(I’m what you’d call an older millennial.) When Nirvana took off, they made an obligatory appearance on Headbangers Ball (with a very-wasted Kurt clad in a ballgown, naturally). I’m old enough to remember a time when metal actually had cachet and influence in mainstream popular music. Add to that a batch of anti-war and anti-corporate lyrics and you’ve got an album that, unsubtle as it might be, remains topical 30 years later. This might still be grindcore (and deathgrind) in its most primitive stages, but Terrorizer made it sound more sophisticated and-as odd as is this is to say about music so brutal-elegant. Repulsion’s Horrified is raw and lo-fi, all murky textures and blunt edges. But World Downfall feels like a very different album, if mostly because of how it sounds. On paper, Los Angeles’ Terrorizer did much of what their Midwestern counterparts at number 10 did so well on their debut LP. And at its best, Slowly We Rot feels mostly like a really ghastly thrash metal record, which is part of what makes it so much fun. Obituary were one of the pioneers of death metal, carving up a raw and murky sound that made thrash metal sound so much uglier. The Golden Age of Death Metal began in the late ’80s and peaked around the early to mid-’90s, when bands such as Death and Morbid Angel were releasing some of their strongest material, Carcass and At the Gates were providing more compelling melodic avenues for the genre, and more progressive artists such as Opeth were beginning to emerge. (Side note: A number of great bands actually took their names from tracks from this very album, including Black Breath and Acid Bath.) Essentially, it’s classic death metal just played that much faster. It’s descended from the school of Napalm Death’s Scum, as much a hardcore record as a metal one, only it finds the Michigan group taking the speed and sheer brutality of that album and using it to form more fleshed-out songs with actual melodies (well, sometimes). Repulsion’s debut album (their only album to date) is raw and ugly and lo-fi, but it’s effective: 18 tracks of ghoulish and ghastly destruction with no room for any pretentious instrumentation or moody interludes.
#List of 1988 heavy metal albums full
It’s evolved into something more complex, artful, often avant garde and weird-all of which can be heard in the latest Full of Hell album, for instance. Grindcore’s come a long way since the late ’80s. So let’s get to it: The 10 best metal albums of 1989, which might be the best year for metal. Or what I consider its 10 best albums (this is totally subjective and based entirely on my enjoyment of these albums-but also I don’t think this looks wrong on a macro scale, at all).
(I mean, 2018 was actually kind of fantastic!) But 1989 was so good that I’m dedicating the essay portion of this month’s column to its 10 best albums. Now, I’m not saying necessarily that this is written in stone if I look closely at the metal I listen to the most, objectively most of it comes from the past two decades. Bands like Morbid Angel, Terrorizer, Godflesh and Obituary. In fact, if anything, having all those names out of the way so as not to suck all the air out of the room left opportunity for a batch of new bands to make their mark. That might make it seem like I’m arguing for 1988 as the best year in metal I’m not. In fact, Death, Iron Maiden, Queensryche and Bathory all released some of their best material in 1988. For that matter, death metal pioneers Death didn’t release an album either. On the surface, it might seem like a year short on ringers none of the Big Four released albums that year, all four of them having delivered a full-length the year prior. Is it 1970, when Black Sabbath opened the gates with not one but two genre-defining albums? Is it 1982, when Judas Priest and Iron Maiden were each at the peak of their powers? Perhaps 1986, when Slayer and Metallica delivered what many consider the two greatest thrash metal albums of all time, and with damn good reason? You could even make a pretty strong case for years in this millennium: 2000 (Weakling, Electric Wizard, Deftones, Maiden’s comeback), 2004 (Isis, Converge, Mastodon, Neurosis, Pig Destroyer!), even 2009 (more Converge, Sunn O))), Baroness, Kylesa, more Mastodon).īut I’m going to offer an entirely different suggestion, one that aligns nicely with anniversary math: 1989. Think back about the strongest year in metal history.