We continue to count down the finest slabs of metal from the last year, as chosen by the devout scribes here at BW&BK;/BraveWords.com. As with previous years, each writer was asked to pick his top 20 albums of the year (no live records, compilations or covers etc...). We perform a little behind-the-scenes metal math and voila, we have our list! We'll be counting down the Top 30 all month - yup, one a day until we get to New Year's - yes, we're aware that December has 31 daze but we thought we'd let you hang until January 1st!

It's time for #19! Drum roll please...

#19 - FOZZY - Chasing The Grail (Riot Entertainment)

FOZZY, featuring frontman and WWE Wrestling Superstar Chris Jericho along with STUCK MOJO mastermind/guitarist, Rich ‘The Duke’ Ward, bassist Sean Delson, and drummer Frank Fontsere, released their fourth studio album titled Chasing The Grail in January. The record had a #6 debut on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart and peaked in the #1 slot on Amazon UK’s Hard Rock & Metal MP3 Albums chart.

About Chasing The Grail Jericho told BraveWords.com earlier this year: "Well, this is our fourth record, and in a lot of ways it’s basically our second record, because it's the second all-original record we've done. It's also the first record that Rich (Ward) and I had written from scratch together. In the past, on the stuff we did, he would have some riffs, and I would have some lyrics that I kind of worked with and messed around with, and this time I wrote about 14 or 15 sets of lyrics, I gave them all to him, and he started constructing his riffs and song structures based on my lyrics. And as a result, it's much more cohesive; it tells much more of a story than All That Remains. That album was more of a pastiche, a patchwork sort of record, whereas this one tells a story all the way through. Also there was no rush. The last one was more like, okay, I've got to get it done in a month, get it done in two months. Now it was more like do it until it feels right, where we’re feeling it, and go from there. So that's the big difference right off the bat. And we’re using some of our influences we never used before. As soon as we started doing the record, I always want to do a long song. I was always a fan of ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Keeper Of The Seven Keys’, and that was my only mission, that there has to be a long song on this record. That was kind of a mission of mine before we got started.”

In his BraveWords.com review Martin Popoff wrote: Fozzy have bravely moved forward, or laterally as it were, Chasing The Grail tossing like Chinese darts both positives and negatives o'er the 11/10 last, but intrigue, mainly. So yeah, Chasing The Grail is interestingly more melodic, and there's even a ballad or two, one of them, gorgeously southerny, the other creepy Depeche. It's also weirdly synthetic, in terms of studio trickery, which seems to be something applied to both vocals and the tornado percussive flood of hits to the body. But the beauty of this hugely crafted metal spread is the gaping maw of dynamics, which gives it a relentless epic-ness.

Read the entire review here.

Brave Picks Top 30 Of 2010

#30 - STONE SOUR: Audio Secrecy (Roadrunner)

#29 - APOCALYPTICA - 7th Symphony (Sony)

#28 - TWILIGHT: Monument To Time End (Southern Lord)

#27 - HAIL OF BULLETS - On Divine Winds (Metal Blade)

#26 - FORBIDDEN - Omega Wave (Nuclear Blast)

#25 - KROKUS - Hoodoo (Columbia)

#24 - AIRBOURNE - No Guts. No Glory. (Roadrunner)

#23 - SOILWORK - The Panic Broadcast (Nuclear Blast)

#22 - TRIPTYKON - Eparistera Daimones (Century Media)

#21 - DARKTHRONE - Circle The Wagons (Peaceville)

#20 - NEVERMORE - The Obsidian Conspiracy (Century Media)

#19 - FOZZY - Chasing The Grail (Riot)