What the Hell, man? I go on a short break for the holidays and first Lemmy from Motorhead dies and now I come back to find a press release announcing that one of the best metal bands in the world has basically called it quits.
Chicago’s Trials is among my very favorite bands of the current metal generation; I even went so far as to name their most recent album, This Ruined World, the number one album of last year in my Best Metal Albums Of 2015 article just a few weeks ago.
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.
Trials This Ruined World MP3
Release date: July 24, 2015
People are always asking me about the state of heavy metal. “Where is the next Sabbath? Priest? Maiden? Metallica?,” they question. Well, I’m sad to say that, while there are innumerable great metal bands in the world, I’ve not seen a band with that sort of potential for a mass, mainstream breakthrough since Pantera in the 90s or maybe Killswitch Engage in the early 2000s. That is, until I recently found an advanced copy of Trials’ new album This Ruined World in my Dropbox about a month ago.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press