AllMusic 2014 Year in Review
Favorite Metal Albums
Reliability was the name of the game in metal this year, with genre stalwarts like Behemoth, Crowbar and Mastodon delivering strong, true to form albums. Mainstream acts including Slipknot, Machine Head and Chevelle found ways to push forward, while more left-field bands like Cynic, Earth, Thou and Pallbearer waved their respective underground flags.
Colorado-based melodic death metal outfit Allegaeon make a creative breakthrough on their vigorous third album.
Tight, hard-grooving, fantasy-infused stoner rock from this Michigan four-piece who fly high on their second album.
Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry
The third volume in this ongoing series, 18 years or so after the first, is the most musically ambitious and sonically adventurous yet.
Split EP from two very different extreme French bands reveals the blackened bridge between them.
This always mercurial band ties together its muses, jumping nicely from dream pop to drone metal to screamo.
Chevelle's partnership with Tool and Isis producer Joe Barresi continues to pay dividends on the band's seventh album, La Gárgola.
The New Orleans sludge heroes' tenth album is a more brooding but no less heavy entry in the band's punishing discography.
Cynic continue to distance themselves from their early death metal leanings with an album of drifting and approachable prog rock.
The band delivers heaviness and melody on this bleak , sublime set with guest vocals form Mark Lanegan and Rabia Shaheen Qazi.
An evocative, brutal, wily, and occasionally wistful set of post-hardcore-, prog-metal-, and ambient pop-fueled confections.
The iconoclastic German "folk-metal" band are unbound by genre on their first new studio recording in 12 years.
A scorching set of punk-metal malevolence that somehow manages to be both relentlessly kinetic and imposingly muscular.
This San Francisco quartet up the creative ante, and deliver not only their finest record, but perhaps a game changer for metal.
The legendary Floor reunite on Oblation, an album of heavy drone-pop that more than lives up to the band's stellar debut.
Constricting Rage of the Merciless
Six albums in, the bayou-based black metal outfit is so dialed in that there may as well be nobody listening.
Godflesh return with their first album in 13 years with the devastating and minimal A World Lit Only by Fire.
On their third outing the Norwegian trio explore hard rock more aggressively than ever before, but maintain their ties to electric jazz.
Helms Alee deliver an impressive fusion of jangly rock and sludgy metal on their third album.
Thunderous sophomore release from these Scottish hard rockers is cosmic and brutally heavy at the same time.
This four-disc package contains two audio discs drawn from the 2011 London performances and two DVDs, including a feature-length biography.
This Norse sax-guitar-drums power trio delivers an exciting debut that walks the line between electric jazz, prog rock, and metal.
After three years and personnel changes, these Bay Area metallers deliver a provocative, musically and sonically ambitious set.
On its fifth -- and best -- full-length, the Swedish d-beat crustpunks keep the aggression level high while expanding their sonic reach.
The band moves deliberately toward hard rock with more crafted songwriting and hooks, but keeps their bag of enormous riffs intact
Sans strings and piano, the Japanese quartet unveil welcome, more sinister sonic aspects on their companion to The Last Dawn.
Members of His Hero Is Gone and Aldebaran tackle grim and gloomy death-doom on their debut outing.
![Bled White [LP]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0004168376/front/400/gm28t_czdFDre1Qcuh740oAf7E_1E-2MlBBPmPAXRBU=.jpg)
On its ninth effort, the Chicago band sums its musical history while pushing ever forward in a dark, aggressive, dynamic set.
The sophomore album by this Arkansas doom quartet reveals no slump. It builds on their successful debut and surpasses it creatively.
Brilliant and unexpectedly successful merger of blazing black metal and traditional Appalachian instrumentation.
Pilgrim revive the stark, glacial doom of bands like Candlemass on their second album, II: Void Worship.
Another seductively wild ride from one of heavy metal's last bands of purists.
The Skid Row singer comes back fast and furious on this album, featuring Guns N' Roses' Duff McKagan on bass.
A 40-minute bar fight soundtrack that offers up classic Sunset Strip sleaze metal with a Viking-punk twist.
Nikki Sixx's band moves away from darkness and into light with this stomping, glammy hard rock LP.
Slipknot deliver an emotional tribute to a fallen friend with their fifth studio album.
So meaty, melodic, and spilling over with Iron Maiden "guitarmonies" that it may as well have been released on cassette.
The Body collaborate with the Haxan Cloak on I Shall Die Here, an album of challenging sonic terror that looks to redefine doom.
Tightly wound, muscular, old-school screamo blasts of aggression with a punk-metal center.
The Shrine dig into the early days of punk and metal for inspiration on their reckless sophomore outing, Bless Off.
Thou return from a relatively slow period with an album of crushing doom with a warm shoegaze center.
Torch Runner's devastating third album proves that when it comes to catharsis, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Supergroup offers up another steaming plate of mammoth, meaty, and majestic, haters-be-damned prog rock goodness.
Various Artists
A Tribute to Ronnie James Dio: This Is Your Life
A fitting tribute to a heavy metal legend from friends, family, and (famous) fans.
JR Robinson and his large collective deliver a powerful new work that combines ambient, metal vanguard composition, and drones.