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Top 10 Albums of Any Given Year


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1995, not an easy year but here goes: 10. Necromantia - Scarlet Evil Witching Black

that warm Greek Black metal sound is familiar, the evil atmosphere and more ritualistic feel though are new.

9. Abigor - Nachthymnen

Melodic and slightly symphonic black metal that ticks all the boxes.

8. Rhadamantys - Labyrinth of Thought

This one is just plain weird. Progressive metal is an apt descriptor here, death metal too but not in a blend you might expect.

7. Mork Gryning - Tusen Al Har Gott

Slightly raw, melodic, and sometimes almost folky black metal.

6. Blut Aus Nord - Ultima Thulee

Ah BAN truly the Vegemite of the metal world. The dissonant, atmospheric band they would become is but a background feature on this album adding to the sinister black metal sound rather than being the inst

5. Vader - De Profundis

Punishing death metal that really is relentless, imo their best album.

4. Ulver - Bergtat

Ok bias is definitely a contributing factor here. This was the first black metal album to really resonate with me. Folky and memorable with a healthy amount of melody .

3. Suffocation - Pierced From Within

these top three could have gone in any order really, punishing rips, crushingly heavy, absolutely relentless this was perhaps as extreme as death metal got at the time and while most brutal  DM bores me to tears I fucking love this album.

2. Dissection - Storm of the Lights Bane

Black metal is seldom this memorable, melodic, or heavy. Absolute perfection

1. Anathema - The Silent Enigma

If DoDS isn’t my favourite doom metal album Ten this most certainly is. Bleak, tortured, melancholic, heavy this is everything that makes  doom metal great.rument through which it is delivered as would be the case on their later albums. 

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        1995  

1. Darkthrone - Panzerfaust

2. Unanimated - Ancient God of Evil

Imprecation - Theurgia Goetia Summa

Necromantia - Scarlet Evil Witching Black

Dissection - Storm of the Light's Bane

Throne of Ahaz - Nifelheim

Driller Killer - Total Fucking Hate

Disfear - Soul Scars

Ritual - The Summoning

Summmoning - Minas Morgul

Misery - Who's the Fool

Usurper - Diabolosis

Barathrum - Eerie

Sodom - Masquerade in Blood

Vlad Tepes - March to the Black Holocaust

Monster Magnet - Dopes to Infinity

Cosmic Psychos - Self Totalled

L7 - Hungry for Stink

 


 

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1995

battles in the north by immortal

panzerfaust by darkthrone

in doloriam gloria by parnassus

the gallery by dark tranquility

 slaughter of the soul by at the gates

for all tid by dimmu borgir 

s/t by nifelheim (i am pretty sure it came out in '95)

........and the forests dream eternally by behemoth

octagon by bathory

the dawn of the blackhearts by mayhem

 

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1995...This turned out to be a harder year than I first expected

 

Scum – Purple Dragons and Magic Poems

Lord Belial – Kiss the Goat

Necromantia – Scarlet Evil, Witching Black

Gehenna – Seen Through the Veils of Darkness (The Second Spell)

Nåstrond – Toteslaut

Unanimated – Ancient God of Evil

Mutiilation – Vampires of Black Imperial Blood

Dissection – Storm of the Light’s Bane

Dominus – View to the Dim

Gorgon – The Lady Rides a Black Horse

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Behemoth - And the Forests Dream Eternally. I've never heard any 90' Behemoth before right now, the oldest one I'd previously heard was '04's Demigod and the newest one I've heard is '09's Evangelion. Not a fan of any of those 3 records so I never bothered to explore the band any further. I'd heard that they used to play black metal in their early years but this is the first time actually hearing any of it. Not bad, but it wouldn't have made my list.

 

Gorgon - The Lady Rides a Black Horse, this is really good, I should probably think about picking this one up. Problem I have with so much 90's black metal is the too thin production. This one's borderline, I could probably live with it. The more recent albums from this century just sound so much better to me, even when they're inetentionally doing the retro 90's sound. I've learned to live with the keys for the most part, although in Gehenna's case they got a bit carried away with it which caused me to drop them from my '95 list.

