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

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

Dublin's finest metal export Primordial release their long-anticipated new studio album, Where Greater Men Have Fallen, last month and boasts some of the band's deepest, most meticulously composed compositions to date. The eight-track, fifty-eight minute epic was tracked at Grouse Lodge in Dublin with Jaime Gomez (Cathedral, Angelwitch, Grave Miasma).

Singer A.A. Nemtheanga elaborates: "Some time at the end of 2013 we sat and began to plot a course for album number eight. We moved camp to a new rehearsal room and the ideas began to take shape. We felt it was time to try a new studio and engineer so we went to Grouse Lodge deep in the middle of Ireland and employed Gomez to come over and work on the new album. The band's idea was, of course, to keep the Primordial trademarks intact while incorporating a broader, heavier more organic sound. "We feel revitalized, the hunger never left and we are ready for another chapter to be written in our history!"

In his review BraveWords scribe Chris Tighe wrote:

Once again vocalist A.A. Nemtheanga steals the show though, putting on a performance that is possessed, impassioned and quite simply dazzling. Ebbing and flowing with the natural proclivities of the music, Nemtheanga goes from crooning, to pained discourse, to heated shouts with amazing ease, providing much of the album's depth and staying power. Extreme folk doesn't get any better than this.

Read more here.

BravePicks 2014 Top 30

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)