EDWIN'S TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2022

I’ve come to terms with the fact that a top ten best albums of any year list made by independent content creators and bloggers pretty much consists of the ten newest albums by their favorite artists. See, I get that. That’s exactly what I do; I just throw the newest album by my favorite bands into a top ten list and try to find a few oddball choices, so my list isn’t like everybody else’s. I understand that I’ll never listen to every album of every year, so a true and honest top ten best albums list is, of course, impossible.

But, what I’m impressed by are all the content creators and bloggers who make their top ten lists from hundreds and hundreds of new releases that they actually went out and purchased. In most cases, when people review albums, they probably just download ‘em or listen to ‘em on Youtube. Where are the stakes in that? On the other hand, I see these content creators, who from my understanding, aren’t making a living from their Youtube channels, producing the physical copies of new releases, particular Pete Pardo at Sea of Tranquility and Wyattxhim, both of whom influenced my purchasing and listing choices on this here top ten list. What kind of day jobs do you guys have?

I mean, I get a bunch of new releases too, but it’s really hard to keep up such an intense buying and listening pace when you have, ya know, work, a social life, and other stuff you spend money on; especially when you’re discovering older bands as well! I mean, Christ, I just discovered JACK STARR'S BURNING STARR from the Metal School channel a couple days ago, and they also released an album in 2022! So, it’s like I’m burning the candle at both ends!

Furthermore, just because I purchased an album doesn’t mean it’s a top ten contender. For instance, I had a lot of hope for Cycle of Contempt, the first release from RAZOR since 1997, and, gotta say, as much as I think Dave Carlo is a badass dude, this new Razor album is, well, uh… I’ll stick with classics like Evil Invaders, Malicious Intent, and Shotgun Justice. Similarly, I was tempted to place Hate Uber Alles by KREATOR on this list because I was having trouble finding other stuff to put on it. But then I thought, eh, it’s pretty good, sure, but I like their previous album, Gods of Violence, from 2017 way more, I can’t in good conscience put this new one in my top ten; even if the opening track pays homage to Sergio Corbucci.

And, of course, there are many albums that I simply didn’t get around to hearing. Upon eventually doing so, I might regret not putting them in my top ten; such as the latest from QUEENSRYCHE, which I ordered because Pete Pardo and my buddy Pete recommended it to me so much.

But, here’s something I don’t understand; why is the new MEGADETH album so much cheaper and easier to purchase than the latest one from GRAND BELIAL'S KEY? Ha, Ha,Ha! Isn't that hilarious??!!

10. Saxon – Carpe Diem

I pushed the latest album from SAXON to the back of the queue because of that song “Remember the Fallen”, where they make Covid sound like World War II. They’re lucky I even put them on the list at all with such a ridiculously silly song. But, nah, Saxon still rules, and Biff Byford is my boy with that unique, untrained singing voice of his that sounds like literally no other singer in rock or metal. Initially I was deathly scared that the release of their covers album, Inspirations, from 2021 was a signal that they were planning on retiring the way UFO and KROKUS did. But they were back in 2022 with Carpe Diem, and it’s exactly what you should want and expect from a late period or, really, any period Saxon album; a collection of ten tight, compact, and catchy metal tunes with big choruses and terrific yet economic guitar work from Paul Quinn and Nigel Glockler that blazes by in 40 minutes, provoking you to start the CD over again once it’s over. Occult and fantasy themes from this classic metal band? Hell no! They sing about far more bad ass stuff, like the industrial revolution and big, bouncy balls that go boom! But, if you want an even more in depth description of Carpe Diem, don’t be a lazy ass and check out my original review!

