On Louder Sound's Top 20 Metal Albums of 1992

As Louder Sound recently pointed out, 1992 was a huge year for heavy metal. Mostly in the USA but also in Europe, metal bands ruled the pop music roost in a way rarely seen before or since. Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction hit #2 on the Billboard Album Chart, for example, and Alice in Chains's Dirt hit #6. Other highlights include alternative metal acts like Faith No More, rap metal like Rage Against the Machine, crossover thrash like Body Count, groove metal like White Zombie, and the utterly chilling black/death metal of Darkthrone's A Blaze in the Northern Sky.

I get ahead of myself, though.

I repeat, here is the list.

Here's Louder Sound's list, stripped of all the descriptions (follow the bolded link above for those). Note that this list is unranked. I think that's a smart move given how diverse metal had become by 1992; while you say with confidence that Iron Maiden was greater than Saxon, how do you compare them to a thrash or death metal act?

Alice in Chains - Dirt

Body Count - Body Count

Cannibal Corpse - Tomb of the Mutilated

Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky

Dream Theater - Images and Words

Exhorder - The Law

Faith No More - Angel Dust

Godflesh - Pure

Helmet - Meantime

Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark

Kyuss - Blues for the Red Sun

Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction

Ministry - Psalm 69

Napalm Death - Utopia Banished

Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power

Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine

Rollins Band - The End of Silence

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

Stone Temple Pilots - Core

White Zombie - La Sexorcisto

There they are, all twenty.

Here are my RateYourMusic ratings for 1992 albums, for reference as I set out my thoughts. I've also mentioned Megadeth and Alice in Chains on this blog, referencing their 1990 song "Five Magics" and their 1995 self-titled album respectively.

In the spirit of this entry being about a list, here are my thoughts, in bullet point form, as they come to me. Of course, they're unranked:

• If EPs are eligible for this sort of list, Tool's Opiate is a glaring omission. Its running time is 26:52, only a minute and a half shorter than Slayer's iconic 1986 album Reign in Blood. Longer EPs are more like albums than singles, so I'd put Opiate on the list.
• For extreme music, I'd like to have seen Brutal Truth's Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses and Demolition Hammer's Epidemic of Violence included. They're both better than Utopia Banished. For a more obscure pick, Aversion's Fit to Be Tied is great, but given most of the entries on the list, I suspect it's meant for more widely known names.
• Why 1992, why now? Thematically, it seemingly makes more sense to pick a notable anniversary, so the 1991 list would be released now, the 1992 list a year from now, and so on. I consider 1992 arguably the best year in recorded music history, though, so here we are.
• I'd pick Fear Factory's Soul of a New Machine over Godflesh's Pure, but they aren't far apart, and the industrial metal scene is covered either way.
• Although Fear of the Dark has the anthemic title track, it doesn't have enough other strong songs to place it in my Top 20. Sorry, Iron Maiden, but 1992 wasn't the '80s for you. Similarly, Helmet's Meantime isn't strong enough front-to-back, despite the awesomeness of "Unsung".
• The only one of these albums I haven't yet heard in full is the Rollins Band's The End of Silence. I was about to rectify that situation while writing this entry, but the album is somehow not on Spotify. Fiddlesticks.
• For more tripped-out music, Melvins' Lysol and Neurosis's Souls at Zero would have been good editions. While neither was a chart hit, both were at least as notorious as Exhorder's The Law, which I'd omit, considering Pantera and White Zombie are both clearly better groove metal bands. I'd also take Melvins or Neurosis over Sleep, but that's a stylistic choice.
• For more death metal, Obituary's The End Complete and Solstice's self-titled album should both find a way onto this list. The lack of FLDM is another omission. Fun fact: Solstice singer/guitarist Rob Barrett joined Cannibal Corpse in 1994. In one of the more puzzling decisions in death metal history, the band didn't prod him into singing. I consider Barrett a better singer than George Fisher. That said, we're still in 1992 here, when Cannibal Corpse still had Chris Barnes...
• Is Core really metal? It's certainly at the hard end of hard rock, especially in songs like "Crackerman". Although Core might be a top 5 album from 1992 in rock music in general, it's tempting to disqualify it here in order to open up a spot for a more purely metal album. I'll leave it on, if only because albums like Angel Dust are often softer than Core. Seeing two California alternative bands headline a Best of 1992 list doesn't offend me in the least.

My drops:

• Exhorder - The Law
• Godflesh - Pure
• Helmet - Meantime
• Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark
• Napalm Death - Utopia Banished

I wouldn't include Rollins Band if I were making my own list from scratch, but I can't recommend dropping an album I haven't heard in full.

My adds:

• Brutal Truth - Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses
• Demolition Hammer - Epidemic of Violence
• Melvins - Lysol
• Obituary - The End Complete
• Tool - Opiate

Genre-wise, I've kept the distribution roughly the same. Think of replacing Exhorder with Demolition Hammer as maintaining the thrash/groove balance, replacing Helmet with Tool doing the same for alternative, and the rest being a slight tilt toward sludge and doom metal. Obituary is mandatory.

It'd be a failure to not include some auditory evidence for my adds, so here's Demolition Hammer's "Skull Fracturing Nightmare":

Here's Obituary's "The End Complete", which, unbeknownst to me until now, has a music video:

Not top 20-worthy, you say? Well, you'd be wrong.

Hopefully I didn't miss anything...