Consequence of Sound's Top 25 Metal & Hard Rock Albums of 2018
The Heavy Consequence staff selects the best metal and hard rock albums from an eclectic year of heavy music.
Published: December 05, 2018 20:30
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From tragedy to triumph, YOB’s incredible 8th full-length recording was conceived amidst dire circumstances that nearly left frontman Mike Scheidt dead. Suffering from an extremely painful and potentially fatal intestinal disease, Scheidt miraculously recovered and reinvigorated the Oregon trio with a new sense of purpose for Our Raw Heart, an album informed by the will to survive. More exposed than ever both physically and emotionally, YOB bleed out seven riveting tracks of enormous volume and pensive, transcendental beauty across 75 minutes of ultimate doom. A brilliant musical progression in the YOB continuum, Our Raw Heart is the band at their most aggressive, impassioned and eclectic. The riffs are massive, the vocals captivating and the songwriting sublime. Existing in its own organic universe, Our Raw Heart is truly the band’s finest work to date and the apex achievement of what heavy music can accomplish. Our Raw Heart was co-produced by the band and longtime collaborator Billy Barnett at Gung Ho Studio in Eugene, Ore., with mastering handled by Heba Kadry (The Mars Volta, Diamanda Galas, Slowdive).
Behemoth’s 11th album doesn’t blast open with a gust of thunderous drums or shredding guitars. Instead, something far more terrifying: a children’s choir. Innocent voices, possessed, chant: “Elohim! I shall not forgive!/Adonai! I shall not forgive!/Living God! I shall not forgive!/Jesus Christ! I forgive thee not!” The unholy mantra sets a nightmarish scene for the Polish blackened death metal band’s most accessible—but no less diabolical—album yet. Flipping a middle finger at their nemesis, Christianity, Behemoth relish flaying and twisting hymns, Bible references, and prayers into infernal noise. The trembling “Havohej Pantocrator” revises the Lord’s Prayer: “Our father, who art in hell/Unhallowed be Thy name/Thy legions come/Thy enemies begone/On Earth as it is in the Netherworld.” Like 2014’s masterpiece *The Satanist*, *I Loved You at Your Darkest* pushes far beyond the extreme sound that they\'ve perfected for more than 20 years: Rock rhythms, acoustic guitars, and atmospheric melodies slice through pounding riffs and brutal howls in ways that, surprisingly, make this journey even *more* intense and exhilarating than ever.
The word tends to get abused, but the California metal innovators’ fourth album exists largely to make sure “epic” won’t lose its proper meaning—and not just because four of the seven tracks clock in at over 10 minutes, although that doesn’t hurt. It’s the familiar squall of guitars, rapid-fire drums, and George Clarke’s curdled screaming, combined with more mannered flourishes like piano, spoken word, and Chelsea Wolfe’s guest vocals (“Night People”) that feels huge and relentless and wholly unique, surpassing the scope of even 2013’s instant classic *Sunbather*.
Sleep’s *The Sciences* begins with a three-minute warm-up of the same name. As though revving a long-dormant engine of feedback and distortion, it’s a fitting start to the legendary doom trio’s first album in almost two decades (released on 4/20, no less). Unlike their hour-plus stoner meditation, *Dopesmoker*, *The Sciences* is divided into six colossal tracks, anchored by the comforting familiarity of sludgy riffs and rumbling percussion. Throughout, you’ll find some of their greatest guitar solos (“Marijuanaut’s Theme”) and lyrics (“Giza Butler,” an homage to Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler), while stunning, reflective closer “The Botanist” is among the best songs in their genre-defining career.
On their second album, young hardcore heroes Turnstile slice, dice, and defy genres at every turn. Leadoff ripper \"Real Thing\" cranks a turbocharged riff against melodic backing vocals and a loungey piano outro, while \"Generator\" spins a Helmet-esque groove into a psych-grunge bridge and hyper-metallic guitar solo. Bassist Franz Lyons takes over for frontman Brendan Yates on the soaring staccato groove of \"Moon\" (which also features subtle backups from Sheer Mag\'s Tina Halladay) and \"Right to Be,\" which boasts spacey production from Diplo.
Maynard James Keenan’s rock supergroup has seriously grown up in the 14 years since their last album. The Tool frontman’s band is still angry—they’ve just found new, different ways to express it. The gargantuan riffs of APC’s past now make room for strings, piano, and post-rock builds. *Eat the Elephant* is thoughtful and brooding, but still heavy as ever (tracks like “TalkTalk” would fit right in on *Thirteenth Step*). Harps and horns make slow-burning “The Contrarian” frighteningly ominous, and “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” sounds so uplifting it’s unsettling—but its lyrics reveal a sardonic ode to modern life, while lamenting the loss of David Bowie and other legends.
