Those Once Loyal was Bolt Thrower's last effort. A solid closer to an extremely consistent and great discography. Bolt Thrower was around since the 80's and released nothing but great music, while they did go stale a little with the releases just before TOL. Those Once Loyal, however, has the best elements of what made Bolt Thrower amazing, and sounds fresh and unique at the same time. After it was released, the band worked on new material that they ultimately scrapped because they felt it wasn't a good enough follow-up to their work on TOL. This commitment they had, this respect for music and authenticity also commands respect. The band went out with a bang and were always true to themselves. TOL is not only a good album, it has an aura to it.

Nile released two amazing albums during the decade, yes. And they were serious contenders for the top 10. Annihilation of the Wicked was my 11th place. It was heartbreaking not to include it, but that's how these polls are, you only get 10 votes. Nile also probably suffered from vote splitting. A lot of members here chose to limit their top 10 to one album per band. This is almost always detrimental to bands with multiple solid releases over a decade. The only counter-example of this that comes to my mind was Mgla for the 2010's poll, who still managed to have Exercises in Futility finish 1st, while With Hearts Towards None still ranked extremely well.

Now does TOL deserve a top 10 spot more than Nile's two albums, I don't know. But it's not like some garbage album by Six Feet Under beat those Nile albums. TOL is actually an amazing album.

Yeah Bolt Thrower have no business being so high up, but as you said. Opinions! lol

I'm coming in late to the party but here's my list:

1. Amon Amarth - With Oden on Our Side (49)
2. Forefather - Steadfast (91)
3. Primordial - To the Nameless Dead (4)
4. Moonsorrow – Kivenkantaja (114)
5. Behemoth – Demigod (18)
6. Bolt Thrower – To Those Once Loyal (2)
7. Vader – Impressions in Blood (rando corner)
8. Fleshgod Apocalypse – Oracles (rando corner)
9. Svartsot – Ravnenes Saga (rando corner)
10. Ensiferum – Victory Songs (147)

- I think Amon Amarth's releases from the last decade have poisoned the well for many people, so it's tough to look back on their best years with appreciation. Luckily for me I can just listen to their new shit once and be done. I still find myself listening to With Oden on Our Side frequently.
- Surprised Steadfast finished at 91. That album was heralded at release and I've seen it mentioned many times since then. It's still sitting strong on the Archives with 10 reviews at 97%.
- I'm also somewhat surprised to see Fleshgod Apocalypse with 0 votes at all besides me. I thought Oracles was awesome and they haven't come close to touching its majesty.
- I guess I'm the only one who thinks Impressions in Blood is Vader's best work from the 2000s. I love the soul crushing heaviness of that album.

Solid list. Steadfast is an amazing album, and so is Oracles. Both were pretty high up my short list but didn't make the cut, again, because we only have ten picks for an entire decade. While Oracles somehow flew under the radar of many and probably wouldn't have faired much better if we had 20 or 30 votes, I'm fairly certain that Forefather was pretty high up on other people's shortlist. Folks who ranked DsO, Nokturnal Mortum, Primordial and Agalloch so high, also tend to like stuff like Forefather.

I was not that far off choosing that album. I actually chose Revelations, but also considered Litany and Impressions In Blood as well. Those other two albums would have made my top 25.

I disagree that Fleshgod Apocalypse peaked with Oracles, however I do agree that it's a really great album. I guess there were just too many albums to choose from, and it didn't reach anyone's top 10 (including mine). It's good that at least one person voted for it.

they released three amazing albums - where's the love for black seeds? i had a hard time picking between the three (one per band limiting), but landed on shrines in the end

While I mostly agree, I think it's more just the curse of melodeath and the course of trends that had more of an impact. Ten years ago this would have been a different story; I didn't know anyone talking about Bolt Thrower in the respected, hushed tones that they do now, but everyone was losing their minds over Amon Amarth.

It's kind of weird in a way. The less-good trilogy that is Twilight/Surtur/Deceiver, as well as non-entities that were their last couple of albums honestly made me appreciate WoooS so much more. But at the same time, I get lumping it in with those albums (and pretty much everything post-Crusher, for that matter).

Bolt Thrower didn't magically become popular 15 years after dropping their last album of a career that spawned 8 albums over 30 years of existence.

I know that Amon Amarth were at peak popularity 10 years ago, but don't go rewriting history like this

So on a different topic, how in the absolute fuck did Altar Of Plagues' White Tomb NOT make the list, AT ALL? Like not even in the Rando Corner! Did you guys forget that album even exists?

