My favorite (thus the best) album (NOT necessarily metal) of each year I've been alive. Any description I give is only my opinion (obviously).

1. Swans - Children of God

2. Bathory - Blood Fire Death

3. Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine

4. Bad Religion - Against The Grain

5. Slint - Spiderland

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These are the albums I've listened to the whole way through at least twice from 2013. I don't tend to listen to a bunch of shit I don't want to listen to so this list is generally confined to bands/albums that pique my interest somehow. Feel free to toss recommendations my way.

1. Wormlust - The Feral Wisdom

2. Apocynthion - Sidereus Nuncius

3. Regarde Les Hommes Tomber - Regarde Les Hommes Tomber

4. Alkahest - Churning The Ocean

5. Eibon - II

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Beware of contact high and feelings of severe misanthropy.

1. Acid Witch - Stoned

2. Ancestors - In Dreams and Time

3. Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

4. Bongripper - Hippie Killer

5. Dirge - Elysian Magnetic Fields

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In the years since I began listening to metal, black metal has become my go-to genre. The despair, anger, dissonance, experimentation, beauty, passion and hatred are second to none. These are the albums which sit at the forefront of my listening experience.

1. Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

2. Agrypnie - Exit

3. Bathory - Blood Fire Death

4. Blut Aus Nord - Odinist - The Destruction of Reason By Illumination

5. Burzum - Det Som Engang Var

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This is the cream of the crop of what I've heard from the previous decade. Good times.

1. Isis - Oceanic

2. Agalloch - The Mantle

3. Drudkh - Autumn Aurora

4. Deathspell Omega - Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice

5. Opeth - Blackwater Park

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1. Deathspell Omega - Paracletus

2. Agalloch - Marrow of The Spirit

3. Intronaut - Valley of Smoke

4. October Falls - A Collapse of Faith

5. Bongripper - Satan Worshipping Doom

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I'm still catching up on 2011 while putting together my 2012 list. Here's what I've heard from 2011. This is bound to change a bit as I re-listen to these albums with a more critical ear and discover albums I missed entirely.

1. Deafheaven - Roads To Judah

2. Cormorant - Dwellings

3. Sleestak - The Fall of Altrusia

4. Dirge - Elysian Magnetic Fields

5. Falls of Rauros - The Light That Dwells In Rotten Wood

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While I'm slightly disappointed the world didn't end this year, I thought I'd share my musical tastes from throughout the year by arbitrarily ranking other people's art. When the year began I was really into sludge and stoner but as the year has worn on, it's been the black metal releases which by and large have won my attention and appreciation.

1. Royal Thunder - CVI

2. Ancestors - In Dreams and Time

3. Merrimack - The Acausal Mass

4. Hail Spirit Noir - Pneuma

5. Hidden Orchestra - Archipelago

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