Poet's Top 10 of 2020
It's been 8 years since I've posted a year-end list. I mostly appreciate that the "Submit List" page looks more modern instead the 1993 look it had back in 2012. Here's my top 10 of the year with the best song from each album included as well. |
| 10 |  | Countless Skies
Glow
This feels like a discount Insomnium album, but that is not a bad thing as the guitars sound great and the dichotomy between the harsh and clean vocals improve the overall quality of the album. Best Song- Tempest |
| 9 |  | Trivium
What The Dead Men Say
Trivium continues to create solid album after solid album and this is a great followup to The Sin and the Sentence. |
| 8 |  | Uada
Djinn
One of the new bands I discovered this year. I've never been a big fan of traditional black metal, but melodic black metal? Sign me up. Best song-No Place Here |
| 7 |  | The Night Flight Orchestra
Aeromantic
I heard this for the first time this week it is amazing enough to make the list. Divinyls and Transmissions are song of the year material. |
| 6 |  | Nightwish
HUMAN. :II: NATURE.
An album that started off as my #2 of the year back in April has fallen down to 6 and it's really because of the unnecessary second disc (read my review!). Best song-Pan |
| 5 |  | Temperance (IT)
Viridian
These Italian melodic metallers do not do anything different or unique aside from using three vocalists, but they make catchy hooks and songs that get stuck in your head for days. It helps that they fill an entire album with these types of tunes. Best song- Viridian |
| 4 |  | Unleash The Archers
Abyss
The most consistent power metal band today. Since they figured out to bring Brittany Slayes to the forefront with their 2015 outing Time Stands Still, Unleash the Archers is reaching rarefied air for me with power metal bands. Best Song- Return to Me |
| 3 |  | Thomas Bergersen
Humanity - Chapter I
Part 1 of Thomas Bergersen's 7 part journey of Humanity (Part 2 also came out this year but was not as good). It's always hard to describe this type of music, but it is amongst my favorite. Mountain Call is the best song here |
| 2 |  | Rome
The Lone Furrow
Jerome Reuter has released 13 albums since 2005 (one of them being a triple album!). From 2006-2010 he was releasing banger album after banger album but he soon hit a wall and the overall quality of the albums dipped. With last year's Le Ceneri DI Heliodoro, he found his magic again and released the best album of 2019. With the Lone Furrow he teams up with metal artists such as Alan Averill of Primordial and Nergal from Behemoth to create one of his most diverse (and best) albums. It never reaches the heights of Heliodoro, but it gets close. The French sung Palmyra is a marvelous piece about the destruction of an ancient site throughout history. |
| 1 |  | Protest the Hero
Palimpsest
The biggest surprise of the year and quite possibly the biggest surprise for me in the past 15 years. The band fell so far off my radar that I had not listened to them since 2011. I can't tell you how/why I came back to them, but after hearing The Migrant Mother for the first time I was absolutely blown away. This was not the band I last heard almost a decade ago. They were crisper, tighter, and more melodic. The vocals are fantastic and this album is a couple mediocre songs away from being one of the three best albums I've ever heard. All Hands is easily the best song from here and it is also my song of the year. |
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