The 20 Greatest Albums of 2015

Source // heavymetal.se

Its been a tip-top year for hard rock and heavy metal in all its guises and the scene is going from strength to strength; with veterans releasing career-defining albums and new maniacs on the block announcing their arrival with aplomb.

We covered thrash metal’s huge contribution to 2015 in another countdown, so you won’t find any thrashin’ here. Instead, this list is for the doom metal, the death metal and everything in between….and, before you ask, you’ll find no predictable Iron Maiden inclusion here!

If 2015 taught us one thing it’s that heavy metal is certainly NOT dead. In fact, it’s just warming up!

20. Fuck The Facts – Desire Will Rot

Source // sterokiller.com

Never ones to repeat themselves, the evolution of Fuck The Facts continued unabated in 2015; their reverence to the grindcore scene magnified by a truly outstanding release that proved this grindcore-hybrid has many legs and many paths still to travel.

With no fucking around to be found, Desire Will Rot’s opener “Everywhere Yet Nowhere” removed teeth with its off-time rhythms and snarling vitriol while “Shadows Collide” continued the rampage before segueing into melodic death metal country; the first indication that Desire Will Rot was be an album that embraced a myriad of styles, often within the same song, often within the same millisecond!

Extreme metal, hardcore, punk, death metal, doom metal and the obligatory grindcore all got a look in but not one of these sub-genres accurately surmised the true nature of this punishing, parameter-pushing work of art.

19. Krallice – Ygg Huur

Source // technicaldeathmetal.org

Once again transcending the limited confines of black metal, New York’s Krallice have long left behind such easy genre ‘labelling’ and Ygg Huur – album number 5 – was another unsettling excursion into their diabolically distorted dimension of blackened progressive metal.

In comparison to previous releases, Ygg Huur was surprisngly short – clocking in at a relatively taut 35 minutes – but don’t assume this frugality had resulted in Krallice devolving and limiting their ideas. In actuality, the reverse was true; Krallice had never been so wilfully obscure. With angular riffs twisting and turning through thunderous walls of percussion, they appeared leaner and meaner than on the likes of career highlights Dimensional Bleedthrough and Years Past Matter.

A swirling maelstrom of tumultuous, cacophonous carnage, Ygg Huur was an osciallating head-fuck of an album that proved Krallice were painting on a canvas much bigger than the majority of their peers.