I'm just saying 90s death metal and melodeath have essentially swapped the esteem they held a decade ago. Of course BT didn't magically blow up right before this poll, but there's no denying that over the course of the 2010s Bolt Thrower's style became more popular and Amon Amarth's style was in decline.

It's my least favourite Altar of Plagues album by a long shot. Mammal and Teethed Glory and Injury would have probably made it into my list but they are from the next decade.

I've barely looked at this thread, but I will say that if I had to pick my top 10 favorite metal albums of the 2000s I don't think any of the top 10 here would be in it.

It's been years since I have listened to Blackwater Park or any Opeth but they are certainly an excellent band, but nothing they've done would earn my top 10.

The one album in there that I could probably fit into my top 30, MAYBE top 20, but probably not, would be The Mantle.

I don't like Primodial, never listened to Nokturnal Mortem, never listened much to Isis but I don't think they are my style. I do like Sigh but never heard that particular album.

For me there's zero question that Anaal Nathrakh's "In the Constellation" would be in there, Dragged Into Sunlight's "Hatred For Mankind" as well. Most likely The Berzerker's "Dissimulate" would make it in, and then at least one of the first three Insomnium albums, and definitely Amorphis's Skyforger and quite possibly Eclipse as well. Eluvitie's Slania would also be a contender, as would In Flames "Clayman", (not the remixed newer crappy version).

I don't think you can entirely lump Amon Amarth in as melodeath though in terms of the rise and fall of subgenres. While it's true that you can call them that, they're really sort of their own thing separate from other acts associated with that label, and if anything people use the "Viking metal" term for them more often. They've also nevertheless retained far more popularity than most of those acts, so it seems insulated from the vicissitudes of it.

Oh, Ensiferum's self titled would also definitely make my top 10, and Wintersun's might make it, certainly they'd make my top 20.

They aren't viking metal band by any means though. It's just a miscategorization that some people do because of their main lyrical themes. However, they have basically nothing in common with the genre that was instigated by Quorthon with the later Bathory releases. Amon Amarth is, however, still kind of an in-between, like you said. I remember someone on these forums refering to early Amon Amarth as a more melodic version of Bolt Thrower, and after revisiting their first records, I can see why someone would say this. They were, indeed, very much rooted in more traditionnal death metal, more so than what other melodic death metal bands were doing at the time. However, their sound did evolve towards a more common melodic death metal sound near the end of the 2000's.

I wouldn't say that their loss of popularity over the last decade is solely due to a change in interest among the community, though. Like others pointed out for bands like Sonata Arctica or Edguy, some bands have seen their popularity decrease over time because their output lost in quality over the 2010's, so even their 2000's output seems to have lost in popularity. Amon Amarth didn't get any better during the 2010's, while bands who kept a solid output throughout the 2010's, like Primordial for instance, have had very good results in this poll. Now of course, this isn't some kind of magic formula that would explain a band's succes or insuccess in this thread, but it's a line of thought that's worth exploring.

With this talk about bands that faired worse (a lot worse) than they would have if we held this poll ten years ago, I wanted to mention that Blotted Science's 2007 album, The Machinations of Dementia got exactly zero votes in this poll. I remember a time when Ron Jarzombek was revered around these forums as one of the best, if not the best metal guitarist alive. The Machinations of Dementia is an album that I considered for my top 10, as it is a truly unique progressive metal album. There is still basically nothing like it, as it was very deeply rooted in progressive metal, but differed from everything else by being entirely instrumental and showing some extreme metal elements, mostly death metal, in very complex song structures that didn't fall into the endless pit of wankery that was going on with tech death, and never using the metallic chug-chug palm-muteds of djent that were very common in so-called progressive metal at the time.

I think The Machinations of Dementia suffered in this poll because Jarzombek and the boys never really gave it a proper follow-up. Sure the band released a pretty decent EP 4 years after the release of TMoD, but I think we all thought this was hinting at some new, original, upcoming material that would be featured on an LP sometime soon after that, but it never happened.

Jarzombek never seemed to be the traditionnal type of musician anyway, and focusing on a project continuously doesn't seem to be fitting with his personality.

Really eh? I was under the impression that White Tomb was like the golden boy of the band - the other albums are good too, don't get me wrong.

I don't really know if you can count it as a proper genre at all though, any more than say pirate metal. It's more extreme (generally black)/folk metal with a Norse focus. But thematically all kinds of artists have experimented with it, Yngwie Malmsteen, Unleashed, Enslaved, Ensiferum, Turisas, Tyr, Crom, etc.

