Anger is a part of life. Work, relationships, politics, the things that surround us every day, there is always something that could crawl under your skin and make your blood simmer like lava. Some bottle it up, some lash out and then retract, others are in a constant state of rage, wound tight and ready to explode. Sometimes we look for ways to soothe that inner beast. We turn on a Whale Sounds In E-Minor album, brew a pot of tea, waft around in the Zen garden for a bit. If thats your approach to dealing with anger, thats fair enough, but sometimes we like to feed that rage, to fan the flames, to ride it out and see where it takes us. And thats where the albums listed here come in handy. They say that music soothes even the savage beast, but that depends on the music in question. Were talking about good old fight music here. Throbbing, vitriolic tunes that, for lack of a more subtle way of putting it, make you want to punch someone square in the face. It works both ways: sometimes the music inspires the anger, sometimes youre already close to breaking point - were not all the Dalai Lama, some of us like to let loose sometimes, and in those situations a blast of truly aggressive music can actually be cathartic. Before we get stuck in, its important to qualify the headline, referring to the artists here as mainstream. Its a silly term, really - the point, though, is that were putting together a list of artists who have some level of mass appeal - it would be too easy to just say every death metal album ever made or any Scandinavian black metal clan with corpse paint and a pointy, illegible logo. Also, "angry" isn't interchangeable with "heavy" - anger has many forms. That's not to say that there isn't metal to be found, just not the obscure stuff. Some specialise in angry music, some usually take things in a different direction but were driven to spit out a torrent of rage at some point in their career. Some express their anger in less conspicuous ways. Whatever their reasons, the ten albums listed here are prime examples of distilled wrath in musical form.
Game-obsessed since the moment I could twiddle both thumbs independently. Equally enthralled by all the genres of music that your parents warned you about.
