3. The Faceless – Autotheism (Sumerian)

If Periphery managed to pull off an incredible full-band effort, The Faceless’ Michael Keene stuck to his shredding guns and made one of this year’s three bonafide classics. Autotheism is appropriately named for the concept of self-worship, and while death metal’s finest names have often been anchored by one visionary force steering the ship – beginning with Death and continuing through Necrophagist and Arsis – Keene’s singular focus catapulted The Faceless from a pretty good technical death act to standing at the forefront of progressive (and still technical) death metal. New second guitarist Wes Hauch blends his chops in effortlessly, and Keene’s clean vocals are unusually versatile, so much so that I’ll never forget first listening to this and thinking the album had the wrong band’s name on it. Songs like “Accelerated Evolution,” “Ten Billion Years” and the entire 20-minute “Autotheist Movement” trilogy undoubtedly show the work of a musician whose skill and respect for his influences finally crossed over into something wholly his own. That’s why the outraged tech-death community doesn’t have to accept it – Autotheism transcends genre. (And hey, if you want pure tech-death, that new Spawn of Possession album was pretty sweet.)

2. High on Fire – De Vermis Mysteriis (eOne)

The only way to edge out The Faceless’ ingenuity would have to be with pure, uncompromising metal power, and Matt Pike and Co. delivered a megaton bomb of an album with De Vermis Mysteriis. It starts with the production, as Converge’s Kurt Ballou somehow managed to outgun every former High on Fire producer (yes, including Steve Albini) to distill the band’s ace riffage into unrelenting intensity. And Pike has never sounded more unhinged; “Bloody Knuckles” features the most batshit insane vocal performance of his career, his guitar riffs hit like hammers being shot out of a volcano, and “Madness of an Architect” might be the heaviest thing he’s written since Sleep’s infamous Dopesmoker. To top it all off, it’s utterly devoid of filler, with the sweeping “King of Days” and the creeping noise-crush of “Warhorn” in its back half. It’s High on Fire’s best record yet, and in almost any other year, it’d be a hands-down choice for the year’s finest.

1. Gojira – L’Enfant Sauvage (Roadrunner)

The Faceless’ Autotheism is a triumph of unfettered artistic vision. High on Fire’s De Vermis Mysteriis is a high-water mark for sheer brute force. Gojira somehow is both of these things, and that’s why L’Enfant Sauvage is the album from 2012 we’re guaranteed to be talking about many years from now. It’s at once the music of now and the music of 2085, an impossible time-traveling cosmonaut of a metal album that I’m simply excited to have heard in my lifetime. This is what planets crashing together sounds like: disorienting, captivating, and worth telling the grandkids about having experienced. Listen to the whole thing in one shot and feel the world collapse.

Honorable mentions:

Devin Townsend Project, Epicloud

Enslaved, RIITIIR

Lord Mantis, Pervertor

Neurosis, Honor Found in Decay

Orange Goblin, A Eulogy for the Damned

Prong, Carved into Stone

Spawn of Possession, Incurso

Torche, Harmonicraft

Vision of Disorder, The Cursed Remain Cursed