My 50 Favorite Metal Songs of 2017

50. Kreator – Satan Is Real

Despite the corny lyrics, the song is some catchy well-produced mid-tempo thrash, and the key shift near the end has repeatedly brought me to a sprint despite being deep into exhaustion on many a run.

49. Boris – Memento Mori

“Memento Mori” is one of the more ethereal moments on the already ascendant Dear, and it’s a great moment in Boris’ massive career. The vocal melody that slowly floats across the song is what lifts the song to its emotive height.

48. Dead Cross – Bela Lugosi’s Dead

One of the album’s stylistic outliers, the song’s low register vocal melody and its brooding tom-heavy drum beat make it strange, not really in the same trashy hardcore punk field of the rest of the album, but also immersive. It’s one of the more unique metal songs of the year.

47. Full of Hell – Gnawed Flesh

On an album already full of pummeling deathgrind with a few noisy/industrial experimental moments, what makes “Gnawed Flesh” standout after seven tracks of extreme blast beat battery and scathing shrieks of agony is the breakdown (not like a metalcore breakdown) that finishes the song with the “Man will fail, man shall always fail” line bellowed from the bottom of the throat increasingly more slowly and sustained increasingly longer.

46. Project 86 – Dead Man’s Switch

I much brighter moment in contrast to “Gnawed Flesh”, “Dead Man’s Switch” finds Project 86 spicing up some traditional post-hardcore with a glorious pairing of guitars and vocals on a fist-raising melody backed by sufficiently hard drum pounding.

45. Sepultura – Phantom Self

With a super groovy drum/palm-muted rhythm to give the song some tasty low-end verses and an orchestral backing to tastefully accent the melody and bring the song to its chaotic climactic end rather than overblow the whole track, Sepultura deliver one of their most unique tracks on Machine Messiah and one that petty naysayers of the Max-free lineup should be pointed toward for reference.

44. Motionless in White – Queen for Queen

Not a lyrical masterpiece, though certainly better than some other tracks on Graveyard Shift in that department, “Queen for Queen” is the crunchy production and industrial flair of the album at its best, underneath infectious vocal melodies.

43. Integrity – 7 Reece Mews

The most epic song on the album, “7 Reece Mews” captures the hard gruffness of the rest of the album, but swirls it into a building, elevated piece proggier than most of the other songs on the album.

42. Mastodon – Toe to Toes

Going for a sound closer to prog rock than what they’re known for, Mastodon capture a feeling of alleviated sorrow and enlightenment on “Toe to Toes” with shiny guitar leads and revealing, emotive vocal melodies. It sounds like a song that the band actually had a specific idea for and took their time to make, which I feel like they didn’t do so thoroughly on Emperor of Sand.

41. Suffocation – Clarity Through Deprivation

It was hard to pick from all the songs on Suffocation’s new album, but I eventually kept coming back to the excellent opener, straightforward technically crushing death metal finished off with a seamless breakdown that offers no breath and delivers the final punches with finesse.

40. Fit for and Autopsy – Heads Will Hang

The Gojira influence the band marinated in during this album’s sessions is all over this track. The pick slide incorporated into the song’s main groovy riff, the groove of the riff itself, and the melodically shouted vocals all point to the band jamming Magma all last year and this year, and it made for a great song.

39. Deadspace – Nostalgia, Like a Plague, She Rapes Me to Sleep

At the finishing climax of a short but rewarding group of songs to land on a split album this year, Deadspace show all their cards with vocal features of unique styles for ambient black metal, well combined and structured with an increasingly heavy instrumental that focuses more on playing to the song’s progress and on trying to impress any hardened hearts.

38. Trivium – The Sin and the Sentence

Trivium came back harder and more convincingly with gruff vocals again on The Sin and the Sentence, and the title track has continued to grow on me as it’s helped me through some tough workouts. I wish the whole album was as similar in feeling to Shogun and In Waves as this track was. Matt’s more clinical style of clean singing certainly helps this song’s hook, and his growls are a much-welcomed treat.

37. Soen – Orison

Soen, in their notably Tool-familiar style, routed Opeth a little bit with a smooth, proggy head-banger absent of any harsh vocals, sounding like what I wish more of Sorceress sounded like. Right from the palm-muted intro, the song gives hint of the motion it soon induces, addictively sing-able the entire way through.

36. Chelsea Wolfe – Vex

One of her more directly menacing albums, the featured growls on “Vex” alongside Chelsea’s chilling voice embody so boldly that darkness she resides so comfortably in, and in more metallic fashion than ever before. Chelsea sounds like she’s remorselessly summoning the very collapse of the sky on this song, with the growls seemingly a representation of the extreme of the darkness in her tearing its way out of her.

