How awesome was 1991? It took your intrepid Decibel staff more than a couple hours on the chopping block to hack this list down to 30. After leaving classics from Immolation, Fudge Tunnel, Entombed, Slint and yes, even fucking Mr. Bungle bleeding out in the cold, we managed to craft a comprehensive list of the year’s finest death metal, grind, thrash, hard rock, grunge, industrial and sheer, ear-crippling noise for your entertainment. As the first Bush in the Oval Office said of the Gulf War, “the world could wait no longer.”
30) TAD "8-Way Santa" Sub Pop
One of the bands swept up and dumped in the great ’90s alternative shitstorm, TAD’s second album, 8-Way Santa, is what solidified their sound before being paraded in front of a confounded and unprepared audience, crowds not sure what to make of backwoods rock slopped with sludge and sprinkled with Tad Doyle’s bombastic sarcasm. Underrated seems to be the band’s most popular descriptor, and it’s hard not to think the same when this record steamrolls itself back into your head.
—Shane Mehling
29) Skid Row "Slave to the Grind" Atlantic
In an alternate universe where Axl missed that Hollywood-bound bus and Appetite for Destruction does not exist, Slave to the Grind is the undisputed single-greatest hard rock record of its generation, period. A mind-bogglingly vast leap from an already accomplished, raucous self-titled 1989 debut, Slave sharpens the Skids’ attack, upping the nuance and complexity of the compositions without sacrificing trademark anthemic power, pushing a pre-Gilmore Girls Sebastian Bach to trade sex obsession for more substantive societal critiques, and conjuring the best one-stop collection of power ballads, like, ever.
—Shawn Macomber
28) L7 "Smell the Magic" Sub Pop
Though Sub Pop jerry-rigged L7’s sophomore full-length into its best-known form less than a year before the Butch Vig-streamlined grunge-era banger Bricks Are Heavy, the two offerings are worlds apart—the later a sleek, serpentine metallic hiss, the former a snarl of primal screams, confrontational rage and punked-the-fuck-out musical abandon, each presented in four harrowing minutes or less that essentially actualize the “Fast and Frightening” lyrics: “Dirty hair and a laugh that’s mean / Her neighbors call her an evil machine / She’s fast, she’s lean / She’s frightening!”
—Shawn Macomber
27) Atheist "Unquestionable Presence" Death
By ’91, Atheist had already proven that not every Florida kid rocked a sweatpants boner for gory indecency. With farther out destinations on their minds, Flynn, Burkey and Shaefer set the controls for spasmodic overdrive, and Tony Choy needed all four fingers to keep up with Patterson’s ghost. But keep up he does, leaving no groove unslapped. Unquestionable Presence is arguably Atheist’s best record, but all must accept that its energy is as potent today as it was 25 years ago.
—Dutch Pearce
26) Ozzy Osbourne "No More Tears" Epic/CBS
Sure, “Would you like some sweeties, little girl?” might sound like an impending Amber Alert, especially coming from a shirtless dude in eyeliner. But after the opening query of “Mr. Tinkertrain,” Zakk Wylde leads you from dim alleys to the scarlet glow of the Sunset Strip with neon hooks and radio-dominating monster ballads. The final effort featuring Bob Daisley’s bass and Randy Castillo on drums, this was also the last non-Sabbath Ozzy effort most mentioned without a disenchanted sigh.
—Sean Frasier
25) Autopsy "Mental Funeral" Peaceville
Metallica may have had the Bay Area’s most high-profile release in 1991, but for the true devotees of the underground, there was only Mental Funeral. A disgusting concoction of guttural death metal, creeping doom and angular thrash, the second full-length from Oakland’s favorite sons served as inspiration for bands of every extreme persuasion—especially those that shared Chris Reifert’s penchant for sickening gore. Whether it’s “Slaughterday,” “Hole in the Head” or “Dark Crusade,” your headbanging fate is sealed.
—Matt Solis
24) Monster Magnet "Spine of God" Caroline
Monster Magnet singer/guitarist/moustache enthusiast Dave Wyndorf was a weirdo among weirdos. While most of the cool kids went around sporting flannel shirts, long johns and depressive attitudes, Wyndorf and company flaunted black leather and big balls. Spine of God, the band’s debut full-length, made the New Jerseyans stick out even further. Recalling the ragged grooviness and dark, psychedelic freakery of early ’70s hard rock, Spine helped spark the stoner metal genre, taking the initial steps of a long, strange trip.
