(Honorable Mention)  Napalm Death - Smear Campaign   Century Media Records

Napalm death recently celebrated their 20th anniversary as a band.  How, then, can they continue to produce such high-level, punk-inflected grindcore?  Barney Greenway sounds just as pissed off as he did on "Fear, Emptiness, Despair."  The guitars of Shane Embury and Mitch Harris still buzz with an evil electricity.  Danny Herrera violently pounds his skins while some n00b who is 30 years his junior flubs songs in his Hawthorne Heights cover band.  Despite all of this, Smear Campaign managed to sell a disrespectful 1,355 copies during its first week, placing somewhere in between Dry Kill Logic and Diecast, whose albums appeared simultaneously.  For shame, people.  The only reason this shows up in the "Honorable Mention" category is that the rest of the world is smarter than we are and bought more copies.

5.  Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain  The End Records

I suppose I could be tainted in my opinion about this album because my introduction to it was their video for "Not Unlike the Waves," which finds the members of Portland's Agalloch performing amongst the scenic backdrop of a snowy mountain forest.  Truth be told, the whole goddamned album is like that, reeking of lush, expansive, frigid nature.  The mental pictures I got from this disc were very clearly defined to this preset (song titles like "This White Mountain On Which You Will Die" help out some), and I'm just not sure if it was because of the video that I saw first.  Based on their earlier output, this is a more thoroughly thought-out album, with better, cleaner production.  Either way, it's a fanTAStic record that most folks need to hear.

4.  MUCC - Gokusai   Universal Records

The title of the CD translates to "varicolored," which is the perfect way to describe MUCC's latest.  Each song blazes with a different take on heavy rock, from pan flute accents to double-bass drumming to down-tuned heaviness.  I've never really been a huge fan of these guys in the past, but Gokusai pushes them into a rarified air of challenging yet accessible music, managing to please many fans of different genres of music.  This is absolutely stunning stuff.

3.  Gojira - From Mars to Sirius   Prosthetic Records

Totally reminds me of old-school death metal with huge double-bass stomps, crushing chords and heavy vocals.  Totally reminds me of the resurgence of metal with crisp, huge production, off-time signatures, a strong sense of melody and tremendous song writing.  In short, it's really hard to make a more perfect metal album than this one.  This is like mid-'90s Morbid Angel meets current-era Mastodon.  It's phenomenal on all aspects, but a bit long-winded and full of itself for its own good.

2. Silent Civilian - Rebirth of the Temple   Mediaskare Records

The demise of Spineshank probably wasn't much of an issue for most folks.  I'm sure they saw it as yet another nu-metal band gone by the by, victim to various circumstances that we probably could have predicted.  And while most of those dissolved nu-metallers went on to form crap like Lo-Pro or Army of Anyone, Jonny Santos assembled Silent Civilian, a metal band whose prowess behind their frontman reminds me of the leap from Coal Chamber to Devildriver.  Santos absolutely shreds behind the axe (something I never saw him do in Spineshank), and the music reminds me of Trivium before they decided to become Metallica, Jr.  Yes, it's commercially-accessible metal, but these cats do it RIGHT, straight down to the politically-charged lyrics.

1.  The Acacia Strain - The Dead Walk   Prosthetic Records

The perfect introduction to a whole new breed of metalcore, or, as the press releases say "purveyors of all things heavy."  This is an unbelievably apt description of The Acacia Strain as I'm certain that had I seen these dudes when they came to town, I'd have seen their guitar strings hanging limply from the necks because they'd been tuned so low (just FYI, but they tune to C#, which is like two and a half steps lower than normal tuning).  The bass drum hits like a dead fist on frozen flesh.  My speakers openly weep when I begin to play this album because of its sheer weight and surround-popping, leaden production.  Great lyrics like "I don't mean any disrespect/But I hope you get buried alive" and "I want to destroy something beautiful" are always bonuses.  Standout production, terrifically competent musicianship, instant musical immersion (a good warning sign for The Dead Walk would be "Warning: Severe Rock Reactions") and a complete lack of media attention.  Hands down the heaviest album I've ever heard, plus I could put about six of the songs on my faves playlist and spin them without worry.  Sounds like a winner for GG's T52k6 if you ask me.