» Toplist Lord Randall 2009  
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Best albums

1. Crescent Shield - The Stars Of Never Seen
California quintet Crescent Shield serves up a heady yet no less heavy prog/power brew on their second album for Italian label Cruz Del Sur, not only avoiding the sophomore slump altogether, but bettering many bands longer in the game. Epic (yes, epic) song structures recall latter-day Savatage, while vocalist Michael Grant shines throughout tales of adventure and discovery both physical and spiritual. An album destined to be a classic, soon as the rest of the world gets on board.

2. The 11th Hour - Burden Of Grief
Multi-instrumentalist Ed Warby (Hail Of Bullets, Gorefest, Ayreon) and vocalist Rogga Johansson (Edge Of Sanity, Ribspreader, Those Who Bring The Torture) get their doom on in a big, lumbering way with Burden Of Grief, warping further back in time to Nemesis' Day Of Retribution in this paean to dejection, dope, and all that is foreboding. Warby and Rogga work that clean/death vocal thing like magick here, monolithic riffs and quiet keyboard interludes weaving together into a tapestry of soul-crushing despair.

3. Way To End - Desecrated Internal Journey
Black metal need not only to suck the rotted cocks of Dead and Euronymous in order to be true, and it goes against the spirit of the form to say it does. Way To End may not court overt controversy as too many of the current crop, but what they do (albeit more ambient) is no less sonically caustic. Chasms of despair are wandered through on this journey, and trust me, you won't emerge unscathed.

4. Isole - Silent Ruins
As the first part of what looks to be a high-brow saga for low-end emotion, Silent Ruins resurrects in me that same feeling I got on my initial listen to the first album that can truly be called Doom Metal, Candlemass' Nightfall. Uber-melodic leadwork winds itself around crushing riffery, vocals ascending and descending as will your moods when awakened to the world of Silent Ruins. How music so forlorn can be so simultaneously thrilling, I know not. Hope I never do.

5. Bleeding Fist - Bestial Kruzifix666ion
After a few years of demos and one full-length Slovenian beast Bleeding Fist injected a syringe of "none more black" into their thrash-fuelled veins, creating what they would come to call "chaos metal". A more appropriate description you won't find after having your eardrums gouged out to make way for the visceral blowtorch that is Moribund Cult debut Bestial Kruzifix666ion. You can take all your newfangled studio trickery and shove it up your ass, quite frankly. That the album was recorded in one 8-hour marathon with the band playing live makes it all the more vicious.

Honourable Mentions: The Destro - Harmony Of Discord, Birds Of Prey - The Hellpreacher, Slough Feg - Ape Uprising, Candlemass - Death Magic Doom

Biggest disappointments

- Ignominious Incarceration - Of Winter Born
I don't care how much money Earache is willing to shove up your asses in order to shove your band down our throats, guys, England has been piss poor for melodic death metal since, oh, ever! I don't see things changing with Of Winter Born either. The band name smacks of being "discovered" during a mad flip through Roget's Thesaurus, and the 3-odd minute farts listed here as songs do nothing but leave one wondering how else they could've spent the last 35 minutes of their lives. I'd rather eat glass.

- The Eyes Of A Traitor - A Clear Perception
I know, I know, quit harping on England. To be fair, England does have its share of bad-ass bands, but when the crap flowing forth from across the pond (well, from me at least) is of such a flushable style, someone's gotta call bullshit. The Eyes Of A Traitor want us to know we can believe in our dreams and that they'll fight with us to the end, blah blah fuckin' blah. Sub-standard wannabe metalcore, boring from the start and impotent. The title of their new single says it best. Nothing To Offer.

- That Children Of Bodom is still a working band.

- That Candlemass didn't tour the US this last year.

- Above all, the death of the print format for former (now current - again) employer Metal Maniacs. The underground and legitimate metal lost a true weapon in our arsenal, but remember; this battle may be over, but the war has yet to be won.

Best live concerts

1. Year Of The Pig/Writhing/Hellmouth @ Lager House (Detroit, Michigan)

2. Horna/Bloodstained Dusk/Nocturnal Fear
@ Blondie's (Detroit, Michigan)

3. Satyricon/Septicflesh @ Harpos (Detroit, Michigan)

4. Testament/Lazarus AD @ Harpos (Detroit, Michigan)