LET’S ARGUE ABOUT THE TOP 50 METAL SONGS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The Faceless: Not on the list!

If there’s one thing you know we love doing here at MetalSucks, it’s smoking pot. But if there are two things you know we love doing here at MetalSucks, it’s smoking pot and masturbating. But three things, if there are THREE things you know we love doing here at MetalSucks, it’s smoking pot, masturbating, and arguing about lists, all of which are completely meaningless anyway, but, nonetheless, are fun conversation starters.

And I imagine that Loud Wire’s new list of The Top 50 Metal Songs of the 21st Century will start quite the conversation.

In fact, my first thought when I saw the list was, “Why didn’t we think of this?” — but my second thought was, “Thank Christ we didn’t think of this!” I honestly wouldn’t even know where to begin with such a list. That being said, for the sake of getting the ball rolling, I’ll point out a few things that immediately strike me as being dead wrong with this list:

• I’m quite certain I could name fifty better metal songs released this century than Iron Maiden’s Final Frontier-track “The Talisman,” which comes in at number freakin’ four on this list. I’m also quite certain I could name a hundred better metal songs. I’m also quite certain I could name at least ten better Iron Maiden songs from this century. So, yeah, fuck “The Talisman.”
• It will shock no one to learn that I think a song from Anthrax’s We’ve Come For You All should have been included instead of a song from Worship Music.
• I wouldn’t put Poison the Well (whose “Apathy is a Cold Body” comes in at number eighteen) anywhere on there.
• Putting Gojira all the way down at number twenty-two seems way off-base to me. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’d be pretty surprised if history didn’t remember Gojira far more favorably.
• I think not having anything by Cynic, The Faceless, God Forbid, The Red Chord, Genghis Tron, or Chimaira on here is a serious crime. I’m sure there are plenty of other good bands who also didn’t make the list, but those are the ones that kinda popped out at me as being missing right away.
• For the love of all things holy, “Redneck” is absolutely, under no circumstances, Lamb of God’s best song. I’m not saying it’s a bad song — I love “Redneck” — I’m just saying that the band literally has entire albums full of better tracks. Fuck, I don’t even think “Redneck” is the best song on Sacrament!

But there are a lot of great songs on here, too, and I like that they seem to have a made a “one song per band” rule, because it means that the list doesn’t consist of, like, twenty-give Mastodon songs or whatever. I also appreciate that nothing which is undeniably total garbage (e.g., Asking Alexandria, Emmure, anything from St. Anger or Death Magnetic, etc.) was included. So on the whole, this list really isn’t so bad.

Read the entire here, then argue about in the comments section below. What definitely belongs here? What definitely does not? I’m curious to hear what other metal fans think.

-AR