—Jeanne Fury
23) Pigface "Gub" Invisible
Pigface isn’t actually a band. Instead, it’s a noise/industrial army with over 100 esteemed members having joined their ranks over the years. And while so many different styles and sensibilities have passed through their unhallowed halls, debut Gub was a crash course lesson that the collective was planning to do whatever the fuck they wanted. Rhythmically dense, sometimes punishing, occasionally absurd, and untethered by any conventions, this is bleak experimentation from professional maniacs.
—Shane Mehling
22) Metallica "Metallica" Elektra
This is pretty much the Return of the Jedi of the ’Tallica discography: everyone’s too cool for it despite it fucking annihilating all successors while succeeding on its own (admittedly broadly accessible) merits. All five mega-hits (except “Nothing Else Matters”) boast household name riffage, and this is one of the few times the jocks and dads got it right. Deep cut highlights: Newsted bass all over “The God That Failed”; the stadium-ready “YOU! KNOW! NOT!” refrain to “Holier Than Thou.”
—Andrew Bonazelli
21) Bolt Thrower "War Master" Combat/Earache
Before “war metal” came to mean dizzying blast beats underlying wind tunnel guitars playing a miasma of notes that dissolve into the ether quicker than acid disintegrating Christ’s skull fragments, Bolt Thrower were its musical personification. No one topped their transposition of the crawl of tanks through bombed-out villages and ground troops barreling over a bullet-ridden hillside. War Master was a consistent, mid-paced thud—a steadily approaching infantry of distorted thunder demonstrating that war was indeed hell, and death metal was deliciously hellish.
—Kevin Stewart-Panko
20) The Jesus Lizard "Goat" Touch & Go
With their second album, Goat, the noise-rock mack daddies in the Jesus Lizard basically created a greatest-hits record even though it wasn’t technically a greatest-hits record—hence, its eventual induction in the Decibel Hall of Fame. From tension-mounting opener “Then Comes Dudley” to the wily crowd-pleaser “Mouth Breather” to singer/howler David Yow’s personal favorite JL tune “Monkey Trick,” every song on Goat lands like one of Yow’s pantsless stage dives into a pool of greedy, greasy arms.
—Jeanne Fury
19) Samael "Worship Him" Osmose Productions
These days, you can chuck a rock and hit an orthodox black metal band that keeps a trunk full of rotting sacraments in their van, but back in ’91, few groups were carrying the devil’s torch as brightly as Switzerland’s Samael. With the release of their debut LP, the unambiguously named Worship Him, the metal world was introduced to a new kind of sonic darkness: one that gorged on the carcasses of Hellhammer and Venom as a cavernous, hypnotic dirge filled the air.
—Matt Solis
18) Ripping Corpse "Dreaming With the Dead" Kraze
Back in the days known as “back in the day,” New Jersey’s Ripping Corpse were often accused of being unaware of the boundaries between genres. To them—and fellow Garden State miscreants Human Remains and Revenant—thrash and death metal were as viable of art forms as nascent grind and noisy hardcore. Unsurprisingly, Dreaming With the Dead’s quirky explosion of thrash/death/crossover chaos—molded by hair-splitting tempo changes, screaming layers of lead blasts and a hoarse bellow irreverently introducing “Sweetness”—threw more than a few people off.
—Kevin Stewart-Panko
17) Swans "White Light From the Mouth of Infinity" Young God
What’s the most punk rock thing that no-wave pioneers Swans could’ve done in 1991? Make a full-blown Sisters of Mercy record. Nobody got it at the time (maybe not even Michael Gira himself, who buried it until recently), but White Light From the Mouth of Infinity has since been recognized as a towering achievement, a lushly layered goth odyssey filled with musical nuance and the kind of emotional shading that makes it feel more like post-metal than post-punk. Ahead of its time then, it’s questionable if we’ve caught up even now.
—Jeff Treppel
16) Confessor "Condemned" Combat
Welcome to one of doom’s oddest mash-ups. Sure, the early ’90s’ world of heavy music was rife with metallurgists seeking highly personalized pathways to extremity, but Confessor’s Neanderthal guitar tone blended with Steve Shelton’s hectic percussion and Scott Jeffreys’ ball-clenched cries certainly separate these North Carolinians even further from the pack. In hindsight, it’s possible to draw parallels to Meshuggah’s later tempo fuckery, or hear Plotkin-era Witch Mountain germinating in the scarred blues of “Eye of Salvation.”