I really liked this album, too, along with some of his other stuff like his solo work and Spastic Ink. This album would have gone in my honourable mentions, but it's still a fantastic album.

it would have been in my top 20 for sure

Well, from what I understand viking metal is an actual genre, much more so than pirate metal, and is not just rooted in lyrical themes. I'm not really familiar with it as it's not a genre I really explored. But from what I understand it is, indeed, as genre that evolved from black and folk, but with heavy and epic undertones. I don't know exactly how we're supposed to define it exactly, but I'm fairly certain that a melodic death metal band like Amon Amarth doesn't fit in the genre.



The Machinations of Dementia is still in my top 5 most played albums, haha! It's a solid album. Ink Complete by Spastic Ink was also a favorite of mine for a long time. I actually fist discovered it through A Wild Hare. It just blew my mind that someone translated all the spoken dialogues of Thumper into guitar riffs. The rest of the album is also very cool, but that's what originally hooked me.

There are very few bands that play "real" Viking metal: Bathory, Isengard, Storm, etc. The rest of it is mostly just black folk imho.

My main issue with the term "Viking metal" is that no actual music from Viking era is known to us, so it's mostly just black metal mixed with some modern Nordic folk music (which afaik derivates from classical pastoral music). So in reality, the only thing that defines the genre is its lyrical content focused on Norse mythology.

I just use the genre tag to describe bands who play loud and epic Norse themed metal without being either black, folk or power metal. Bathory's Hammerheart is obviously the album that codifies this. Bands like Falkenbach and Graveland follow very closely as well. That's why I personally don't consider Enslaved viking metal, outside a few songs like 791 Lindsifarne.

It's somewhat of a fuzzy term, but I defend its use because most people understand exactly what is meant by it, so it has utility.

This is such a weird thing take issue with. The viking adjective doesn't imply that it's based on "viking" music. Viking isn't even a real ethnicity (unlike say celtic) but a job description (see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/viking-was-job-description-not-matter-heredity-massive-ancient-dna-study-shows). It's as much of an invented term as goth. Like, what, goth rock is an improperly named genre because it has nothing to do with the Germanic tribe?

Viking metal is very much a standalone genre with its own conventions. Yeah, it leans heavily on black metal, folk, and even a bit of power metal. But if that's not enough to establish a subgenre, why not also argue that thrash isn't a real genre? After all it's just fast heavy metal mixed with punk, right?

Yeah, I don't consider viking metal or pirate metal real sub genres, they are more lyrical themes IMO and most of the stuff that would be called either like Amon Amarth tends to either be melodic death metal, folk metal or some mixture of the two, or occasionally black metal with viking themes like Enslaved, Einherjer, etc.

As an English major I couldn't resist nitpicking lol, but since you mentioned goth rock not having anything to do with the Germanic tribe of the Goths I have to say that really it seems pretty obvious that "goth" in that sense is referring to the Gothic literary and artistic genre out of which novels such as Frankenstein, Dracula and Dr. Jekyl and Mr.Hyde was born, and which there is obviously a much closer artistic relationship with, than the Germanic tribe.

This of course does beg the question though as to whether or not there is any actual connection between "The Gothic" as it was used to describe mostly 19th (and some 18th) century literature and the Germanic tribe of the Goths, and I did look it up once a long time ago and I vaguely remember there being some kind of a very loose link between the two in terms of where the literary Gothic term came from, though I cant' remember right now and I'm too lazy right now to look it up lol, but maybe I will later.

I majored in English in graduate school and my base was in the English Romantic poets and Gothic Literature (which are intimately related) and there are just so many great Gothic novels, and not just the obvious ones I mentioned above.

The best one i ever read was called "Melmoth the Wanderer" and is about as badass and metal as a book can get, and then of course there's The Monk by Matthew Lewis and other lesser known books like Vathek.

Great stuff.

You do realize there's a whole subculture of people that call themselves "goths" and have nothing to do with Germanic tribes, don't you? I honestly don't know what to say, your point is so incredibly dense that I don't know where to start. Do I really need to explain to you what gothic rock is and why was it named "gothic rock"?

Also, when did I say "Viking" was an ethnicity? I know it was a job. I only said that we don't have any music from Viking era. Just so you know, Viking era = The Viking Age (793–1066 AD). We don't have Norse music from that period although it is known that Vikings had their own songs. I guess fucking carpenters had songs too but I don't know any carpenter metal, do you?

Next time maybe don't assume what my point is and ask instead? I don't know, I feel like you just came here and wrote some rant about stuff I never wrote or even implied and you didn't address any of the stuff I wrote. I even said that Viking metal is a real genre on the first phrase I wrote, what are you even talking about?

