I've been making these sorts of lists long enough to know they're not an exact science, and they don't please everyone. In the end, they're snapshots that remind the individual stressing out over said list about what was important to them within a particular time span. They're also fun to argue about. So read on for my Top 40 Metal Albums of 2011, along with a slew of Honorable Mentions and explanations as to why bands including Liturgy and Leviathan did not make the list.

40. Weekend Nachos: Worthless [Relapse]

39. Skeletonwitch: Forever Abomination [Prosthetic]

38. Peste Noire: L'Ordure à l'État Pur [Transcendental Creations/Tour De Garde]

37. Absu: Abzu [Candlelight]

36. Machine Head: Unto the Locust [Roadrunner]

35. Mournful Congregation: The Book of Kings [20 Buck Spin]

34. Vanhelgd: Church of Death [Nuclear War Now!]

33. Negative Plane: Stained Glass Revelations [Ajna Offensive]

32. Rwake: Rest [Relapse]

31. Sonne Adam: Transformation [Century Media]

30. Mitochondrion: Parasignosis [Profound Lore]

29. Gridlink: Orphan [Hydra Head]

28. Loss: Despond [Profound Lore]

27. Drugs of Faith: Corroded [Selfmadegod]

26. Atlas Moth: An Ache for the Distance [Profound Lore]

On their sophomore LP, the psychedelic, progressive Chicago quintet uses multiple vocalists, three guitarists, bass, and drums to create a kaleidoscopic rush of colorful sludge, post-rock, doom, lighter-lifter metal, and clear-headed pop. This band makes catchy, ambitious music, and they did a better job at being Mastodon this year than Mastodon themselves.

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"Holes in the Desert"__

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25. Atriarch: Forever the End [Seventh Rule]

Funeral-paced Portland deathrock quartet Atriarch, featuring members of Graves at Sea, Trees, Final Conflict, and Get Hustle, create shambling, ritualistic drone that gets its talons into you via crusty howls, a colossal dynamic, and the overall feel of continuing ritual: Their four-song, 36-minute debut comes to one intense culmination after another.

"Shadows"

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24. Necros Christos: Doom of the Occult [Sepulchural Voice]

On their second album, the German blackened death quartet Necros Christos, aka "Dead Christ," create a deeply atmospheric blend of Eastern incidental music, somber church organs, Absu-like philosophies, and death growls. Vocalist/guitarist/mastermind Mors Dalos Ra is an occult thinker who plots his 23-song albums based on numbers, the dusty books he's read, and-- thankfully-- catchy riffs.

"Necromatique Nun"

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23. Indian: Guiltless [Relapse]

Chicago quartet Indian's crusty, blasted-out third full-length Guiltless is one of the heaviest records of 2011. The doom guitars are sturdy, droning, down-tempo, and desolate, but it's the little details-- Sean Patton's "noise," the exhilaratingly bleak, strangulated vocals of guitarists Dylan O'Toole and Middian/Wolves in the Throne Room/Nachtmystium multi-tasker Will Lindsay-- that make it click.

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"No Grace"__

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22. Deafheaven: Roads to Judah

[Deathwish Inc.]

On San Francisco quintet Deafheaven's four-song, 38-minute full-length debut Roads to Judah, the group blends shredding West Coast black metal, Explosions in the Sky dynamics, a healthy My Bloody Valentine infatuation, a floor-punching hardcore sensibility, and anguished (but romantic) vocal eruptions by clean-cut frontman George Clarke. If they toured with Liturgy, web boards would implode.

Deafheaven: Violet

21. Thou: The Archer & the Owle EP

[Robotic Empire]

The prolific, DIY-minded Baton Rouge quintet landed near the top of my list last year with the gorgeous sludge funeral Summit. Their first of two 2011 EPs comes with a cover of Nirvana's "Something in the Way" and locates a similarly sky-melting place. Like the rest of their material, it's incredibly well wrought, anthemic, and, somehow, life-affirming. (Plus, you can't fuck with the occasional piano and horns.)

