I’m going to be honest with you: I really, really like this album. I’ve gone back to it time and again since hearing it early this year, and doing so has brought me nothing but satisfaction. The Wounded Kings are a bright spot on the UK‘s hope for the doomed future. I felt that way with 2008’s Embrace of the Narrow House, and I feel that way with their I Hate Records debut, The Shadow Over Atlantis.

Not only is the record cohesive sonically and ideologically, but multi-instrumentalist Steve Mills and guitarist/bassist/vocalist George Birch inflict an atmosphere so dense that it affects your mood for the rest of the day. There’s plenty of doom out there that’s dreary, but The Wounded Kings go beyond the melancholic, plunging the depths of Lovecraftian terror and arising therefrom with a hellacious beauty in tow. “The Swirling Mist” and “The Sons of Belial” are more rituals than songs.

The Shadow Over Atlantis also marks the end of an era for The Wounded Kings, as they’ve since gone on to include a full-time bassist and drummer in Luke Taylor and Nick Collings (respectively). Already this new lineup has shown its prowess on the An Introduction to the Black Arts split LP with Cough, and with their increased ability to play live now that they’re a complete band, The Wounded Kings feel like they’re just getting started. Let’s hope that’s the case.

They go quick. Here we are at number 16 and it’s Earthride‘s first album in half a decade, Something Wicked. Released through their own Earth Brain Records, Something Wicked had no pretense about it, made no grand claims about what it was trying to accomplish. It came in, rocked solid for its 52 minutes, and then was gone again. Charismatic frontman Dave Sherman was in top form, introducing more clean singing to his approach, and the band behind him grooved in the key of Orange like few acts can.

The title track was a highlight, thanks in no small part to the hairy thickness of Kyle Van Steinburg‘s guitar, and cuts like “Wake up Your Mind” and the speedier “Grip the Wheel of Death” made Something Wicked an album I went back to time and again throughout the year. I mean, seriously, “Hacksaw Eyeball?” I’ll take it, and while you’re at it, throw in the Wino guest appearance on “Supernatural Illusion.” Can’t go wrong.

It was doom for doomers to the nth degree, and asked little other than for your attention while it put its sizable boot up your ass. With the recent news that bassist Rob Hampshire (also of Nitroseed) has been replaced by Josh Hart, one hopes that Something Wicked will spawn a new era of productivity for Earthride, but whatever happens, they delivered a kickass album in 2010.

The first album by Tom G. Warrior‘s post-Celtic Frost outfit Triptykon was a revelation. It was as though Warrior himself was reaching his hand through the speakers to say, “It’s okay that Celtic Frost is broken up, everything’s going to be fine…. and by that I mean we’re all going to die and life is utterly meaningless.” Eparistera Daimones stands stall as one of 2010’s most grim and beautiful releases, Warrior and his band reveling in their misery with all the avant blackened doom that has become synonymous with his name over the last 30 years.

And they killed it live. Both headlining Roadburn and when I saw them again in New York, Triptykon was a highlight of the year, no question. The only reason it’s not higher up my list is because there were other albums I listened to more. If this were a quality-only kind of tabulation (which, by being a tabulation, it couldn’t really be; discuss amongst yourselves), Eparistera Daimones would certainly be a top 10 record, but staying power counts.

I’ll say this for it: I may not have kept Eparistera Daimones in my player all year long, but every time I’ve gone back to it, I’ve found something new. Like Celtic Frost‘s last album, Monotheist, it’s a record best enjoyed over time. It got no shortage of hype over the course of this year, but I think the real beauty and complexity in Triptykon are going to take longer than a mere couple months to fully appreciate. I still get a shiver up my spine every time I listen to “A Thousand Lies.”

There were arguments to be made for and against Zoroaster‘s 2010 E1 Music debut, Matador, but at the end of the day, I dug the record and it’s off-kilter methodology. The Atlanta trio’s third album overall, it was time for Zoroaster to shake up their approach. Last year’s Voice of Saturn saw them begin to experiment with clean vocals and more melodically-conscious songwriting, and aided by the production of Sanford Parker, Matador took that experimentation in new and innovative directions.

