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40. Anathema – Weather Systems

Remember when this band was paying its dues as a death/doom group? Twenty-odd years later, on Weather Systems, Anathema’s staking its claim as one of the best contemporary prog rock bands around. Lead guitarist Daniel Cavanagh’s evolution as a songwriter continues, as he churns out a deeply beautiful and, at times, deeply moving album that tugs at a wide range of listeners’ emotions. One of the few Achilles heels is the length; there’s no reason a song like “The Storm Before the Calm” needs to last nine and a half minutes when the bulk of it’s run its course in five. But regardless, with its crisp, shimmering production, and catchy compositions from beginning to end, the album is without a doubt one of the band’s best to date.

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39. Animal Collective – Centipede Hz.

NEWS FLASH: When you set the bar as high as Animal Collective did with their 2009 opus, Merriweather Post Pavilion, duplicating the results can be next to impossible. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at the band’s follow-up, Centipede Hz., for what it is—weirder, more experimental, but still a very listenable album. The high point comes midway through, with the dynamic one-two punch of “New Town Burnout” and “Monkey Riches” – which channels the cacophony into an immersive, trancelike peak. It’s not perfect, but the album offers more than its fair share of thrills.

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38. Nachtmystium – Silencing Machine

For a band that had, on its previous two albums, done so much to expand the boundaries of black metal, it was a bit unexpected to see Nachtmystium go back to black metal basics on their sixth album, Silencing Machine. On this beast of a disc, Blake Judd and co. serve up healthy doses of blast beats and searing, throaty growls, while still leaving time for the occasional experimental sound, as on centerpiece “Borrowed Hope and Broken Dreams.” In most cases, looking backwards for musical inspiration can be detrimental to a band, but Nachtmystium pulls it off quite well here.

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37. Winterfylleth – The Threnody of Triumph

Over the last several years, Winterfylleth has emerged as a true force in contemporary black metal, and the Manchester quartet’s third album, The Threnody of Triumph, only strengthens their stake in the game. It’s raw but not unlistenable, atmospheric but not overly produced, and hidden underneath all the aggression are some of the most beautiful melodies you’ll hear in extreme metal this year.

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36. Minus the Bear – Infinity Overhead

Seattle indie rockers Minus the Bear return with another solid effort on their fifth release, Infinity Overhead. Loaded with future MTB standards, (“Toska”) as well as a number of excellent change-of-pace ballads (“Diamond Lightning”) the album keeps up the band’s patented combination of rhythmic experimentation and melodic euphoria. But the standout ends up being “Lies and Eyes,” a four-minute blend of synth-driven pop-rock bliss and one of the year’s best tracks.

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35. Coheed & Cambria – The Afterman: Ascension

That Coheed & Cambria can continue churning out source material for their Amory Wars concept album series for, now, six albums is impressive. But that these albums can continue to sound as fresh musically as The Afterman: Ascension does is even more so. The first in a two-part series, the album brings an absurd range of influences to the table; the harmonized intro riff on “Goodnight, Fair Lady” is almost Police-esque, while the sing-along chorus on “Vic the Butcher” recalls the band’s most emocore roots. With the album’s counterpart, Descension, due out in February, consider our appetites whetted.

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34. Buckethead – Electric Sea

When an acknowledged guitar virtuoso puts out six albums in a single year, (yes, six) how does one find a place for all of them? Fortunately, the clear winner of Buckethead’s monster 2012 was Electric Sea, the sequel to his reflective 2002 masterpiece, Electric Tears. Sea proves a more-than-worthy successor, showcasing some of Buckethead’s most beautiful, intimate guitar work to date. The lead work on “Swomee Swan,” in particular, is enough to move one to tears. A stunning, enchanting album from start to finish.

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33. Kreator – Phantom Antichrist

Three years after the disappointing Hordes of Chaos, German thrash legends Kreator bounced back nicely with their thirteenth album, Phantom Antichrist. This time, Mille Petrozza and co. remain as ferocious as they’ve ever been, but channel their aggression into tighter, more melodic and more listenable compositions. “From Flood Into Fire” combines the perfect blend of heaviness with a stellar, ballad-esque bridge section—while the title track is a pummeling blast of Teutonic fury, as merciless a song as the band’s put together in years. If not for 2005’s seminal Enemy of God, Phantom Antichrist would easily rank as Kreator’s best album in two decades.

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32. Eluveitie – Helvetios

It’s kind of funny how it took a concept album for Eluveitie to reach its true potential. Injecting a storyline almost always results in bloated, misguided musical output, but on Helvetios, the Swiss folk-metal mainstays channel the histories of the Gallic Wars into arguably their best album yet. The songs are tight and crisply-produced—a sound for sore ears after the total sonic failure of the band’s last album, Everything Remains as it Never Was. It’s also interesting to see how much hurdy-gurdist/vocalist Anna Murphy’s role has grown since the last time out; she nails a handful of lead opportunities on Helvetios, including the stunning centerpiece, “A Rose for Epona.” At the end of the day, incorporating a tale to rival the epic scale of their music has also forced Eluveitie to raise that very musical bar as well—and they’ve utterly surpassed themselves in doing so. A tremendous effort.

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31. Lupe Fiasco – Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1

Setting aside the, er-hem…slight amount of pretense in the title, Food & Liquor II plucks Lupe Fiasco out of his pop diversion and returns the rapper to his original, classic sound. Absent the Modest Mouse rip-offs and Trey Songz guest spots that we saw on his disappointing previous album, Lasers, Lupe’s true strengths—innovative beats, sampling and stellar vocal dexterity—can finally return to the forefront and remind listeners just how strong a force Lupe is in hip-hop. So while a song like “Battle Scars,” might be a shameless bit of pop-rap sell-outage, Food & Liquor II’s got more than its share of reinforcements to cancel that out, from “Bitch Bad” to the masterpiece, “Around My Way [Freedom Ain’t Free].” The latter might just be the best song Lupe’s ever recorded—and after Lasers, who thought we’d be saying that?

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That’ll do it for today’s edition, so check back tomorrow for albums 30-21. And, as always, we welcome your comments, criticisms, and list contributions! (Just no bricks through the window, please. Had enough of those lately.)

While he never slows down (this is his eighth solo release in the last two years alone,) the enigmatic virtuoso guitarist/composer/rock star who chooses to go by the name “Buckethead” does occasionally change directions. His latest, Electric Sea, shows a fresh re-emergence of classical and Spanish guitar in his rich vocabulary of styles. Along with original compositions, the album includes performances of two Bach pieces, and one selection from the Alfredo Catalani opera La Wally. And, as is so often the case with Buckethead releases, I’m tempted to close that summary with “yes, really.” The album also closes with “Homing Beacon”, his elegy on the occasion of Michael Jackson’s death. (Yes. Really.)

There are ample rewards for looking past the artist’s self-imposed exile from the mainstream, here: compositions like the titular “Electric Sea” reveal an amazing fusion of compositional and performance ability, with every passage speaking a potent musical homage to memory and nature. Elsewhere, the songs occasionally skirt the edges of technical overindulgence (“El Indio’s” closing leaps to mind,) but never quite dull their personality in the process. The word nostalgic may sum up the tone of the original compositions, here, but with the important caveat that it’s the emotive content, rather than the musical style, making the appeal to nostalgia.

Electric Sea is a few pages from the songbook of one of our very best guitarists, and it’s an album to listen to with your full attention. Throughout, there’s an unapologetic reverence for the possibilities of electric guitar, the likes of which you’d be hard-pressed to find in anything else since Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. (Unless, of course, you’ve been following Buckethead all along.)