On their fourth album, Swedish goth metallurgists Tribulation explore the underworld with their most thrilling and cohesive package yet. Picking up where 2015\'s *The Children of the Night* left off, songs like \"The Lament,\" \"Nightbound,\" and \"Lady Death\" combine soaring guitars, vintage horror-movie ambience, and frontman Johannes Andersson\'s ghostly death-metal growl with postmortem themes to create something truly awe-inspiring. Meanwhile, \"The World\" and epic closer \"Here Be Dragons\" deliver rich cinematic triumph via strings, darkly elegant guitars, and chilling glockenspiel melodies.
Eternal Return, the fourth full length from Richmond, Virginia's heavy psychedelic quartet WINDHAND represents a new era for the group, a chrysalis moment that takes them to new and unforeseen heights. Across nine songs and 63 minutes, Eternal Return is an infectious display of songcraft cloaked in alluring atmosphere, molten fuzz, eerie psychedelia and ethereal vocals. The album was once again produced by Jack Endino (Nirvana, Soundgarden) with vivid artwork by Arik Roper (Sleep, High on Fire). Equally informed by heavy, fuzzed-out psych along with the iconic grunge / alternative groups of the 90s, WINDHAND have crafted a record brilliant in scope, powerful in execution, and perfect for an era of increasingly blurry yet still heavy borders.
Cult Leader is a chaotic band from Salt Lake City, Utah. “A Patient Man” was recorded and engineered by Kurt Ballou at God City Studios (Converge, Nails, High On Fire). From the first hits of opener “I Am Healed” Cult Leader take listeners on a sonic rollercoaster ride. Much of the album follows this blueprint. Songs like “Curse of Satisfaction”, “Craft of Mourning”, and “Share My Pain” are driven by a weave work of unorthodox metallic riffing and fueled by hyper-aggressive percussion. While the tech- nical proficiency is impressive, it’s in their use of dynamics where they truly shine. The album contains four beautifully brooding epics; “To: Achlys”, “A World of Joy”, title track “A Patient Man”, and “The Broken Right Hand of God”. Each one of them carries a maturation and sense of melody that few “extreme” bands have within their arsenal. Proving that aggressive music still has much to offer the world in terms of originality, creativity, and emotion.
When Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister was still alive, Matt Pike—singer/guitarist in High On Fire and the iconic stoner-metal band Sleep—often found himself compared to the late legend. Once, he even dreamed that Lemmy got mad at him about it. So, three years after the legendary frontman died of cancer, Pike’s Oakland-based sludge trio released a tribute album in his honor. It’s their most diverse—and maybe best—record yet. The riffs are loud, the rhythms are dizzying, and the Motörhead influence is obvious, but it’s still very much a High On Fire album. Land speed record contenders such as “Spewn From the Earth” and “God of the Godless” sit alongside more than 10 minutes of crushing doom in “Sanctioned Annihilation.” The title track, directly inspired by Pike’s dream, pays homage to the late, great Ace of Spades himself. Loud, brutal, nostalgic: *Electric Messiah* is proof that 20 years in, High On Fire is only getting better.
“I had a dream about Lemmy,” says Matt Pike, explaining the inspiration behind the title of High on Fire’s triumphant eighth album Electric Messiah. “When Lemmy was still alive I always got compared to Lemmy,” the gravelly-voiced guitarist elaborates, “so I had this dream where he got pissed at me. He gave me a bunch of shit, basically, and was hazing me. Not that he didn’t approve of me, but like I was being hazed. The song is me telling the world that I could never fill Lemmy’s shoes, because Lemmy’s Lemmy. I wanted to pay homage to him in a great way. And it turned out to be such a good title that the guys said we should call the album Electric Messiah. Although at first the working title was ‘Insect Workout With Lemmy’,” he adds with a big laugh. Electric Messiah, the best and most diverse of the band’s three albums with Ballou, and a record Pike cannot stop gushing about. Justifiably, too. There’s more speed than ever before (the aforementioned title track, the raucous opener “Spewn From the Earth”, and the thrashy, Sir Francis Drake-inspired “Freebooter”) but the dynamics of Electric Messiah hold the listener riveted. Of note is the nine-minute Sumerian historical epic “Steps of the Ziggurat/House of Enlil”, which Pike proudly calls his own “rock opera”. “The song is the creation story of the Sumerians, the weird dichotomy of two gods fighting over power. I put it into two parts because it’s my Sumerian rock opera. At the end I play three different characters: I play the two brothers that clash, and I play Isis, and there’s a high, medium, and low part. It’s very theatrical. I felt like Meat Loaf doing it, but at the same time Bryan Sours at the studio went, ‘I don’t know what you just did, but that’s fucking cool, just keep doing that!” For all the dream visions and historical epics, the state of the real world permeates Pike’s writing on Electric Messiah as well, none more blatantly than on the bluesy closing track “Drowning Dog”. “That one is about the media and the tomfoolery that’s going on,” Pike explains. “You’re either left or right. Do you see how they’ve divided us through the media? I’m basically saying, ‘Do you see how stupid we are?’ Someone’s gotta speak out and say shit like that, or we’re going to continue to be worse slaves over time. They set this shit up so they can keep us under wraps. What they’re afraid of is us ascending and evolving and understanding our past for real. That was the point of a lot of this last album. People not reading the writing on the wall.”
