Rolling Stone gave a hint as to what their list of the best metal of the year might look like last week when they named Cobalt’s “Beast Whip” one of the 50 best songs of the year. In fact, that was the only metal song on the list. No Metallica, no Deftones, no anything else heavy. So now that the magazine’s come out with their 20 best metal albums of 2016, Cobalt’s a lock for #1, right? Wrong – in fact, it’s not even on the list! In fact, there’s some stuff that we haven’t seen on any other list. Remember Black Sabbath’s The End CD that was only sold at shows and never commercially released? RS does. It’s a pretty solid list of some of the better metal that’s come out this year, which should be expected, given that they’ve got a solid stable of metal writers. It’s also not that big of a surprise that Metallica’s Hardwired… To Self Destruct is their #1 album of the year. Here’s the list: 

20) Black Sabbath, The End
19) 40 Watt Sun, Wider Than the Sky
18) Virus, Memento Collider
17) Crowbar, The Serpent Only Lies
16) Gorguts, Pleaides Dust
15 Darkthrone, Arctic Thunder
14) Frontierer, Orange Mathematics
13) Abbath, Abbath
12) Nails, You Will Never Be One of Us
11) Khemmis, Hunted 
10) Whores., Gold
9) Cult of Luna and Julie Christmas, Mariner
8) Gojira, Magma
7) Deftones, Gore
6) Megadeth, Dystopia
5) Neurosis, Fires Within Fires
4) The Dillinger Escape Plan, Dissociation
3) Sumac, What One Becomes
2) Meshuggah, The Violent Sleep of Reason
1) Metallica, Hardwired… To Self Destruct