Listapaloozamania Ends Now!
Merry Christmas freaks! It’s been an, uh, interesting year. We sincerely thank each and every one of you who listen to this podcast and support us in any way. It is a fair amount of work, but even more fun, and it means a lot that we have all of you enjoying it! So thanks again being with us in 2016, and we look forward to a (hopefully better) 2017! And now, enjoy our top albums of the year!!
P.S. As you heard last week, in this episode and may have read in comments recently, Nick and I overlooked a few releases when talking about Most Disappointing, Best Debut, etc. You should know by now we aren’t always the sharpest crayons in the box. Well, adding to that list, we neglected to mention an EP we both enjoyed – Welcome to Poetry 201 by The Nietzsche. (Check out our 4 star review HERE if you missed it.) Sorry about that guys!
- Every Time I Die – Low Teens
- Nails – You Will Never Be One Of Us
- Car Bomb – Meta
- Meshuggah – The Violent Sleep Of Reason
- Textures – Phenotype
- Trap Them – Crown Feral
- Anciients – Voice Of The Void
- Bury Tomorrow – Earthbound
- Norma Jean – Polar Similar
- Dark Tranquility – Atoma
- Toothgrinder – Nocturnal Masquerade
- Red Fang – Only Ghosts
- Polar – No Cure, No Saviour
- Enthean – Priests of Annihilation
- Virvum – Illuminance
- Amon Amarth – Jomsviking
- Gojira – Magma
- Castle – Welcome To The Graveyard
- The Dillinger Escape Plan – Dissociation
- Deviant Process – Paroxysm
- Katatonia – The Fall Of Hearts
- Periphery – Periphery III: Select Difficulty
- Mantar – Ode to the Flame
- Goes Cube – Shadows Swallowed the Flood
- Tombs – All Empires Fall
The Sideshow Podcast 
Overall, the year in metal 2016 has been a mixed bag. On the plus side for 2016, two things stand out. First is tech death. I listened to 11 tech death albums released in 2016 that I would rate a 4 or a 5.
The second plus of 2016 was the consistency of good albums released throughout the year. In the past, I’ve ranted about metal labels needing to spread out their releases better. In 2016, they listened. I feel like from the end of January with Abbath to the end of November with Metallica, there was always an album being released that I wanted to listen to. The previous few years saw a very light number of good releases before summer.
I think what 2016 lacked is many really killer, game changing albums. There were lots of good albums, but nothing truly belonging to the category of an all time classic. I would argue that for Nails, their game changers were their previous 2 albums, even if YWNBOOU is a very good album. Previous years saw albums from Cattle Decapitation and The Ocean and Ne Obliviscaris that were game changers for me. Nothing in came out in 2016 to make me think that metal is moving in new directions or expanding boundaries.
I’ve started listening to Hunted by Khemmis. It’s good. To call it doom doesn’t do it justice. One or two of the songs are not doomy at all (and there are only 5 songs) and the rest are more of a stoner fuzzy tone mixed with traditional metal (Sabbath/Priest) riffing. Maybe call it Doom ‘n Roll? It would definitely have cracked a top 20 list for me.
Overall a good list from you guys and well done on another successful year. But did I miss you mention Weekend Nachos?!?! I can certainly see liking Nails more, but Weekend Nachos not even being in your top 25 seems very surprising. Especially since I seem to recall Nick saying that for the previous albums from these 2 bands he liked Weekend Nachos better.
Nick did say that but I didn’t put it in my top 20. It’s good, but there is way more slow parts than I want from a powerviolence album.
For Weekend Nachos, I make no apologies for saying that the slow parts on Apology are the best parts.
It was on my list, but the way the combined list numbers stacked up, it didn’t make our merged list. Don’t worry – it wasn’t forgotten!
-n