TONEwood's Top 10 Metal Albums of 2018

For fear of sounding like a Jerry Seinfeld joke, what's with all the insane death metal albums this year? Though I consider myself to have a broad taste, my greatest worry in making this year's top 10 metal albums has been whether or not the list would be too samey. I decided that censoring or catering the list for any reason wouldn't be right - After all it should only be about which albums were best - subjectively, of course. Now the biggest challenge is gonna be varying the descriptions...

Butcher ABC: "North of Hell"

The heaviest gore groove known to man

Though North of Hell technically speaking is Japanese gore meistros Butcher ABC's first real album since their humble noisecore beginnings in 1994, it's not that their career has had a shortage of releases. If bands like General Surgery, Haemorrhage and early Carcass gets you hard, you're surely going to like this one!

Triple Grindcore Feature: Antigama, Marginal, Wojczech/Krupskaya

U.D.S.: "Too Fast for Love"

Thuggish grindcore beatings

Self-proclaimed practitioners of goreviolence, U.D.S. curate their brand of ghetto grindcore with all knobs turned to maximum. They're not too fancy to not include a bunch of pitch shifted vocals to go with their devastating low-end grooves either!

Gestapolis: "Amagerland"

Amagerbro grindcore warmachine!

With grindcore it's no good to just claim something as being no-holds-barred, unrelenting, or extreme, because that's basically just the name of the game. There are other factors to take into account instead, otherwise you would just be describing every grindcore band ever.

Friendship: "I&II"

Hateful mires of liquid metal

Sentient Ruin Laboratories from Oakland, California, have never been a label to skimp on music's outcast misfits. Be it grindcore, extreme metal or noise, this indie label are true purveyors of extremity. SRL have just now compiled two EPs of absurdly crushing Japanese powerviolence into one single nuclear crucicle of raw disregard and abrasiveness with Friendship's I&II.

2016 Top 10 - Part I: The Metal Part

2016 has been an incredibly strong year for music. Although we've had to say goodbye to several legends, many new hopes continue to arise and bring the sound and feeling that we crave.

I've had the chance to listen to a relatively high amount of new albums this year, and only few of the albums I was anticipating were disappointing. Of course choosing just ten was incredibly tough with many huge contenders sadly having to be left out.

Brain Famine: "Brain Famine"

Grindsploitation from the States, ready to fight

Grindcore, mostly too harsh for the masses, is a genre that on its own can be quite devastating, but combined with death metal, thrash metal - or both - is an even more lethal setup. Proven time and time again by bands like Frightmare and Ghoul, among many others, Brain Famine from Massachusetts, USA, take up the mantle of mosh-friendly grind with gusto and abrasive enthusiasm.

Various Artists: "8-Way for Destroy the Music"

Living life on the edge of music

In many ways music has become progressively more aggressive over time. There will always be individuals who seek to push the boundaries, and others asking if we have finally hit rock bottom. With genres like powerviolence and grindcore is it even possible for music to be more extreme without seizing to be music? The bands featured on this split are certainly pushing the limit with their individual mixes of grindcore, noise and droning industrial. They call it noisecore, and the term says it all for this 8-band split album.