Look, 2017 sucked bad. If you go back to my Metal Injection Best of lists for 2015 and 2016 you'll see I expressed similar sentiments in those years, too, but we're currently living in a Mike Judge remake of Triumph of the Will. Nazis are marching in the streets. The Socratic ideal of everyone's stupid, racist uncle is President of the United States and 3 years from now we're probably going to be fighting each other for food in gladiator pits to amuse billionaire assholes. But at least we have heavy metal, right? RIGHT?!
This year has been a particularly great year for heavy music. There's generally a wealth of really good metal if you're willing to dig for it, but this was the first year I had a really hard time narrowing my Best of list to 15 entries. I left out some truly great albums, but them's the breaks. Also, I'm sure my Metal Injection compadres will cover a lot of the records that I couldn't fit into this list.
I know we writers like to ramble and reflect on the year in music during these intros, but I'm just going to get to my list. I know none of you are paying attention at this point, either because you voted for Trump and you're pissed at me over that first paragraph of you didn't care what I had to say to begin with. Either way, here's a list of my 15 favorite heavy albums of 2017 in no particular order. Enjoy, bozos!
15. Tchornobog – Tchornobog
Tchornobog, the warped brainchild of a 21-year-old Ukrainian musician named Markov Soroka, was originally conceived way back in 2009 when Soroka was a teenager. The project is a heaving mass of death, doom and black metal that’s hard to describe and is at times unsettling as well as beautiful. This music isn’t easy to digest, but it’s a rewarding album that holds up to repeated listening. Also, there’s a saxophone in there which is pretty cool.
https://youtu.be/o9y-N8t8dII
14. Yellow Eyes – Immersion Trench Reverie
I believe there’s been a Yellow Eyes album on every Best Of list I’ve written for Metal Injection. If I’m wrong it’s likely because the band didn’t release and material that year. Look, I’m an unabashed fan boy of the band. I love the way they subvert typical black metal tropes and play with tempo to create tension and release throughout their songs. If you’re already familiar with the band then Immersion Trench Reverie will be well-traveled territory. It’s not a huge creative departure from their previous work but it’s easily as good as 2015’s Sick with Bloom which I thought was a really stunning album.
13. Spirit Adrift – Curse of Conception
It’s worth mentioning that I’m not much of a fan of doom metal. There are exceptions, of course, but I find a lot of doom songs overly-long and plodding. Enter Spirit Adrift’s sophomore album Curse of Conception. The average song length on the album is around five and a half minutes and it’s jam packed with stadium-ready riffs and solos from beginning to end. There’s no point over the course of album where I found myself losing interest or reaching for the Track Skip button. I’m generally quick to point out that these Best Of lists are purely subjective but Curse of Conception is an objectively great album. Tracks flow into each other naturally, the LP sounds great and it’s just a joy to listen to. This has become one of my primary go-to choices when I’m looking for an album to get lost in for an hour.
12. Acephalix – Decreation
California's Acephalix seems like a band in conflict with itself. Musically, these guys create punishing, primitive death metal that fuses the sound of Sweden in the 90s with crust punk while vocalist Daniel Butler grunts and growls about French philosophy and surrealism. This isn't the lyrical content you expect from a primal death metal band, but most of you knuckleheads aren't paying attention to the lyircs anyway, are you? Regardless, Decreation is a ferocious album that deserves a place in every metal fan's library.
11. Spectral Voice – Eroded Corridors of Unbeing
Spectral Voice's debut album Eroded Corridors of Unbeing has been a long time in the making. The band formed back in 2012 but it's taken until 2017 for the death metal quartet to release a proper LP. This is due partly to the fact that three of Spectral Voice's members are also in Blood Incantation – a band responsible for 2016's best death metal album. But the wait was worth it because Eroded Corrridors of Unbeing is a monster of a death metal album. It's a howling mass of dread that flawlessly melds cavernous death metal with scummy doom.
10. Power Trip – Nightmare Logic
I don't think I need to explain why Power Trip's latest album Nightmare Logic was included on this list. It's fast, it's hard, it's fun and Power Trip is one of the best metal bands around today. The world sucks so put this album on and punch a hole in the wall or something.
9. Ecstatic Vision – Raw Rock Fury
I initially ignored Ecstatic Vision's sophomore album when the promo landed in my inbox this past Spring because the album art screams Southern rock. The joke's on me, though, because Raw Rock Fury is a brain melting collection of grimy heavy psyche bangers that sound like someone locked The Stooges in a room with a ton of acid and made them listen to nothing but Hawkwind and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd for 24 hours straight. I've been preaching the gospel of this album to anyone who will listen for months and you'd best give this LP a spin as soon as you're done reading this blurb if you know what's good for you.
