Revolvers Top 20 Albums Of 2008

Revolver Magazine’s Top 20 Albums Of 2008. I bought the new issue of Revolver today and I’ve only had a quick chance to thumb through it, but it’s a pretty good issue. Surprisingly, I agree with most of it and a lot of it was on my Top 10 Albums of ‘08. It starts out a bit rough as I stated awhile back. On some of these I comment on and the ones I don’t comment on at all are the ones that I either have not heard or have not heard enough to have an opinion on.

Revolver Magazine’s Top 20 Albums of 2008

1. Metallica – Death Magnetic: I’ve bitched about this enough, really. They attempt to bring up some valid points as to why they named it number one, but I still feel it’s not a good enough comeback for Metallica to be named on anyone’s number one album of the year.
2. Gojira – The Way Of All Flesh: Should have been number one. Enough said.
3. Slipknot – All Hope Is Gone: Not even top ten material in my opinion. Not for 2008.
4. Testament -The Formation Of Damnation: A great return for the thrash veterans. I still don’t have enough of their old albums though.
5. Made Out Of Babies – The Ruiner
6. Nachtmystium – Assasins: Black Meddle, Part 1: I’ve heard mostly good things about this album and only sampled a few tracks. I’ll have to give this a better listen.
7. Amon Amarth – Twilight Of The Thunder God: A great follow up to With Oden On Our Side. Nothing groundbreaking, different or progressive from their last album but still fun, heavy metal.
8. Meshuggah – Obzen: Finally picked this up today and it might have made my top 10 had I bought it when it was released.
9. Torche – Meanderthal: Revolver always pushes the envelope on what is and what’s not metal. While most agree that it’s not quite metal, it still kicks ass! If you haven’t checked out this album yet then you are doing yourself a huge injustice.
10. Opeth – Watershed: I think I’ve kissed enough Opeth ass since buying this and every other album they’ve released.
11. Kingdom Of Sorrow: I love Hatebreed but this has yet to grow on me. Then again I have only heard two songs on XM radio. Neither of which I can remember the names of either one.
12. This Comp Kills Fascists Vol. 1: No clue
13. Nine Inch Nails – The Slip: Not a big NIN fan so I haven’t heard a note of this.
14. Enslaved – Vertebrae: I’m tired of hearing people tell me how great this is, yet I never see it in stores. Perhaps an itunes DL is in order.
15. United Nations – United Nations
16. Warbringer – War Without End: I appreciate every band that tries to resurrect old school thrash but I just don’t hear anything that I’ve really, truly been impressed with. To me it seems like they are all trying way too hard to play the sound and the image. We’ve all been screaming “What ever happened to that old school thrash sound?”. Then bands started popping up left and right. I’m not picking on Warbringer because they almost have me…but not quite.
17. Genghis Tron – Board Up The House
18. Century – Back Ocean: Awful, just damn awful. Words can not express how much I dislike this album.
19. Whitechapel – This Is Exile: I loved this the first few times I heard it. After that it just didn’t quite appeal to me. It’s heavy and dirty but it doesn’t have that lasting effect on me.
20. The Sword – Gods Of The Earth: Good ole guitar driven metal. Riffs, Riffs and more riffs. That’s what we came to expect after Age Of Winters. Amazing live band.

Overall, I think most would agree that this is a semi-respectable list considering it’s from a mainstream magazine. Of course there were so many great albums that came out last year and I think Revolver would rather keep the list with bands people have mostly heard of.

Image: Photo © Metal Martyr 2009