Well, here we are again. I said last year I wouldn’t do another list of honorable mentions because in the end it makes zero difference. I love every single album on this list, and you (or I) can easily swap out anything here with the ones that end up on my “official” (whatever that means) end of year list. It’s the celebration that matters, the joy in sharing what you loved and finding other discoveries that deepen your knowledge and appreciation of the form.
I used to limit this to 15 albums. That’s stupid. There’s so much I connected with this year when it comes to heavy music I want to share as much of it as I can with you1. So enough talk. Let’s dig in, alphabetical order except for the first one, because this is the first year in forever I don’t have Boris in my Top 25 so let’s address that and then get all the other great records out of the way.
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