Let’s just put this out there: Metal had a pretty bad 2016. Maybe this is specific to my country, America, which also had a pretty bad 2016. Maybe I’m projecting a little bit. Maybe you live someplace where everything is going great, and maybe where you live, metal is going great, too. If that’s the case, I’m jealous, I can’t lie. But I also can’t lie about how things appear from my vantage. And right now, where I’m at, things look kinda bleak.

There’s the big, blaring, obvious stuff, of course, the stuff we want to ignore: the fact that metal topographically bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a certain kleptocratic Manchurian Candidate president-elect of questionable integrity. It’s often boorish, vulgar, sexist, suspicious of outsiders, possibly illiterate, and white as a sheet. There’s also the fact that a fair-sized number of metal fans tend to fall into one of two fundamentally oppositional but equally repugnant demographics: (1) shitkicking separatists who like to listen to loud music while they lift, and (2) soft-ass woke bros who would nonetheless prefer to keep politics removed from a form of entertainment they see as a role-playing respite from their desk jobs.

I’m not implying that describes all metal fans, or even a majority of metal fans. I’m definitely not implying that describes you — in fact, if you’re here, I’m pretty sure you aren’t part of either of those factions. I just think it would be kinda weird to deliberately look away from all that at this particular moment. I’m also a big First Amendment proponent, and I think metal bands, and fans, and everyone else should have the inalienable right to say whatever the fuck they want, irrespective of how I feel about the content of their speech. But that “everyone” includes me, and here’s what I want to say: I’m not here for either the rage-stewing sewer rats or the big-baby boys who are too delicate to deal with reality. If that makes me unfit to write about metal anymore — and maybe it does — then so be it. I can’t say I’ve done more good than harm here. I’m OK walking away from this battle, because there are plenty of others that need soldiers.

But I’m also not here to make sweeping generalizations aimed at easy, self-drawn strawmen. I prefer to take a holistic view of complex ecosystems. So let me be clear: I’m not saying the entirety of metal, the music itself, was universally or even uniformly bad in 2016. The genre is far too vast and diffuse for such a thing to be true today, and anyway, the list we’ve compiled below would immediately belie such a statement. If you take any sort of macro view of the subject, however, it’s hard to pinpoint any real positive gains, and all too easy to identify negative developments and trends. Metal never had the strongest center in the first place — by nature the music exists in constant conflict with itself — but in 2016, much of its recently gained traction was lost, almost invisibly.

Here’s an example of what I mean: This past summer, metal-friendly music editors Ben Ratliff and Brandon Stosuy moved on from their respective posts at The New York Times and Pitchfork, leaving behind fairly immense voids of metal coverage that would be difficult to fill even if those publications made the genre a top priority. Metal has thrived over the past decade precisely because it’s had such benefactors: fierce champions with identifiable voices and far-reaching forums. The effects of their absence will be unquantifiable, but in the short term, at least, undeniable.

Here’s another example: In July, the organizers of America’s biggest extreme-metal gathering, Maryland Deathfest, announced that their annual event would be altered considerably in 2017. Next year, there will be no outdoor element to MDF. The entirety of the four-day festival will take place in two clubs: the 1,500-capacity Rams Head Live and the 700-capacity Baltimore Soundstage. Removed from the proceedings is the massive Edison Lot, the open-air space that had served as MDF’s central grounds for the past few years. According to MDF’s organizers, the decision was a bottom line-based necessity:

Not using Edison Lot may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you, but to make a long story short, the cost of production to use Edison all weekend is too much to justify using it again next year … We know that many of you will form your own opinion about what we should do, but please know that this decision was necessary for MDF to continue for years to come.

Maryland Deathfest is not gone, but minus an outdoor component, it will be less of a destination, less of a mecca. It will still draw a crowd, because its lineup is still outstanding, but it will necessarily be a much smaller crowd. The grand-scale MDF gave America its own version of European giants like Wacken and Roadburn; it was a place where far-flung fans, friends, and colleagues converged and communed. The scaled-back iteration will surely still be worthwhile, but it won’t be quite so essential.

Last one, and then we’ll move on. This past May, the great Pacific Northwest-based progressive black metal band Agalloch broke up — and in truly spectacular fashion. Now, bands break up all the time, but the loss of Agalloch is a big one, in part because the band was still very much at the top of its game, and in part because Agalloch were one of the few extreme-metal bands on the planet that just about everyone agreed on. They were a point of consensus in a genre that basically lacks consensus. They were a metal band whose new work was guaranteed to be reviewed (and, almost invariably, received well) by nearly every music-covering media outlet in the world. They also helped to keep the lights on at Profound Lore Records, arguably the best metal label in the game today: According to label head Chris Bruni, as of May 2014, Agalloch’s 2010 LP, Marrow Of The Spirit, was PFL’s all-time best-selling title. You can’t just wish into existence a replacement for Agalloch. The band built its unassailable reputation and dedicated fanbase over the course of nearly two decades. You also really can’t say for sure how much they’ll be missed. But make no mistake: They will be missed.

