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You've heard this kind of thing before, but CHRCH find new and exciting ways to make it feel fresh. As YOB once were, CHRCH are signed to Neurosis' Neurot label (this is their first album for the label and second overall), and like YOB and Neurosis, CHRCH blend post-rock, sludge metal, soaring clean vocals, burly screams, and more and come out with an album that takes its time but remains gripping from start to finish. This is guitar nerdom done right.Īs fantastic as the newest YOB album is, an album in that same style that I liked even more this year came from a much newer band who recently toured with YOB: Sacramento's CHRCH. It's not enough to have fast fingers Chapel of Disease also write killer, catchy melodies, and their songs offer adrenaline rush after adrenaline rush. To quote Radiohead, anyone can play guitar, and we've all heard enough amateur shred-masters on YouTube and at Guitar Center. It's all about Laurent and Cedric Teubl's intertwining leads, which play out like a game of Guitar Hero that's actually fun to listen to. Laurent Teubl's raw, OSDM-style scream is pretty brutal too, but the vocals are almost a footnote of these songs. It's like they studied Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists list and decided to squeeze the entire list into an album of death metal songs. They've got flashy 1970s hard rock solos, and they've got clean, dusty blues. It's only for a short period of time (around the 5:45 mark in album opener "Void of Words"), but it's one of many times these guys show off the kinds of guitar nerds they are. It happens more and more, but it still feels special to see a reunited band making music as crucial as At the Gates.Ĭhapel of Disease aren't the only modern metal band who incorporate classic rock into their sound, but they might be the only one I've ever compared to Dire Straits. Plenty of the riffs on this one rival those of Slaughter of the Soul, and Lindberg still sounds like a wild animal. Whatever the case, To Drink from the Night Itself rips and it sounds like classic At the Gates while still sounding fresh. Björler left the band before the making of this album, leaving vocalist Tomas Lindberg and bassist Jonas Björler to write it themselves, and maybe the situation left them feeling extra fired up. Maybe it was having the pressure gone since this time they were closing a four-year gap instead of a 19-year gap, or - strangely enough - maybe it was the absence of lead guitarist Anders Björler. And To Drink from the Night Itself is even better. That album picked up where its 19-year-old predecessor had left off, and while there's nothing quite like the original, At War with Reality came close. For nearly two decades, At the Gates never even tried to follow it, but then they returned in 2014 with At War with Reality and proved they hadn't lost their touch one bit.
![best metal albums 2018 best metal albums 2018](https://cdn3.pitchfork.com/longform/862/Do%08dsrit.jpg)
The riffs, the shrieks, the pummeling rhythms - it was all executed at a near-perfect level. They just did everything right for that album.
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With those caveats out of the way, continue on for my picks.Īt the Gates' 1995 masterpiece Slaughter of the Soul remains, in my humble opinion, about as good as melodeath gets. I also decided to keep this list strictly metal, so I left off my metal-associated-but-not-actually-metal 2018 favorites like Daughters, Marissa Nadler, and Anna Von Hausswolff. On that note, I also have a list of top 2018 punk albums coming soon on BrooklynVegan, and I intentionally avoided any crossover between the lists, so stay tuned for that list for metal-leaning punk albums like Svalbard, Turnstile, War On Women, Birds In Row, and Portrayal of Guilt. (If I left something off, it's also possible I just haven't heard it - leave me suggestions in the comments!) As I point out every year, my taste in metal leans towards the punk side or the "heavy rock" side, so most of what you'll find here fits that description in one way or another. My top two have been pretty rigid since I heard them both, but I re-ordered the rest of this list a bunch of times and I'll probably still be changing it and adding to it in my head for months after it's cemented in Internet stone. It's been another great year for heavy music and music in general, and it has not been easy to narrow down a list of favorites.