"Voices in the Wilderness"

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20. SubRosa: No Help for the Mighty Ones [Profound Lore]

This Salt Lake City "female dominated" doom-pop quartet has plenty of 1990s alt hooks in their violin-lined, stoner-folk sludge. No Help for the Mighty Ones was mixed and mastered by Marduk bassist Magnus Devo Andersson, but will have no problem appealing to the more adventurous Breeders fans out there.

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"Beneath the Crown"__

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19. Vastum: Carnal Law [20 Buck Spin]

Crusty San Francisco quintet Vastum features members of Acephalix, Infest, and Saros/Amber Asylum/Hammers of Misfortune. (Those last three via guitarist/co-vocalist Leila Abdul-Rauf, who shows up on this list twice.) Originally issued as a demo, this five-song debut retains a cassette-trading feel: dirty, dense death metal, not the shiny, tech-y breakdown-happy sort. (And feel free to mull their subject matter, which includes "themes of sexuality and psychic disfiguration" via Georges Bataille and the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche.)

"Primal Seduction"

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18. Altar of Plagues: Mammal [Profound Lore]

The Irish black metal quartet's sophomore LP-- after well-played EPs-- is their most blistering, experimental, patient, and majestic collection to date. It's not empty, rarefied black metal-- the stuff comes with muscular, working-class grit. Vocalist/guitarist James Kelly has said Mammal is about death, but despite the dark atmosphere, lyrics like, "The brother, the mother, the sister and the son/ All of them are gone," and the title's suggestion that in the end we're just animals, this is fist-pumping/goosebump-raising music.

"Feather And Bone"

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17. Krallice: Diotima [Profound Lore]

In 2011, Krallice have taken on an a darker, weirder, stronger, manlier, more death-infused shade. They've grown more comfortable as a band and, importantly, co-vocalist/bassist Nick McMaster-- who only handled "additional vocals" and live bass in 2008-- has substantially increased his writing role and makes his presence felt via deep death grunts that collide nicely with Mick Barr's more ghostly banshee howl. Time to forget the Weakling comparisons; no one else is making, or has ever made, music like this.

"The Clearing"

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16. Trap Them: Darker Handcraft [Prosthetic]

Entombed-loving hardcore crew Trap Them's Kurt Ballou-produced third full-length arrived with a new drummer, ex-Coliseum pounder Chris Maggio, and frontman Ryan McKenney writing his catchiest throat-shredding vocal lines to date. Outside of that, you've got early Black Flag energy, the dense atmosphere of guys who like their Swedish death metal, and layers of discordant-but-melodic axes that do their part to worsen your tinnitus while inspiring plenty of d-beat/rock 'n' roll dancing.

"Evictionaries"

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15. Ash Borer: Ash Borer [Psychic Violence]

This California black metal quartet's self-titled proper LP debut features three songs that combine for nearly 40 minutes of blistering, expansive punk-infused black metal. (They remind me of Bone Awl, largely because of the grain of their guitar buzz.) The wordy titles match the song lengths, but somehow it all feels intensely honed. The band features a member of the sci-fi black metal duo Servile Sect, and things are pretty apocalyptic here, too. They should've been a bigger part of this year's USBM discussion.

"Rest, You Are the Lightning"

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14. Autopsy: Macabre Eternal [Peaceville]

Bay Area punk-inflected, horror-obsessed death metal pioneers Autopsy's suffocating 68-minute "comeback" record Macabre Eternal arrived shortly after drummer/vocalist Chris Reifert and guitarist Danny Coralles pulled the plug on their other band, Abscess, in June of last year and started focusing full-time on Autopsy. Abscess' Dawn of Inhumanity was one of my favorites last year, and Autopsy's higher-fi Macabre Eternal-- with plenty of those rickety guitar solos and plenty of crust-- is even better. Not bad for a bunch of old-timers.