These may sound like minor developments, and maybe taken individually they are minor developments. Maybe they’re not even that. Maybe, in fact, you could frame all these things as net positives. You could say that the losses I point to above are merely examples of extreme metal regressing to its niche mean: a style of music that does well as a DIY underground culture but can’t sustain itself as an element of the mainstream.

• Maybe metal never belonged in places like The New York Times or Pitchfork (or Stereogum) precisely because ubiquity and unity don’t suit the music.

• Maybe dropping Edison Lot will improve the state of MDF: Detractors will point to its awful sound, dangerous lack of free water, and inconvenient location, not to mention that its sheer square-footage required the organizers to aim for bigger draws in a way that conflicted with the original audience and spirit of the fest.

• Maybe Agalloch’s breakup is a good thing, because its members have since gone on to form two new bands — Khôrada and Pillorian — and two is always better than one, right?

Maybe. I don’t see it that way, but I see the logic. Maybe I’m just feeling unreasonably pessimistic about everything right now, but it’s hard for me personally to view the aforementioned events as anything less than critical blows, especially if you understand the fragile ecosystem in which metal has slowly grown over the last decade or so. Inevitably, in the immediate future, metal’s domestic profile and economic viability will diminish, and it’s not as though the genre was making such a killing or occupying such a prominent place in the cultural consciousness to begin with.

To get an idea of how decentralized metal became in 2016, you need look no further than Decibel’s list of the year’s 40 best albums. I think it goes without saying at this point that Decibel is the most respected and vital metal-specific publication in the world right now (as it has been for about a decade), but when I saw the magazine’s year-end list, I was pretty surprised: A decent number of the selections were totally unknown to me, and I’d written off a decent number of others as more or less unremarkable. I don’t think I was totally alone in this response. There are two ways to react to such a thing, as illustrated below by two of my colleagues, Adrien Begrand and Phil Freeman, both of whose opinions on metal I respect tremendously, even when I don’t entirely agree with them.

Adrien was excited about the diversity on display, seeing it as an indication of the genre’s overall health:

How strong was metal music in 2016? Looks like only about 15 titles from Decibel's top 40 will be in my own top 40.

— Adrien Begrand (@basementgalaxy) November 17, 2016

Phil, on the other hand — unless I’m misreading him — was a bit more skeptical:

I listen to more metal than most people and I've only heard, like, 5 albums on @dbmagazine's Top 40 of 2016.https://t.co/ETaJpx0ncp

— burning ambulance (@burn_amb) November 17, 2016

I could go either way on this one, but I think I’m primarily sort of dispirited by the fact that nobody in metal appears to be having the same conversation as anybody else. (Incidentally, by my count, 10 titles from Decibel’s list are included on our own top 40 below.) I think music benefits from having ubiquitous figures inspiring universal debate. I think prominent artists push forward the entire art form. I think metal today lacks standard-bearers — and maybe even standards — and as such, it fails to meaningfully engage with the culture at large. Right now, it barely seems to understand how to substantively connect with its most-devoted community members. You can be a serious metal enthusiast and probably not give a shit about a single one of the 40 albums on Decibel’s list — or our list, for that matter. And while I understand how we got here, I think that’s ultimately probably not a great development for metal. Stereogum’s own Tom Breihan summed it up pretty damn well in his late-November review of Worm Ouroboros’ What Graceless Dawn, saying:

Underground metal is a funny thing. These days, it feels less like a genre and more like a loose constellation of vaguely connected mini-scenes … Seriously: Sometimes I think metal is less a kind of music and more a design sensibility.

It’s hard to argue with that, except perhaps to say that even the design aspect is pretty inconsistent at this point. Notably, a number of metal bands enjoyed brief periods of commercial success in 2016. Anthrax’s For All Kings debuted at #9 on the Billboard 200. Both Korn’s The Serenity Of Suffering and Volbeat’s Seal The Deal & Let’s Boogie debuted at #4. Megadeth’s Dystopia debuted at #3. Deftones’ Gore debuted at #2.

In a different world, that would mean something — those albums would be central to our collective understanding of this music. But in this world? Nah. None of those albums were included on Decibel’s list. None of them are included on our list. But, like, then you see that two of them were included on Rolling Stone’s list. So, I mean, I dunno. I’m not trying to single anybody out here. I’m pretty egalitarian in my view. Nobody’s right, nobody’s wrong, but mostly, my point is, nobody’s talking about the same music.