35. Sólstafir – Hula

“Hula” was hardly the heaviest number on Berdreyminn, in fact probably the most mellow, more post-rock than post-metal. But like good post-rock is supposed to (and hasn’t for a long time for the most part), “Hula” builds on its ethereal foundation to a soul-opening vocal crescendo.

34. Thantifaxath – Cursed Numbers

Thantifaxath turned up the experimentation on the closing track of their new EP, venturing deeper with the first drum punch into abysmal black metal psychosis. Whether the band are going willingly or falling further into the void is hard to tell as the song only gets more and more chaotic.

33. Oceano – Dark Prophecy

I kept coming back to this song in particular for the unabashed deathcore brutality it condenses so well. Well-produced, eviscerating guitars and merciless drumming tear through this song from beginning to end, but what wraps it all up so nicely is the ridiculously guttural vocals so dense they slow the pace of even the fiery instrumentation beneath.

32. Power Trip – Waiting Around to Die

The clinical execution with which Power Trip helped lift thrash into 2017 with exactly what lifted it up in the 80’s is astounding, and the precision with which they channel Kill ‘Em All-era Metallica on this song especially deserves immense respect.

31. Cannibal Corpse – Code of the Slashers

“Code of the Slashers” is an exhibition of Cannibal Corpse doing what they do best, at their best, making crushing, classic death metal infectious and groovy. Cannibal Corpse let the sustain of the guitars do the talking for the most part on the intro, but they sound like the battle howl of a massive army more than plain talking, and the Corpsegrinder’s echoed refrain seals the catchiness factor expectedly bloodily.

30. Marilyn Manson – Saturnalia

Manson went a little bit proggy on this one, and with quite a rewarding pay-off. While he’s known for his weird musicality and shocking presence, Manson has kept himself controlled and tenacious even through his roughest eras, and on this song he flies under the radar for a more brooding Mechanical Animals-ish set of verses and choruses in his signature low moaning vocals, which eventually explode into a captivating climax with the swell of the metal underneath the ambient rock above it with Manson screaming high with applaudable execution.

29. Slaughter to Prevail – Chronic Slaughter

Deathcore song of the year for me, Slaughter to Prevail came through with the hunger a newer band should have driving them from within. The band bring not only the high bar of brutality of the deathcore flavor to the table, but they shuffle it up with unique structure and dynamic changes across the song, which at a couple of sections sounds much like Nergal came on board for a few seconds.

28. Alestorm – Fucked with an Anchor

I had to give Alestorm a spot for this song. The upfront stupid tongue-in-cheek humor that I wouldn’t want any differently from them is exponentiated with the goofy folky pirate metal on this song and God am I glad for it.

27. Goatwhore – Those Who Denied God’s Will

Goatwhore close Vengeful Ascension with quite an epic and apocalyptic blackened death/thrash sandstorm of a song, made so grand by the majestic guitar coverage and the thundering drums that tear through everything on the ground below.

26. Code Orange – Kill the Creator

Despite being a short and perhaps awkwardly structured track, “Kill the Creator” captures the hardcore, the industrial, the massiveness, the primal savagery, and the unpredictability of Code Orange in an entirely unforgettable and uncopiable manner, whose big choral-backed ending is quite justified.

25. Primitive Man – My Will

It was so hard to pick a track out of this album so I just went with the first one that told me right from the get go how uneasy, unempathetic, and ceaselessly powerful and flattening this whole album is. Not to say the other songs are far below this or that they’re just an indistinguishable mush of sludge and death, but the album is really meant to be experienced as a whole, an unapologetic session of soul abuse, with the physical aspect conveyed by the music. Someone should slip this into a sex playlist and document the mood change because if any song breaks up, crushes, and grinds into crumbs immediately any romance, love, intimacy, and joy, it’s this one.

24. Havok – Intention to Deceive

From the news anchor reel sample to the intricate thrash riffing and all-too-relevant commentary, Havok do Megadeth much better than Dave Mustaine himself has for years now. With lyrics striking at the purposefully manipulative and pathetically inept media shitstorm, Havok make light of a huge part of what has fueled the toxicity of the political climate so nastily as of late: media outlets becoming less veiled in their partisan agenda-pushing and their ego-patting of their constituents, be it Fox News for Trump or CNN against him. It’s not new, and Havok isn’t trying to start any kind of revolution with this song, but damn is it good to hear thrash taking a well-played stab at the relevant and incredibly infuriating flaws of the political climate of today, and in classic thrash fashion so expertly performed.

23. Zeal and Ardor – Children’s Summon

One of the most exciting songs from one of the year’s most exciting bands, I only wish this song was produced to better accentuate the volume dynamic and the punchiness the song plays on. But despite it needing a remaster, each choral chant paired with pounding bass drum and the black metal sections make for an incredible listen.

