Rolling Stone's 20 Best Metal Albums of 2014

Purchase physical copies here: neurotrecordings.merchtable.com/artists/yob ____________________________________________________________ Two years after leveling the expectations of critics and listeners alike with Atma, doom trio powerhouse YOB unleashes Clearing The Path To Ascend, an aptly titled album for what will undoubtedly be the crowning achievement for a band whose journey now nears two decades of creating music as commanding as it is cathartic. As is the YOB way, the tracks here don’t simply offer a vacuous glimpse into the already riff-soaked doom genre. These songs demand the tandem attention of mind, body, and soul – etching a mark across a sound that finds YOB as formidable and unequaled as they’ve ever been. True ascension requires a destruction of those barriers that prevent any movement forward. Unsurprisingly, YOB pummels any and all of these obstacles with absolute authority, clearing the way for a genuinely visceral listening experience and climbing upward into a realm that sets the band in a heavy metal place that has been and will always remain wholly their own. YOB’s music is not unlike the path that’s led them to their current place among heavy metal’s elite, slowly building from a hushed ethereal vapor into the thunderous and masterful tumult of sound domination. The ethereal mists of Eugene, Oregon no doubt provided the perfect catalyst for founding member and vocalist Mike Scheidt to call up the signature of surging doom that would soon come to garner YOB its current position as one of the most respected and revered bands in all of heavy metal. While giving due sonic credit to cornerstone influences such as Cathedral, Sleep, Electric Wizard, and Black Sabbath – YOB immediately set out to define a sound wholly singular and utterly devastating in its cathartic enormity, incomparable to any other music being created at the time. Those threads of progressive rock and drone that have always underscored the music of YOB are now fully realized with Clearing The Path To Ascend, as each track forges into the next with a ferocity that’s as completely unhinged as it is utterly focused. Drummer Travis Foster wields his signature rhythmic furor here with bombastic precision while bassist, Aaron Rieseberg, coils around the sonic tide with an unforgiving churn – all the while in a deadly synchronicity with Scheidt’s uncanny vocal range and its pendulous movement between the triumphant howls of a medieval madman and the earth splitting growls of a war-battered titan. With Clearing The Path To Ascend, YOB explores a thunderous dimension that’s familiar in its auditory clout but completely new in the execution of its trajectory, taking the band’s sound into a remarkable place as ethereally compelling in its aesthetic as it is merciless in the magnitude of its sound.

By the \'90s, the ‘60s pop star Scott Walker had evolved into an avant-garde master. In 2014, it’s little surprise that he’s written *Soused* as a collaboration with underground drone-metallists Sunn O))). Anyone familiar with previous Walker albums such as *Tilt*, *The Drift*, or *Bish Bosch* will recognize the barking, musical theater–like baritone vocals and the postapocalyptic, scorched-earth instrumentation. And for *Soused*, Walker is joined by Sunn O))), including their third guitarist Tos Nieuwenhuizen. “Bull,” in particular, takes on the dark, grinding distortion, while other epics sound like a circus on fire. Singularly brilliant.

Symmetry in Black is the perfect album to arrive in the number ten slot of the Crowbar catalog, a penultimate achievement embodying the early sloth of doom touchstone Obedience Thru Suffering (1991), the moody dissonance of modern classic Odd Fellows Rest (1998) and the crisp thunder of the album’s eOne Metal predecessor, Sever the Wicked Hand (2011), with nuggets of Crowbar’s storied history sprinkled throughout. The crushing signature sound of Crowbar is at its peak on Symmetry in Black, the band’s most diverse yet cohesive release. It was coproduced with fellow New Orleans resident Duane Simoneaux, who worked on Sever the Wicked Hand and mixed by Josh Wilbur, whose diverse credits include work with Lamb Of God, Gojira and Killer Be Killed. “We needed to move our sound forward but at the same time, make sure everything stayed 100% true to who and what we are,” Windstein explains. “The album is heavy, dark and killer. There’s everything we are on here. It’s just Crowbar 2014. We’re really proud and excited. And where we stand with Crowbar right now, we can only go up.”

TOMBS’ third album Savage Gold is the most anticipated underground metal album of 2014. The band’s sophomore LP Path Of Totality unanimously topped 2011 end of the year metal lists (everyone from Decibel to Pitchfork to NPR, and more, dubbed it their top album of that year). Savage Gold focuses the awesome strength of Tombs’ previous works into one brilliantly dark post-punk and extreme black-metal masterpiece. Recorded and produced by Hate Eternal’s Erik Rutan (Cannibal Corpse, Goatwhore), Savage Gold both expands upon the moody post-punk foundations that Tombs’ prior albums explored while also bringing out the band’s most traditionally metal moments yet. Once every few years a record comes along that sets a new benchmark for what can be done in heavy music. This is that moment and this is that record.

Grief and loss aren\'t something typically associated with horror-core specialists Slipknot, but when founding bassist Paul Gray died in 2010, it crippled the band. Dedicated to their friend, *The Gray Chapter* is Slipknot\'s first album in six years, and it\'s both a eulogy and a means of moving on. \"I don\'t want to get up, but I have to,\" sings Corey Taylor on the opener, \"XIX.\" What follows is a blitzkrieg of a tribute. \"Skeptic\" is a cement mixer of pummeling blast beats and scorching riffs, while \"Sarcastrophe\" is an exhausting expression of sustained ferocity. Music this vicious is hard to call poignant, but the emotion that powers this tumult is palpable.