…. Sad!!!) and then repeatedly going back and forth between really bad doomdeath n’ roll and radio friendly rock n’ roll. If you’re a musician that ever started a death metal band within the first year of picking up your instrument your music sounded exactly like this. Bad death metal, bad doom, bad rock, bad album, but Decibel Magazine’s aging editor has developed such a horrible case of PTSD over 90’s metal being over that he heard the shit-tier intro and actually thought it was Thergothon, thus crowning an album too mediocre for any other metal list as their #1. Doom and gloom indeed, let it burn!
Cvlt Nation #1 Death Metal Album of 2017:
Altarage – Endinghent
ClIt Nation was one of the few fake metal news outlets to post a “best death metal of 2017” list, and went with an album that’s so underground it’s not even on YouTube! Wait, actually, it’s not on YouTube because it’s so bad and boring that not even NEETs can afford to spend the time uploading it. By the way, has anyone heard ANY good death metal album last year- let alone a whole list? Anyway, Altarage is basically 8-string Meshuggah riffs with slightly pitch-shifted Meshugah vocals combined with some kinda-sorta-not-really death metal parts overdubbed with some kind of weird droning effect that sounds like the fan that automatically goes on when you flick the light switch in certain bathrooms. Long story short, its a not-really-death-metal album on a not-really-death-metal list, and should burned at the stake along with all the wiccans that write for this piece of shit site!
Metalsucks #1 Album of 2017:
The Contortionist – Clairvoyant
The undeniable winners of the fake metal news awards with via their abysmal reporting on the Decapitated fiasco further urinate on their reputation by telling us that some obnoxious hipster art rock album is metal. Clairvoyant is what they play in the background of Brooklyn restaurants in Vince Neilstein’s shitty industrial neighborhood that close down after two months because their artistic use of food and life is too pretentious to attract customers. The Contortionist push the stupid misunderstanding of “transcendental” philosophy through ripoffs of the flavor of the week Liturgy/Altar of Plagues art-metal trend that ended two years ago with all of the fans-at-the time really embarrassed to be a part. This band is so terrible and so unmetal that even leftist cat-lady-run Metal-Archives refuses to acknowledge them as an acceptable metal band! Of course, it is certainly possible that The Contortionist simply paid off MetalSucks/The Blastbeat Network to list them as the top review (as bands have known to do) and perhaps this is likely given Vince’s dad had to close down his Greenwich Village guitar shop leaving Vince unable to much money. Let’s burn those overpriced Umanov guitars in this pyre with this waste-of-my-time piece of shit album!
Now that the fires going let’s quickly gather a bunch of flimsy little sticks!!!
No Clean Singing’s #1…. fuck I forget what list, they have thousands:
Byzantine – The Cicada Tree
Complete and utter trash radio rock groovecore but with hipster aesthetics from the band you hear doing covers of Puddle of Mud and Godsmack songs in that really trashy pool table bar that all of those kids from your high school who can’t seem to find a spouse that sticks around hang out at 10 years after graduating.
Both Revolver and Rolling Stone Magazine’s #1 Metal Albums of 2017:
Code Orange – Forever
Boy life must suck when you’re Neurosis and all of these weird trust fund metal kids are ripping off your sound, adding nu metal elements, and topping the list of once-famous-but-now-dying-magazines headed by dudes that rape other dudes.
Metal Hammer’s #1 Metal Album of 2017
Mastodon – Emperor of Sand
Mastodon is trash and Metal Hammer’s “boo hoo we’re broke and going out of business feel sorry for us” campaign lead them to an unfortunate continuation despite being dead for a good 20 years now.
Pitchfork Magazine’s #1
Suffering Hour – Harvest
Mountain of burning excrement (both the album and hipster magazine)
Tags: Altarage, byzantine, Code Orange, Cvlt Nation, decibel, fake metal news, fake news, fake news awards, hipsters, incineration, metal hammer, MetalSucks, paradise lost, rape, rolling stone, sadistic metal reviews, The Contortionist, Trump
Hmmm, the only time I ever visited Pitchfork was to read an hilarious review of Muse someone sent me. I looked around a bit and saw no reviews, save Radiohead, of any bands I liked. Seems to be a sign that the infiltration of metal is complete that Pitchfork is doing metal reviews. Looking at their page just now, I see they have an obituary for Delores O’Riordan who singlehandedly ruined an otherwise pleasant band; that first Cranberries album had decent pop songwriting (by the male guitarist I believe) that was tight and pretty enough (kind of like early REM extra lite) to be decent for driving and such. Like a well-tended and recently mowed lawn in a middle-class neighborhood on a spring morning: orderly, pleasant, but nothing extraordinary. O’Riordian’s contributions to songwriting were even retardeder versions of the already retarded 90’s misunderstanding of what made Pixies songs so great (it wasn’t the soft to loud dynamics)like the godawful Zombie: the next door neighbor has fed his grate dane on nothing but rancid Dinty Moore beef stew for 8 months and it just took a dump on the aforementioned lawn. It is so curious how music reviews tend to review everything but the music. The best mainstream music reviewers will review the lyrics and production (conflating these things with the actual music) while most of them will review the lifestyle that the music somehow signals for the listener.
Revolver magazine is funny. I read their “Top 100 Albums of All Time” article lo many years ago. Their top album was that Oasis album that was so popular in the 90s (Kristal Nebula in the sky?). In the write-up for that album, they straight-up said that Oasis merely stole everything they did from the Beatles and Sex Pistols yet somehow, despite this, the album is better than anything those two bands did.
Did Rolling Stone do a top 10 false rape allegations reported by Rolling Stone as truth list yet?
“most of them will review the lifestyle that the music somehow signals for the listener.”
This. so much this. groupthink obsessed leftists only care about how their consumer choices reaffirm the beliefs of their brain dead friends/co-workers. choosing music is like choosing a new car to them, it is only symbolic (better make it a Prius)
Doesn’t apply exclusively to leftists. Not remotely. That you think it would is my supporting evidence…
GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HEAD
“By the way, has anyone heard ANY good death metal album last year- let alone a whole list?”
I thought the new Phrenelith and Desecresy were decent. Both pushing 7/10 but that’s it
Someone recommended Neocaesar here with a similar level of confidence.
all those bands sound like the first five minutes of this spread across a few hours of mediocre obliviousness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5waxh4fZ3lM
On the Contortionist review you should have said “ripoffs of the flavor of the weak”. Missed opportunity there.
UMM and this list:
http://www.voicesfromthedarkside.de/Specials/BEST-OF-2017-THE-BEST-RELEASES-OF-THE-YEAR–11377.html
or
http://autothrall.blogspot.cl/2017/12/autothralls-annual-listrionics.html
I accept opinions?