It seems wild in retrospect, but Disney’s High School Musical was the best-selling album of 2006. No shame in your game if Zac Efron’s career-launching teen musical got your head in the game day in and day out that year, but it’s fair to say that most metalheads were not interested in sticking to the status quo.
Instead, 2006 was a year that had us blasting the sounds of Slaytanic legends in their classic formation, while likewise wrecking our necks to the sacred sounds of Virginian legends-in-the-making, soundtracking our Saturday night’s with alt-metal booms, and opening our horizons with the sounds of an illuminating second chapter.
Notably, 2006 was also the year Nintendo launched the Wii. With that in mind, here are a Baker’s Dozen of still-great records that had us wildly swinging our fists in the air that year.
Celtic Frost – Monotheist
Per Monotheist‘s title, there may be but one single god ruling us all. Much-worshipped Swiss extreme icons Celtic Frost, on the other hand, didn’t possess a singular sound. Their journey from proto-black-metal negativity towards Cold Lake’s infamously and bafflingly jubilant Eighties metal and into the gloom-tipped cascades of their 2006 reunion album is one of heavy music’s most fascinating runs.
Monotheist, which was the band’s first album in 16 years, delivers knuckle-dragging, low-tuned barbarism (“Progeny”), insidiously slow-sludging sadness (“A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh”) and bleak, yet heart-fluttering goth-metal romanticism (“Drown in Ashes”). No matter the approach, Celtic Frost sound as if they’re desperately trying to tunnel out of a pit of eternal despair.
A challenging, unendingly complex collection from vocalist-guitarist Tom G. Warrior and co-founding bassist-vocalist Martin Ain, Monotheist is undoubtedly one of their heaviest, and perhaps their best.
Converge – No Heroes
Converge rip through the first five songs on No Heroes in just over five minutes, its expertly D-beated rhythms, feverishly fretboard-attacking riffage and scathingly enraged vocal performances marking one of the most relentless stretches in the metallic hardcore band’s entire oeuvre.
On the other side of things, the toweringly gloomy, nearly-10-minute “Grim Heart/Black Rose” finds vocalist Jacob Bannon tapping out to let Only Living Witness’ Jonah Jenkins flex bombastically soul-shattering croons on the mic.
While Bannon mused at the time that idolizing bands was “completely pointless,” No Heroes is one of many awe-inspiring displays in Converge’s sterling catalog.
Deftones – Saturday Night Wrist
Saturday Night Wrist occupies a strange place in Deftones’ discography. Chino Moreno once explained that it was made during the “worst time in [his] life.” He’d been struggling with addiction issues. He’d written all his vocal parts after the rest of the group completed the music, leaving the sessions a little more disjointed than normal. Guitarist Stephen Carpenter says they almost kicked him out of the band at the time.
Despite all that, the record features a series of staggering statements, like the heavy space-gazing “Hole in the Earth,” and the sensual sensory overload that is “Cherry Waves.”
Its heaviest fact, however, is that this would be the final album to be made with OG bassist Chi Cheng, who fell into a coma in 2008 following a serious car accident, and passed away in 2013.
Evanescence – The Open Door
Evanescence blew the doors wide open with the magnetically anthemic sound of 2003 debut album Fallen, and to say expectations were high for the follow-up release would be an understatement. Despite the title of the second record’s closing ballad, The Open Door wasn’t just “good enough” — it was pretty damn great.
Amy Lee’s stately, near-operatic vocals soared above the nu-pounding brawniness of “Sweet Sacrifice.” The emotionally resonant “Lithium” left us in a daze. “Call Me When You’re Sober” remains one of the Aughts’ most potent heavy kiss-offs.
Evanescence opened their Door to reveal rock, metal and choir-assisted opulence. Selling more than two-million copies in the U.S. alone, it remains one of their strongest statements.
Hatebreed – Supremacy
Few have reigned as supreme in the realm of fists-up hardcore as Hatebreed. The aptly titled Supremacy found the Connecticut-bred outfit continuing their steady roll of Aughts-era heaviness, vocalist Jamey Jasta beckoning listeners to engage with the hell inside his heart across a collection encompassing anxiety, despair and never-ending battles.
Their frontman spat pure venom on the mic, while the addition of Ringworm guitarist (and future hot sauce magnate) Frank Novinec beefed up the sound.
Killswitch Engage – As Daylight Dies
Guitarist-producer Adam Dutkiewicz told Revolver that the recording sessions for the metalcore vets’ fourth album were reasonably relaxed, and that they “weren’t as picky” with performances as they had been on past efforts. The steady stream of Busch Light that had been flowing into the group probably helped, but more so it was a collective effort to work on impulse and instinct instead of progressive intellect. As Dutkiewicz put it: “Don’t use your brain — use your sack, man!”
Powered by kinetic riffage, an aching-but-anthemic melodicism and the soulfully sung-and-screamed dynamism of then-vocalist Howard Jones, As Daylight Dies still gets you right in the feels. Truly, their “Curse” was our blessing.