—Daniel Lake
15) Suffocation "Effigy of the Forgotten" Roadrunner
This foundation-shifting, dazzlingly-technical-yet-primordial Dawn of Brutal Death Metal gut-punch debut is so un-fucking-deniable the Long Island Music Hall of Fame cites it as one of the primary achievements for which Suffocation was inducted back in 2012 alongside Debbie Gibson, Salt-N-Pepa, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Neil Diamond, George Gershwin and Billy Joel—a sublime, unlikely triumph for a record that begins with track entitled “Liege of Inveracity” and is full of grunts and riffs that could likely be prosecuted as criminal threatening in most states.
—Shawn Macomber
14) Godflesh "Slavestate" Earache
Yes, the intros to the title track and “Someone Somewhere Scorned” sound like refugees from the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Until peals of ugly distortion throttle the synth and bury its stupid face in the mud and shit that Godflesh call home. I can’t speak intelligently about the dubs and remixes, but the four originals (six if you count the tack-on “Slateman” single) are Justin Broadrick at his most O.G., tastefully integrating said industrial elements, all the while crushing with impunity.
—Andrew Bonazelli
13) Corrosion of Conformity "Blind" Relativity
Emerging for their first album since 1985’s Animosity, Woody Weatherman and Reed Mullin brought in new collaborators for this game-changer. While vocalist Karl Agell’s COC career was restricted to this confident performance, Pepper Keenan’s recruitment shed their crossover crust while redefining their sound. From the first shivering harmonized licks on “These Shrouded Temples…” to the controlled bombast of “Dance of the Dead” and “Vote With a Bullet,” Blind was a blueprint for southern-fried sludge and groove metal to come.
—Sean Frasier
12) Cathedral "Forest of Equilibrium" Earache
Grotesque figures dance and cavort in a nightmarish orgy, the gatekeepers to a sinister morass perpetrated by disaffected death metal refugees from the darkest parts of England. The same year Ozzy Osbourne declared no more tears, Cathedral shed drops of ebony and reinvented the form. Doom metal was already depressing—they just made it ugly. Performed by demons and recorded through a fog bank, Forest of Equilibrium still frightens a quarter-century later.
—Jeff Treppel
11) Dismember "Like an Everflowing Stream" Nuclear Blast
It took four demos before Dismember were ready to unleash their now-ubiquitous brand of Swedish death metal in full-length form, but with genre-defining results like “Bleed for Me,” “Skin Her Alive” and “Override of the Overture,” it’s clear that their craftsman’s approach to riff forging was the wisest path. Like an Everflowing Stream is a perfect, churning maelstrom of everything we love about the devil’s music: primal, sharp and—thanks to the interplay between guitarists Robert Sennebäck and David Blomqvist—intrinsically melodic.
—Matt Solis
10) Guns N' Roses "Use Your Illusion II" Geffen
Sure, the last two tracks are tacked on—“Don’t Cry” with alternate lyrics is unnecessary, and Axl’s industrial closer was ridiculous then and now. But that leaves 12 tracks that range from solid to outright incredible. “Civil War,” “Estranged” and their Dylan cover would be standalone centerpieces on any other album, and on here they’re surrounded by songs—some heartfelt, some diseased—each trying to make an indelible mark. Even for non-fans, this remains a staggering achievement.
—Shane Mehling
9) Bathory "Twilight of the Gods" Black Mark
Quorthon knew little about clean singing, but he was channeling so much earnest anima on Twilight of the Gods that it triumphs over everything anyway. Probably the thunder was just too loud; he couldn’t hear himself. It doesn’t matter. His solos are divine experiences; his riffs change lives forever; even the programmed drums ring trve. Prologued by Hammerheart or not, Twilight must’ve taken a lot of courage to release, and its courage takes it over the top.
—Dutch Pearce
8) Soundgarden "Badmotorfinger" A&M
Alice in Chains are arguably more metal-metal (glam lamestains escape harsh realm!), but Dirt didn’t drop ’til ’92, so here’s our very deserving mainstream grunge entry. From the urgent verse chug of “Room a Thousand Years Wide” to the ball-busting shrieks of “Outshined” and “Rusty Cage,” this is legit wall-to-wall heaviosity (which nukes Superunknown, btw). Bonus: the (needlessly) MTV-banned “Jesus Christ Pose” video features a bunch of vegetables in human form being crucified because, uh, ’90s?
