2022 CLOSE BUT NO CIGARS

What Mariangela Demurtas did next after she was ousted/left Tristania. It’s pleasant enough eighties-tinged gothic rock. Essentially what the Sisters would have sounded like if Patricia handled all the vocals.

Brutal uncompromising death metal from the states. Lacked enough variation or originality to rise above the din.

By a long shot the best thing she has done since her astonishing 2010 release “Stridulum II”. But I am not sure if I have moved on in my tastes or whether her bewitching lo-fi have less of an effect on me in my fifties, as this plunged like a stone from its impressive early showing. Essentially it failed to hold its own on multiple listens.

A good fifteen years after their heyday, Editors are still making decent records. They still sound like a happier Joy Division and they sound contended and miserable in what they are doing. It won’t set the world on fire or spark a rampant comeback but it will keep their fans happy.

Grizzled grindcore from Tennessee. They are young enough to know better but still seem to have fallen for a musical form that emerged when their grandparents were in diapers. Nasty, brittle, and headache-inducing. Just as Grindcore should be.

Norwegian black n’ roll merchants. They take their art a bit more seriously than Kvelertak and this means that it comes across as a mix of Motörhead and Mayhem. Not bad at all but probably needed a few more identifiable tunes to make the hundred.

An impressive mix of death and doom metals that subtly combines the brutality of the former with the crushing slowness of the latter.

I am sure there is a factory in Sweden that churns out technical death metal bands and here comes yet another. Not bad but at the end doomed to sound like yet another technical death metal album.

Austria’s Belphegor are veritable veterans of the Blackened Metal scene. They have a sound and a stage presence and do what they do remarkably well. They long ago stopped making records for anybody but their small but perfectly formed rabid fanbase. It’s all right but it ain’t going to suddenly make them Download headline contenders.

Epic, chest-beating Danish metal. It is more Viking-obsessed stuff that hankers back to a past that never really existed.

The return of German symphonic metallers who reputedly called it a day back in 2014. There are no farewells in metal, just adjours until the next tax bill comes in. Like the last nine years haven’t happened.

One woman multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and composer Kathrine Shepard has made a name for herself creating ethereal post-metal. This is atmospheric blackgaze and should be VERY much my cup of tea. It just feels like it takes itself too seriously to these ears.

Yet another gothic metal icon that you have never heard of. Thirty years they have been doing this and the most we can muster is “who?”. Absolutely adequate and nothing more.

German power-sludge duo. Metal at its raw best. Entertained rather than grabbed.

Psychedelic Doom (like normal doom but with more mind-altering drugs) from Italy. With an emphasis on the psychedelic.

Australian metalcore that tries really hard to do something noteworthy with this most mundane of metal’s many sub-genre, but ultimately fails because there are all the new ideas have already been taken.

This is where I start to feel old. This is going to feature large in all the other end-of-year lists and some of my fellow ROCKFLESH scribes have been going mad over it. But me, well I can’t quite see the fuss. It has got this position because (like vegetables) I can see there is some real merit here, I just can’t figure out what it is!!

Melodic death metal, but not from Scandinavia. It’s from Portugal. It sounds like it should come from Scandinavia.

I adore Amorphis and their previous four records have all made my top twenty. They skilfully balance melodic death metal with big epic song writing. However, it sounds like Tomi and the boys were having an off day here as “Halo” is (whisper it, I may be thrown out of the Fanclub) devoid of memorable tunes.

This is turning into a little ghetto of bands that usually have a season pass to this list, that have failed to chart. These Polish legends need no introduction. They have been mainstays of continental death metal for decades. They are great live and can always be guaranteed to make great records. This is not a bad album it just, just felt rather dialed in. Almost like a “will this do” from Vorg before he buggered off to make the Machine Head album.

They keep on coming. I love Arch Enemy as much as I do Amorphis. But being straight, I just can’t bond with “Deceivers”. What has always been Arch Enemy’s strongest selling point has been that combination of aggression with commerciality. Here it sounds like the latter has taken the dominant role and that all-important oomph is missing.

And yet another of my big metallic loves that have, for once, failed to crack the hallowed hundred. I really don’t know what happened here. I gave the album three listens in a row hoping that its satanic glory would reveal itself to me, but I remained unmoved and unconvinced. It’s not awful and it’s certainly Behemoth, but it fails to effectively leave orbit and is ultimately rather forgettable

Jesus! Paradise Lost guitarist Gregor Mackintosh gets itchy feet easily. No sooner has he put Vallenfyre out to pasture has he gone and formed another side project to keep him occupied whilst our Nick is off doing Bloodbath. This time he has gone down the Black Metal rabbit hole. Perfectly functional but probably a little pedestrian.

The second release in a row where Randy and the boys have failed to set my world on fire. All the ingredients are there but it just seems to be failed to gel. It’s heavy, its full of rampant energy but it just doesn’t make me want to throw myself around the room, in the same way, previous records of theirs have.

Probably more than any other band on this list I love the Scorpions. They have always been the unfashionable face of metal but I adore their cartoon-like take on heavy record. There was always a lot more tongue-in-cheek bravado going on than people actually realized (Germans having a sense of humor, shock and horror) and it is that sense of fun that I have always adored. But this is just run of the mill “will this do”, Scorpions. The sense of fun feels oddly synthetic, almost like they are trying too hard.

Sabaton are the one power metal band that these fair isles have taken to their collective bosom. Their rise to arena-bothering status has been as stunning as it has been meteoric. This is the second of their first world war-themed records and sadly it is not a patch on 2019’s “Great War”. It still skilfully manages to be chest beatingly anthemic while it is respectful to its subject matter. But this time around it just doesn’t land as well and ultimately it feels rather underdone and disappointing.

Ozzy has made a career out of “last albums”. This is probably Ozzy’s fifth or sixth final release and each time he seemingly finds himself stumbling into the studio again. The problem here is quality control. There are some BRILLIANT numbers (specifically the ones where he has been once more reunited with Tony Iommi) BUT there are also utter duds that scream “Filler Filler Chicken Dinner1”. Ultimately this means it languishes here in the also runs.

Let’s end with probably the most surprising and potentially most controversial albums not to make it into the top one hundred. New Slipknot albums should be moments of celebration. They have (in the main, The Gray Chapter, I am looking at you) moved the bands sound on. Here they have sadly ended up down a musical cul-de-sac. It just lacks the furiousity and the ugliness that makes Slipknot, Slipknot. It feels like they are trying to capture the essence of the first record but without the hunger. It sadly sounds like nine middle-aged millionaires going through the motions. Really disappointing.

And that is the notable also-rans. The main list starts probably this Saturday. Be ready….