My Top 5: Albums Of 1993

Released: June 22, 1993

Genre: Technical Death Metal, Progressive Metal

My Favourite Track: Trapped In A Corner

Brief Rumination: For a genre like death metal that is so often tarred with perceptions of thickheaded brutality what is so often missed by the casual observer is the beauty that interweaves itself throughout an album like Individual Thought Patterns, marrying gut-wrenching melody with thunderous complexity.

Released: August 17, 1993

Genre: Gothic Metal, Doom Metal

My Favourite Track: Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)

Brief Rumination: Bloody Kisses was the best selling album on Roadrunner records up that point, surprising everyone after the controversial 'Slow, Deep and Hard' debut with its melodic gothic romanticism amongst the trademark dark satire and gloom..

Released: September 14, 1993

Genre: Progressive metal, technical death metal, avant-garde metal, jazz fusion

My Favourite Track: Veil Of Maya

Brief Rumination: 'Focus' is the very definition of a grower, yes there are the traces of those aggressive death metal roots but for me it's so characterised by Masvidal's celestial guitar techniques and has a quality that separates it from simplistic genre definition.

Released: May 4, 1993

Genre: Alternative rock, indie rock, punk blues, punk rock

My Favourite Track: Rub 'til It Bleeds

Brief Rumination: Easily Polly Jean Harvey's most intense record, not to mention rawest and sexiest too...a perfect blend of punk and blues with lyrical odes to sexual obsessions and tongue in cheek tales of humour and horror.

Released: April 6, 1993

Genre: Alternative metal, progressive metal

My Favourite Track: Prison Sex

Brief Rumination: In a decade when music was reaching new extremes Tool blended shadow laden heaviness with enough hooks and melody to keep a wider rock audience interested while simultaneously challenging and subverting.