357/365 Top 100 by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
My favourite music magazine, Metal Hammer, have been doing a ‘Top 100 Albums of the Year’ thing for a while now. These things are always contentious as they’re drawn from the mixed preferences of the mag’s writers, but there’s always a tonne of great bands on there, many of which I’ve not had a chance to listen to.
I tried to listen to every album on the 2015 list, but stopped somewhere in the 80s due to other new music coming out. I didn’t even try in 2016, but have become determined to finish the job this time.
I am definitely, positively going to listen to every single album on the 2017 Metal Hammer list. Oh yes.
I will note that there’s some stuff in the top 20 that I do not like (Black Dahlia Murder I’m particularly looking at you) and there’s the mystifying absence of The Von Hertzen Brothers. I’ve listened to their latest more than anything this year – Metal Hammer writers, what the hell is wrong with you?
I’m going to do mini reviews of each on my blog, just for writing practice. There are so many great music review sites out there, so I will also link some of those, along with where you can buy the albums in question. It’s important to support these bands after all.
I do still buy music, mostly from Pledge Music these days, although I subscribe to Apple Music. While this doesn’t pay the bands very well at all I also try and assist their finances by buying merchandise when I can. The subscription streaming model is great for listeners (and Apple, obviously) but pretty terrible for bands. We should all do what we can to support our favourite artists – buy their stuff and go and see them live!
