The Best Metal Albums of the 2000s

Relapse put it out, Matt Bayles produced it, and the band hung the whole record on Moby-Dick without ever sounding like a book report. Blood and Thunder opens on a four-note lurch and Brann Dailor answers it with fills where a normal drummer would leave silence. Scott Kelly of Neurosis sings on Aqua Dementia. Sludge with a progressive engine bolted underneath.

Equal Vision released it, Kurt Ballou engineered it, and Jacob Bannon drew the face on the sleeve that half of hardcore now has tattooed somewhere. Concubine lasts about eighty seconds and spends them falling downstairs, Ben Koller playing two tempos at once while Bannon's voice comes apart. Metalcore from before the word meant clean choruses. The eleven-minute title track closes it in slow motion.

Ipecac Recordings carried it, Matt Bayles recorded it, and Aaron Turner took the title from Jeremy Bentham's prison design by way of Foucault. So Did We circles one guitar figure for two minutes before the drums commit, which is the method of the entire record. Spotify credits the band in capitals as ISIS. Oceanic went to the Post-Rock 2000s list, so post-metal is represented here by its sequel.

Portland's answer to Scandinavian black metal, issued by The End Records with acoustic guitar doing most of the heavy lifting. In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion runs past fourteen minutes and barely raises its voice — clean picking, a rasp kept at a distance, drums brushed rather than beaten. Border case: closer to folk than metal in stretches, and better for it.

French, environmentalist, and built around two brothers: Joe Duplantier on guitar and vocals, Mario on drums. Listenable Records issued it at home before Prosthetic picked it up for America. Flying Whales spends its first ninety seconds on sonar pings and then drops into the pick-scrape riff that half of metal has borrowed since. Enormous low end, and the songs still move.

Rise Above Records, three men from Dorset, and a guitar tone so overdriven it sounds broken on purpose. Funeralopolis crawls for eight minutes and then doubles its tempo for the last two, which is as close to mercy as the record gets. Spotify's edition appends Mind Transferal, absent from the original CD, and dates the record 2006 for that reissue. Doom, but a 2000 release, so it sits here rather than on the revival list.

Norma Evangelium Diaboli put it out, the French membership stayed anonymous, and Mikko Aspa of Clandestine Blaze took over the vocals. Sola Fide I sets a dissonant tremolo figure against a beat that keeps refusing to land where you expect it. Black metal that started reading theology instead of shouting at it. Spotify normalises the Latin; the sleeve prints V for U throughout.

Steve Albini recorded it at Electrical Audio in Chicago, which is why the drums sound tracked in an aircraft hangar. Matt Pike had already done Sleep; here he plays faster and louder than doom permits. Devilution opens at a gallop and repeats one riff until it stops being a riff and becomes the rhythm section. Relapse Records, and Spotify capitalises the band High On Fire.

Victory Records, Jamie King producing, eight tracks crossfaded into one continuous hour-long piece — the progressive revival's proof of concept. White Walls closes it at fourteen minutes and swings through polka, death metal and a straight guitar-hero solo without apologising for any of it. Some of this is ridiculous. The band knows, and plays it dead straight anyway.

Two brothers from Olympia who ran a farm and made black metal about it, recorded by Randall Dunn for Southern Lord. Cleansing hands its middle section to Jessika Kenney, whose unaccompanied singing sits inside the distortion rather than on top of it. Four tracks, no blast beat deployed for its own sake. Spotify styles the band Wolves In The Throne Room.

Epic Records took the gamble, Machine produced, and Chris Poland of Megadeth and Alex Skolnick of Testament both solo on the instrumental title track. Laid to Rest runs on a stop-start riff with Chris Adler's double kick filling every gap the guitars leave open. Spotify capitalises it Ashes Of The Wake. Groove metal that sat next to nu metal and never tuned down into it.

Neil Kernon produced it for Relapse, and Karl Sanders wrote Egyptology liner notes longer than most bands' lyric sheets. Cast Down the Heretic breaks its blast beats with a chanted low-register passage that lands like a funeral rite going wrong. George Kollias's first album behind the kit, and the reason the tempos are inhuman. Technical death metal that stayed heavy instead of only fast.

Southern Lord belongs to Greg Anderson, one half of the duo, which is how a record this uncommercial got made at all. Malefic of Xasthur cut his vocal for Bathory Erzsebet shut inside a coffin and the claustrophobia is audible. Two guitars, no drums, amplifier hum used as structure. Spotify strips the diacritics from that title. Border case: drone metal, if metal is a volume.

Norwegian veterans who began as black metal teenagers and grew into progressive rock with a rasp on top, still led by founders Grutle Kjellson and Ivar Bjørnson. Tabu Recordings released it and it won a Spellemannprisen, Norway's national music award. Isa, the title track, gives its opening minute to clean guitar and keyboards before the tremolo picking arrives. The clean vocals are the argument.

Roadrunner Records debut, produced by Adam Dutkiewicz, and Jesse Leach quit the band within a year of putting it out — Howard Jones took over and Leach did not come back until 2012. My Last Serenade sets a Gothenburg-style melodic riff against a chorus sung outright, the template a decade of metalcore copied. Here it still sounds like somebody discovering it.

No bass player, by design: Scott Hull on guitar, Brian Harvey on drums, J.R. Hayes shouting a narrative about a woman across twenty-two tracks on Relapse Records. Jennifer opens the thing and is gone before you have settled — a riff stated once, abandoned, never returned to. Grindcore with an actual lyric sheet. Spotify capitalises the preposition as Prowler In the Yard.