Fifty years of metal, 50 best albums of the year. Note that in order to diversify the list I limited it to one album per band, otherwise there would have been too much Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

1.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

2.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

3.Deep Purple - Machine Head

4.Budgie - Never Turn Your Back On A Friend

5.Queen - Queen II

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1.Judas Priest - Sad Wings Of Destiny

2.Judas Priest - Nostradamus

3.Judas Priest - Jugulator

4.Judas Priest - Screaming For Vengeance

5.Judas Priest - Ram It Down

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To give you a sense of how much I hate Deathcore, the only Suicide Silence album I find to be passable is their self-titled. Even with better bands I still don't like their albums. For example, I like some songs by like Veil of Maya, but I only really liked entire albums after they changed style away from deathcore to something more like Periphery. That being said, there is a few deathcore albums I legitimately liked. Overall these bands are going to be on the lighter end of the genre, because the more extreme deathcore-ish bands that I like tend to actually be deathgrind, such as Benighted. I do find the oldschool deathcore bands like Despised Icon and The Red Chord to be okay, but I haven't really listened to them enough to see if they have albums I like as a whole. The bands who stood out enough to get me to listen to album tend to have experimental aspects that drew me in, these aspects typically make them less extreme by conventional standards as there is more to them than just shear brutality. Here they are are.

1.All Shall Perish - Awaken The Dreamers

2.Bring Me The Horizon - Count Your Blessings

3.Whitechapel - Mark Of The Blade

4.Betraying The Martyrs - Breathe In Life

5.Slice The Cake - Odyssey To The West

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Ten heavy metal holy cows that have contributed much less to metal than their popularity would suggest.

1.Ghost - Ripping Off Black Metal Aesthetics + Pop = Profit

2.Testament - Sorry, but Anthrax is the band which deserves the fourth spot in the big four

3.Cannibal Corpse - The point at which shock value in death metal became more important than actual music

4.Avenged Sevenfold - Talent wasted on a spastic Metallica wannabe

5.Mötley Crüe - The worst band in the worst subgenre of metal, they are known for hedonism rather than talent

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While the order in each decade is purely personal preference, there are several rules for a song qualifying for the list. First off, the band has to be notable. I'm not going to define what that means, but I'm sure you'd agree all the bands in the list are notable. There are plenty of riffs from obscure bands I'd rather put, but I know my love for Tarby doesn't make him the greatest riff maker of the 21st century. Second, each artist can only appear once in a decade, this is to prevent the best riff makers from hogging the list and adding some variety, showing how metal has changed over time. Decades are measured by when the song was recorded, not released, and when it's unclear the beginning of recording is used. This is mainly because a lot of definitive early metal songs were released in 1970, but recorded in 1969. Third, the song itself has to be notable. Here are things that can qualify as being notable: the song was release as a single, has music video made for it, was released as a single, was the title track for an album (note that Crawl through Knives meets this criteria because it was the original title for Come Clarity, and there is no way in hell Come Clarity is getting best riff of the decade ), is included on a greatest hits compilation album, was nominated for a Grammy or musical award of similar caliber, was included as a track in a notable film or video game, was covered by a notable band, or has a Wikipedia page for some miscellaneous reason. Finally, the song needs to be metal. Misirlou gets the pass despite predating metal as it was probably the single most influential song on the development of metal, and while many of the other songs in the other songs are better classified as hard rock, I can find a source listing them as heavy metal.

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2.King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King

3.Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

4.Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

5.Deep Purple - In Rock

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Bands who are known for incredibly monotonous riffs in their early albums, but proved to be distinguished riff makers later in their career.

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Nu metal is often berated for it's simple riffs, but compared to genres which don't share it's metal heritage it's always been riff driven. The purpose of this list is not to find the absolute best nu metal riffs, but emphasis the riffs in many classic nu metal songs.

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New is being defined as being forming within the new millennium, and continuing to create unique music in the current decade. Interesting is defined as being significantly unique, and I like them. This list is updated whenever I can think of five new bands that deserve mention.

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These guys can't really do the sing thing, but they try, and we love them anyway.

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Progressive metal has some of the most creative musicians in metal, but the tendency for progressive bands to make extremely long, technical songs with no sense of structure can be turnoff to some people, and often these bands take themselves too seriously, making them unenjoyable for people who like their metal to have some good rock n' roll fun. These bands frequently avoid such prog cliches, they are completely capable of writing a pop song without sacrificing complexity if they choose to, and weave a range of influences in creative and even fun ways.

1.Devin Townsend - Accelerated Evolution

2.Porcupine Tree - In Absentia

3.Toehider - What Kind Of Creature Am I?

4.Coheed and Cambria - Volume 4

5.Mastodon - Once More 'Round The Sun

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Another one of these, I guess it could be considered a bit of a follow up to the nu metal one, only this time it's for a genre known for it's vocal talent.

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Well, it's been over 8 years since their last album, at it this rate it may be over a decade. While we are waiting, here are some other bands with a similar sound to check out. Also don't forget to check out Maynard's other projects, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer.

1.Soen - Cognitive

2.Deftones - White Pony

3.Karnivool - Sound Awake

4.Chevelle - Point No. 1

5.September Sky - Bright Sides to Dark Days

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I wanted to write a bit more about each singer, but I only had so much room on each line.

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So here are ten alternative metal albums which I think are significant to defining the sound of alternative metal over the years, limiting it to one album per band and keeping to albums that are best described as alternative metal as opposed to subgenres like industrial or nu metal. I've also included what I consider to be the most important song from each album, even if it's not the best representative of the albums sound.

1.Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking

2.Faith No More - Angel Dust

3.Helmet - Meantime

4.Alice In Chains - Dirt

5.Tool - Undertow

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