We’re here, the final 20 of the year’s 100 best albums! We hope you’ve enjoyed this years countdown and that it provided an alternative voice in honoring the year’s best music from Metal, Punk, Indie, Electronic, Pop and Hip Hop.

2009 was a great year in music. But truth be told ever year and every decade is great in their own ways. One thing we hate here at the Bloglin is hearing people profess how “This year sucked for albums”. Great albums aren’t always played, written or blogged about everywhere where discovering them is unavoidable. Music fans need to do some leg work in unearthing certain things and if you’re willing to dig a bit and expand your horizons there is always great new music being made every single year.

We invite you all to post and compare your own top 100, 50, 20 or 10 albums of the year within the comments section! Maybe we missed some obscure gem your ears got to enjoy in 2009? If so, we’d love to hear about it!

• For #100-81 of The Bloglin’s Best Albums of 2009 (Click Here)

• For #80-61 of The Bloglin’s Best Albums of 2009 (Click Here)

• For #60-41 of The Bloglin’s Best Albums of 2009 (Click Here)

• For #40-21 of The Bloglin’s Best Albums of 2009 (Click Here)

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20) Mastodon - Crack the Skye [Reprise]

Fans either adore this or think it’s the biggest sell-out album of the past decade, but we belong to the former camp. So what if it’s commercially viable? It’s also really effing good. The classic Mastodon structure is honed, guitar tones perfected, vocals catchier and more emphatic than ever. If this is the album that makes Mastodon really famous, so be it: it’s a fucking well-deserved fame, if you ask us.

Original Bloglin Review

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19) Cold Cave - Love Comes Close [Heartworm/Matador]

Cold Cave are the year’s shining stars of dark releases with a coldwave bent, and all hype aside, it’s for pretty good reason. Love Comes Close is a chilly-creepy-crazy homage to 80s wave that manages to avoid being novel by just being good. The Bloglin originally called it “the perfect gateway album”, and that’s totally right: not only will Love Comes Close bowl you over with its revival-like darkness, it might just spark an interest in both the classic dark- and coldwave albums of the 80s and the new crop of wave-inspired releases sure to bombard us in 2010.

Original Bloglin Review

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18) Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms [Lefse]

The new project of VEGA’s Alan Palomo, Neon Indian slid in silently and exploded when no one expected it with their debut release, Psychic Chasms. Palomo used an arsenal of vintage gear and analog samples to create an inspired surfy, synthpop and dub-influenced album. Psychic Chasms was humble, fresh and authentic, generating well-earned buzz for the band and setting the scene for a successful career.

Original Bloglin Review

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17) Iron Age - The Sleeping Eye [Tee Pee]

This is one little monolith of an album. One part Hardcore, one part Thrash, one part Powerviolence and one part Stoner Metal and yet, entirely it’s own beast! Not your usual Crossover fare, The Sleeping Eye is the most unconventional and engaging approaches to Hardcore and Thrash in years!

Original Bloglin Review

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16) Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care [Domino]

Maybe the warmest and most human of their releases so far, Begone Dull Care shows Junior Boys in an updated, funkier place. Rather than evoke the same old 80s synth-pop they’ve been perfecting for years, the duo goes a little Hall & Oates here—a tactic that sounds guilty pleasure-destined in the text but is seriously innovative and technically impeccable in practice. Way to totally best Chromeo, Junior Boys.

Original Bloglin Review

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15) Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix [V2]

Ignore the stupid title and focus instead on this: Phoenix is seemingly incapable of putting out a bad record, and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is the best of the best. Dancey, catchy and so smoothly produced, these tracks may be emotion lite, but they’re still tons of sugary fun. Just the thing for taking the edge off a particularly dark winter.

Original Bloglin Review

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14) Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions [Southern Lord]

Stephen O’Malley has crafted his finest hour as Sunn O))). This is more an incantation than an album. A terrifying and transfixing journey from a demon’s womb into the blistering light. This truly is Doom Metal at it’s finest. Lock your doors and grab your bong… Cthulhu coming over!

Original Bloglin Review

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13) Screaming Females -Power Move [Don Giovanni]

A healthy mix of 70s proto-metal, post-punk and even late riot grrrl, Power Move is both confounding and completely rad. It’s not stunningly innovative, but the shrieking riffs and sloppy construction totally convey the sort of enthusiasm for music you had as a teenager. Back then, it didn’t matter whether the stuff was technical or innovative—it just needed to be raucous, riotous and full of bratty attitude. You know, exactly what Screaming Females do best.