9. Negative Plane – The Pact…

My token “extreme metal” entry in my top ten best albums list. Man, thank goodness I haven’t heard the new WATAIN album yet, else I might have included it, and the black metal kids would call me a poser and fake, because apparently Watain is a “poser” band, even though they are pretty damn good, and I don’t get why they’re hated so much. And, I didn’t feel like adding the new IMMOLATION album, since I’m not the biggest death metal guy either, even if the album is totally solid. Anyway The Pact… is the kind of “extreme metal” I love; the non-extreme kind! You might be like, wtf, bro! But, of course, as a boomer in a millennial’s body, I still like my hooks, melodies, good production, and lyrics that you can halfway understand. So, though I love my share of black metal and death metal, I prefer the stuff on the more melodic and accessible edge, like melodic and progressive death metal like CARCASS and ATHEIST or punk-thrash black metal like IMPALED NAZARENE, NECROPHOBIC, and NIFELHEIM; as opposed to that Godawful “war-metal” blastbeat ‘n’ shit production crap like PROCLAMATION. But, The Pact… isn’t even as extreme as early KREATOR, SODOM, or ONSLAUGHT! And the vocals sound exactly like Sy Keeler, the second singer of Onslaught, while the music has lots of SLAYER, MAIDEN, and RUNNING WILD riffs with a few blastbeats in really long songs, and it’s catchy. Yet, for some reason, it’s called black metal, The Pact… is the third album of a super prolific career that dates back to 2001, the band members are called Nameless Void, Bestial Devotion, Diabolic Gulgalta, and Thammuz, and there’s a song on The Pact… called “Even the Devil Goes into the Church”, which I’m guessing was inspired by “Even the Devil Believes” by STRYPER.

8. Venom Inc. – There’s Only Black

I actually was kinda disappointed with the second VENOM INC. album when I first heard it. Original drummer Tony “Abaddon” Bray has been replaced by some guy named Jeramie “War Machine” Kling, and the goodtime, “black ‘n’ roll”, Satanic whimsy from their 2017 debut album Avé seems to have taken a backseat to more brutal black-thrash in the vein of early SODOM, DESTRUCTION, or BATHORY. But I eventually accepted this more aggressive approach, because, hey, the songs still kick mucho ass, and I gotta hand it to Jeff “Mantas” Dunn for becoming a more technically proficient guitarist, who can still write catchy and killer riffs. And bassist/singer Tony “Demolition Man” Dolan, who ingratiated himself to the Venom world on the underrated albums Prime Evil (1989), Temples of Ice (1991), and The Waste Lands (1992), still has plenty of that eeeevil personality to keep the songs fun, even if some of them seem a little too tight and, well, serious, for Venom 2.0.

7. Birth – Born

Woah, look! It’s a debut album by a new band! Okay, granted, it’s a new band that consists of two members from an older band, specifically, keyboardist/singer Conor Riley and guitarist/keyboardist Brian Ellis from 70s spacey, Moog prog revivalists ASTRA, who I absolutely love. But even Astra isn’t that old. I mean, in this day and age, if a musician started his career in the early 2010s, he’s still relatively new. What does BIRTH sound like? More 70s style space-Moog prog. The album’s got six songs, clocks in at 41 minutes long, has a really neat psychedelic album cover, alternates between soft acoustic parts and big, loud, heavy crescendos, is full of complicated time changes, and more or less sounds like NEKTAR or BIRTH CONTROL or NIGHT SUN or ELOY or Todd Rundgren’s UTOPIA or some other heavy prog band from the early 70s. If you’re into that type of stuff, you’ll love this.

6. Stryper – The Final Battle

Well, hopefully it’s not their final album. I found it hilarious and awesome that STRYPER got number one slot for best album in The Metal Voice’s reader year end polls. Boy did that piss people off. Ya know what’s kinda funny? Stryper might not even be the best Christian metal band out there. There are so damn many of them with names like DEMON HUNTER, THEOCRACY, and DELIVERANCE, that Stryper might merely be the tip of the iceberg of a pretty righteous and vibrant scene. And, maybe within the Christian metal polls, The Final Battle by Stryper didn’t even make someone’s top ten. Whatever. In case you didn’t know, Stryper has been on a roll with their brand of traditional and power-metal from their latest batch of albums. If you remember them as the cheesy 80s glam metal band with songs like “Calling on You”, then you’re missing out if you don’t give their latest material a chance; assuming you like traditional and power-metal. As one of my FB buddies opined, “That’s not the Stryper I remember!” God fuuuu-- errr, freaking bless!

