Year-End Critics' Polls 2013

SPIN's 20 Best Metal Albums of 2013
01 Deafheaven - Sunbather
02 Kvelertak - Meir
03 Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control
04 Locrian - Return to Annihilation
05 Carcass - Surgical Steel
06 Windhand - Soma
07 Gorguts - Colored Sands
08 Whores. - Clean
09 Inter Arma - Sky Burial
10 Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us Is the Killer
11 SubRosa - More Constant Than the Gods
12 Black Sabbath - 13
13 ASG - Blood Drive
14 Red Fang - Whales and Leeches
15 Power Trip - Manifest Decimation
16 Voivod - Target Earth
17 Palms - Palms
18 Wrekmeister Harmonies - You've Always Meant So Much to Me
19 Portal - Vexovoid
20 Nails - Abandon All Life

18 Wrekmeister Harmonies - You've Always Meant So Much to Me

^ i love that one

Tegan and Sara left me cold. It felt like indie people playing at "perfect pop" and ending up with an outdated shop-mannequin version. Closer's good but I can't remember the rest of it.

yeah i felt the same about them

Overall, I'm pleased there's no Kaputt this year - no high-scoring album that I really hate. Yeezus and AM aren't my favourites but they're both inside my top 40.

uncle acid over carcass, hmmm

Pazz & Jop ballots should go out very soon...

Kind of feel that Random Access Memories is this year's Kaputt, even if I like it a lot more.

You're probably right. I love RAM though.

i find this year's lists boring rather than hateable. combination of being all talked out about the year's tedious ~event albums, long-term objects of hatred like arctic monkeys and vampire weekend who i try to ignore completely these days, and new acts who don't interest me either way like lorde and haim. but i do think 2013's consensus albums are the worst in some years, there's something really...inevitable and obvious about a lot of them

lioke, i'd almost rather have an "aaargh RAGE" reaction to these lists than my eyes glazing over as my brain mutters "don't care, don't care, don't care..."

I can understand being bored but no way are this year's consensus albums worse than the GAPDY tyranny.

Didn't mind it at first but I've been mercilessly subjected to RAM on every car journey so far this year, and every trip we make I loathe it a little more. Somebody else please release an album my wife likes, Daft Punk you are slowly killing me.

the thing i find depressing about years like this is how many of the records on the lists are just well-regarded albums by established artists, but not, like, widely held to be their best yet or some kind of big breakthrough. just ho hum, Kanye and Daft Punk and The National and Vampire Weekend and Bowie made records and they're not terrible, AOTY then.

Loving this Portal album from the Spin list.

Conversely I didn't listen to RAM for several months and then put it on the other day and was suddenly "hey this is awesome, why don't I listen to this all the time?" I think the discourse and hype wore me out to the extent that I was just prepared to accept the backlash through osmosis even though I didn't agree with it.

yeah Portal is fantastic

I'm checking some of the stuff I hadn't heard on the Juno list and quite enjoying Stellar Om Source and Karen Gwyer, for starters. But like factoring in Tim Hecker, Julia Holter, Laurel Halo, pretty strong year for the more experimental end of electronic music.

yeah al sums up what i was vaguely trying to grasp at. i feel ennui when i read these lists.

with maybe two exceptions the Spin metal list kind of... conforms to type tho

xp I see your point in most cases somedude - I don't think Kanye, Arctics, Bowie, QOTSA, the National or Arcade Fire are at their peak - but a ton of critics, including me, think this is Vampire Weekend's best album by a long chalk, and RAM is a law unto itself.

Weak year for debuts though. The balance is off.