22. Converge – A Single Tear

Kicking off The Dusk in Us with no presumptions and no pretense, “A Single Tear” eventually turns unexpectedly but expectedly sorrowful and wraps up a raw expression of loss beautifully. No less furious in its vulnerability than its directness, the song captures multiple facets of Converge’s sound at their most potent.

21. Persefone – Aathma

The epic four-part drama that closes their 2017 album, Persefone turn their prog, their scope, and their immensity all up to eleven for the title piece, bringing a sense of satisfying completion to the album and standing alone magnificently. Moving through numerous sections of varying intensity the band sound as spiritually elevated as they need to for the song.

20. Mutoid Man – Bone Chain

Mutoid Man make a perfect, delicious blend of thrash, stoner metal, and hard rock that I cannot think of coming from anywhere else and “Bone Chain” captures them at some of their most sludgy. The tasty groove of the low palm muted riff and the exquisitely clean vocals make this song in particular.

19. Stone Sour – Fabuless

So much of Hydrograd and so much of this song were very overcharted territory for Stone Sour, but “Fabuless” flows through the more hard-rocking and metallic vein as one of the band’s best with that goddamn infectious chorus chant. The band’s pushing no boundaries at all, but it sure as hell doesn’t matter during “Fabuless”.

18. Converge – I Can Tell You About Pain

Wrestling wild guitar feedback into a noisy hardcore beatdown with syncopated drumbeats bashing in the head of anything nearby, Converge put another violently emotional confessional to tape brilliantly.

17. Elder – Sanctuary

Like Soen with Opeth, Elder ended up doing Mastodon better than Mastodon with Reflections of a Floating World and the mental space-odyssey-ish vibe is captured best on the opening “Sanctuary” with the echoed grand vocal melodies and big guitar lines stringing together a series of proggy sludge.

16. Zeal and Ardor – Blood in the River

The more I worked out with this song playing the more I came to appreciate it for the variety of musical elements that pepper its loud, soulfully sung refrain. Like much of the album, I think a remaster would benefit the song’s dynamic shifts, but it is not unenjoyable as it is due to its current mastering.

15. Full of Hell – Trumpeting Ecstasy

Definitely the most unique song on the album, the title track’s eerie muffled and distorted riff is made sweetly poisonous by the inviting female singing atop it, only priming the song to bit hard when the screams of deathgrind burst in.

14. Decapitated – Kill the Cult

With a death metal riff so groovy and double bass so precise, Decapitated brought themselves out of a bit of a dry spell with this song especially on their new album. I remember getting to my post about Anticult late and the next day seeing the ominous, unsavory, and still-unclear news about the band’s accusation of kidnapping and rape in Washington. I wish I didn’t have to mention it because it’s just a terrible situation no matter what the reality of it is. At this point, from what I know about it, it could go either way really and while the band still have their presumed innocence I think their work this year is worth praising. I’m not saying I side with them or against them in their legal battle, nor that I condone or excuse at all what they’re accused of having done. It should go without saying really, regardless of the future legal outcome, this praise is solely for the art and the artistic facet of the band members, not their personal decisions outside their music that have essentially zero connection to their art.

13. Code Orange – Real

Of all the applause Code Orange have been getting, I don’t see enough of it directed toward “Real”. The band tells everyone right upfront: “This is real now, motherfucker.” But really, Code Orange kick up some straight-up aggressive hardcore/metalcore of all shapes and sizes through the instrumental shifts on this song, each section full of chest-pounding accents, grinding guitar leads, and impassioned gruff vocals that prove that Code Orange is not just a front, they’re not playing around, they’re not a façade. Code Orange is real. Motherfucker.

12. Chelsea Wolfe – 16 Psyche

Chelsea Wolfe made metal bend to her whim on Hiss Spun, and especially on “16 Psyche”, playing the heaviness and creepiness of the music to her strengths and her stylistic comfortabilities and experiences. Not that she at all dismembered or butchered the metal instrumentation, the main motifs of the verses and chorus are sticky and swooning, and sufficiently massive.

11. Trivium – The Revanchist

This is how Trivium fans have wanted the band to sound, yet I don’t see anyone talking about this song either. It’s epic, it’s chorus is so sing-along worthy and it’s melody is so emboldening, I’m surprised people are talking more about “Endless Night” than this song, it sounds like it could have landed on Ascendency. This is what everyone has wanted from Trivium since Vengeance Falls and they definitely delivered, so appreciate it.

