This year, I’ve only listened to 21 albums. There are new albums by bands I like or want to try out that I haven’t gotten around to yet. So I can’t comment on whether the new Trivium, ‘Bodom, ‘Amarth, Carcass, Annihilator, Gamma Bomb, Soulfly, Helloween, Stratovarius, Powerwolf, Haken, Amplifier, Karnivool, Leprous, Tesseract, Circles, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Frattelis, Five Horse Johnson, Vista Chino, Motorhead, (or whoever else) album is good and whether or not its better than any of these.
This is essentially the albums I’ve listened to in order of preference.
KingcrimsonBlog Album Of The Year List 2013:
1. Protest The Hero – Volition
2. Queensryche w/ Todd La Torre – Queensryche
3. Clutch – Earth Rocker
4. Bring Me The Horizon – Sempiternal
5. Coheed & Cambria – The Afterman Descention
6. Riverside – Shrine Of New Generation Slaves
7. Killswitch Engage – Disarm The Descent
8. Hatebreed – The Divinity Of Purpose
9. Monster Magnet – The Last Patrol
10. Arctic Monkeys – AM
11. Five Finger Death Punch – The Wrong Side’ Vol 1.
12. QOTSA – …Like Clockwork
13. Deep Purple – Now What!?
14. Red Fang – Whales & Leeches
15. Black Sabbath – 13
16. Babyshambles – Sequel To The Prequel
17. Five Finger Death Punch – The Wrong Side’ Vol 2.
18. Megadeth – Supercollider
19. Soil – Whole
20. Chimaira – Crown Of Phantoms
The only other album I’ve heard is Frequency Unknown, so it would be at 21, but 21 is not a commonly used number for AOTY lists, so I can’t include it. Its not me cheekily slighting it, I just heard better albums than it in my own opinion but didn’t hear enough to make a good number for the list, eg. 25, 50 etc.
Queensryche’s comeback was number one almost the entire year since it came out, and just got beat out at the last minute by Protest the Hero releasing Volition (‘Mist’ ‘Underbite’ ‘Skies’ and ‘Plato’s Tripartite’ are genuinely magical songs). Arctic Monkey’s AM was actually a massive disappointment but it really slowly grew on me and I went from disliking it to really liking it over a very long time.
Hard to know how I’ll feel about 2013 in a few years time when I’ve got around to hearing more from it, but for now, this is the albums I’ve heard rated by how much I like them at this precise moment.
See you next year.
Metal-Nerd Blog 
Yikes – The Arctic Monkeys one is the only one I’ve heard from the list, I’ve heard good things about the Protest The Hero/QOTSA releases. Didn’t even realize Babyshambles had a new one – I’ve got some homework for 2014!
LikeLike
Ha ha, yeah I was caught off gaurd by quite a few albums this year, only noticing they’ve been made a day or two before their release or a week or two after.
I definitely recommend Protest The Hero’s latest if you like them. Its stupidly good. Its almost too good.
LikeLike
Carcass’ album Surgical Steel is a-ma-zing. It’s a mixture between the old gnarly craziness of Descanting the Insalubrious and the clean, polished sound of Heartwork.
LikeLike
I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’ve heard a real mix of good reviews and then negative words from close friends.
LikeLike
I was reserving buying it until after I saw them live. I had tickets to see them with Amon Amarth about a month ago, and then I just straight-up forgot to go. I walked home from my Girlfriend’s house, straight past the venue and saw the que of metalheads lining up and wondered who was playing tonight, thought I’d look it up on the internet tomorrow. When I woke up the next day I saw on Facebook that Amon Amarth and Carcass had played. That was a surprise disappointment.
LikeLike