Best of the 00s!

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   This is a list where you state your favorite album of each year in the 00s. Preferably metal, but other things are acceptable as well. I will start.

2000: Gonna have to start out with a non-metal album here (sorry, I'm trying to find the Perfect Element somewhere!). So I'm going for Godspeed you Black Emperor's Lift Your Skinny Fists... which is one of the few albums I would call perfect. Absolutely phenomenal and the atmospheres inspire me. The perfect album to zone out to when I'm tired and worn out.

2001: Tool's Lateralus. While I don't think it's explicitly metal, it is my favorite album. Fery few albums can come close to it's depth. It's atmospheres blend just as easily with some of the shifting times and the intertwining concept. This is an album that I heard for the first time and I absolutely loved it, and loved it even more as it went on.

2002: Dream Theater's Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. Easily one of my favorite Dream Theater releases, it starts off with a bang with The Glass Prison and from there explores into a beautiful long-form Rush like track, a slow building alt-metal track, a tool influenced prog metal track, and a touching ballad. Oh, and there's a suite on the other side two which is pretty good. Maybe you've heard of it. 

2003: Enslaved's Below the Lights. Starting off with a haunting mellotron-esque synth the band bursts into somber, cold black metal that goes so many angles. This is definitely a highlight of the 00s and it's really a phenomenal release.

2004: Meshuggah's I. The epic is an overused format. Almost every song is a mashup of two verses and two choruses that could stand as its own song without being part of the epic. I kicks that in the balls, chops its nuts off, tears off its limbs and chucks that to the wolves. Starts off with polymetric madness and never lets up from there. The agressive parts are brutal, the quiet parts are eerie, and it covers so much ground.

2005: Strapping Young Lad's Alien. Devin takes everything on this album as far as he can fucking go. It's an over the top smashfest of epic proportions. The first three songs are probably my favorite three in a row that I can think of and the rest of the album is great too. Even the ballad is over the top in cheese. (Honorable mention to Annihilation of the Wicked, which is just as deserving of best of 2005).

2006: Moonsorrow's Havitetty. Two giant epic tracks underscore the giant, doomy folk soundscapes. The melodies are just piercing, and the moods range from somber to aggressive to meditative. Tons of folk melodies juxtaposed with long form doom riffs add up to an incredibly good record.

2007: Between the Buried and Me's Colors. Don't act like you didn't see this coming from me. This album inspires me every time I listen. The musicianship is flawless. Each song goes places and lacks redundancy, because each new riff progresses smoothly from the last. Absolutely tops. In a battle with Lateralus for my favorite album.

2008: The Faceless' Planetary Duality. At first I thought this album was ok, nothing special. Now I can't get enough. There is some bizarre technical wizardry, but in my opinion it never gets in the way of the songs, which are all pretty damn brutal. There are some definite tech-death highlights and all of them kick ass. It's a shame I will miss them when they come to this city in march.

2009: Animals as Leaders' s/t. Tosin Abasi reinvents what a shred guitar can mean. There are spacey sounds alongside weird pickings, shreds, and tappings. Again, this is an album that inspires me. I feel emotion in every track, from the frantic insanity of "Tempting Time", to the quiet cyberpunky "Behaving Badly", to the mournful "On Impulse", to the joyous "Song of Solomon". (runners up Addicted by Devin Townsend, and Black Future by Vektor which I just started listening to).