Top 20 Albums of 2010

Yes, it's that time again. The end of the year is upon us, which means it's time to roll out what albums made this year amazing for me. However, there are some people that have pointed out something about my past year-end lists, so let me make a quick disclaimer before I start this shindig:

I listen to a LOT of music. I have a 160 GB iPod that is maxed out with music, and I intend to get another one in the future and max it out as well. My music is my life. That said, I did not get to every album that was released this year in the rock and metal world. In fact, I didn't get to nearly as many as I wanted. I will listen to the albums I missed in the future though. At that time, if I determine that one of those albums is good enough, I will adjust my rankings to accommodate it. Thus, this list may change in the future. If you are not okay with that, I am sorry, but they are my rankings, not yours. I do my best to remain consistent, but that isn't always possible. Unlike last year, when my choices were extremely clear-cut for me, I spent hours agonizing over this list, trying to find a way to order it and decide which albums meant the most to me. It's been reordered and reconsidered more times than I can remember, and as I said, the chance exists that it will be redone again in the future. About the only thing I can promise is that my top three will always stay the same. For everything beyond that, I'm standing by the order that I have listed here for the foreseeable future.

Now that that's out of the way, we can move on to the list itself. As I just stated, I listened to significantly less music this year than I did last year. There are multiple things that factored into that, most of them having to do with the fact that I actually write about the music I listen to now instead of just listening. Either way, if you remember last year's top 200 list and were hoping for something similar, I must unfortunately (unfortunate for me, at least) announce that I will not be reaching that milestone. Hell, I have a long way to go before I get to even half of that. However, to make up for that fact and my lack of reviews for several weeks, I will give you an extended best-of list for this year.

Album Review: "Love is Gone" by Dommin

Gothic rock has become one of the most oversaturated scenes in music in the past decade. With the advent of bands like Evanescence and Lacuna Coil and their worldwide success, the gothic rock and metal scenes have exploded tenfold what they used to be, especially with female-fronted bands within these genres. Such an inundation of music means that newer bands have less of a chance of being noticed because their sound will seem to lack originality. A new gothic rock band will need to have something remarkable in order to stand out, much more so than ten years ago. Such is the struggle of Dommin, a Los Angeles-based quartet that has existed since the gothic surge of the early decade, but only recently got their official start after signing with Roadrunner Records. On their debut album, Love is Gone, the band tries to show where they stand out from the rest of the scene, with varying degrees of success.