10. Igorrr – Ieud

Igorrr are no less weird on this song than they are all over their discography, but the passionate vocal opening on here finds Igorrr tugging shockingly well at the heartstrings, staying true to their eccentric metal creed. It’s Igorrr as strange as they usually are, but catching the ears off guard and giving a truly emotional performance.

9. Igorrr – Homous

That’s right, two in a row. I put this song ahead of “Ieud” because it kind of captures the essence of Igorrr a little more completely. With accordion opening the song at allegretto, the blast beats that follow somehow feel right at home, which highlights Igorrr’s strength. While other metal bands will often try to throw a sax or a xylophone in for eccentricity’s sake or prog points, Igorrr show themselves to be masters of eccentricity and blending unlikely musical elements into something enjoyable. Their not-so-serious approach is something that speaks personally to me in a way that I can understand being off-putting, but damn how can anyone get worked up over this not in a positive way? Horns, 8-bit music, slappy bass, blast beats, wacky shrieking, somehow cohesively enjoyable, it’s astonishing. Also, this is the song with a chicken.

8. Mutoid Man – Bandages

The ballad that closes the album, “Bandages” is another surprise, kind of. I just didn’t expect a ballad at all from this band, nor for it to be so goddamn heart-wrenching. Good ol’ Chelsea Wolfe makes another great feature providing the vocal harmonies that help take the song to the upper echelons during the heavy choruses. This song is just so cathartic, every time, I cannot deny it a sing-along ever.

7. Septicflesh – Portrait of a Headless Man

Septicflesh have mastered the symphonic alchemy of death metal and this song, with a fucking violin section riff that’s impossible to not headbang to, is the pinnacle of their progress. Brutal and grandiose, the band’s symphonic approach is anything but cheesy and they sacrifice no deadliness of their metal to make room for it, rather welcoming in the sounds of strings and horns to season it.

6. Emmure – Smokey

I never thought I’d ever think this highly of Emmure but “Smokey” is a powerful, violent kickback from a band reinvigorated with new blood and new ideas. I almost picked “Flag of the Beast” for this spot, but Frankie sounds so fucking animalistic on this track, the guitars and drums synch with such pounding force, and it really sounds nothing like Emmure at the end of the day. It really is more of a somewhat djenty powerviolence song than anything else, almost like Code Orange even. The band really elevated their game on this song and they definitely turned a lot of heads back around to see what’s next, mine included.

5. Death from Above – Caught Up

The most anthemic chorus of the year definitely goes to Death from Above for “Caught Up”, I cannot stop listening to this song. There’s not much to say about the Muse-y hard rock and sort of metal edge across the song. It’s just catchy as all hell, and not in the annoying way.

4. Pallbearer – A Plea for Understanding

Definitely the most heartfelt catharsis of the year for me came out of this song. Finishing off Pallbearer’s Heartless, “A Plea for Understanding” opens up its soul from the very title and in a fashion unheard of before from the band, continues baring it more and more, with the ending declaring “these feelings are real, all I ask, won’t you please understand” in the most goosebump-inducing melody that can bring any sludge/stoner metal fan with anything resembling a heart to tears.

3. Full of Hell – At the Cauldron’s Bottom

“At the Cauldron’s Bottom” captures everything that makes Full of Hell incredible, plus more. With a vicious deathgrind intro full of blast beats and terrifying screaming, the song eventually gives way to a simple but apocalyptic riff over pummeling drums that close the song perfectly like the gates of heaven to the damned world as it engulfs in flames while the guitar fades to let the drums beat away all on their own. It’s a chilling and magnificent moment for Full of Hell and such a fucking incredible song.

2. Havok – F.P.C.

Like with “Intention to Deceive”, I’m so glad to hear Havok bringing the thrash attitude to current phenomena, “F.P.C.” being a resounding middle finger to the speech policing of political correctness. While it’s mostly people on the less far “left” end of political issues usually complaining about political correctness, Havok attack the weak ideology of the core motivation of toxic political correctness rather than resorting to MAGA-pandering (and I’m pretty sure the band don’t even lean that way politically either). Referring to it boldly as a social disease, seizing free speech, Havok hit at an important issue impeding social progress and being weaponized to silence opposition and do nothing but drive deeper the many wedges between political camps.

1. Code Orange – Forever

Code Orange have had a hell of a year and “Forever” has been a big part of it, helping get them on the map early last year, deservedly so. The song blasts through violently from the start and only gets bloodier with each transition between sections. It’s a perfect mission statement for the fierce young band who made their own wave of hype with no bullshit and no shortcuts, just hard work. The song feels like being beaten with a tree branch, then a baseball bat, then a chainsaw on fire. Jami Morgan’s hardcore vocals are more visceral and more esophageally painful than most and his bandmates thrash with finesse, but also unbridled rage. Not a damn second of the song is dull.