Last week, Rolling Stone named their top 50 albums of the year. No big surprises, in that Keith Richards and James Taylor were up on the list. and one metal album, or arguably metal album, was. That album was Marilyn Manson’s The Pale Emperor, which also tops their just-published list on Rollingstone.com of the 20 best metal albums of 2015. Listen, we’re not here to bash Manson. As far as Marilyn Manson albums go, it’s the best he’s put out in years. It’s also less metal than anything he’s put out in a while too, though. There are tons more albums that we’d put before that, and the rest of the list is actually full of some pretty solid choices.
There are some obvious choices in there, like Slayer’s Repentless and Iron Maiden’s The Book of Souls, solid albums from heritage bands that the typical RS reader would be into, although this is the first “best-of” list that we’ve seen with Slayer on it. There are also a handful of other non-metal albums on the list, like Metz’s new one and Faith No More’s Sol Invictus. A few culprits that you’d expect, Deafheaven’s New Bermuda and High On Fire’s Luminiferous, showed up, as did a handful of ones you wouldn’t necessarily expect from as mainstream an outlet as RS, like Cloud Rat, Leviathan, Tau Cross and Bosse-De-Nage. In closing, it’s not the worst list ever, but we’d be hard-pressed to put Manson at the top. Here’s the full list:
20) Cloud Rat, Qliphoth
19) Ghost, Meliora
18) Clutch, Psychic Warfare
17) Deafheaven, New Bermuda
16) Lamb Of God, VII: Sturm Und Drang
15) Slayer, Repentless
14) Leviathan, Scar Sighted
13) Revenge, Behold. Total. Rejection.
12) Napalm Death, Apex Predator – Easy Meat
11) Metz, Metz II
10) Killing Joke, Pylon
9) Bosse-De-Nage, All Fours
8) Royal Thunder, Crooked Doors
7) Baroness, Purple
6) Refused, Freedom
5) Iron Maiden, The Book Of Souls
4) High On Fire, Luminiferous
3) Tau Cross, Tau Cross
2) Faith No More, Sol Invictus
1) Marilyn Manson, The Pale Emperor