Led by Power Trip drummer Chris Ulsh on bass and vocals, Mammoth Grinder pound out thundering death metal with a feverish punk attitude. For the band\'s fourth album, Ulsh enlists the talents of Iron Reagan members Ryan Parrish (drums) and Mark Bronzino (guitars), who bring unbridled fury and ripping riffs to the likes of \"Grimmenstein,\" \"Blazing Burst,\" and \"Locust\'s Nest.\" The power trio slow things down—briefly—on the churning \"Human Is Obsolete\" and the doom-laden \"Mysticism\" before kicking back into maximum overdrive.
Underground extreme metal trio MAMMOTH GRINDER return after five long years with their fourth full-length Cosmic Crypt, a non-stop, meteoric force of aggression and mayhem. Self-recorded by the band at Trax East in South River, NJ, mixed by Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Sepultura, Inquisition) and mastered by Toxic Holocaust’s Joel Grind, Cosmic Crypt is an 11 track slab of primitive, punk-inflected death metal. Frontman Chris Ulsh (Power Trip, Impalers) recruited Mark Bronzino (Iron Reagan) and Ryan Parrish (Iron Reagan, ex-Darkest Hour) to take MAMMOTH GRINDER to new heights of misanthropic rage and blazing songcraft! Features stunning cover art from the legendary Joe Petagno (Motorhead, Autopsy, Angelcorpse, Pink Floyd).
One of the best damn rock bands this side of Hades is back, led as always by inimitable vocalist Neil Fallon, whose burly howl only gets better with age. *Book of Bad Decisions*, their 12th album, picks right back up where their 2015’s *Psychic Warfare* left off, peddling a similar strain of weaponized funk that’s been winning over rock-hardened hearts since 1991. Decades in, Clutch’s jammy, wide-open blend of jubilant blues, ’90s alt grooves, and Southern rock swagger is still its own kind of monster. “Are you cool? Well I’m cool. Is everybody cool? Well let’s get hot!” Fallon warbles on the barn-burning “How to Shake Hands” before segueing into the second-line stomp of “In Walks Barbarella,” playing with psychedelic shimmers on “Emily Dickinson,” and taking it down home on “Hot Bottom Feeder,” a crab-cake recipe—and homage to their Maryland roots—spun into song.
D.C. grindcore titans Pig Destroyer—like Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the enigmatic troupe with whom they’ve shared multiple members over the years—have always excelled at finding beauty in brutality. *Head Cage*, their multilayered, ambitious sixth album, keeps in that vein—J.R. Hayes’ dark lyrics, set against aggressive, off-kilter riffs and thunderous blast beats, use poetry as a weapon. This LP is also a more of a collaborative effort than usual: ANb bassist John Jarvis makes his recorded debut with the band (resulting in the first bass to feature on a Pig Destroyer album), and significantly thickens the overall sound. Additionally, ANb vocalists Richard Johnson and Kat Katz show up (on the pummeling hardcore anthem “Army of Cops” and the short, nasty blast “Terminal Itch,” respectively), while Jason Hodges (Suppression, Brown Piss, Bermuda Triangles) joins in on the thrashy, self-explanatory “The Adventures of Jason and Jr.”
After six long, harsh years of absence, the mighty PIG DESTROYER have reassembled to eradicate eardrums and split skulls with their highly anticipated sixth full-length opus, entitled Head Cage (named after a grisly medieval torture device). A visceral vortex of animalistic rage and extreme sonic brilliance, Head Cage is a true work of extreme metal art, that with the addition of a bass player, is hands down their most dynamic and heaviest recording to date. Across twelve tracks, PIG DESTROYER weave together harrowing tales of philosophical dualities, touching on mortality and depression, fear and violence, and the darkest complexities of the human condition, all told through the distorted lens of delightfully transgressive vocalist/lyricist JR Hayes. Musically, the band continues to push the boundaries of metal, grindcore, noise and punk, ramping up the intensity and leaving you bludgeoned in a state of utter shock, all in less than 33 minutes. Head Cage was recorded by guitarist Scott Hull at Visceral Sound Studios, mixed and mastered by Will Putney (Exhumed, Every Time I Die, Body Count) and features striking artwork by Mark McCoy (Full of Hell, Nothing) along with guest vocal appearances by Agoraphobic Nosebleed's Richard Johnson and Kat Katz plus Full Of Hell's Dylan Walker. PLAY AT MAXIMUM VOLUME!