10. Lamb of God – As the Palaces Burn (Prosthetic – 2003)
This was the exact moment that American metal crystallized from a sporadic underground movement of a billion subgenres into a single, brutal, almost-mainstream entity. As far as I’m concerned, this is ‘…And Justice for All’ all over again. It is a stark, precise, punctual slab of serious thrash and shred of a caliber that had long been absent not just from American metal, but from metal in general. Lamb of God has been pretty consistent with their releases, but they have not been able to match the ferocity of ‘As the Palaces Burn’ before or since.
9. Boris – Pink (Southern Lord – 2005)
This album was described to me as having the greatest first three song sequence in history, and I cannot argue with that. I will say that ‘Pink’ does not lose steam after its first three tracks, however. Boris created a doom metal masterpiece with this album, it fluently navigates a vast expanse of metal territory from classic stoner metal (“Pink”) to experimental (“Blackout”) to full-on drone (“Just Abandoned Myself”) leaving you in a headspace that is both contemplative and stoked for metal.
8. Meshuggah – Nothing (Nuclear Blast –2002, 2006 re-release)
Okay, Meshuggah put out the heaviest album ever recorded when they released ‘Nothing’ in 2002. However, they weren’t satisfied with making anyone within thirty feet of a stereo playing this album shit in their pants, so they decided to retcon the thing in 2006. How do you make the heaviest album ever even heavier? Switch to eight-string guitars, have your drummer program the entire thing on the “Drumkit From Hell” software that he helped create, slow it down even more, and re-record the mofo. The result? Let’s just say I had to put adult diapers on my Costco list.
7. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Ire Works (Relapse – 2007)
I am not alone when I say that ‘Calculating Infinity’ is the album that peeled my fucking skull back and changed everything for me, forever. The Dillinger Escape Plan is truly one of the greatest bands of our time, solidified when singer Greg Puciatto joined the band in 2004. However, it wasn’t until their second release with Puciatto, ‘Ire Works’, that the band really hit their stride. This album is technically immaculate and brutal, it features dense programming as prominently as it does flame-throwing instrumentation. Ben Weiman is both mastermind and master henchman of guitar destruction, and Gil Sharone (who sadly left the band after this album and tour) brings a swing to Dillinger that seemed highly improbable. This was the best forty minutes of 2007.
6. Thrice – Vheissu (Island – 2005)
If you listened to Thrice’s major label debut, ‘The Illusion of Safety’, you would agree that an album like ‘Vheissu’ was unlikely to say the least. Thrice made a name for themselves playing metal-influenced punk that was way smarter than anything their peers were doing, both lyrically and musically, but ‘Vheissu’ is a complete motherfucker of an album that took me by surprise. They got heavier, yet more atmospheric. They remained tuneful, but tied the record together as a single entity. Hell, all of a sudden there’s a Rhodes piano on every other song, and it works! The result is a truly great piece of music that you cannot help but listen to again and again.
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