It’s the most wonderful time of the year… if you like lists. Yep, December is when publications start releasing their favorite music released in the past eleven months, and while 2016 has been a motherfucker of a year, there’s also been some pretty great music to come from it. And while we’ve already gotten top picks from Decibel, but now some more mainstream outlets are starting to weigh in, which is always fun. For the most part, smart people with good taste are allowed to weigh in, because no one would want a pop critic to choose music that’s outside of what they listen to. And while we’ll continue to bring you those lists, as well as those of our own contributors and picks from the people that made the music itself, Rolling Stone has one notable metal track among their top 50 songs of the year, and Consequence of Sound has listed their top ten albums of the year.
First off, Rolling Stone picked Cobalt’s “Beast Whip” as the 29th best song of 2016. It’s a pretty ballsy pick, in that there are far more obvious picks for a magazine like RS to single out. In a year where Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth all put out albums, this is pretty underground for them. Granted, Cobalt’s Slow Forever is going to be on a lot of lists. The reborn duo hadn’t released an album in seven years, and along with Hardwired… To Self Destruct, has given us two essential double albums in a year where there are often none.
Cobalt is absent from Consequence of Sound‘s list, but there’s plenty of other music on there, much of it equally non-mainstream. Astronoid, who will be on this writer’s list, leads it off, and seeing Eight Bells and Oathbreaker on the list also shows that CoS know what they’re talking about. It’s the first #1 we’ve seen for The Body as well. Deftones and Gojira are really the only nods to mainstream metal, even though the majority of indie-rockers that frequent Consequence probably still aren’t familiar with Gojira. Check out their reasoning behind their top ten here.
10) Astronoid, Air
9) Oathbreaker, Rheia
8) Ustalost, The Spoor of Vipers
7) Eight Bells, Hating
6) Khemmis, Hunted
5) Mizmor, Yodh
4) Alcest, Kodama
3) Deftones, Gore
2) Gojira, Magma
1) The Body, No One Deserves Happiness
