1.) Boris' Smile---Psychedelic and trippy, this mind-blowing album is a journey through joyously raw music and stark moments of wonder. Unbelievably heavy yet catchy beyond belief, few things in 2008 made me Smile as much as Boris and yet another of their amazing albums. Nothing in 2008 comes close to this. Link

2.) Ogre's Plague of the Planets---Fluid yet raw, this gnarly slice of traditional doom channels the spirit of classic rock throughout the entirety of its epic, post-apocalyptic storytelling. Binding the story together is a collection of doom songs, the likes of which are so oldschool they could belong to a time traveling Black Sabbath. Link

3.) Opeth's Watershed---An album of such sophistication that it recalls a fine wine. Dark, elegant, morbid, and unsettling, Watershed is not just another grand Opeth album – it is one of their best yet. Perfectly mixing elegant melody with feral brutality, Opeth emerge here with a whole new level of majesty to surpass next time. Link

4.) Martriden's The Unsettling Dark---This thunderous debut fuses the black and death metal genres into a memorable, stark, and beautiful union. Airtight in its technicality and brutal in its execution, The Unsettling Dark promises great things from this young horde. There is a reason Emperor handpicked Martriden to open on their last string of concert dates, and an album like this is it. Link

5.) East of the Wall's Farmer's Almanac---This album captivates without a single word. Entirely instrumental, Farmer's Almanac twists and turns with jaw-dropping musical ability and frightening beauty. Through it all there emerges a plethora of intense emotions, the likes of which most bands could never hope to capture even with the best of vocalists. Link

6.) Nachtmystium's Black Meddle Part I: Assassins---Nachtmystium has spent many years breaking the mold of modern black metal, and here it is –a ferocious, hallucinogenic mix of blistering fury and drugged-out paranoia. It may not be my best album of 2008, but Assassins is definitely my breakthrough album of 2008. Link

7.) Arsis' We are the Nightmare---With a level of shredding wizardry that seems inhuman, Arsis redefine the melodic death metal field as something both intricate and cutting. This is a fiendishly memorable collection of virtuoso fireworks, the likes of which causes disbelief in its remarkable agility again and again. Link

8.) Mountain Mirrors' Dreadnought---Achingly lonely, Dreadnought is one man's individual will and testament to the beauty of music in general and the guitar in particular. It is beyond this a transformative journey, powered by the cunning of minimalism and powerful human emotion. Link

9.) Ufomammut's Idolum---A ghostly black hole of sound, this CD is always massive, intangible or not. This is that rare mix of spaced-out theatrics, unrelenting heaviness, and spectral fear. Link

10.) Deadbird's Twilight Ritual---A heady draught of booze, blood, and blackness, Twilight Ritual is the sound of quiet defeat deciding it wants to be really loud and really scary. An album like this pegs Deadbird as a top band in the sludge department in the years to come. Link

THE BEST OF THE REST (CHECK THESE OUT TOO)

• The Monolithe Deathcult's Trivmvirate

• I Shall Become's In the Falling Snow

• Javelina's Javelina

• Biomechanical's Cannibalized

• Cursed's III: Architects of Troubled Sleep

• Hollenthon's Opus Magnum

• The Mars Volta's The Bedlam in Goliath

• The Sword's Gods of the Earth

• Impiety's Dominator EP

• Arkan's Hilal

• Sweet Cobra's Forever

• Portugal. The Man's Censored Colors

• The Man from the Moon's Rocket Attack

• Transcending Bizarre?'s The Serpent's Manifolds

• Fight Amp's Hungry for Nothing

• Virgin Black's Requiem---Fortissimo

• Rigor Sardonicus' Vallis Ex Umbra De Mortuus

• Bigelf's Cheat the Gallows

• Ihsahn's AngL

• Unleashed's Hammer Battalion

• Earth's The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull

• Meshuggah's ObZen

• Wetnurse's Invisible City

• Averse Sefira's Advent Parallax

• Phazm's Cornerstone of the Macabre

• Woven Hand's Ten Stones

• Gojira's The Way of All Flesh

• Enslaved's Vertebrae