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The 10 Best Metal Albums of 2019

Nu-metal mainstays, rulers of the underground, style-smashing upstarts, and more

Metal, in all its various guises and subgenres, “turned and faced the strange” this year, to steal a quote from one of Metallica’s inspirations, David Bowie. In 2019, Slipknot spaced out their onslaughts with ambient psychodramas, Opeth embraced their inner darkness, Aussie psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard finally thrashed out with a spacey, authentic metal LP, and Rammstein let their freak flag fly in ways we don’t even want to know. Elsewhere, Tool finally released their fifth LP after a 13-year wait and fan favorites from Dream Theater to Mayhem played to their bases with solid new efforts. But when we tallied up our critics’ votes, the 10 records that followed were the ones that made the strongest showings.

10

Slipknot, ‘We Are Not Your Kind’

Five years after they mourned the death of bassist Paul Gray on .5: The Gray Chapter, Slipknot returned with more breakneck anthems for malcontents on their sixth LP. A collection of songs for “the bitter, the maladjusted and the wise, fighting off a generation too uptight,” as Corey Taylor spits in “Birth of the Cruel,” We Are Not Your Kind discovers a reinvigorated Slipknot sounding more like themselves this go-round — which is to say, like a rambling horror show. Contrasting gruff rock-rap with dark pop harmonies, Taylor adds levity to vulnerable moments with sneering braggadocio on the Clown-devised skirmish “Nero Forte”; and on the catch-and-release melody of “Critical Darling,” Taylor calls to mind the human-spurred apocalypse, as foretold by both evangelists and climate scientists. “What is coming has begun,” warns Taylor. “An ending I won’t live to see/We tell ourselves it can’t be hell if there’s no heaven.” Said Taylor in May, “You want a villain, I will give you a fucking villain” — but as in most Slipknot songs, there’s no villain more disquieting than the one who lives in every one of us. S.E.