Shuffling the honorable mention winners out the servant's entrance, we now don our black monastic cloaks and prepare for the unholy rites...
#10
The Black Dahlia Murder - Ritual
I made evident in my review earlier this year; something had to give for The Black Dahlia Murder to continue at their breakneck pace lest they slammed into a creative brick wall. Ryan Knight, Arsis alumni and guitarist extraordinaire not only dipped his toes but unreservedly plunged head-first into the vast canon of metal but of all extreme music; like a deranged and alcohol-fuelled (possibly illicitly lit-up as well) metal necromancer, he charges through punk, death metal, black metal, metalcore and indeed the entire gamut, extracting the most brutal essences and discarding the bloated morass of insipid shit that’s gone wrong. It’s not an aimless or schizophrenic effort by any means; it’s cohesive, it’s modern and its heavy metal. It deftly bypasses any pretension that so many bands yearn for simply by rocking and rocking well…and that’s the heavy metal way!
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The Top 10 of 2011