Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: The Top 40 Albums of 2014 List is Here!

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

If recent history is any indication, it looks like we’re a couple weeks away from Axl, Vince and your favorite MS misfits unveiling their top 15 albums of the year lists. That’s the advantage of doing this job online, as opposed to print: You can wait until it actually gets grim and frostbitten outside to determine if any grim and frostbitten latecomers are deserving of honors. Alas, Decibel has an extremely rigid print schedule that establishes our release cutoff a little earlier than we’d like; that said, we feel pretty damn comfortable with our Top 40 Albums of 2014 list, appearing in the January issue.

You will assuredly not share the sentiment. People whose bands appear in the list will assuredly not share the sentiment. But we all know that already—there’s nothing like end-of-year lists to get everybody fired up. Should our #12 be that high? Did our #4 get screwed? Do #25 and #29 even belong (even though I personally voted for them)? The aforementioned questions are merely my own, so imagine what you’ll come up with. It will probably not resemble your personal best-of list, Axl or Vince’s list, or any other metal journalism outlet’s list, but it’s representative of votes from our 20+ staffers, with the editor-in-chief as final arbiter. As always, we provide new interview content with the highest-placing bands, as well as a variety of piss-taking top 5 lists from staffers, musicians and special guests to make the read an event. And if you feel the need to register your disgust on the internet within minutes, there’s always a Mastodon cover story, Spazz Hall of Fame and Bloodbath flexi to keep you otherwise assuaged. To paraphrase Amber Waves, goodbye, 2014—hell-oooo, 2015.