Text by Daniel Dystyler and Erica Roumieh
With the arrival of 2020, the decade is officially over. These ten years passed quickly, and with everyone caught up in their lives, it's easy to forget about releases that happened during this period.
Of course, we quickly remember the classics from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but music fans can be a little unfair to the recent work of their bands, and especially newer artists.
With that in mind, the Wikimetal has compiled the best albums of the last decade for you, our reader, to celebrate good old rock and roll in its current form. The list includes releases from classic bands that are impossible to ignore, but we also remember new artists who have won the ears and hearts of our editorial team.
For a complete experience, we've put together a playlist – on Spotify and Deezer – with some of the songs from the chosen albums. So here we go:
20. Anthrax – Worship Music (2011)
Anthrax's tenth studio album is their first since the return of legendary vocalist Joey Belladonna. The creative process began in 2008 and lasted over three years. The album reached #12 on the American charts, their best position since Sound Of White Noise .
19. Kiss – Monster (2012)
Monster is Kiss's twentieth studio album, which peaked at #3 on the Billboard 200. The album was produced by Paul Stanley himself and Greg Collins, who had also produced their previous album, Sonic Boom.
18. Mastodon – Once More 'Round The Sun (2014)
Once More 'Round The Sun is the band's sixth album and reached #6 on the American charts. Here, the group shows itself to be more mature and aware of its heavy, alternative, and powerful sound.
17. Graveyard – Peace (2018)
Hard rock straight from Sweden, crafted with excellence. On their 5th studio album, Graveyard explores the dynamism of garage rock with psychedelia, drawing on diverse influences ranging from Thin Lizzy to Frank Zappa. Heavy, raw, and powerful, the album's production is imbued with the sound of the 60s with a fresh feel.
16. Tool – Fear Inoculum (2019)
Thirteen long years separated Tool fans from a new release from the band, and the wait was worth it. The group's progressive rock is dissected in 80 minutes. Each song showcases a facet of Maynard James Keenan, and together they work perfectly – a difficult feat for a multifaceted artist like him.
15. Baroness – Gold & Gray (2019)
It's difficult to listen to a Baroness album and try to dissect it. Its diverse layers are the great appeal of the band's sound, but it makes it difficult to label them. Perhaps that's exactly the group's intention, after all they're venturing into DIY (do it yourself) in metal. Gold & Grey is a constant metamorphosis.
14.Behemoth – The Satanist (2014)
death metal band released their 10th studio album in 2014, and it's the literal definition of "giving blood" to their work. The Satanist features the vocalist Nergal's own blood on its original cover – he worked on the album after a difficult battle with leukemia – and contains emotionally and artistically painful lyrics. Behemoth faced death and overcame it majestically.
13. Stone Sour – Hydrograd (2017)
Spoiler alert: this list doesn't include Slipknot. However, Corey Taylor wasn't left out. Besides his work with Slipknot, the singer was intensely involved with Stone Sour, creating one of the best albums of 2017, Hydrograd. The group's evolution on this album is undeniable. In the 15 songs, Taylor and company explore the diverse range of their abilities and deliver a complete album – from its lyrics to its different sonic layers.
12. David Bowie – Blackstar (2016)
On January 8, 2016, David Bowie released his 25th album. Two days later, he passed away. Suffering from liver cancer, the singer withdrew from the public eye and worked on his farewell to his fans. Blackstar is extremely experimental by rock standards and precisely for that reason it is a work of reinvention, proving that the genre unfolds in diverse forms.
11. A Perfect Circle – Eat the Elephant (2018)
After a 14-year wait, A Perfect Circle made a brilliant return in 2018. With high expectations, fans received a beautiful album that explores the group's diverse facets while showcasing the artistic evolution of each member.
10. Ghost – Meliora (2015)
Macabre, lively, and surprising, Meliora captures the essence of what Ghost is all about. Heavy like Metallica and refined like ABBA, the album is a spectacle of Tobias Forge at his best. Before the dramas and lawsuits involving the vocalist and his bandmates, the group was in perfect harmony here.
09. Gojira – L'Enfant Sauvage (2012)
Translated from French as "The Wild Child," Gojira's 5th album showcased the group's most mature sound. The album's diverse layers are blended with a grandiose composition that raised the bar for Gojira fans. Here, they push boundaries and provoke listeners with existential questions – and perhaps answers.
08. Deafheaven – Sunbather (2013)
It seems like a terrible idea to mix black metal with dream pop, but with Sunbather , Deafheaven proves that the sky's the limit when it comes to music. When released in 2013, the album would have been only the second album from the San Francisco group, but today, years later, it's a landmark of metal and what it can be.
07. Iron Maiden – The Book Of Souls (2015)
The Book of Souls is Iron Maiden's sixteenth studio album. Released by Parlophone Records, it marks the first time an album hasn't been released by EMI, which ended its contract in 2013. Released as a double album, it was produced by Kevin "Caveman" Shirley and Steve Harris. Like its predecessor , 2010's Final Frontier , the album reached number one on the UK charts. It also reached number one in 23 other countries, including Brazil and Portugal. The album features the longest song in Iron Maiden's discography, "Empire of the Clouds," at 19 minutes.
06. Sepultura – Machine Messiah (2017)
Machine Messiah is Sepultura's fourteenth album and the second album with drummer Eloy Casagrande. Here, the group ventures into heavy and current themes such as the "robotization of society," as Andreas Kisser explained at the time of its release. Conceptual, Machine Messiah shows the world the strength of Brazilian music.
05. Judas Priest – Firepower (2018)
Firepower is Judas Priest's eighteenth studio album. It is the band's last work with guitarist Glenn Tipton, who stepped away from activities due to Parkinson's disease, making sporadic appearances on the album's promotional tour. The album was produced by Tom Allom and Andy Sneap, who replaced Tipton on the tour.
04. Rammstein – Rammstein (2019)
This is the seventh studio album from the German band and was released almost 10 years after their previous album, Liebe Ist Für Alle Da, in 2009. The single “Deutschland” became the second song in Rammstein's history to reach #1 on the German charts.
03. Iron Maiden – The Final Frontier (2010)
Iron Maiden's fifteenth studio album reached #1 on the charts in 28 countries and is the band's fourth album to reach #1 in the UK. In the United States, it reached #4, their highest position ever. The band also won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for "El Dorado".
02. Metallica – Hardwire…To Self Destruct (2016)
Hardwired… to Self-Destruct is Metallica's tenth album, which, like Iron Maiden's The Book Of Souls , was released as a double album eight years after their last one, Death Magnetic, in 2008. The work is exactly what we expected from a release by one of the biggest metal bands in the world.
01. Black Sabbath – 13 (2013)
13 is the nineteenth album by the fathers of heavy metal and the ninth with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, who hadn't recorded a studio album with the group since Never Say Die! in 1978. The production was handled by the legendary Rick Rubin and featured drummer Brad Wilk (Rage Against the Machine) as a guest after founder Bill Ward decided not to participate due to disagreements over contract clauses. The album reached #1 in the US and the UK, something that hadn't happened in England since Paranoid in 1970.
