best of 2012.

here are four best-of-the-year lists for your reading pleasure - twenty widely released albums, ten cassettes, ten splits, and ten digital releases. each list is in no particular order.

it was an especially great year for cassettes, splits, and digital from small labels.

these albums are readily available all over the internet for free. but please buy something if you like it.

top twenty widely-released albums
menace ruine - alight in ashes

evoken - atra mors

elysian blaze - blood geometry

panopticon - kentucky

sutekh hexen - larvae

wrathprayer - the sun of moloch…

rage nucléaire - unrelenting fucking hatred

wildernessking - the writing of gods in the sand

baroness - yellow & green

mutilation rites - empyrean

worm ouroboros - come the thaw

mgla - with hearts toward none

mares of thrace - the pilgrimage

cryptopsy - s/t

bosse-de-nage - III

drudkh - eternal turn of the wheel

pseudogod - death womb catechesis

horseback - half blood

ash borer - cold of ages

pig destroyer - book burner

top ten cassettes

this station of life - plastic fire

rhinocervs - rh-12

rhinocervs - rh-14

ash pool - cremation is irreversible

dommedagssalme - to that which lies dormant

dressed in streams - s/t

voltur - obscuritas incantamentum

grinning death's head - golden dawn

hell - hell III

torture chain - time is but a doorway to the incinerator

top ten splits

absum/odz manouk

a pregnant light/obscure lupine quietus

wheels within wheels/merkaba

thou/hell

barghest/false

muknal/the haunting presence

trist/lonesummer

white medal/cäina

year of no light/altar of plagues

yellow eyes/monument

top ten digital/self-releases

ekadzati - s/t

thenn - threshing the golden fields

jute gyte - senescence

venowl - patterns of failure

cellgraft - s/t

acédia - l'exil

book of sand - mourning star

mare cognitum - an extraconscious lucidity

dephosphorus - night sky transform

botanist - III: doom in bloom

what did I miss?