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

8) TRIPTYKON - Melana Chasmata (Century Media)

Triptykon, the occult/avant-garde metal project formed by former Celtic Frost/Hellhammer legend singer, guitarist, and main songwriter Tom Gabriel Warrior, unveiled their second album, Melana Chasmata, in April. Like its predecessor Eparistera Daimones, the album was produced by Warrior and guitarist V. Santura and recorded and mixed at V. Santura's own Woodshed Studio in southern Germany as well as at Triptykon's rehearsal facilities in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2013 and 2014. Melana Chasmata has been described it as "atmospheric, dark, diabolical, and dramatic", "diverse, epic, and doomy, but on an entirely different level", "a fierce boulder of abhorrence", or "very heavy and yet very aesthetic at the same time."

In his review, BraveWords scribe Jason Deaville wrote: "With Melana Chasmata, Tom has created an album steeped with a palpable sense of dread - a terrifying musical apparition that lingers around every darkened corner. The compositions shift between punchy Entombed-like tempos to slow, concussive, hypnotic rhythms. Occasionally, a brief glimpse of light seeps through, casting ghastly, foreboding shadows across the entirety of the doom-laden affair. Melana Chasmata is a much heavier outing, having more in common with Celtic Frost's Monotheist than anything else Triptykon has released, which tends to be more experimental. Tom has taken great care to insure that every suffocating riff be a path sheathed with the decaying memories of love; where each anguished exhale, the echo of death's chilling breath, quivers its way down the twisted and tangled spine of life."

Read more at BraveWords.

(Triptykon slider photo by Axel Jusseit)

BravePicks 2014 Top 30

8) TRIPTYKON - Melana Chasmata (Century Media)

9) CANNIBAL CORPSE – A Skeletal Domain (Metal Blade)

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)