Kylesa – Time Will Fuse Its Worth
Somewhere in the swamps of Georgia — Savannah, if we’re being precise with it — Kylesa emerged with this sludgy classic.
While the band’s third full-length raged hard, the psychedelically effects-soaked texturing across Time Will Fuse Its Worth made it seem like someone had been sneaking psilocybin into the crust quintet’s water supply. Add to this the counterpoint-crazed attacks from their two drummers, and a trio of uniquely barking vocalists, and you have yourself an epic headtrip.
While perhaps not as loudly celebrated as fellow Peach State stompers Mastodon and Baroness, time has only further confirmed Kylesa’s worth.
Lamb of God – Sacrament
If you haven’t spun Lamb of God’s Sacrament lately, consider this is a motherfuckin’ invitation to blast the Virginia metal greats’ fifth devastating full-length ASAP. After all, Revolver labeled the record our Album of the Year in 2006.
While full of memorably heavy tracks like “Redneck” and the flames-erupting “Walk With Me in Hell” that have enthralled the metal masses over the years since, Sacrament was kind of a nightmare for the band during its making. Former LOG drummer Chris Adler reported to Revolver years back that their sessions with producer Machine were obsessively perfectionist, with the group treating “every chord and drum hit… like life and death.” At times, they were too in their heads during its making to realize they had an all-timer in the tank.
Nevertheless, Lamb of God rose to the occasion, and we raise our chalice to their mighty Sacrament.
Mastodon – Blood Mountain
Mastodon’s 2004 breakthrough LP Leviathan was a crushing reinterpretation of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; it was 2006 follow-up Blood Mountain that fully cemented the Atlanta outfit as master storytellers in their own right.
While full of impeccable vocals hooks and beastly howls from Mastodon’s core quartet, the eccentric story also unfolds through the unique vocalizations of Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala and one of many assists from Neurosis’ Scott Kelly.
Armed with toothy thrashers, sludge-savage riffing, Southern flair and progtastic encounters with visionary one-eyed sasquatches, the band’s third album climbed great heights as one of 2006’s most mesmerizing concept records.
Slayer – Christ Illusion
Christ Illusion scorched the earth as the classic Slayer lineup’s first album together in 16 years. Sure enough, returned drummer Dave Lombardo (who’d rejoined the band a few years earlier) brings uncaged ferocity to the most classically thrashing parts of Slayer’s 10th album, while simultaneously waking up the dead with the elephantine-stomping crush of slower pieces like “Catatonic.”
Across its 10 black serenades, Tom Araya howls through anti-religious treatises, weighs in on the 9/11 attacks from a terrorist’s perspective (“Jihad”) and explores a soldier’s shell-shocked PTSD on “Eyes of the Insane,” the latter nabbing Slayer a Grammy for Best Metal Performance.
Some Girls – Heaven’s Pregnant Teens
Heaven’s Pregnant Teens, hardcore supergroup Some Girls’ first and only full-length, was bursting with bleak, brutal inspiration from every angle — its membership flexed members of American Nightmare, the Locust, Unbroken and many more.
Most of its songs trafficked well under the one-minute mark, the record puree-ing elements of jagged noise rock with irascibly pug-ugly Eighties hardcore, armor-piercing powerviolence blasts and viciously vivid poetics from American Nightmare (and Cold Cave) vocalist Wes Eisold.
While generally presented at a quick clip, Heaven’s Pregnant Teens slows itself down to birth a bilious take on Public Image Ltd’s. “Religion II,” while closer “Deathface” rides a primal, grave-swung groove for nine exquisitely uncomfortable minutes.
TOOL – 10,000 Days
With 10,000 Days, TOOL gave us an illuminating look at their alt-metal art like never before — in part, because CD copies were packaged with stereoscopic lenses that transformed Alex Grey’s psychedelic illustrations into pineal-gland-piercing 3D wonderworlds.
On record, songs like “Jambi” and “Vicarious” further rabbit-holed us into darkly prismatic progscapes of irregularly undulated rhythms, hauntingly hypnotic musical arrangements, talkbox solos and the soul-enveloping wail of one Maynard James Keenan.
It’s been just over 7,200 days since TOOL released the album. Every second of it has been its own journey.
Underoath – Define the Great Line
Why don’t we sit here for half an hour and speak of how Underoath’s fifth album was in regular rotation on our iPods throughout 2006.
Capitalizing on the breakthrough success of 2004’s They’re Only Chasing Safety, their first release with scream-centric vocalist Spencer Chamberlain, the band hit the studio with Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz behind the boards and devoted themselves to delivering a big bash of emo-and-metalcore-stitched anthemry.
20 years later, the writing is on the wall: Chaotic, hummable and heavy, Define the Great Line helped shape Underoath’s enduring legacy and remains, by our measure, their greatest work.