As Metal Director/DJ at WRUV, plus owner of this website, I get sent a metric shit ton of new music every year. I was once able to house my entire MP3 collection on a 160 GB iPod Classic, but as the inevitable digital shift progressed, my virtual library grew exponentially.

The included list of bands are an alphabetical order by band name rather than order of appearance, either on the live show or on my list posted here on MindOverMetal.org… guess you’ll need to listen and/or read up to find out!

I thought continuing the top 13 was a good way to go, but for every album I thought of, a parallel arose. So the list turned out as it did (with top slots held by bands found on few metallic year-end lists). Plus more stuff came to mind in the process—perhaps categories will be in order next year.

James Malone is one of the finest songwriters of this generation. This man rewards time and again, across and between both songs and albums. On Arsis’ most accessible opus to date, Malone consciously draws attention to not only his entire body of work, but notably, his physical body.

The Black Dahlia Murder – Deflorate released September 15, 2009 on Metal Blade Melodic death metal bands akin to latter day Death or [insert Gothenburg thrash band here] have such challenging prerequisites and evolutionary expectations. This was the problem with TBDM for their last three albums: relentlessly indistinguishable cacophonies dominated. Their progressive absorption of talented metal musicians has helped. This is the second album with ex-All That Remains drummer Shannon Lucas, and replacing John Kempainen is guitarist Ryan Knight. His tenure with Arsis must have helped the band class up their craft, as their songs are more memorable than [...read more]

Arsis – “We Are the Nightmare” [Nuclear Blast] … quite simply the best Melodic Death Metal that America currently has to offer … the riffing: technical, but listenable; the vox: blackened, but understandable; the hooks: omnipresent, but craved … Virginia’s Arsis has certainly found their niche and their strongest album to date now has a label to match that might, casting an imposing shadow across the Metal landscape … a Best of 2008 pick! FCC OK … Try *1*, *2*, 3, 4, *5*, 7, *10* … 2008Apr15 01. We Are The Nightmare 02. Shattering The Spell 03. Sightless Wisdom [...read more]