 

Lord Belial – Kiss the Goat, I have 2 Lord Belial albums and this ain't one of them. Pretty good as well, this one might even have made my list if I'd heard it before. I mean if we're kissing goats then you have my attention.

 

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2 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

Agreed...to play by the rules and do only 10, I had to clip out more than a few I'd have otherwise put on a 1995 list

Likewise, can’t believe sole of the albums I missed. Not sure I’m going to have many more lists though around the 2000’s my album collection thins out.

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3 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Likewise, can’t believe some of the albums I missed. Not sure I’m going to have many more lists though around the 2000’s my album collection thins out.

Well Blivvie we'll just have to remedy that. Black metal was just starting to get really good around the turn of the century. (imho of course) I'm sure you'll find some cool stuff on the rest of our lists, even though only a few of us seem to be playing along at home. 

I can tell you've been influenced by our old pal Blut aus Nerd because I'm always seeing you post albums that I associate with him. But then for all I know it could have been your tastes rubbing off on him. Either way I wish I could talk him into coming back here even on a part time basis, but no such luck so far.

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1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Black metal was just starting to get really good around the turn of the century.

Ugh...no. There's some obviously good albums in there, so finding 10 isn't exactly like pulling teeth, but I never thought it was a particularly great time for black metal either. I don't think things really got rolling again until maybe the midway point...and that's being kind of generous

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Well clearly you and I have different taste in black metal. Overall I'd say we do have a fair amount of overlap, but if we were to both drill down and make a list of our absolute unfuckwithable ride or die favorite black metal albums of all time I doubt that our top 20 would have more than 2 or 3 matches if that. Not that I'm complaining, that's a big part of the reason I enjoy having you on the board because you bring a lot of stuff to the table that I'm not familiar with, and you don't waste my time with all those rapid fire Kevballs bands that I could live without.  

My All Time Black Metal Top 20 wouldn't have many albums from the 1990's besides Blaze in the Northern Sky, Dawn of the Dying Sun, And So the Night Became, Slaughtersun Crown of the Triarchy, uh...I can't think of any others. Not saying there weren't many good black metal albums in the 90's because obviously there were, it's just that for me the 2000's completely blow them away. 

In the 2000's first of all we have Inquisition, Decayed and Morrigan which are all elite status bands for me. And all the Finnish bands all got going in the 2000's: Azaghal, Horna, Baptism, Behexen, Diaboli, Clandesine Blaze, Anal Blasphemy, Black Dawn, and of course Archgoat. BaN & DSO's best stuff was in the 2000's, and the Swedes got a bunch of bands going: Armagedda, Tsjuder, Avsky, Ofermod, Svartsyn, Setherial, Nidsang. There's more from Norway and Germany and Poland and France...but yeah all that 2000's stuff beats the pants off 99% of 90's black metal as far as I'm concerned.

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Nah...you're misunderstanding me...it's not that there isn't any good releases in the 2000's, like I said, you can find enough bands to make a list, but I'd hardly call the early 00's a great time for black metal....Yeah, the Polish and Finnish scene had some good releases...hell, there was some decent stuff coming out of the U.S. by then too, but if you really look at it, there was about a 5 year period where things were kind of slow. Even the bands who hung in from the 90's weren't necessarily putting out their best material during that first 1/2 a decade. I think you might be a little surprised on how few of your favorites came out between 2000 and 2005.

I mean, based on full length releases, BaN, Inquisition, Horna, Decayed, Svartsyn, and Setherial are all late 90's bands (and honestly, Setherial's best material was definitely their 90's output), while Avsky, Ofermod, Anal Blasphemy, Archgoat (who could technically be called a 90's band if you count demos) and Nidsang were all late 00's. (Black Dawn literally had one album and dropped off the planet for 15 years).

So, if we're talking back half of the 00's...yeah, I'd agree, it gets progressively better from there. Front half is sparse though.

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