Noctem

While the entire world waits wearily for Europe to crumble financially, leave it to an extreme blackened thrash metal band to deliver the purifying goodness of one of the year's fastest and best heavy albums. Europe may be falling apart financially, but Spain's Noctem have done their part for humankind, providing a good dose of whiplash-inducing speed on second album Oblivion. Maybe it's all the metalcore (which, don't get me wrong, I love), with all those pulsating breakdowns, or maybe it's all that swamp/sludge metal, with all those crushingly slow, snail's pace riffs that sound like they've come from the darkest regions of hell (again, don't get me wrong, I love it), but every once in a while it's easy to forget that metal's origins are one part good-old fashioned heaviness and one part speed. Working from a lineage that includes some of the fastest metal ever made, Oblivion takes speed seriously in the same way Slayer did on Reign in Blood or Gorgoroth did with Pentagram. It's the kind of infectious speed that makes you think you're invincible in a mosh pit or inspires you to pick up your guitar just to try and meet the challenge of playing that fast. In short, Oblivion is black, it's fast and when it's over you feel the need to take a bath in holy water.