"Hand of Darkness"

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13. Morne: Asylum [Profound Lore]

The Boston post-sludge quintet first got a boost when Darkthrone included their name in the Dennis Dread drawing on the cover of 2010's Circle the Wagon. But even without Fenriz's backing, their brilliant seven-song, hour-plus sophomore full-length-- featuring their most beautifully heavy, deeply atmospheric, patiently devastating recordings to date-- would've done the trick.

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"My Return"__

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12. Hammers of Misfortune: 17th Street

[Metal Blade]

For the past decade and change, San Francisco's Hammers of Misfortune have done progressive metal right: Their ambitious, impeccably rendered compositions make room for honest emotion alongside the larger concepts. Led by John Cobbett (ex-Ludicra, Slough Feg), the band's fifth studio album 17th Street was a song cycle about "loss and endings" that felt more like a new beginning. And not just because it featured new members guitarist Leila Abdul-Rauf (Saros, Amber Asylum, Vastum) and power-piped vocalist Joe Hutton (the Worship of Silence), though their presence definitely helped.

"17th Street"

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11. Exhumed: All Guts No Glory [Relapse]

I've been surrounded by sickness and death the past couple of years, so the raw-yet-playful obsession with life's circle via songs like "Your Funeral, My Feast", "Through Cadaver Eyes", and "I Rot Within" on thrashing San Jose goregrind heroes Exhumed's first album in close to a decade felt right. Call it dark comic relief. Or, if you're not a lyrics person, focus on the putrid atmosphere, melodic grinding, and memorable old-school buzzsaw riffs.

"Through Cadaver Eyes"

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10. Primordial: Redemption at the Puritan's Hand [Metal Blade]

You won't hear many things as demanding of lighters (or armor) as the pagan Irish group Primordial's seventh album. Charismatic vocalist A.A. Nemtheanga-- sort of the bald, heavy metal Daniel Higgs-- could make a shopping list feel like an battle cry about a huge, bloody war. In this case, he's bellowing over the best songs of the band's two-plus decades-- folk and black metal-inflected classic metal that spirals and extends and, somehow, keeps getting bigger. This thing has a way of making slowly rotting in front of your laptop feel epic.

"Bloodied Yet Unbound"

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09. In Solitude: The World, the Flesh, the Devil [Metal Blade]

In Solitude's young frontman Pelle "Hornper" Åhman doesn't slather as much facepaint as fellow satanic Swedes Ghost, but his twin-guitar-toting, classic cult metal-invoking Uppsala-based quintet's vintage-sounding second full-length The World, The Flesh, The Devil should be even more appealing to fans of Mercyful Fate. (As a bit of trivia, the title track was the first song to make my son throw the horns-- he was six months old at the time.)

"The World, The Flesh, The Devil"

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08. Yob: Atma [Profound Lore]

Oregon trio Yob's "comeback" album The Great Cessation landed at No. 6 on my 30 Best Metal Albums Of 2009. At the time, I mentioned mainman Mike Scheidt's masterful "Wino-on-Deathspell Omega" vocal performance plus those endless doom riffs equaled pure American doom gold. Two years later, the five-song, 55-minute Atma is a crustier, sludgier, dirtier, more in-your-face collection that manages to feel both down-to-earth intimate and outer-realms airy by the time you reach the end of closer "Adrift in the Ocean".

"Prepare the Ground"

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07. Circle of Ouroborus: Eleven Fingers [Handmade Birds]

This Finnish duo have been finding ways to straddle its love of Joy Division and corpse paint for a number of years. Their newest, Eleven Fingers, is their best yet. Mastered by James Plotkin, it's out on Handmade Birds, the new imprint by R. Loren (Pyramids, Sailors With Wax Wings), and it's the strongest, most concise example of this band's dark and depressive blackened post-punk.

