Top 25 Metal Albums of 2015 - Jay

Wow, pretty great year...up until Lemmy died. Amorphis and Cattle Decapitation released utterly addictive albums, the Vanden Plas release might be their best yet (Goddammit, more people need to listen to them), and Bell Witch dropped a nuclear bomb on the doom crowd, setting a new bar for that whole sub-genre. I saw King Diamond live, shamefully for the first time, but the hands-down best show I witnessed was the aforementioned Bell Witch...who oozed through a flawless set at Oakland Metro Operahouse. I made some cool discoveries in Chapel of Disease, Cretus, and Slugdge, and even Slayer released a good record. My only list regret is that I couldn't quite fit the Children of Bodom album in there somewhere - I think it's really solid; oh well, call it an honorable mention. 

As ever, my list is all opinion with no facts, but a couple weeks after putting it together I still feel good about my choice of order. Good fucking year. - Jay

#25 Elder Lore	#24 Tribulation The Children of the Night	#23 Nile What Should Not Be Unearthed
#22 Slayer Repentless	#21 Immortal Bird Empress/Abscess	#20 Ereb Altor Nattramn
#19 Myrkur M	#18 High On Fire Luminiferous	#17 Alkaloid The Malkuth Grimoire
#16 Monster Magnet Cobras and Fire	#15 Mutoid Man Bleeder	#14 Tau Cross Tau Cross
#13 Vattnet Viskar Settler	#12 Chapel of Disease The Mysterious Ways of Repetitive Art	#11 Swallow the Sun Songs from the North 1,2,3
#10 Sulphur Aeon Gateway to the Antisphere	#9 Cretus Dux Mea Lux	#8 Enslaved In Times
#7 Arcturus Arcturian	#6 Slugdge Dim and Slimeridden Kingdoms	#5 Ahab The Boats of the Glen Carrig
#4 Cattle Decapitation The Anthropocene Extinction	#3 Vanden Plas Chronicles of the Immortals 2	#2 Amorphis Under the Red Cloud
	#1 Bell Witch Four Phantoms

HONORABLE MENTIONS

• Act of Defiance - Birth and the Burial
• Children of Bodom - I Worship Chaos
• Draconian - Sovran
• Horrendous - Anareta
• Intronaut - The Direction of Last Things
• Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower