While awaiting the rollout of our own series of posts devoted to the year’s best metal, I continue to keep an eye out for year-end lists published by what I’ve been calling “big platform” web sites. By “big platform” sites, I mean those that have web traffic which greatly exceeds even the biggest metal-only sites. By definition, this means that they cover music or other forms of entertainment beyond metal. They may not be as trve as the sites that are completely devoted to metal, but I have fun watching what they say in their year-end posts, in part because their articles are written for a broader audience.
This year I’m including a year-end metal list by a “big platform” site that wasn’t included in our round-up last year. It’s called Loudwire.com, and it’s the national music website covering active rock and heavy metal of the Townsquare Media Group. Townsquare Media says that it’s “the largest music focused advertising network online consisting of over 1,500 music sites and reaching over 60 million people each month”. It also owns 250 radio stations, including 18 “active rock” radio stations nationwide. Loudwire has over 585,000 Facebook fans and reports that it receives more than 1.2 million unique visitors per month. This means that it edges out NCS traffic by a hair.
Yesterday, Loudwire published its staff list of the 10 Best Metal Albums of 2012. Though I wouldn’t agree with all the picks on the list (e.g., I don’t think Lamb of God’s Resolution is one of the year’s 10 best metal albums), I wasn’t surprised by most of the albums on there. I think we will see most of them on a great many lists this year. But there were two exceptions: Woods of Ypres seemed like an unusual stylistic choice, given what else is on the list, though I’m not criticizing the pick because I haven’t heard the album, and I wouldn’t have guessed the album that Loudwire picked for No. 1. Here’s the list:
10. Goatwhore – Blood For the Master
09. Lamb of God – Resolution
08. Down – Down IV, Part 1 – The Purple EP
07. Woods of Ypres – Woods 5: Grey Skies and Electric Light
06. Pig Destroyer – Book Burner
05. Gojira – L’Enfant Sauvage
04. High On Fire – De Vermis Mysteriis
03. Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind
02. Napalm Death – Utilitarian
01. Between the Buried and Me – The Parallax II: Future Sequence
15 Responses to “LISTMANIA CONTINUES: THE LOUDWIRE TOP 10”
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I can tell you now… only 3 of those are actually featuring in ANY of my lists. The Great, The Good, and The Disappointing.
Though there are another 3 I wish I had found time to listen to.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Woods of Ypres on the list- only they and High on Fire make my own best of. I also took a look at their “Best Rock” albums and it pretty much confirmed my suspicions that I’m not missing much in modern rock these days.
Anyone want to lay odds on how many of those are actually on my list
Can I bet on a negative number?
The Woods of Ypres album is one you really should check out, Islander. Not the heaviest album ever, but it’s a dark, soulful gem.
It’s also one of the two albums here I’d have on my Top Whatever list.
Woods 5 came out this year?! The fuck i’ve been smoking..
Probably the last Woods album ever too, as the vocalist/mastermind of the band tragically passed away this year too.
After David’s passing, Earche put it out for download for a week in December 2011. However, the official release date was in March of this year.
GOATWHORE!!!
Yeah, okay, but what about GOATWHORE!!!
¿y que GOATWHORE!!?
I’m instantly disregarding any top-metal-of-2012 list that includes no Meshuggah. And Dying Fetus should really be on here too.
Agreed, Koloss and Reign Supreme are 1 and 2 on my list.
They’re 1 and 3 for me. Converge is the intervening #2. But I would already put Koloss up with the very greatest metal albums of all time. It’s one of the most consistently top-tier albums I’ve ever heard, every moment of every song is a knockout.
Agreed.