50 Best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Albums Of 2017

Whether you’re aware of it at this juncture or not, the future of extreme music belongs to British death metal. Over the course of the past eighteen-to-24 months, young, critically acclaimed bands like Neck of the Woods, Venom Prison, Harbinger, A Trust Unclean and Raised By Owls have found themselves bursting through the woodwork, each amassing a cult but hugely rabid following.

Among the best of this new wave of British death metal, however, are the technical Londoners Abhorrent Decimation, who earn the appropriately evil number thirteen slot with their sophomore album, The Pardoner.

Complex and, at times, even eerily melodic in its delivery, The Pardoner is a ride that takes the classic, extreme sound of the likes of Obituary and Cannibal Corpse and ups the complexity tenfold. The solos of ex-Reign of Fury shredlord Ross McLennan are among the best that have blessed my ears this year, the roars of lead growl-dispenser Ashley Scott as dissonant and harsh as any other heavy band in the scene today.

The Pardoner’s destructive sound is off-set in several grandiose and orchestral interludes, composed by bassist David Archer and featuring enormous, operatic cellos, violins and keys. The classical reworking of some of the band’s riffs works gangbusters on the disc, peaking as the title track closes out the album in a five-minute flurry of gigantic orchestrations.

With a concept centred upon the character of the same name from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The Pardoner finally proves that olden English literature can, indeed, be brutal as f*ck!