Ah, Top Ten lists. Will there ever be a more difficult process in the realm of criticizing music? 2009 has brought with it many achievements and many unexpected surprises in the world of organized sound. Picking out a top ten was tough, but this year might just be the best year of music this decade has experienced. I wholly look forward to enjoying every one of these releases for years to come. Let’s hope you do too!

1. Converge - Axe To Fall

I’ve been a fan of Converge for a long time. The other writers of this site have listened to Converge for a long time. Two of us wrote about Converge in two separate Weekly Worship articles when we had them going during the summer. Alright, by now you probably understand we like Converge. The reason I’m hammering this into your head is because, even though I am a fan of the band and nearly everything they’ve released I’ve held dear to me, I wasn’t so sure that Axe to Fall would be that good. When No Heroes dropped in 2006, I hardly gave it a passing glance. I was devastated. “How could they do this?!” I exclaimed. My favourite band, the ones who released the technically ferocious When Forever Comes Crashing, the brutal, emotional and absolutely crucial Jane Doe, and the “punk-metal” attack of You Fail Me, released what I considered an inconsistent album, for the very first time in their career. Then I realized they fooled me. See, unlike its predecessors, No Heroes is a grower. The band changed up their sound quite a bit, opting for a more straightforward crust approach with metallic flourishes. Even the epic “Grim Heart/Black Rose” is a dirtier, liquor drinking princess compared to the dense epic of Jane Doe‘s title track. It took two years, but I hold that album in regards as close, if not exceeding, those of their aforementioned predecessors. With a reliability streak this amazing, they were destined to fail. “They have to,” I thought. “How can a band go nearly twenty years without a single blemish?”  And then it hit. Holy mother of Jesus.

I listened to Converge’s latest opus (that’s right, they have many) for the first time in a college dormitory, watching the tiles on the ceiling as my journalist friends shared in the moment. A good month before the release with a copy that could never be spoken of at the behest of the good will of the band (which, subsequently, was spoken of by another party in the US, but we won’t get into details here), I shrugged. It was an audible assault, sure. The necessities were there. Insane rhythm section, replete with the return of a distorted bass from Nate Newton and newly introduced double-bass kicking courtesy of human drum-machine Ben Koller; Technically complex and off-kilter riffing from Kurt Ballou. The ever-improving horror in Jacob Bannon‘s voice. “Awesome,” I thought. It’s decent, but it’s no Jane Doe. Fast-forward a month to the release of Axe to Fall on CD.

Ever seen a music critic eat his words? Ever wonder how they taste? I couldn’t get enough, and I still can’t get enough of Converge’s 5th official full-length studio album (not including Petitioning the Empty Sky and Caring and Killing, both compilations of pre-recorded material). The assault of “Dark Horse.” The complex riffing in “Reap What You Sow,” the title track, and “Effigy.” The mind-fuckingly amazing trilogy of epics (“Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast,” “Cruel Bloom” with Steve Von Till, and “Wretched World,” which might just have outdone Jane Doe’s title track) round out the unrelenting pace until you feel exhausted. Emotionally and physically. With Axe To Fall, Converge did it. They’ve made the greatest record of their career. I look forward to seeing this at the top of many year-end lists this year.

2. Japandroids – Post-Nothing

Sex, friends and rock ‘n roll??? That’s correct, and Post-Nothing is the most fun you’ll have listening to any record this year. Making full use of their two-man getup, fuzzed-out My Bloody Valentine influenced guitar, and Cap’n Jazz vocal playfulness, Vancouver, British Columbia natives Japandroids recorded an album so awash with the normalcy of adolescence that they managed to make it work. Leading the “art-punk” pack (alongside noteworthies Wavves and No-Age), the duo’s simple, reverb-enhanced riffing is stuffed so full with emotion (happy, playful, sad, and even heartbreaking), that we can practically feel their catchy sentiments. “Young Hearts Spark Fire,” “Wet Hair,” and “Rockers East Vancouver” all find Brian King and David Prowse waxing poetic on the fun side of life, while “Crazy/Forever” and the inimitable “I Quit Girls” tap a vein so strikingly disarming, it’s difficult not to get paralyzed with shivers. A truly excellent album, I’ve never heard anything quite like this, or done this well.

