It’s that time of year when the end of the year lists are coming out (ours will start soon!). So the other day, I received a very interesting email about Evan Schultz‘s Battle Jacket end of the year list project on frombeyond.me. He listened to over 400 releases from 2016 and narrowed his picks down to the ones you will find on this interactive battle jacket below. Check out what Evan had to say about this project for yourself…I’m already interested in seeing what he comes up with for 2017!

“There was no final goal in terms of genre or popularity,” Schultz says. “I didn’t care if it was the most obscure demo tape or the most hotly anticipated release of the year. I just wanted to listen to everything and pick my true favorites. To get a patch, your album had to be good. Like, headbang-through-the-drywall good.”

The genre-blending vest features patches for 2016 releases from relatively well-known acts like Abbath and Inquisition, as well as more obscure releases by underground acts such as black thrashers Occult Burial and mysterious black/death cult Mylingar.

Each patch or pin links out to a brief review written by Schultz. “With the reviews, I tried to strike a balance between informative metal nerdiness and self-aware humor,” he says. “Metal is completely ridiculous. I wanted to capture a lot of the silliness of being obsessed with this type of music. I mean, who dedicates a year of their free time to something like this?”