OK, that’s not entirely true. There was in fact one metal album released in 2016 that everybody talked about. So … fuck, man … let’s talk about that one.

The first time I heard Metallica’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct was in late September. It was at a private playback at Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan. It was in an intimate room with perfect acoustics, a gigantic PA, and a small group of industry professionals flown in from around the country. Oh, and Metallica were there, too. All four of ‘em. I got to shake their hands, got my picture taken with them. For real. I normally don’t care about stuff like that — in fact, I generally prefer to not meet the people I admire, to be honest, which is something I learned the hard way — but this was different. And lemme tell you, it was such a great day. I’m not kidding; it was the best fucking day.

And the reason it was the best fucking day was not because I got to meet Metallica — I mean, not primarily, anyway — but because the music was so goddamn good. I couldn’t talk about it at the moment (I had to agree to these embargo terms saying I wouldn’t share any details of what I’d heard till November), but since it’s December, and since you’ve probably heard the record for yourself at this point, I can tell you: The thing was great. I walked out of that place thinking Hardwired was, without question, Metallica’s best album since 1988’s …And Justice For All. After more than a quarter-century fucking us all around, Metallica were unequivocally back. I was writing the review in my head on my walk back to Stereogum HQ, trying to remember details of the music even as they slipped from my grasp.

I was floored. I was so happy. I was dizzy from the whole thing. I was blown away.

Let me take a quick snapshot of that moment now, actually, to preserve it for posterity, to freeze it in amber.

I didn’t hear Hardwired again till its release, the week after my country elected Donald Trump to be its president.

If Hardwired had come out at just about any other time in history, my feelings would have been different. But at that moment, it didn’t really matter much to me that Metallica were back. I couldn’t get excited about them flexing, much less pretend their rejuvenation meant anything. The world in which this music had been created was fucking gone.

Metallica were bringing the fire, but why? To my ears, Hardwired was the sound of four multi-millionaires trying to gin up a convincing simulation of rage for the sake of sounding vital in their final stretch, and it felt immediately irrelevant in a country that was suddenly ablaze with actual rage. Whether Hardwired was dealing in pretend-anger or genuine vitriol pandering to the exact people whose own misdirected anger had left us in this place, it seemed immediately antiquated and frankly a bit cynical.

I tried to find some meaning in the vague lyrics projecting undirected angst, but I couldn’t shake the sense I was searching for something that just wasn’t there. And you know what? I was right. This was clarified for me by none other than James Hetfield himself, via quotes like this one, which I stumbled upon after a good week or so of parsing Hardwired for substantive commentary:

We stay away from politics [and] from religion. That just seems to polarize people even more. We all have our own beliefs, but at the end of the day, we’re trying to connect with people, and it seems like political views don’t do that as much as music does.

And then there was this one from Lars Ulrich:

I swear to you, I talk to James Hetfield about most things on this planet, but I don’t think I’ve ever willfully had a political conversation with him. We’ve spent 35 years together, and obviously we’ve been in the same room when the conversation went toward politics, but James and I sitting down in a room and discussing our particular views on something like affordable health care? Never happened.

Here’s another one from Lars, same interview:

If you break down what Metallica does in its simplest form, it’s write — or at least try to write — fucking great rock songs. Once you go beyond that and into more specific social or political relevance, I get uncomfortable.

Regarding Hetfield’s assertion: “trying to connect with people”? That’s bullshit, man. Metallica have never cared about connecting with people. Metallica’s last album was fucking Lulu. Also, Metallica at their most relevant were a pretty political band! Justice opens up with a song called “Blackened” whose lyrics warn against the dangers of climate change! Maybe environmental concerns hadn’t been so politicized in 1988 as they are in 2016, but it’s grotesque to think that Metallica today are more concerned with “trying to connect with people” than using their platform to speak out on issues that were already urgent three decades ago.

Lars’ quotes irritate me even more. You seriously mean to tell me that two men in their 50s who’ve known each other since they were teenagers — who’ve made art together their entire adult lives, who’ve amassed vast fortunes and seen every inch of this Earth as a result of their art’s impossible success — just avoid talking about politics? What in God’s name do they talk about then? Are all their conversations focused solely on how to “write fucking great rock songs” that say absolutely nothing?

How miserable must Kirk Hammett be right now? My man is so clearly repulsed by Donald Trump and freaked-the-fuck-out for the state of the world that he’s being crushed by his own conscience. But Metallica are so goddamn scared of offending anyone that he can only say shit like this:

We want everyone to be in this together, experiencing the music together. We see politics as a completely different thing … That’s why I’ve chosen my words carefully, that I — not Metallica, but I — will take it upon myself to get involved, if there is something I see that is seriously wrong, and I really feel that it’s my job to say something, and to call out people who need to be called out … if anything happens that I’m not OK with, I’m going to be super vocal about it for the first time in my life.