3. Isis - Wavering Radiant

Aaron Turner and co. have accomplished a lot in their eleven or so years with post-metal-cum-sludge outfit Isis. From their blast-furnace beginnings in Boston to their holy trilogy of Oceanic, Panopticon, and In The Absence of Truth, you can never accuse the band for lack of ambition. With this year’s Wavering Radiant, Isis found themselves streamlining their material, cutting the fat away from their typical explorations of ambience and going straight for the jugular. It’s a different listen from their past material, but fans of the band should appreciate the bold step toward a definitive Isis sound. Turner’s vocals are the best they’ve ever been, keys take a more prominent position on the mixing board, and – let’s just admit it here – this album has some of the most memorable parts of any Isis song. Ever. Have a good listen to “20 Minutes/ 40 Years” or closer “Threshold of Transformation;” It’s addicting stuff.

4. Thursday - Common Existence

Why this album flew so far under the radar this year is completely beyond me. Thursday, a band most instrumental in the post-hardcore/screamo revival field, have already established themselves as untouchable since the release of their benchmark Full Collapse in 2001. They further cemented their untouchable status with 2003′s surprisingly audacious War All the Time. Perhaps it was their falling-out with Island-Def Jam or the unpopularity of 2006′s A City By the Light Divided (an album I still hold dear, regardless of public opinion). Either way, Common Existence is a righteous fusion of both ends of the Thursday spectrum, combining the older, heavily-screamed band with the later, subtler, and ultimately more melodic version of the band. Switching harmoniously between post-hardcore jams like “Resuscitation of a Dead Man,” “Friends in the Armed Forces,” and “Subway Funeral” to the ethereal beauty ingrained into “Beyond the Visible Spectrum” and “Circuits of Fever,” Geoff Rickly and his band of misfits have never sounded this good.

5. Baroness - Blue Record

I wrote a thesis about this album! Go check it out in the reviews section for my exact thoughts on this near-masterpiece of an album. Baroness manage to take the greatest jams of the 70s and the heaviest sludge this side of pre-Leviathan Mastodon to create one of the defining records this decade.

6. Brand New - Daisy

Jesse Lacey, Vin Acardi, Brian Lane, and Garrett Tierny received some flack for Daisy, most of it misdirected, all of it undeserved. Following up a behemoth like The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is no easy task, and the fact that the members of Brand New didn’t fold under the pressure warrants pales of kudos upon them. Sure, Daisy is a different version of the Brand New most of their fans have come to know, but how could you expect anything else? With this album, the band stopped waffling and found their sound. They synthesized their college-rock leanings and emo tendencies to create the album of their career. While it may be the wolverine to Devil and God‘s grizzly, it’s a brutally honest recording that takes the band in a different direction. Anyone who can evolve without fear of the consequences deserves praise; We’re just lucky that this evolution sounds fantastic.

7. Pianos Become the Teeth - Old Pride

This is a scary album. Not scary in a sense of panic or moral terror, but rather haunting in its ability to make its listener shiver. Taking its cues from acts as diverse as Envy and perhaps even the legendary Pg. 99, Old Pride crackles and glistens with the shame of past regrets alongside the sheen of profundity. There is a better tomorrow and a hopeful eye toward the future, and Pianos Become the Teeth hold the cathartic soundtrack to the anti-apocalypse. At once beautiful and charging, Pianos take the best elements of screamo (the real, hard-hitting one that lost its footing at the turn of the century) and post-rock to create a record that involves as it assaults. A truly glorious and fulfilling listen.

8. Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Agorapocalypse

Agoraphobic Nosebleed. And thrash. Pardon? Yep, Agorapocalypse finds the grindcore legends channeling crossover acts of the past, from Corrosion of Conformity to Dirty Rotten Imbeciles to create one of the hardest hitting, heart-stopping records this year. From the detuned sludge of “Timelord Zero” to the galloped breakdowns in “First National Stem Cell and Clone,” the band tunes down their usual brand of politically incorrect chaos and turns up the shreddage.

9. Mastodon - Crack the Skye

A Concept album about Rasputin, with Mastodon providing the soundtrack? Sign me up. Everything on this album is cohesive, perfectly executed, and involving. A blast of a listen, every track here is worth its grain of salt.

10. Russian Circles - Geneva

“At once dark, menacing, lush and hypnotic, Geneva is akin to nestling in a forbidden garden at the edge of a mountain, if only to receive stings from the bees.” Moments of serenity burst into sometimes beautiful, sometimes heavy explosions of catharsis. This is post-rock at its most devastating.