Top 10

I've been collecting music for nearly 20 years now. I've never really done much in the way of "best of" types of posts or thinking. When I ran Hyperblast we used to do a "Top 2" of the year, just to keep it simple. Since I am just a collector my choices are really restricted to albums I purchased over the year. I buy nearly 100 Black Metal releases every year and my collecting is not all encompassing, so if you think I've missed a great release there are chances that I just never bought it. Sometimes releases are so limited I miss out on them, but I try to make my choices restricted to what I've purchased over the years, rather than what I've heard on youtube samples. That being said, I think I've been in tune with the scene close enough that I've managed to pick-up a lot of the albums that present a turning point in the scene and changed the way people thought about the music. So, I'm going to venture back in time and see what I would have chosen in the years gone by as well as try to keep up with the new releases.

I should also point out that I don't exclusively buy or listen to Black Metal. I also listen to Death Metal and Ambient. However, my purchasing of Death Metal has tapered off massively over the years, to the point where I'm lucky to purchase ten albums in a given year. At the end of the Top 10 lists I try to give a sense of what Death Metal I purchased. Ambient I seem to listen to very sparingly, despite enjoying it quite a bit when I do, so I will be reviewing what I own from time to time.

I follow very strict rules for choosing my top ten and this is why you may not see some releases below. The reason for this is to simply narrow down the choices to make things more reasonable for me.

Rules: No splits allowed. The album must be full-length, so no EP's and no demos. It must be an official release.

Top 15 of 2014
Top 10 of 2013
Top 10 of 2012