Well at least now you see how dense it is to say that the issue with viking metal is that we don't know what viking music sounds like. No viking metal band ever claimed that a song of theirs is some traditional viking song that they modernized.

This is why viking metal is different from celtic metal. Celtic metal is a type of folk metal and viking metal isn't folk metal. What does Viking Age music have anything to do with it? It's like bringing up the Germanic tribe when talking about goth rock.

Gravetemplar wrote: "You do realize there's a whole subculture of people that call themselves "goths" and have nothing to do with Germanic tribes, don't you? I honestly don't know what to say, your point is so incredibly dense that I don't know where to start. Do I really need to explain to you what gothic rock is and why was it named "gothic rock"?

Also, when did I say "Viking" was an ethnicity? I know it was a job. I only said that we don't have any music from Viking era. Just so you know, Viking era = The Viking Age (793–1066 AD). We don't have Norse music from that period although it is known that Vikings had their own songs. I guess fucking carpenters had songs too but I don't know any carpenter metal, do you?

Next time maybe don't assume what my point is and ask instead? I don't know, I feel like you just came here and wrote some rant about stuff I never wrote or even implied and you didn't address any of the stuff I wrote. I even said that Viking metal is a real genre on the first phrase I wrote, what are you even talking about?[/quote]"




Yeah, I was explaining to him that while there isn't any clear connection (at least that i know of) between Goth rock and the Germanic tribe, there obviously IS a link between Gothic literature and Gothic cinema and Goth rock. I mean, that's obviously where the term came from considering that Dracula and Frankenstein are Gothic novels and "The Gothic" refers to a very specific dark artistic style which Goth rock is influenced by.

I do believe i read that there may have been a loose connection between how Gothic literature and art got its' name and the Germanic tribe, though i don't remember exactly what it was, but yeah, obviously there's no clear link between Goth rock and the Germanic tribe of the Goths.

Dude, once again, your link here is inaccurate, even by comparison.

Goth rock got its' name from Gothic art and literature like Dracula and Frankenstein to which it has a clear connection and not the Germanic tribe.

I am not sure if before Gothic fiction existed whether or not there was a clear link between the Germanic tribe and that style of writing/art, there might have been, but you are not recognizing where the term Goth come from in terms of why Goth rock uses it, as there is a very obvious connection between the aesthetic used in Goth rock/goth metal and Gothic fiction.

Pretty much this. I can't believe you're having to explain it.


Except it does? Lyrical content of Viking Metal is focused on Norse mythology and the Viking Age.



(just for the record, I don't think Amon Amarth are a Viking Metal band, just pointing out that there's an obvious connection between Viking era lore, Norse mythology and metal)

Unlike the Goths and the Visigoths. Gothic metal isn't focused on the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe because of some Germanic people decided to invade Rome.

You really have no clue what you're talking about. Besides, you're the one that came here guns blazing saying that being a Viking wasn't and ethnicity and then compared them with the Goth tribes, which certainly have a certain ethnical component.

All I was saying is that most Viking metal is just fake ass Hollywood stuff and that it makes no sense. It tries to emulate Viking era culture and music but most people don't even realize we don't have a single piece of medieval folk music related to Vikings. So it's mostly just modern folk metal and black folk.

I don't really see why it matters how a genre/sub-genre arrived at its name. Stuff like Bathory's "Hammerheart" is referred to as Viking metal (like literally here on MA -- though the tag is not directly attributed to any albums). When people use the term, I can probably generally understand what they are talking about. So how the genre/sub-genre originated its name and whether or not it is accurate is moot to me.

Okay, I don't think we actually disagree on most things here. I apologize for the initial guns-blazing response.

Because, that is exactly right, viking metal uses a kind of modern romanticization of what is perceived, in popular consciousness, to be related to vikings. And some of those tropes are misconceptions that have never been corrected.

It's just what Viking "music" sounded like doesn't really matter. It is exactly like the meaning treadmill behind the word "gothic." First, it referred to actual peoples, then it referred to architecture, then a literary movement, then a music subgenre. The fact that there is such a big leap between the original term and the modern goth subculture illustrates that the meaning of the word has shifted radically. So having a problem with viking metal having the word viking in the name despite us not knowing anything about what viking music sounds like shouldn't matter. And this also goes back to my other point that viking was an occupation. So you had vikings that settled in Italy, Ukraine, Spain and while they may have kept some of the mythology it's very possible that other cultural aspects such as music was influenced by where they settled.

But my overarching point is that viking metal isn't about the original vikings, it's just a name for a style of metal that has certain musical features and tends to focus on Nordic mythology and a romanticization of the noble warrior ethos.

