Every year it astounds me how over and above any other musical genre that remains relevant and contemporary, heavy metal is truly international in scope.  A kid growing up in Iran is more likely to be familiar with Master of Puppets than he is an N’Sync or Backstreet Boys record.  Kids in Brazil still love Iron Maiden more than these panty waist art-rock groups American mall kids listen to.  Anthrax can still sell out arenas in Japan and Korea.  Fucking global metal. 

Of the bands included on this year’s Top 10 list, some are American, some are Dutch, British, and Scandinavian.  In recent years, some of the top selling metal bands have been French, Danish, and Japanese.  The British and the Americans, who once controlled the market share of heavy metal, now only represent smaller pieces to a wholly global picture.  All this proves that no matter where you are, what language you speak, and what your particular struggle or suffering might be, the voice of metal can reach anyone, anywhere, at any time and pull them from the coils of despair. 
It will never relent.

Top 10 Albums of 2009
(In no particular order)

1. Katatonia – Night is the New Day

Easily my favorite album of 2009.  Looking at my iTunes history I’m astounded how many times I’ve listened to this fucker from start to finish.  At the time of this writing, 139 times, to be exact – and this shit only came out in November.  That’s at least twice a day, every goddamned day, since the album released on November 10th.  Night is the New Day’s opening track “Forsaker” kicks off with what I consider to be the most crushing riff of 2009, but then gently falls into a crystalline electro-melancholy accented by Jonas Renkse’s masterful vocal work – by the end of the track, the two sounds are woven together like two lovers meant never to be apart.  And from there, the record only gets better.  Expertly written.  Expertly produced.  Expertly recorded.  Each listen through Night is the New Day is its own unique journey though the self. 

2. Mastodon – Crack the Skye

The one album on this list that you’ll find on just about every “Top 10 Albums of 2009” article published in any and every rock n’ roll periodical or blog in the western hemisphere.  Completely and universally adored by listeners.  Crack the Skye is an album just as accepted by die hard metalheads as it is by the Rolling Stone crowd.  A band that MTV rockers can feel hip telling people they’re into.  From a goddamn metal band that appeared on both Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon late night shows in 2009.  To just about every listener, Crack the Skye is immediately accessible, groovy, and beautiful.  This is the album where Mastodon achieved crossover success without sacrificing a shred of dignity or metal credibility.

3. Skyfire – Esoteric

Probably the most surprising album of 2009.  This fucker came out of nowhere and knocked me flat on my ass.  We’re talking piano-driven Swedish melodic death metal, but built around the loose sensibilities of an American garage band.  A broke American garage band, at that.  I’m talking dirty, under-produced, and relentlessly slutty.  Just hearing the recordings here, you get the feeling that these fuckers showed up to the studio, hungover, still drunk maybe from the night before, and just threw on their instruments and cranked out these tunes.  This is what it would sound like if Bill and Ted were Scandinavian melodic death metal kids instead of Kiss-ified mall rockers.  No second takes here.  No auto-tune or Protools bullshit.  Just balls out melodic death metal crunch.  But in the end, it all works.  It works perfectly.  And as a bonus, the track “Seclusion” has easily the best mid-song groove breakdown of 2009.

4. Amorphis – Skyforger

All the way back since I first heard Elegy (1996), I’ve been in love with Amorphis’ uncanny ability to blend what, in all other circles, sounds like straight up porno saxophone (the “bow-chicka wow wooow” played expertly by Sakari Kukko), with Scandinavian death metal groove.  After a brief misstep with 2007’s ill conceived Silent Waters, the band has returned to form in 2009 with Skyforger.  Instead of expanding on the odd musical contrivances first explored on Silent Waters, Amorphis instead chose to reflect back on their classic lineup of albums, turning their old sound into a newer relevant one.  Skyforger effortlessly echoes the delicate whispers and chug chugs of albums past - and yes, the porno sax sound of classic Amorphis albums like Elegy, Tuonela, and AM Universum came back to full form in 2009.

5. Clutch – Strange Cousins from the West

Clutch never disappoints.  Album to album they do whatever the fuck they want and it always turns out like gold.  Sure, with “Strange Cousins,” for once Clutch may not been attempting to reinvent themselves like they did with past albums, but what they did do, was create an album with rock n’ roll precision built from the fundamentals of their last album, Beale Street to Oblivion.  This band has already reinvented itself over and over again.  Clutch will reinvent themselves whenever they damn well please, thank you very much.  Strange Cousins brought fans all the pro-rock they expected.  And even a little they didn’t.  It’s like I’m always saying, Clutch started out just being an eccentric and funny metal band made up of homegrown Maryland hillbillies.  Somehow, without anyone noticing, they’ve become the last real rock band on Earth. 