Circle of Ouroborus: Warpath

06. Wolves in the Throne Room: Celestial Lineage [Southern Lord]

On what could be their last black metal album before they go full-on folk, the atmospheric "eco-spiritual" Olympia duo Wolves in the Throne Room created what felt like American black metal's idiosyncratic defining record of 2011, a mix of ethereal female vocals, woodsy atmospherics, and blistering extended post-Weakling black metal riffage. In some ways Celestial Lineage feels like a throwback when compared to the claustrophobic experimentation of Leviathan's headier pieces or the genre-shifting hyper-speed "occult metal" of contemporary Absu. Unlike a lot of that other stuff, though, it also feels like a classic.

"Thuja Magus Imperium"

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05. Disma: Towards the Megalith

[Profound Lore]

Disma are a rank, heavily down-tuned, and against-all-odds "catchy" quintet from Clifton, NJ, featuring ex-Incantation vocalist Craig Pillard, along with onetime Incantation guitarist Bill Venner, bassist Randi Stokes (ex-Methadrone), and a couple of members of Funebrarum (guitarist Daryl Kahan, drummer Shawn Eldridge). Their official debut full-length, Towards the Megalith, is the perfect blend of miasmatic vocals, putrid old-school atmospherics, and well-wrought riffs.

"Of a Past Forlorn"

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04. 40 Watt Sun: The Inside Room

[Metal Blade]

Ex-Warning vocalist/guitarist Patrick Walker's new doom trio 40 Watt Sun stands up to the old, classic material: The five down-tempo songs on the London-based group's 47-minute debut The Inside Room update Warning's production, weave in pensive acoustic moments, and locate a vaster sounding explosiveness without straying from the script. There are also those sweeping hooks, painful, introspective lyrics, and Walker's clear, soaring voice-- elements that could be cheesy if not handled with such delicacy or well-earned confidence.

"Restless"

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03. Ulcerate: The Destroyers of All

[Willowtip]

New Zealand trio Ulcerate's gorgeous, technically dead-on third album, The Destroyers of All, weaves epic post-metal into frantic atmospheric death squalls. Featuring one of the year's most compelling rhythm sections, it's a beautiful blizzard of sound that feels chaotic and supremely controlled. Ulcerate create death metal you can feel comfortable comparing to Deathspell Omega. Or, Isis-- at their best-- giving a go at the Portal song book. Or, a Chariots of Fire marathon during a hailstorm.

"Cold Becoming"

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02. Tombs: Path of Totality [Relapse]

The Brooklyn trio is quintessentially New York-- reminiscent of early Swans, Unsane, and a bunch of the hardcore I liked as a kid-- but also weaving in an epic dark metal vibe. Vocalist/guitarist Mike Hill, a guy who lifts weights before practice, is also the city's most compelling frontman. (It helps that his rhythm section-- who play like they're in a street fight-- will also eat you for dinner.) If you're at all interested in noise-rock, sludge, black metal atmospherics, or post-punk, you should be into Tombs' peerless sophomore album-- a violent, beautiful marriage of no-bullshit toughness and moving, surprisingly delicate ambitiousness.

"Path of Totality"

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01. Blut Aus Nord: 777: Sect(s) / The Desanctification [Debemur Morti]

This year, the long-time avant-garde black metal project of mysterious French multi-instrumenatlist Vindsval released the first two installments of the 777 trilogy, the pummeling "rock"-oriented Sect(s) and the discombobulating, cavernous, tripped-out The Desanctification. Together, these almost 90 minutes of music find Blut Aus Nord continuing to redefine what, in 2011, has become a genre difficult to rekindle in honest ways. Beyond the experimentation, both of these records also really move-- you could almost dance to the latter. As more and more obscurantists lineup to be interviewed or open Facebook pages, it's also a treat to have BAN remain basically as hooded and anonymous as when things started in 1994.

Check out the closer to Sect(s) and the opener to The Desanctification below, and look for part three of the trilogy in March 2012.