5. Blind Guardian – The God Machine

Someone must have called Hansi and his boys a bunch of nerds, because the latest BLIND GUARDIAN album seems to be attempting to bring back some of that more aggressive, thrash-influenced sound from the band’s earlier albums. I suppose Blind Guardian will always be known as a power metal band, a stigma in some metal circles that goof on the GANDALF/D&D/CONAN/EPIC shit, and Hansi is kind of a bitch for throwing his boy Jon Schaffer under the bus, but this time around the group has decorated their album with what looks like H.R. Giger art or the Cenobites from Hellraiser, and the lyrics have some sort of ancient alien and conspiracy themes going through them. Plus the members of the band are dressed like the Men in Black on the inside. Oh, wait, there’s a song called “Blood of the Elves.” I guess they’re still a bunch of nerds.

4. Candlemass – Sweet Evil Sun

Does this even count as doom metal? But that’s why I love CANDLEMASS… and hate doom metal. Okay, I don’t hate doom metal; I just hate bands that play reeeeeally sloooooowww and don’t rock at all. No, no, I realize that Candlemass were one of the leading bands of first wave doom metal, and their early stuff could be pretty slow. But first wave doom metal wasn’t a contest in who could put their audience to sleep the quickest, and Candlemass had something called dynamics, along with dual guitar interplay, hooks, and melodies. In other words, they just play good ol’ fashioned 70s style hard rock and heavy metal and just happen to have BLACK SABBATH as their primary influence. Anyway, Sweet Evil Sun is the second album since Johan Langquist, the singer from their 1986 debut album, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, officially joined the band for 2019’s The Door to Doom. And, yeah, I guess there are still those slow, crushing, Sabbath-influenced riffs, but then they have other parts and other riffs that aren’t super slow, along with some BLUE CHEER in there too, so that the album totally rocks and isn’t boring as shit, like the unfathomably overrated ELECTRIC WIZARD, who suck ass. And the song “Devil Voodoo” isn’t slow at all! Well, it’s not that fast either, but you get my point.

3. Voivod – Synchro Anarchy

VOIVOD is one of my favorite bands, so it should be no surprise to anybody who knows me that I will always find a place for them in a top ten best albums of any given year list; unless that year happens to be 2003, 2006, or 2009, and their bassist is a former member of FLOTSAM AND JETSAM and METALLICA, but that’s another story. What’s also crazy, though, is that, in the period of time from when I bought the most recent Voivod album, my buddy Christian introduced me to former Voivod bassist Eric “E-Force” Forest’s band that’s curiously called E-FORCE, and they are AWESOME. In fact, I wish their latest album, Mindbender, had come out in 2022 rather than 2021, so I could include it on this list. In my estimation, E-Force is another criminally underreported and underrated underground sensation that needs to increase the size of its cult (CVLT?) ASAP. But, I digress. Read my original review of Synchro Anarchy to know what I love so much about Voivod, and why, of course, they can never become anything more than a well-loved cult band themselves; in short, they’re too prog for the metal crowd and too metal for prog geeks. And Synchro Anarchy is Voivod to a fault, with its super tight and technical mix of KING-CRIMSON-style guitar work, thrash breaks, herky-jerky time signatures, psychedelic textures, and science fiction themes; that’s a good fault, mind you. The current line-up of Snake on vocals, Chewie on guitar, Rocky on bass, and Away on drums carries the torch in spite of being half the original band, and Snake is wearing a VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR t-shirt on the back of the album.

2. Scorpions – Rock Believer

Like a total dumbass, I neglected to mention in my original review for the latest SCORPIONS album that its title actually comes from the song “Steamrock Fever”, the first track on the Scorpions’ 1977 album, Taken by Force. That, along with the vintage looking cover, should give a pretty strong indication of what kind of album Rock Believer is. The Scorpions had already “returned to rock” on their 2010 album Sting in the Tail after roughly two decades of experiments in alternative rock, alternative metal, re-recording old songs with an orchestra, and even doing the “unplugged” thing. And they continued knocking out classic, 80s-sounding cock rock anthems on the awesome follow-up Return to Forever in 2015. But on the group’s latest release, Rock Believer, it would appear as though the band is now going back even further to their sound before they started writing those really big arena metal anthems that made them one of the biggest bands in the world. I think that probably had something to do with recruiting former KING DIAMOND/DON DOKKEN/ MOTÖRHEAD drummer Mikkey Dee and just a desire to appease the kids who only listen to the Uli Jon Roth or the earliest of Matthias Jabs stuff. Whatever the case may be, the album rocks ass, Klaus Mein’s voice hasn’t aged a bit, and the Scorpions are doing the kinds of songs they haven’t done since the Lovedrive album; check out “Shining of Your Soul” for a perfect example. But, even if it wasn’t a throwback to pre-Blackout Scorpions, it’s still the Scorpions, one of the most consistently amazing, rock-out-with-your-cock-out bands on this planet. And, when they release an album every few years, it should make the top ten of any reviewers list; not that British band that released the 82-minute snooze-fest last year and that everyone feels obligated to like even though it sucks. As a side note, just to show how “objective” I am, I didn’t feel I could put the latest MICHAEL SCHENKER GROUP release, Universal, on this list, because I just didn’t feel it was top ten material either, even if it would have been bad ass to represent both Schenker brothers, and I’m a fairly hardcore Michael Schenker fan.

