With the sheer amount of music being released nowadays, it would be presumptuous for anyone who’s not a professional music critic to declaim on the “best” music of a given year. And that’s true even if you confine yourself to a particular genre.

Nevertheless, it might be worth mentioning the music that I personally enjoyed the most this year. The rankings are more or less arbitrary.

Metal. By nearly everybody’s account, it’s been a fantastic year for metal. Here are just 9 great albums that came out in ’09:

1. Baroness, Blue Record

2. Lamb of God, Wrath

3. Revocation, Existence Is Futile

4. Between the Buried and Me, The Great Misdirect

5. Slayer, World Painted Blood

6. Obscura, Cosmogenesis

7. Hacride, Lazarus

8. The Red Chord, Fed Through the Teeth Machine

9. Mastodon, Crack the Skye

Honorable mention:

10. God Forbid, Earthsblood

11. Chimaira, The Infection

12. Kylesa, Static Tensions

13. August Burns Red, Constellations

14. Shadows Fall, Retribution

15. Converge, Axe to Fall

Bonus album that didn’t come out in 2009 but which I listened to for the first time this year and really liked:

16. Textures, Silhouettes (Released in 2008)

Man does not live by metal alone: great non-metal music of ’09:

1. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone

2. Sunset Rubdown, Dragonslayer

3. The XX, XX

4. Blacklist, Midnight of the Century

5. Regina Spektor, Far

Holiday album:

1. Tori Amos, Midwinter Graces