6. Bring me the Horizon – Suicide Season

Yes, yes… I know.  Suicide Season actually released in late November of 2008.  I’m including it here anyways though. For one thing, most of the planet didn’t even hear about this record until way into March 2009.  For another, once most people heard this fucking album, it owned them.  Like the bastard child of Fear Factory and that annoying screamo sub-genre, BMTH crafted and album that makes you want to connect your fist with a brick wall and hug your best friend – at the same time, and in equal parts. Think of this like self-deprecation with the emotional attitude of vengeful party animal.  This is the musical equivalent to a violent drug and booze-hazed self-destroying party scene undertaken to spite everyone you hate and love.  A pure “fuck you” album if there ever was one.  This is the album I drink to when I want to get shit-faced on a bottle of whiskey and hate the world and everyone living in it.  
Nothing says self-loathing like some pure and simple self-destruction. I wish this band was around when I was 16.

7. Eluveitie – Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion

Bottom line is, no one sounds like Eluveitie.  This is truly one of the only bands in the industry that’s been able to carve out their own sound, unique and set apart from just about everyone else. With Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion, the folk metal nine-piece from Switzerland have completely shed their metal conventions.  In a bold risk-taking effort, they have completely removed loud distorted guitar staccato, black metal vocals, and crash-driven blast beats from their musical ensemble.  They call this album “acoustic,” but it’s not.  “Acoustic” is far too pussy a term to describe what The Arcane Dominion is.  With The Arcane Dominion, Eluveitie has my head banging to a violin, a flute, a gaita, and a bodhran – with lyrics delivered in some dead Celtic language I don’t even understand.  If Epic Battlefield Metal were a legitimate sub-genre, Eluveitie would be its goddamn kings.  I officially cannot fucking wait until the new Eluveitie album releases in 2010.

8. Epica – Design Your Universe

Forget that, yeah, Epica is fronted by possibly the hottest redhead ever to sing in front of a band playing jhunt jhunt staccato guitar music (in the form of the deadly beautiful Simone Simons).  Forget the contrived symphonic Dimmu Borgir-esque orchestrations.  Even forget cheesy lyrics like “it’s time to bite the dust – leave behind the breaches of my trust” or “Quantum physics lead us to
Answers to the great taboos.”  Fact of the matter is, in many ways, Epica’s orchestrated opus of symphonic metal glory is so unabashedly cheesy, it’s basically impossible not to like.  However, saying simply saying that Design You Universe “so bad it’s good” doesn’t give Epica enough credit.  Simone Simons is a serious talent, and Mark Jansen has truly crafted a set of respectable and riffy tunes here.  Cheesy or not, no matter how you slice it, Design Your Universe is catchy, relentless, and ultimately proud of what it is.

9. Paradise Lost – Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us

Truth is, the last time I really got into a Paradise Lost album was back in high school, when One Second came out, and Paradise Lost suddenly became some kind of half-heavy metal half-Depeche Mode fusion band.  At the time, I loved that record… but as I got older Paradise Lost fell off my radar.  It could be that I realized that the Deftones did “Heavy Depeche Mode” better than Paradise Lost ever could.  Or, maybe it was that Paradise Lost simply stopped being relevant to the fans who felt the band had abandoned them to its newfound synth-pop sound.  Either way, I never really got into the five albums between One Second and Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us – I mean, I listened to them, but they never really caught on.  But in 2009 Paradise Lost released Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us, and it’s easily the darkest and heaviest album of their career.  Dark, heavy, and fucking good.  On this new album, Paradise Lost has managed to revert to the sound they pioneered 20 years ago, without sounding the slightest bit dated or uninspired.

10. God Forbid – Earthsblood

As a genre, metal is essentially hamstrung on its dependency on cliché.  Clean vocal/dirty vocal mash-ups.  Drummers who use their crash cymbal like the way how you’re supposed to use a high hat - that kind of thing.  Most of us metalheads love the cliché, and that’s why we keep coming back. Still, it’s nice to hear something that doesn’t rely on any of those tired tropes.  God Forbid plays metal like they’ve just discovered it for the first time.  Like they have an idea of what metal is supposed to be, but they haven’t heard or been influenced by any of the stuff that’s come before.  Just totally pure.  Like uncorrupted.  The guitar work on Earthsblood is pure American heavy metal, but it’s played fast and loose with the technique of a hippie jam band – only with the precision of a watchmaker.  That’s a difficult balance, to be sure, but on Earthsblood, God Forbid do it perfectly. You’ll find none of the clichés here.  Just good goddamned heavy metal.