Below you’ll find my Top 25 favorite metal albums of 2015, along with a few more individual lists from other critics who write about heavier music for Pitchfork. (You can listen to a few songs from some of these albums at Apple Music.) It’s an annual tradition to hear people talk negatively about consensus in year-end writing, but looking at each person’s picks here, something that stands out to me is just how different these lists can be, even when limited to a specific genre. In fact, there are a number of records that only show up once. This wide range says something about the great year metal had, yes, but also about the mindset of metal listeners in general. When I got into this music as a pre-teen in the '80s, it wasn’t very cool; its profile has risen in some cooler circles since then, but it’s still a place, at least to me, where you can talk about what you like without judgment—unless, maybe, what you like is Deafheaven.