The metal world is seemingly dripping with bands with pine tree album artwork and stories of a lost past. The sub-genre, one of my favorites, is indeed experiencing a golden age – but along with any great harvest comes the risk of overabundance. In this case, however, it was hard to resist including one of the beacons of atmospheric black metal. Selecting number 15 might actually be more difficult than the top choice, as it involves the painful matter of deciding what bands to cut off from any change of inclusion. Want an easy way to listen to all of these great albums? Check out my 2016 Spotify playlist! If you were looking to me for some insight/comfort/cynicism around the non-metal events of the year, I'd redirect you elsewhere.
As with previous years, I’ve attached a list of five songs to call out as favorites, even if I found their albums "good" rather than "great." Add an alternative heavyweight here, an unexpected death metal ripper there, and you have my year in music. Most of my listening clustered around black metal and grind-influenced hardcore (as usual). So with that in mind, here are my favorite albums of 2016. And as the knowledge of classic black, death and doom metal bands flourishes among the metal audience, the quality of the scene increases with it. This allows artists to take greater creative risks, without feeling the squeeze of fad-driven market forces.
On the flipside, more and more musicians are coming to terms with the fact that day jobs are a necessary part of surviving while playing a specialized form of music. From an economic perspective, the music industry has begun to stabilize around streams and vinyl sales, which could help yield a steadier/healthier cash flow for metal and hardcore. There are enough passionate listeners discovering this music every day to keep it alive for years to come. No art form can maintain its peak novelty status forever (early-1991 in the case of metal).
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