—Andrew Bonazelli
7) Slayer "Live: Decade of Aggression" Def American
We celebrate 1991 largely as a time of nascent excellence, when some of our favorite bands were first finding their strides, but Slayer’s double live monstrosity slammed audiences after the band’s commonly accepted golden triptych—Reign in Blood, South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss—was already a part of their (recent) past. Perhaps this cements DOA’s position as the only live record on our list: the set flaunts a band playing peak-level performances atop a creative crest.
—Daniel Lake
6) Type O Negative "Slow, Deep & Hard" Roadrunner
Just like your mom likes it! As slick and lush as Bloody Kisses was just two years later, we tend to forget how fully formed Type O were on their debut. How far did they really deviate from the raw, tongue-in-cheek upchuck that was opening classic “Unsuccessfully Coping With the Natural Beauty of Infidelity”? This is as mean and lean as an album with a bunch of seven-to-12-minute songs could possibly be, almost entirely devoid of Peter Steele’s “sexier” introspective moments. Stay Negative.
—Andrew Bonazelli
5) Morbid Angel "Blessed Are the Sick" Earache/Relativity
Following Altars of Madness, the Tampa malcontents rained pestilence on Sunshine State beaches again on their sophomore record with Earache. After the uncharacteristic crawl of “Fall From Grace,” David Vincent snarls over Trey Azagthoth’s signature dizzying riffs and diseased grooves, chased by the rabid percussion of Peter Sandoval. Blessed Are the Sick quickly erases criticism of its dated synths with a mix of its predecessor’s to-hell-in-a-hurry shredding and the contagious mid-paced ferocity they’d fully realize on Covenant.
—Sean Frasier
4) Paradise Lost "Gothic" Peaceville
Gothic is a tormented and philosophical monster that almost seems to resent its heaviness. Despite its attempts at beauty and poppiness (consider the proto-Type O “Shattered”), Gothic has a killer’s core. Mackintosh’s solos sound strangled by cold hands, the rhythm plods like trudging through Grimpen Mire, and Holmes growls and howls like an existential abomination, e.g., the beginning of “Silent.” Like Shelley’s monster, Gothic is intelligent and crushing. But what’s most remarkable is that it’s not a bit pretentious.
—Dutch Pearce
3) Death "Human" Relativity
Is it just me or does the fade-in to opener “Flattening of Emotions” recall “Hot for Teacher”? Maybe not, but by 1991 it’s not like Chuck Schuldiner was slamming his wheelhouse doors in the face of anything. After contributing to the invention of death metal, he trampolined the genre’s inherent trademarks with Human. Backing by members of Cynic and Sadus helped create a masterstroke of prog-death, with the likes of “Suicide Machine,” “Lack of Comprehension” and “Secret Face” brushing aside barriers to make it one of the greatest half-hours since Reign in Blood.
—Kevin Stewart-Panko
2) Carcass "Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious" Earache
Take the “cold, industrial rumble into ballistic riff assault” transition in opener “Inpropagation” as a metaphor: Carcass’s third LP is the putrefying bridge that connects the grinding filth of their early work to the godly melodic death metal we know and love today. All hail the Brits’ decision to double down on their six-string attack and recruit Swedish wunderkind Michael Amott, who would become the Johnny Utah to Bill Steer’s Angelo Pappas on decidedly salubrious classics like “Corporal Jigsaw Quandary” and “Carneous Cacoffiny.”
—Matt Solis
1) Sepultura "Arise" Roadrunner
Whatever one thinks of the groove groveling grind of 1993’s Chaos A.D. or the controversial tribal-beats-meets-rooster-stomp nü-metal found on 1996’s Roots, it is difficult to blame the boys from Brazil for backing away from thrash-infused death metal in the wake of Arise: They’d just raised an entire subgenre to quintessence. Standing there in the promised land, the thought of attempting to improve upon immortal, instantly sacrosanct tracks like “Altered State,” “Desperate Cry” and “Dead Embryonic Cells” must have seemed as absurd as it remains 25 years later.
—Shawn Macomber
