Album(s) of the Year: 2012

[kevdes93]

in no particular order

deftones - koi no yokan
meshuggah - koloss
converge - all we love we leave behind
greeley estates - the narrow road
shut in - old homes
tony danza tapdancing extravaganza - danza 4

 

[Somnium]

DEATH GRIPS

 

[linchpin]

Fear Factory - The Industrialist
Ill Nino - Epidemia
Cannibal Corpse - Torture
Deftones - Koi no Yokan
Lamb Of God - Resolution
Demon Hunter - True Defiance
Mnemic - Mnemesis
One way Mirror - Destructive by nature
Whitechapel - s/t
Meshuggah - Koloss

 

[3074326]

Periphery's album gets my vote.. I'm not getting tired of it and it's still in my ghetto six disc player.

Can't really think of any others I absolutely love.

 

[JonteJH]

Danza 4 and No love and the money store

 

[ilyti]

Holy cow, what a year!

Arjen Anthony Lucassen - Lost in the New Real (it takes a real miss for Arjen not to make my number 1 each year.)
Steve Vai - The Story of Light
Threshold - March of Progress
Ian Anderson - Thick as a Brick 2
Katatonia - Dead End Kings
Marco Sfogli - reMarcoble
Soen - Cognitive
Wintersun - Time I

Still haven't heard the Paul Gilbert album, but I am confident it will make my top 10.

Disappointments: (I'm not arguing anything here, if you liked them, great, I accept that. I just had different expectations)
Anathema - Weather Systems (I hoped the last album would get it out of their system, but this is even more in the same direction)
Meshuggah - Koloss (not that it was bad, it just didn't catch me)
Storm Corrosion (I liked the idea of what they set out to accomplish, just not the execution)

 

[blaaargh]

Samothrace - Reverence to Stone
Deathspell Omega - Drought
Death Grips - The Money Store
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Don't Bend, Ascend
Panopticon - Kentucky
Evoken - Atra Mors
Inverloch - Dusk Subsides
Agalloch - Faustian Echoes
Katatonia - Dead End Kings

Not sure about/haven't listened:
Death Grips - No Love Deep Web
White Hills - Frying on This Rock
Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction
Dragged Into Sunlight - Widowmaker
Neurosis - Honor Found Through Decay
Aesop Rock - Skelethon

 

[AdamMaz]

Best:

• Airiel - Kid Games EP
• Cannibal Corpse - Torture
• Conan - Monnos
• Hour of Penance - Sedition
• Lightfoils - Lightfoils EP
• Om - Advaitic Songs

Honorable Mentions:

• Asphyx - Deathammer
• Black Breath - Sentenced To Life
• Grave - Endless Procession of Souls
• Jeff Loomis - Plains of Oblivion

 

[simonXsludge]

Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Valborg - Nekrodepression
Deathspell Omega - Drought EP
Gaza - No Absolutes in Human Suffering
Blut aus Nord - 777 - Cosmosophy

 

[epsylon]

Deathspell Omega - Drought hands down for me.
Enslaved - RIITIIR comes close second, as well as TRAM - Lingua Franca (I'm rocking the TRAM "illuminati" hoodie at work right now and it makes a strong impression to my colleagues ).
Unfortunately, I've been kind of disappointed by the other releases for which I had high hopes, including Ihsahn (which is still good but much less than After imho), Katatonia (meh), Burzum (I really loved Belus and Fallen, but Umskiptar is mostly boring), Blut Aus Nord (I was kinda disappointed by Cosmosophy), Sybreed (awful )....
And moreover, 2011 was such a good year, that it was hard to top it off...

 

[celticelk]

Samothrace - Life's Trade

Did you mean Reverence to Stone? Life's Trade was released in '08.

 

[Don Vito]

Time 1 is the best album I've heard this year. Worth the wait.

 

[kerska]

Danza IIII.

 

[jawbreaker]

Hmmmmm.
In no order.
The Contortionist - Intrinsic
The Haarp Machine - Disclosure
Monuments - Gnosis
BTBAM - Parallax II
This Or The Apocalypse - Dead Years (BIG T.O.T.A fanboy)
Periphery - Periphery II
The Faceless - Autotheism
Resist The Thought - Sovereignty

More recently i've been jamming a lot of Intervals, so the honorable mention goes to
Intervals - In time

 

[Xiphos68]

Rush - Clockwork angels

Great album! I really enjoyed it.

This was my first Rush album purchase.

Headlong flight, BU2B, Caravan, and & Clockwork all great tunes.

This album had a "metal" edge to it as well.

 

[JouniK86]

Top8 (so far) in alphabetical order:

Between the Buried and Me - The Parallax II : Future Sequence
De Lirium's Order - Veniversum
Dian - Burn Together
Hexvessel - No Holier Temple
The Faceless - Autotheism
Meshuggah - Koloss
Periphery - II : This Time It's Personal
Swallow the Sun : Emerald Forest and the Blackbird

Few potential contenders to Top10, but haven't listened enough yet:
Anaal Nathrakh - Vanitas
Cryptopsy - Cryptopsy
Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage
Ground Frame - Worlds EP
Ihsahn - Eremita
Ne Obliviscaris - Portal of the I

Letdowns of the year:
The Devin Townsend Project - Epicloud
Katatonia - Dead End Kings
Jeff Loomis - Plains of Oblivion
The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet
Nile - At the Gates of Sethu
The Script - #3
Tesseract - Perspective EP

 

[Scattered Messiah]

Album of the Year:
Baroness - Yellow&Green

(veryvery) close contenders:
Dysrithmia - Test of Submission
Gojira - l'Enfant savage
Wintersun - Time I
Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pandora's Piñata
Deathspell Omega - Drought

 

[Varcolac]

Another vote for Wintersun here. Damn that album's good.

Ihsahn's Eremita is also a good contender. Doomy, jazzy, experimental, catchy and really rather excellent.

Then there's Propagandhi's Failed States. Far more punky, but one of my favourite bands ever and about the only people that could not only get people to sing along to lines like "a primordial flow across the blood-brain barrier," but make them freaking anthemic.

 

[MythicSquirrel]

Death Grips - The Money Store

Can't believe I forgot about The Money Store

 

[fps]

Baroness' new ones. I love them like I loved new music when I was 16. That just doesn't happen to me much any more.

Also fantastic were Orange Goblin- Eulogy Of The Damned and Cannibal Corpse- Torture.