best metal 2001

If you're curious about my thoughts on recorded metal in 2011, you'll find some of my year-end commentary at Exclaim and Hellbound. (more on Canadian metal picks to come at hellbound.ca, and I may post my full year-end list here if it doesn't show up anywhere else - stay tuned)

But in good old Kill Eat Exploit the Weak tradition, the approach of the new year is not just a time for reflecting on the year gone by. As I get increasingly more old and nostalgic, this annual event provokes me to step deeper into the past, reminiscing about what I was enjoying ten years before.

It's been a few years since I've been able to play you my favourite songs on campus radio on New Year's Eve. However, I can list some of the best metal albums that came out in 2001. Without further ado (and in no particular order) here they are (according to me, of course). I grant, good things are missing from this list, but my tastes are ever peculiar and arbitrary, then and now. Plus I could have forgotten something (my memory is reliably unreliable).

• Opeth – Blackwater Park (Koch)
• My Dying Bride – The Dreadful Hours (Peaceville)
• Katatonia – Last Fair Deal Gone Down (Peaceville)
• Virgin Black - Sombre Romantic (The End Records)
• Killswitch Engage – Alive Or Just Breathing (Roadrunner)
• System Of A Down – Toxicity (American)
• Cathedral – Endtyme (Earache)
• Arch Enemy - Wages of Sin (Century Media)
• Iced Earth - Horror Show (Century Media)
• Savatage - Poets and Madmen (SPV/Steamhammer/Nuclear Blast)
• Annihilator - Carnival Diablos (SPV/Steamhammer)
• Soilwork - A Predator's Portrait (Nuclear Blast)
• Dragonlord - Rapture (Spitfire)
  
• Moonspell - Darkness and Hope (Century Media)
  
• Dimmu Borgir - Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia (Nuclear Blast)
  
• Cradle of Filth - Bitter Suites to Succubi (Spitfire)
  
• Lacuna Coil - Unleashed Memories (Century Media)