"Epitome VI"

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"Epitome VII"

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Honorable Mention [in no order]:

Branoil: Death of this Dry Season [20 Buck Spin], Young Widows: In and Out of Youth and Lightness [Temporary Residence], KEN mode: Venerable [Profound Lore]; Mamaleek: Kurdaitcha [Enemies List]; Batillus: Furnace [Seventh Rule]; Maruta: Forward Into Regression [Willowtip], Flourishing: The Sum of All Fossils [The Path Less Traveled], Wolvhammer: Obsidian Planes [Profound Lore], Corrupted: Garten Der Unbewusstheit [Nostalgia Blackrain], Thou: To the Chaos Wizard Youth EP [Vendetta], Antediluvian: Through the Cervix of Hawwah [Profound Lore], Cianide: Gods of Death [Hells Headbangers], Immolation: Majesty and Decay [Nuclear Blast], Speedwolf: Ride With Death [Hell's Headbangers], Ravencult: Morbid Blood [Hells Headbangers], Raspberry Bulbs: Nature Tries Again [Hospital], Futur Skullz: Futur Skullz [Kemado], Desolate Shrine: Tenebrous Towers [Hammer of Hate], Rotten Sound: Cursed [Relapse], Bringers of Disease: Gospel of Pestilence [Translation Loss], Locrian: The Clearing [Fan Death], Engineer: Crooked Voices [Black Market Activities], Portrait: Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae [Metal Blade], Noisear: Subvert the Dominant Paradigm [Relapse], Morbus Chron: Sleepers in the Rift [Pulverised], Owen Hart: Earth Control [Vitriol], Gates of Slumber: The Wretch [Rise Above/Metal Blade], All Pigs Must Die: God is War [Southern Lord], False: False [Gilead Media], Cynic: Carbon-Based Anatomy EP [Season of Mist]; Solstafir: Svartir Sandar [Season of Mist]; Glorior Belli: The Great Southern Darkness [Metal Blade], Nunfuckritual: In Bondage to the Serpent [Debemur Morti], Rue: Thorns [Shifty], The Swan King: Eyes Like Knives [Seventh Rule], Craft: Void [Southern Lord], Unkind: Harhakuvat (Relapse), Vreid: V [Indie], Seidr: For Winter Fire [Flenser], Russian Circles: Empros [Sargent House], Servile Sect: Trvth [Handmade Birds], Harpoon: Deception Among Birds [Seventh Rule]. *

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Miscellany:

-- I like, and admire, WOLD's Freermasonry [Profound Lore], as I do all their records, but for various reasons I feel like I should never subject their releases to the structure of a list.

-- Same goes for Liturgy's Aesthetica [Thrill Jockey], a very good record that sounded better live (drummer Greg Fox will be missed). I didn't want to include it above because it deserves its own citation. In many ways it was the album of the year-- the conversations it sparked, the shifts it suggested, the masks it removed, the hate it inspired, and, hell, the simple forward momentum of that music. Too much time was spent getting angry at frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, though, for basically having interesting and smart opinions about black metal. It's amazing to me the drivel some folks prefer from their "grim" frontmen.

-- Speaking of which: Jef Whitehead, aka Wrest of Leviathan, continued to come off like Beavis & Butt-head, something that ultimately turned me off to True Traitor, True Whore [Profound Lore], a record I liked before I was unable to shake his frat-boy non-singing voice from my head. (Ditto, for different reasons, Burzum.)

-- Another album that deserves it's own honorable mention is Botanist's I: The Suicide Tree / II: A Rose from the Dead [tUMULt], an, as tweeted, "eco-terrorist black metal" project using voice/drums/dulcimer on tracks about plants & flowers. Truly weird, engrossing stuff that, again, doesn't seem to conform to a list's hierarchy.

-- It's worth noting that I put Inquisition's Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm at No. 5 of my 2010 list, so I didn't include it here. If you haven't listened to it, you really should.

-- Speaking of the past, I listened to Dragged Into Sunlight's Hatred For Mankind quite a bit, but since it has an original release date of 2009, before Prosthetic's 2011 reissue, I didn't include that either.

-- Endnote: 2011 will go down as the year I got sick of talking about black metal.