It’s a fascinating record, and hypnotic. If you played it for me back to back with Zoroaster‘s full-length debut, Dog Magic (2007), I wouldn’t think they were the same band, or at very least not the same personnel therein. But ultimately it may have come too quickly on the heels of Voice of Saturn, which was an honorable mention addition to last year’s top 10, as it seems like some of the material could have been developed further — the toying with traditional rock and roll guitar conventionalism on “Titan,” for example — before being put to tape.

Zoroaster are proving themselves able to produce at a consistently high quality, and Matador is a big part of that, but I’d be interested to see what came out of it if they took two years between albums instead of one again. The jump from Dog Magic to Voice of Saturn was much greater than that from Voice of Saturn to Matador, and as they’re at a pivotal point in their career — right on the verge of the bigger metal notoriety of bands like High on Fire — it’s time for them to really hunker down and start writing great songs. I hope in the future we can look back at Matador as the beginning of that process.

One of the most interesting things about putting together an end-of-year list for me is that, as I go through like this and explain why each release is in the spot it is (confession: this isn’t my first time), I break out the album and give it another listen. And in some cases, like with the Melvins‘ 2010 release, The Bride Screamed Murder (Ipecac), I haven’t heard the record in months. It’s like visiting an old friend. Or a still semi-new friend, anyway.

The Bride Screamed Murder was released on June 1, and I saw them on the 18th in NYC. I don’t want to say it was immediately after, but probably a week or two later, I put the album away — filed appropriately, of course — and never went back to it again. It’s nothing against either the Melvins or the album itself, I guess I was just done with it.

So, if it seems like The Bride Screamed Murder — which legitimately has some killer tracks (“Evil New War God,” “Pig House,” “Electric Flower” and the creepy “PG X 3” all come to mind) — is low on the list, that’s why. It was a good album, certainly much better than 2008’s Nude with Boots outing, but it wasn’t enough to hold me for the rest of the year, and my fickle attentions turned elsewhere.

And sure, I’ll allow my crap-tastic interview with Buzz Osborne and the hellish nightmare that paying $30 to see them at Webster Hall turned out to be might have something to do with it, but hey, it’s my list, and there are still 18 other albums I listened to and enjoyed more than this one in 2010, so take it for what it’s worth. If you’ve got a complaint, that’s why the comments are there.

When I sat down last night to make my Top 20 of 2010 list, I’d only heard Electric Wizard‘s seventh full-length, Black Masses, one time. And no, the copy I ordered more than a month ago from Rise Above Records still hasn’t shown up; it was the second one I ordered from All That is Heavy that came. Having only given it a once-over, I knew it deserved to be on this list, but in all fairness to every other album I listened to and/or reviewed in the last 12 months, I just couldn’t put it any higher than this. Call it a timing issue.

I’m going to post a full review sometime in the next week or so, but in the several subsequent listens I’ve given Black Masses since the first, it appears to be an evolution of the occultic ideas presented on 2007’s Witchcult Today: plenty of rituals being performed, plenty of ’70s boobage throughout, demons being called upon, and so forth. I’m looking forward to digging into it further, but so far, Jus Oborn‘s vocals on “Venus in Furs,” the bounding riff that leads “Patterns of Evil” and the anthemic chorus of “The Nightchild” all make Black Masses a worthy inclusion on this list.

And yeah, I’m sure that when I think back on 2010, Black Masses will be more prevalent than 20th place in my mind, but without knowing the record better than I do at this point, I’d be insulting the 19 other releases to come by buying into the hype and rating this higher just because it’s Electric Wizard and I’m excited about it. Incidentally, they’ve set a Jan. 18, 2011 release date for the official American issue of the album, so maybe Black Masses‘ll show up on next year’s list as well. In any case, expect much pronouncement of genius to come.