What a horrible situation. What a bunch of wimps.

Now look, I GET IT: No one could possibly expect an old metal act like Metallica to have the pure and righteous convictions of hard-hitting agitprop firebrands like Katy Perry, Vampire Weekend, or Lin-Manuel Miranda. That would clearly be too much to ask. But right now, I can’t really fuck with a band that’s “trying to connect with people” by writing throat-ripping thrash tunes about the life and death of Amy Winehouse.

Are they serious with that shit? I honestly don’t know. I can see a range of possibilities, but I’ve come up with two likely ones, and neither feels particularly satisfying to me.

At best, every member of Metallica is generally on the side of decency, humanity, and democracy, but they don’t want those feelings to infect their art because they don’t want to alienate the substantial percentage of their audience that might be turned off by (or even boycott) the band for holding such views.

Now that’s pretty shitty and cynical, and while it’s basically understandable, it’s in no way admirable.

At worst, though? Ugh, man, this is not easy for me to say, but here goes: At worst, one (or more) of my childhood heroes is someone I’d consider to be a goddamn apostate: a person I’d cut from my own life without mercy or remorse; a person whose views are so intolerant and offensive that they can’t be shared with even his oldest friends.

This breaks my heart, you know. There’s a segment of the metal “community” that seems to hate Metallica more than it actually loves any other band, but I’m not a part of that group. I’m all the way on the other side. I’m the guy who stands up for Metallica at their dumbest. When I was editor of Invisible Oranges, I presided over and signed off on one of the only positive reviews of Lulu you’ll find in the whole universe. I didn’t write that review, because I don’t like Lulu, but I was stoked to share it with the world. Because I love Metallica. I want to love Metallica.

And if Hardwired had dropped in September, it would probably be on this list; I probably would have had a whole different take on the thing. Maybe it’s just a case of terrible timing — for me, anyway — and maybe I’ll come back to the album in six months or a year and be able to listen to it for what it is rather than what it isn’t. But right now, I can’t do that, which is why I didn’t vote for Hardwired among my favorite metal albums of 2016. You can call me a hypocrite, and maybe on some level I am, but right here, I’m just being honest.

Of course I’m not the only person involved in this project. As you probably know by now, Stereogum’s list of the year’s best metal albums is compiled by the same five guys who collaborate on our monthly metal column, the Black Market: me, Doug Moore, Aaron Lariviere, Wyatt Marshall, and Ian Chainey. Now, I don’t mean to go all Kirk Hammett on you here, but I should probably make a point to say that the views expressed above are entirely my own. I have a good idea of where all the other Black Market guys stand on the political spectrum — because we talk about politics, because we’re adults — and I still consider each and every one of them to be among my closest friends, but I’m in no way saying their views are reflected in my own. I’m alone out here. You can leave them out of this.

In any case, none of us included Hardwired on our individual ballots. You now know why it didn’t get my vote, but here too I can’t speak for anyone else. My best guess is, all those guys loved other stuff more, and I get that. The truth is, we didn’t come to much of a consensus on anything, musically speaking. I think when it finally came time to do this thing, we were all a little unsure about why we were doing it. Was there really any value in five grown men seriously arguing over the respective merits and demerits of obscure metal albums released in an arbitrary timeframe?

We talked it over, and we finally decided there was, for a few reasons:

First, we ultimately recognized this as the culmination of a lot of hard work that we’ve done throughout the year, and an opportunity for us to celebrate the music that really moved us for whatever reason. It would be kinda disrespectful to ignore that. Second, I believe there’s an underlying and invaluable greater good being served here: Over the past four years, we’ve established a healthy, thoughtful, and responsible community in an unlikely space, and these sorts of communities will be increasingly essential in the future. More importantly, I believe metal itself has the opportunity to play a vital role in shaping our collective consciousness going forward. Few art forms are so free to speak truth to power, so apt to channel rage.

And where we’re headed, we’re gonna fucking need that.

Metallica may not feel comfortable in that role anymore, but there are countless other metal bands who recognize what Metallica have forgotten: Metal is not comfort music. And it’s not a design sensibility, either. It’s fury and sorrow and rebellion and confusion and hate and joy made sound.

Which brings me to the main reason we’re doing this again: Because even though metal had a pretty bad 2016, it still gave us a crazy bounty of great music. We loved this stuff. I loved this stuff. I’ll always love it. Because no matter how bad metal gets, it’s still — absolutely, forever — the best. –Michael Nelson