Summary: Continuing our countdown of Crucial Years in Metal, we arrive at 2001. It was a year of reinventions and innovation that the metal world greatly needed to maintain relevance in critics circles. Bands like Cathedral came back with a fusion of all their various styles consolidated into a stripped down, crushingly heavy magnum opus, Pig Destroyer had refreshed grind, Enslaved had taken their songwriting to the next level and Katatonia refined their style into a perfect amalgam of indie rock, metal and everything in between. Add to that Converge's Jane Doe and 2001 stands out in the annals of metal history as a banner year. Kissing the Shadows (4:35) Children of Bodom - Follow the Reaper TALKSET 1 Bleak (9:16) Opeth - Blackwater Park Melancholy Emperor (5:32) Cathedral - Endtyme Vision: Sphere of the Elements - A Monument Part II (4:58) Enslaved - Monumension Trojan Whore (1:35) Pig Destroyer - Prowler in the Yard TALKSET 2 The Broken Vow (2:13) Converge - Jane Doe Passing Bird (3:37) Katatonia - Last Fair Deal Gone Down This is Where I Am (4:49) Rapture - Futile From Where Its Roots Run (3:41) Neurosis - A Sun That Never Sets Stellar Master Elite (3:53) Thorns - Thorns TALKSET 3 Infernal Rites (4:30) Akercocke - Goat of Mendes Ticks and Leeches (8:10) Tool - Lateralus