I consciously avoided most of the RAM discourse. Glad I did, as it resonates with me in a very personal way.

with maybe two exceptions the Spin metal list kind of... conforms to type tho

you'll probably have to unpack that for me

Pop Matters The Best Metal of 2013
http://www.popmatters.com/feature/176995-the-best-metal-of-2013/P1/

20 Dark Tranquility - Construct
19 Heaven Shall Burn - Veto
18 Atlantean Kodex - The White Goddess
17 Exhumed - Necrocracy
16 Shooting Guns - Brotherhood of the Ram
15 Lycus - Tempest
14 Kataklysm - Waiting for the End to Come
13 Deafheaven - Sunbather
12 Russian Circles - Memorial
11 Clutch - Earth Rocker
10 Skeletonwitch - Serpents Unleashed
09 Kvelertak - Meir
08 Oranssi Pazuzu - Valonielu
07 Altar of Plagues - Teethed Glory and Injury
06 Darkthrone - The Underground Resistance
05 Gorguts - Colored Sands
04 Shining - One One One
03 Carcass - Surgical Steel
02 SubRosa - More Constant Than the Gods
01 In Solitude - Sister

I can understand being bored but no way are this year's consensus albums worse than the GAPDYX tyranny.

fixed

Weak year for debuts though.

kacey musgraves, ariana grande, brandy clark, k. michelle, creep, sky ferreira, maya jane coles, om'mas keith...eight debuts in my top 20 isn't a bad strike rate

I didn't mean your favourites, or even mine. I meant the records that are impacting on list after list. Not many debuts punching through.

That list of metal band names reminds me to post this thing I saw yesterday, which contains some of the best fake names of all time:

http://ow.ly/rthKj

I would have expected SPIN to be all over In Solitude and Russian Circles, and to a lesser extent Shining and Oranssi Pazuzu. Nice to see Atlantean Kodex made a list

sad thing is i recognise half those band photos eg. klaxons @ 19

that was an xp btw

Spin metal list kinda reads to me like a compendium of the most praised stuff of the year from the bigger of the 'thinking person's' metal blogs/webzines, with no real surprises save for Wrekmeister Harmonies and maybe Locrian. not sure how they put their poll together so idk if it's the perils of voting by committee or one person being unimaginative or something else

guys can we go back to that AV Club inessential album list and this terrifying Nick Lachey album cover for a second:

http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2013126/560.lachey.cm.22613.jpg

Spin metal list kinda reads to me like a compendium of the most praised stuff of the year from the bigger of the 'thinking person's' metal blogs/webzines, with no real surprises save for Wrekmeister Harmonies and maybe Locrian. not sure how they put their poll together so idk if it's the perils of voting by committee or one person being unimaginative or something else
--screaming lord, such opinion (DJ Mencap)

If someone could point me to a "thinking person's metal blog" I'd really appreciate it thanx

"SPIN's metal list looks like its run by professionals who know how to write for an audience"

lol @ how ilm will never get over gapdy

^^^^^ this

The best was when Scott kool-aid manned in here and tried to take credit for the notoriously weaksauce middlebrow tastes of america's alt-weekly writers.

Has there been anything like 40 Watt Sun released this year? It was my ultimate discovery from the 2011 lists (I believe from SPIN) and the sole reason I keep scanning the EOY metal lists, hoping for something remotely like that record.

I was kind of "this is okay, whatever" about the Pusha T album until I hit "40 Acres", which is just great

should probably be more annoyed by the consensus among metal lists but man those carcass, gorguts, and subrosa records are unbelievable

i like the darkthrone album. quite different to what i expected, but it's rollicking fun.

Dummy - Best albums #20-11
http://www.dummymag.com/lists/the-20-best-albums-of-2013

a few good records in there but i'm not really down with their thing on the whole

first time I've seen Mount Kimbie on one of these things. not sure I ever heard the album

that horrible deptford goth record

needs to be a sleaford mods vs deptford goth fite

xpost you're giving me inverse nostalgia for 2009 guys.

If anyones interested ~~~ End Of Year ILM Metal - Albums & Tracks Poll- Nominations 2013~~~

Cool, be sure to remind us once or 500 times as it gets closer to deadline

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/blurred-lines-the-worst-song-of-this-or-any-other-year-20131206