Drum roll please … or maybe a hearty dose of blast-beats! Tis the season to commence the good, bad and ugly of 2014! Of course we’re talking about BravePicks 2014, where all the staff put their collective metal minds together to build the ultimate lists including individual Top 20s (new studio albums ONLY),  Top 5 Brave Embarrassments, Top 3 Concerts, What/Who Needs To Stop In 2015? and Metal Predictions For 2015.

BravePicks 2014

27) CALIFORNIA BREED – California Breed (Frontiers)

As longtime BraveWords’ longtime scribe Martin Popoff stated in June, California Breed finds legendary Deep Purple/Black Sabbath bass/vocalist Glenn Hughes howling epically in power trio format with young new guitarist Andrew Watt and the best drummer on the planet living or dead, Jason Bonham, atomic clock for the Zeppelin of ’07 and the Zeppelin of ’10 to ’13.

“For me, after Black Country, as you know, Martin, you know me pretty well, I never repeat myself. Throughout my career or kind of the bands and records I’ve been in... although it is rock. It is rock. Once I firmly planted the seed with Black Country four years ago, I decided, you know something? I really do enjoy the rock side of my game, although I love all kinds of music. But you know, the genre which is rock for me, really made a poignant stance with Black Country. The flag was planted, if you will. And everybody welcomed me back. All the critics and fans. So when we broke up, people would’ve thought, oh, is Glenn going back to solo, what’s he going to do? What kind of music is he going to make? Well, it’s very firmly planted in my brain I was going to form a new band. And Jason was going to be in the band. But who was going to play guitar or keyboards? Well, let’s have no keyboards, because although I am the singer of Black Country and Jason is the drummer, we didn’t want to sound like… Like, we chose a different producer, engineer, the guys that mixed it. We wanted it to be a trio.”

Read more of the chat here.

BravePicks 2014 Top 30

28) TESLA – Simplicity (Tesla Electric Co.)

29) PRONG – Ruining Lives (SPV/Steamhammer)

30) GAMMA RAY – Empire Of The Undead (EarMusic)