8. Jag Panzer – The Deviant Chord
Colorado's Jag Panzer has been kicking around the heavy metal scene since 1981, but despite name recognition and my love of power metal, I never took a deep dive into their catalog. But that's going to change after listening to their stellar tenth album The Deviant Chord. This album is positively jammed with burly power metal songs that would give Manowar a run for its money. Wailing guitar solos and galloping rhythms are plentiful and Harry Conklin's emotive voice is perfectly suited for soaring anthems like "Far Beyond the Fear" as well as more subtle acoustic passages in "Long Awaited Kiss."
7. Chepang – DADHELO – A Tale of Wildfire
Chepang is a Nepalese grindcore band that's currently based in New York City. I saw them perform live this past Winter and, as soon as the band began playing, the two vocalists flung themselves into the crowd standing at the front of the stage. They proceeded to spend the entirety of the set doing vocals while chugging beer and moshing. This album is a good representation of that experience. If you're a grindcore fan and you've never heard these fellas, you need to remedy that like right now. Their latest album, DADHELO – A Tale of Wildfire, is only 20 minutes long so stop fucking around and give it a listen!
6. Unleash the Archers – Apex
Power metal is a style of heavy metal that doesn’t get much love from American metalheads. However, if there’s a power metal band that’s primed to appeal to haters and skeptics, it’s Canada’s Unleash the Archers. These warriors from the great white north have been honing their craft over the course of three previous albums and their latest LP, called Apex, is their best effort yet. The album combines muscular riffing, acrobatic guitar solos and vocalist Britney Slayes’ powerful voice to create a power metal behemoth that will lay waste to any and all naysayers.
5. Pyrrhon – What Passes for Survival
Out of the four death metal albums on my list this year, Pyrrhon is the only tech death band that made the cut. In general, I don't like technical death metal because so much of it feels soulless, sterile and assembled in Pro Tools. But What Passes for Survival is that next-level shit. The album walks a fine line between unhinged savagery and that skronky technical prowess the nerds love. Having seen the band perform live several times over the years, I can attest that Pyrrhon can play these songs live from front to back; What Passes for Survival isn't a Frankenstein monster stitched together in a DAW. I also have to mention vocalist Doug Moore's lyrics which are hyperliterate, sardonic and directed squarely at some of the scummiest people on the planet from Nazis and try-hard edgelords in the metal scene to wealthy assholes who exploit the less fortunate.
4. Couch Slut – Contempt
Gather 'round, noise rock fans (and fans of challenging, angry, and darkly funny music in general), for I want to share with you the revelation that is Couch Slut's second album. The title of this LP is Contempt and that's exactly what these songs are dripping with. Over the course of 7 tracks, vocalist (and, in the interest of full disclosure, good friend) Megan Osztrosits shrieks and howls over jagged guitar riffs that claw their way into your brain to lay eggs. Couch Slut isn't metal in the traditional sense but Contempt is some of the heaviest shit you're going to hear this year or any other year.
3. Ironflame – Lightning Strikes the Crown
Ironflame is a one-man power metal project created by multi-instrumentalist and absurdly talented musician Andrew D'Cagna. D'Cagna decided to start writing a power metal album after the death of a good friend and he completed writing riffs and basic outlines for all the songs on the album in just two days. You'd thing working that quickly would lead to sloppy, derivative songs, but that's not the case at all. Lightning Strikes the Crown is one of the best metal albums of the year and one of the best power metal albums in recent memory. Every song is loaded with triumphant riffs and acrobatic solos that will inspire even the most timid soul to pick up a sword and do battle with a dragon.
2. Satan’s Hallow – Satan's Hallow
The self-titled debut LP from Chicago’s Satan’s Hallow just might be the best metal album of 2017 you haven’t heard. This five-piece trad metal band worships at the alter of NWOBHM but they manage to avoid sounding stale or contrived. The album is full of dueling guitar harmonies and galloping rhythms that recall the glory days of Iron Maiden. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Benatar-esque vocals compliments of Mandy Martillo. This is one hell of a fine album.
1. Dawn Ray’d – The Unlawful Assembly
The Unlawful Assembly is the debut full-length from UK anarchist black metal band Dawn Ray'd, and it's a doozy. The band eschews many of the tropes of traditional second wave black metal in favor of a heightened focus on melodicism and punk influence. The violin also features prominently into Dawn Ray'd's music and that adds a pastoral feel the the album as a whole. Aside from the music, another thing that sets the band apart from its contemporaries are radical leftist politics. Dawn Ray'd are unabashedly anti-racist, anti-fascist and anarchist which is at odds with many black metal artists who embrace a childish combination of racism and nihilism that roughly translates to "Duurrrr, I'm not racist, I hate everyone…who isn't of white European descent." Dawn Ray'd's music is about rebellion but it's also about liberation and that, to me, is the essence of heavy metal.
View more of the Best of 2017 here.
