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

10) OVERKILL - White Devil Armory (Nuclear Blast/eOne)

BraveWords scribe Carl Begai asked Overkill frontman Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth a very pointed question in July while he was promoting the band's latest thrash-terpiece: will he ever slow down? The beloved New Jerseyites having released albums consistently since 1985 with no more than a three year gap between them.

"I don't know if that's possible," Blitz laughs. "Somebody asked me the other day what I'd be doing if I wasn't doing this, and I told him I'd be dead in six months. It's still a cool feeling to just press play. As time goes on it's not that easy to make records because of the repetition factor; you don't want to repeat yourself. You want the music to have that energy, you don't want to feign it, but where it all starts coming together is when you realize that making music and being in a band is just what you do. When you drop all the pre-processing and just go for it, things work. Who am I to question that and try to fix what's not broken? It's obviously not broken at all."

 

 

"Overkill is this physical-chemical element made up of a lot of thrash, some rock n' roll and some traditional heavy metal," Blitz continued. "I can hear a bunch of that on this record, and I always think at the end of the day that we went around the block again which is the right way to do it, to bring out all those influences. Basically, the thinking was if we do what we do best we're probably going to have something that's relevant in 2014."

 

Read more at BraveWords.

 

 

 

BravePicks 2014 Top 30

10) OVERKILL - White Devil Armory (Nuclear Blast/eOne)

11) ARCH ENEMY - War Eternal (Century Media)

12) 1349 - Massive Cauldron Of Chaos (Season Of Mist)

13) SANCTUARY - The Year The Sun Died (Century Media)

14) OBITUARY - Inked In Blood (Relapse)

15) GRAVE DIGGER – Return Of The Reaper (Napalm)

16) ACE FREHLEY - Space Invader (eOne)

17) MASTODON — Once More ’Round The Sun (Reprise)

18) EDGUY – Space Police: Defenders Of The Crown (Nuclear Blast)

19) THE DAGGER – The Dagger (Century Media)

20) PRIMORDIAL – Where Greater Men Have Fallen (Metal Blade)

21) UNISONIC - Light Of Dawn (earMusic)

22) PRIMAL FEAR – Delivering The Black (Frontiers)

23) DEVILMENT – The Great And Secret Show (Nuclear Blast)

24) MR. BIG - ...The Stories We Could Tell (Frontiers)

25) EYEHATEGOD – Eyehategod (Housecore)

26) STEEL PANTHER – All You Can Eat (Open E)

27) CALIFORNIA BREED – California Breed (Frontiers)

28) TESLA – Simplicity (Tesla Electric Co.)

29) PRONG – Ruining Lives (SPV/Steamhammer)

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