Unveiling the top five hard rock and heavy metal albums of this half
year
By Peter Lindblad
And then there were five. Fine specimens of skilled
musicianship, thrilling energy and conceptual artistry, these sparkling diamonds
bear hardly any rust, even if Judas Priest is nowhere to be found among them.
From the devastating brutality and white-hot intensity of Whitechapel and
Kreator to the steam-punk splendor and adventurous progressive spirit of Rush
and black melodic magic of Kill Devil Hill, 2012 has been a banner year for
hard rock and heavy metal up to this point.
And though any of the four mentioned above could easily have
garnered the top spot, none of them did. There is another whose mystical vision
and raging metal tumult simply boggles the mind. It is a perfect storm, one
that would make meteorologists quiver with excitement. And it will leave you
disheveled and dumbstruck, scrambling your brains so thoroughly that you might
not remember where you are or how you got there. Feel free to agree or disagree
with the list or its order, as long as we can do it over drinks at an
establishment of my choosing.
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| Whitechapel - Whitechapel 2012 |
5. Whitechapel:
Whitechapel – Nobody’s taken a bigger leap forward in 2012 than
Whitechapel. It’s not enough anymore for deathcore’s biggest breakout act to take audiences by brute force. It’s not enough for them to terrify the easily
offended with gore-splattered lyrics. These tortured Tennesseans with the swarming,
intricately woven triple-axe attack have gone all in on their self-titled not-so-pretty
hate machine, with back-breaking tempo shifts, maximum riffage and crazed dynamics threatening
to consume Phil Bozeman’s guttural growl. Pretty little piano passages – a
tribute to a fallen friend – set listeners up for the kill, as the imaginative sonic
architects of Whitechapel makes good on their promise to conquer expectations.
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| Kill Devil Hill - 2012 |
4. Kill Devil Hill:
Kill Devil Hill – A thick slab of surging, darkly melodic doom metal, Kill
Devil Hill’s powerhouse debut bulldozes gothic ruins of riff-heavy rock and builds
towering, monolithic new song structures atop the sacred burial grounds of
Pantera and Ozzy-led Black Sabbath. More than the sum of its talented parts, Kill
Devil Hill – created by former Sabbath and Dio drummer Vinny Appice, with
ex-Pantera bassist Rex Brown onboard – introduces to the world Dewey Bragg, a
man with the voice of a lion, and guitarist Mark Zavon, whose Panzer-like
guitar forays seem directed by Rommel himself. The Alice In Chains comparisons
are unavoidable, but with Brown lending heft and potency to the low end and
Appice beating the living daylights out of his kit, Kill Devil Hill – immersed in
all the haunting blackness and gloom of a graveyard after hours – boasts way
more sonic mass than its grunge-era counterparts.
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| Rush - Clockwork Angels 2012 |
3. Rush: Clockwork Angels
– 2112 was a great album … for
its time. Clockwork Angels is better.
Blasphemy, you say? Clockwork Angels
is heavier – “BU2B” and “Carnies” – and more complex musically, although
perhaps less raw and angry. The elaborate story, welded to some of the most
grandiose sonic architecture the Canadians have ever constructed, of Clockwork Angels is wonderfully crafted,
a mature, thought-provoking concept with none of the holes or the confused hokum
of the 2112 saga. Where revisionists
might see 2112 as the epochal moment
where Rush’s power and progressive-rock inclinations clashed to create a
compelling piece of art – which 2112
surely is – Clockwork Angels finds
Rush still suspicious of totalitarian authority but more articulate and elegant
about how they construct a response to it. And “The Wreckers” is one of Rush’s
finest creations.
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| Kreator - Phantom Antichrist 2012 |
2. Kreator: Phantom
Antichrist – Across a hellish, smoldering wasteland of apocalyptic imagery
fly these four horsemen of thrash, soaring to dizzying heights on spiraling
arpeggios, pounding whole cities into piles of ash with bombing drums and
frenzied riffs that attack with an unquenchable blood lust, and speeding at high velocity into
the unknown with an unrestrained fury bordering on madness.
Screaming for vengeance, tracks like “United in Hate,” “Death to the World,”
and “Civilisation Collapse” rain torrents of fiery thrash down on the
unsuspecting, while “Until Our Paths Cross Again” and “Your Heaven, My Hell”
offer brief moments of bruised beauty amid an outpouring of transcendent power-metal
drama. Once again, Mille Petrozza whips this reconnaissance mission of the
damned through its paces, and the result is a magnificent manifesto forged of startlingly
brilliant technical musicianship and cataclysmic, compelling song craft. Phantom Antichrist will make you a
believer.
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| High On Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis 2012 |
1. High On Fire: De
Vermis Mysteriis – In the eye of a wintery hurricane of blustery,
tempest-tossed guitars and roiling rhythmic seas stands High On Fire’s Captain
Ahab Matt Pike, daring an angry God bent on destruction to silence his roaring,
ragged voice as he relates the woeful plight of Jesus’ cursed twin brother.
Mystery, madness, time travel and gale-force riffs threaten to tear
the good ship De Vermis Mysteriis to
pieces, but Pike’s able seamanship steers this scarred vessel through
treacherous, rumbling melodic currents and violent, battering storms of sludgy
metal. Epic is too small a word for such a monstrous beast. It’s only four
letters after all.
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