Every year our Listmania series of posts includes not only lists of the year’s best releases as compiled by our staff, invited guests, and our esteemed readers, but also lists assembled by what we call “big platform” web sites and selected print magazines. Today we feature the first of the 2015 lists we’ve seen from that category of web sites and print zines — and fittingly, it comes from the best metal magazine on the planet, DECIBEL.

The list appears in the January edition of DECIBEL, which features Lamb of God on the cover and is beginning to arrive in the mailboxes of subscribers now. My copy is taking its sweet time making it to my mailbox up here in the far northwest corner of the U.S., but a friend on the East Coast sent me pics of the list, which is why I’m able to bring you this post. I know I’m stealing some of DECIBEL’s thunder, because they haven’t posted the list online themselves. But I’ve been doing this thunder-stealing for six years now, and it’s too late to stop. Continue reading »