1. Wolf –Shadowland

I basically feel there’s the WOLF/HIGH ON FIRE dichotomy. You might be wondering, what the hell that is. Look, I’m not dissing or hating on High on Fire. In fact, I’m still a fan of that band, but there’s a great meme going around that says High on Fire are just power metal for stoners. Make that power metal for stoners and hipsters. See, Wolf and High on Fire more or less started around the same time, the end of the 90s and/or beginning of the 00s, and I think there’s a parallel development, where High on Fire were part of the hip stoner/doom/sludge marijuana metal contingent, and became Pitchfork/Hipster darlings, along with MASTODON, the whole of the Savannah, GA sludge metal scene, SUNN O))) and other bands in that awful “drone metal” subgenre, and anything on either the Relapse, Southern Lord, Peaceville, and Season of Mist labels. Meanwhile, labels like Metal Blade, SPV, AFM, Century Media, and Nuclear Blast released the other kind of metal, the kind that Wolf belonged to, the kind with the singers who can sing and has the big choruses, dual harmonized guitar solos, grand epic themes, and was still considered uncool nerdy shit from the 80s that you could only like as a joke.

But what I find ironic is that, High on Fire jettisoned their original sludgy sound on their first two albums for a more straight-ahead, rockin’, head-banging delivery on their 2005 album, Blessed Black Wings, which might or might not have had its title inspired by the second Wolf album, Black Wings, yet still kept one foot planted in hipster world by having it produced by Steve Albini, thus becoming the hipsters’ token “rockin’” band.

I too was once part of this sect of “hipster metal heads”, but I’ve since corrected my ways, giving away all of my Sunn O))) albums, debating selling off a good chunk of my MELVINS albums, not having touched my NEUROSIS albums in years, and regretting that I didn’t get into Wolf back at the beginning of their career, partly because their first album is out of print and ass expensive on discogs! But, let it be known that Sweden’s mighty Wolf, led by only original member, guitarist/singer/songwriter Niklas Stålvind, is probably the catalyst for this New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal and that they are the best metal band of the last two decades. Their newest release, Shadowland, only further bolsters that claim.

That is, of course, if your measurement of best metal band of the last two decades is a band that has the ability to write incredibly catchy and memorable songs that absorb the influences of the who’s-who of classic metal without sounding like any specific band, and doing it consistently, over and over again. Granted, they began their career as a better than average MAIDEN clone on their first two albums, Wolf (2000) and Black Wings (2002), but quickly developed their own style on their third release, Evil Star in 2004, and perfected it with the masterpiece and Century Media debut, The Black Flame in 2006.

Since then, Wolf released five more albums and went through several line-up changes – currently Niklas Stålvind is joined by lead guitarist Simon Johansson, bassist Pontus Egberg, and drummer Johan Koleberg – unleashing a consistent torrent of infallible, melodic, hooky, old school, traditional heavy metal; with their latest album obviously being 2022’s Shadowland. And, yet, still, in spite being on such a big label and being the best metal band of the last two decades, Wolf remains only liked by a few hardcore fans. It’s a shame, it sucks, the world isn’t fair, and more people should be into this phenomenal band.

And if a song like, say, “Visions for the Blind” doesn’t make you a Wolf convert, then go back to your sorry ass GHOST. You’re not worthy of Wolf.

Edwin Oslan
Revenge of Riff Raff

7th January, 2023