Mammal’s Best of 2015 – The Winners

 

My heartiest congratulations go to the winners in all of my categories. So does my deep gratitude to all of the finalists and winners for making such great albums in an excellent year for all the types of modern music I love. To you good folks who’ve been following my hit parades, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing some of your picks included in my lists, and I hope you also found something new to explore.

Keep on rawkin’.

 

Mammal’s most recommended new albums: Melodic & symphonic death metal

Trying to pick out the very best death metal of the year so far was a bitch of a job. Of the many deathy albums we’ve been invited (and sometimes we’ve asked) to review, there are dozens I like. Eventually I decided the fairest approach would be to divide those albums into three groups – melodic and symphonic death; prog and technical death; and assorted death. That still left a pile of death to listen to.

Not that I minded, of course. Listening to and writing about music has become my consuming pastime since I sort of retired when I turned 65. Even so, I shall use one of the M-words to describe the nature of the task in hand. It was… no, not Majestic. Massive, yes. Monumental… yeah, that’s good because it fits so much of the music on my death row.