Not to mention its application to fashion, and its broadening (often overly so especially in the 00s) to label any artists with dark aesthetics. This discussion is making me think maybe there's a similar divide, with some people insisting that it is only relevant to bands who sound like late 80s/early 90s Bathory, with others wanting to extend the term to cover others who experiment with the same concepts in other genres. The question is whether there's an actual musical overlap between any of them other than being epic Norse-themed folk metal. With gothic metal there's a whole spectrum of artists, from those who sound like the late 70s/early 80s post-punk-derived bands, just riffier, to those who have a more expansive semi-classical elegant romanticism musically, to just those who don the garb or have similar poetically morbid lyrical themes.

To me it only matters because lyrical content alone should not equal a sub-genre, and while some people say they hear enough differences in Viking metal for it to be a separate sub-genre, me personally I don't.

Some of it like Amon Amarth is more melodic death, and I'd also say Tyr is a bit on the further spectrum between Melodic death and folk metal mixed, but I could see the argument for them.

Other bands are folk-metal with the viking lyrics, or even black metal with viking lyrics like Enslaved.

It's hard to even see how you can use the term because then you'd want to put Amon Amarth and Enslaved in the same category when the former is clearly melo-death related and Enslaved is definitely black metal.

I'm still going to strongly disagree with you on the Goth term.

Yes, there's a huge leap between the Goth tribe and Goth music, but there's just as huge a leap between the Gothic literary/art/architecture movement as and the tribe.

Fact is, there's a VERY clear link in my mind (and i've studied Gothic literature and I'm a huge goth rock fan) between Gothic fiction and art and Goth rock. The aesthetic is totally right on. I mean it's plain as day, and "Goth" has not meant the Germanic tribe for what like probably 1,000 years now.

So when we talk "goth" we either mean music, art or architecture.

There's such an obvious link between Gothic literature like Dracula and Goth Rock like Christian Death and Sisters of Mercy it's just plain as day.

Sorry I have to nitpick so much, it's just that I majored in gothic and romantic literature for my Master's Degree and I'm also a big Goth rock fan and the link is really really strong so you just might want to think about using a different comparison because it just doesn't hold up here.

Yeah but as someone who has studied Gothic literature I still think the link between Gothic literature and art of the 18th and 19th centuries is quite strong in its' relation to Goth rock and goth metal.

Sure, it gets stretched, but, for example, when I first heard Type O Negative as a teenager and Bloody Kisses I remember getting such a clear and addictive dark vibe from songs like Christian Woman and Black Number One and on a personal level getting the feeling of old dark churches and graveyards and medieval castles and then you look on the insert of Bloody Kisses and you see Pete Steele and the band posing outside some kind of church graveyard or something and the link is so clear.

The front of the cover has two women dressed in black with black lipstick looking sexually suggestive like they might either want to make out or bite eachother's throats and it leads us straight back to Dracula.

The link is there to my mind very obviously and always has been, and it's there with goth rock like Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy, Rosetta Stone, etc, as well as lyrical themes.

So no, there's no clear link to the Germanic tribe but that was lost long ago.

I just think his way of saying that "viking metal" doesn't make sense to him in the same way that Goth rock doesn't is just a bad comparison cause as someone who has read a lot of Gothic fiction and even spent time in Gothic churches in Europe as well as their graveyards I can see the link there easily.

First of all, you're using examples that aren't even classified as viking metal on this site. Amon Amarth and Tyr aren't listed as viking metal and Enslaved is classified as Progressive Black/Viking Metal. Take a more prototypical viking metal example like Einherjer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq1RFFfNGqQ. What else is it but viking metal? Sure you could say it's like 5 different genres, but you could literally do that with any given subgenre.


I'm not claiming that goth rock has nothing to do with gothic literature and I never did. My entire point is about the original use of both terms, since that was the objection towards viking metal raised by Grave. In both cases, we're talking about people that lived (approximately) over a thousand years ago. The hell does Gothic architecture have to do with the Germanic peoples? How is it that Dracula has something to do with some sword-wielding warrior wearing a sheepskin making fun of Romans for wearing togas? It all came out of a popular consciousness that made erroneous assumptions about what the historic Goths were actually like--this notion that they were savages, destroyers of civilization, etc, discounting the fact that they lived alongside the Roman empire, served in Roman armies, and many wanted full citizenship rights.

Well, we have very similar parallels with vikings. The viking is mostly an artifact of mythmaking and romaniticization of the noble savage, with very scarce basis in factual history. The overwhelming majority of people don't care what vikings were actually like. They are just projecting some idea of what they want them to be like.