2015 has sucked in almost every way for me and for a lot of people that I know, too. You could say it was full of Trials and Tribulation (that’ll be funny AFTER you see the top of my list). Fortunately, we were gifted a litany of top-shelf metal albums to get us through it without losing our minds. The following are the top 20 metal records that I subjected my children to while driving them all over L.A. I have to admit that there was so much great stuff this year that I sort of cheated here by including a very extensive “honorable mentions” category for all of the other albums that might have made the list had the year ended when they came out. All of them are excellent efforts that I know I’ll be listening to for years to come.

Check out the list and let me know what you think in the comments below because if I know metalheads (and believe me, I do) you’ll all have some very strong opinions about your own likes and dislikes. The best thing about other people’s year-end “best of” list is that I always discover a few absolute gems that got past me during the year. Last year, you, the readers, even turned me on to Ne Obliviscaris and Solstafir, two amazing bands that I was unfamiliar with and whose albums should have been on my list. It is my hope that no matter what your opinion of my personal list is, that it will inspire you to check out some artists or records that you haven’t yet discovered. Who knows, maybe you’ll find your new favorite metal band contained herein.

Have a wonderful holiday season and rest up, because 2016 promises to be another pummeling year in extreme music. And be sure to stay tuned here at GoD because you know we’ll be doing our very best to keep you informed about all of it.

Bloodbath is a long-running supergroup consisting of a “who’s who” of Swedish death metal musicians. The band has, at various points, consisted of members of Opeth, Katatonia, Edge of Sanity, and Paradise Lost. They have issued four full-length albums, two EPs, and two DVDs since their inception in 1998.

Original singer Mikael Ã…kerfeldt left the band to concentrate on his duties as the leader of Opeth and was replaced by Paradise Lost singer Nick Holmes for last year’s spectacular album Grand Morbid Funeral.

This week’s Massive Metal Monday track takes us back to Akerfeldt’s final album with the band. From 2008’s The Fathomless Mastery, this is “Hades Rising.”

Twenty seven years into their career, Paradise Lost has come full circle. The band’s recently released 14th studio album The Plague Within, sees the legendary English unit returning to their death metal roots, much to the delight of old school fans. Few bands in metal, or any genre for that matter, have taken such a wide creative arc in their careers. Aside from a few notable missteps, these guys have conquered everything from death metal to gothic synth metal to straight rock, and have even composed some things that would not be entirely out of place on a Depeche Mode record.

Check out the the video for the first single below.

British metal legends Paradise Lost have just entered Orgone Studios in London with producer Jaimie Gomez Arellano (GHOST BC, ULVER, CATHEDRAL, ANGEL WITCH) to begin work on their fourteenth studio album.

Longtime fans will be excited to hear the musical direction that the band has chosen to pursue on this outing.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Coming to DVD
Directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
Starring Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, Lorri Davis, Mark Byers, Terry Hobbs, Burk Sauls, Dale Griffis, Natalie Maines, Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
HBO
Aired: January 12, 2012

The new documentary, Paradise Lost: Purgatory, third in the Paradise Lost series, attains a sense of closure in the case of the West Memphis Three. Recalling and reprising events from the previous two documentaries, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky also follow the developments of the preceding ten years, leading up to the release of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley in 2011.

Being a long-time believer of the innocence of, and a supporter of, the West Memphis Three, and this now being the year of 2012, I still find it difficult to believe that the convicted men are now free. I was always hopeful they would one day see freedom and liberty, but had a lingering, deep, dark fear that it would never be in my lifetime.

While any and all tentpole projects can get a fair bit of funding, it’s the more intriguing pieces that appear to be getting the bad end of their respective deals.

The latest project to get delayed is, according to Deadline, Legendary Pictures’ upcoming film, Paradise Lost.

Helmed by Alex Proyas, the film is set to star Bradley Cooper, Djimon Honsou, Casey Affleck, Camilla Belle, and Callan McAuliffe, and will obviously be based on the John Milton poem, which follows the story of “the battle between good and evil.”

Just a few days ago, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were on hand to film a new ending for their hit HBO documentary series, Paradise Lost. The moment was was when the West Memphis Three—who had been imprisoned for almost two decades for the murders of three young boy scouts—were set free after DNA testing that didn’t exist when they were convicted proved that none of them were involved.

Some rather prestigious celebrity names were very supportive of the trio, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, and their release, doing everything in their power to see justice done. They include Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins, and Natalie Maines, as well as Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit director Peter Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh.

The upcoming release of Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the third and likely final film in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky‘s award-winning HBO documentary series chronicling the strange case of the West Memphis Three and the circumstances that resulted in their wrongful imprisonment nearly two decades ago, just got a radically different ending.

Today all three members of the group — Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Jason Baldwin — were released on suspended sentences with time served after spending seventeen years behind bars. They were convicted in 1994 for the brutal slaying of three 8-year-old Boy Scouts — Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers — in the wooded Robin Hood Hills area of West Memphis, Arkansas. The killing was said to have been committed as part of a Satanic ritual. Echols, who was 18 years old at the time, was given the death penalty, while Misskelley, 17, was given life imprisonment plus 40 years, and Baldwin, 16, was given life. Due to the lack of DNA testing available at the time and the questions that arose surrounding the police investigation and the three teenagers’ subsequent conviction, the case became a focal point of controversy across the country. It wasn’t until 2007 that testing proved that none of the DNA collected at the scene of the murders belonged to the defendants.

From Abraham Lincoln, to the Archangel Michael, actor Benjamin Walker is having one hell of a run. The star of the upcoming film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has, according to Deadline, joined the cast of the equally intriguing Paradise Lost.

Director Alex Proyas revealed that Walker will join the film’s star, Bradley Cooper, in Paradise Lost, which takes on the legendary Milton story that follows the battle between Michael and Cooper’s Lucifer. The film shoots this January, and will have a script worked on by Stuart Hazeldine, Lawrence Kasdan, and with a recent draft from Ryan Condal.

We all know how bad movies based on games tend to be (and vice versa), but there are some games out there that, if done correctly, could make some pretty fantastic movies.

One of the big ones that jumps to mind is the Mass Effect trilogy. One of the biggest game series to-date, the BioWare property takes the action–RPG to incredible places, making for an intense and compelling story and a truly must–play experience for any gamer out there.

A Mass Effect movie has been whispered about for a while now, dating back to around when Mass Effect 2 was being released where Casey Hudson was quoted saying “Obviously we have a tremendous amount of interest from people in Hollywood to make a major motion picture about Mass Effect. The most important thing for us is, we don’t just want to see a movie get made. We want to see a great movie get made, if it’s going to get done at all.” That was followed by the news that Legendary Pictures had secured the rights to turn the game into a movie, but that was the last we heard about it…until now.