The A.V. Club's Best Metal Albums of 2018

Released By: Armageddon Shop Label AS-013

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).

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Since they hit the scene in 2003, Athens, Ohio\'s Skeletonwitch have always been more than just a thrash band—whether they were snapping necks with their breakout 2007 album, *Beyond the Permafrost*, or branching out on 2013’s melodic *Serpents Unleashed*. Their sixth LP (and first without vocalist Adam Clemans after he joined the band), *Devouring Radiant Light* showcases a seasoned, adventurous version of Skeletonwitch—one that’s more interested in exploring gloomy, dark corners than crushing beer cans and kicking up circle pits. The record still shreds while embracing genre agnosticism: On songs like the magisterial title track or the icy closer, “Sacred Seal,” shards of gothic doom, death metal, and proggy bombast jab at the band\'s more familiar thrash template.

Delve into the the mephitic melodies of Molluscas malodorous minions once more with Esoteric Malacology, the latest gastropodean gospel from Slugdge. Journey through the annuls of Slishic history; through the death and rebirth of the supreme cosmic overlord, and unlock mental gateways to even more horrendous and nonsensical realities than ever before

This is album is dedicated to the sacred ego, that wellspring of individuality and unique complexity. Sing the song of the Inner Voice. Recite the hymns to the Celestial Will. Rebuke all desire to succumb to corrosive idolatry—be it the militancy of extremity, the beneficence of untempered ideology, or the divinity of cherished relationships. Rebuke the impulse to capitulation, to hide beneath of hard shell of callous disregard and secede from the world. We surrender our power only to those worthy of wielding it. And we will not hesitate to strip authority from and war against all those that prove unworthy.

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.