Original Bloglin Review

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12) Screen Vinyl Image - Interceptors [Safranin]

The year’s two most prominent revival genres, married at last. Interceptor is so much the middle point between shoegaze and goth, you really can’t call it anything but gothgaze: dark and ethereal, mechanical and still somehow warm. I’ll be closely following Screen Vinyl Image in 2010; if Interceptor is any indication—and if they get the attention they deserve—we can expect nothing but great, gothgazey things.

Original Bloglin Review

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11) Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II [EMI]

Raise your hands if you honestly expected this album to be good. I know I didn’t, and from the early singles I went into it with rather low expectations. I’ve never been happier to have been so wrong. 14 years after the original, Raekwon not only storms himself, but all of the Wu back into relevancy. Shit, at this point I’m ready to even believe that Detox will come out and may end up being greatest record ever recorded.

Original Bloglin Review

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10) Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy [Matador]

After releasing a grip of 7″s, EPs, singles and a 2008 album titled Constant Hitmaker that was largely ignored, Kurt Vile finally started to get the attention he deserved with his short and excellent vinyl only release, God Is Saying This to You… (out much earlier in 2009).  But it is with his Matador debut, Childish Prodigy that Vile truly comes into his own.  A lonely masterpiece of outsider Americana and retooled lo-fi. Vile sucks you into his melodies and holds you there, transfixed with curiosity at a man so full of mystery and talent.

Original Bloglin Review

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9) Health - Get Color [Lovepump United]

Barring this year’s success of the XX, I’d be hard pressed to name another band in recent years who were able to shift as effectively across different audiences as Health. Beginning with the release of their 2007 debut, Health have found equal support in many different circles. Get Color saw the band introduce a heavier focus on vocals and continue to build upon their brand of synthesized noise rock. A logical next step, Get Color proved Health are going to be around for awhile and will just keep getting stronger with every subsequent release.

Original Bloglin Review

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8) A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Ashes Grammar [Mis Ojos]

The gleaming beacon of this year’s nu-gaze influx, Ashes Grammar doesn’t merely outshine each of ASDIG’s previous releases–it blows every similar sounding band straight out of the water. Ashes is a sideways album, a sort of down-the-rabbit-hole experience that boasts kicky dance tracks and watery-gorgeous interludes in equal parts. It’s easy to lose yourself in all this sweet, twinkling tinkering…and just as easy to never dig yourself out.

Original Bloglin Review

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7) Skeletonwitch - Breathing the Fire [Prosthetic]

Chance and the guys put on one hell of a live show. Between drinking beer, shots of whiskey and screaming “Eat some pussy” to the crowd, you can tell what they’re all about; brutally honest blackened thrash metal. Breathing the Fire is the follow-up to Beyond the Permafrost; Hot and Cold. Quite simply put, Breathing the Fire is exactly that, one hot album that effortlessly weave decades of Metal into something altogether fresh and exciting.

Original Bloglin Review

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6) Atlas Sound - Logos [Kranky]

Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox’s sophomore solo effort, Logos, painted a flawless portrait of what it means to be human. Love, longing and loss fill the compositions of an album that was as well executed as it was emotive. Cameos from Noah Lennox (Animal Collective) and Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab) provided bright spots on an otherwise ethereal, and deeply introspective opus.

Original Bloglin Review

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5) Blessure Grave - Judged by 12, Carried by 6 [Release the Bats]

Talk about getting it in under the wire: Judged by 12, Carried by 6 may be one of the year’s final releases (available by Dec. 28th) but it’s by far one of its best. Evocative, dramatic and amazingly reminiscent of everything from Bauhaus to Play Dead, Judged hits you on the same guttural level as, say, Unknown Pleasures; a total clusterfuck of dark emotion that leaves you manic and panicky and desperately craving more. Most of you won’t hear this until 2010, but trust me: its miserable loveliness is so, so worth the wait.

Original Bloglin Review

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4) Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion [Domino]

Animal Collective is one of those bands that, for whatever stupid reason, I always think I hate…until I actually listen to them again. It’s like an accidental affection, you know, but Merriweather Post Pavillion is different; there’s just no denying that this thing is charming as hell. Melodic noise, psych explosions, hypnotic breakdowns—it’s all there, just a wee bit gentler and easier to embrace. The band’s most accessible, and joyful, album to date.

Not originally reviewed on the Bloglin

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3) The XX - S/T [Rough Trade]

They’ve been hyped within an inch of their lives, but The XX are one of those rare bands who actually deserve the fervor. Everything about this debut is so near perfection. Buttery vocal interplay that feels like a hushed, secret conversation. Lyrics both desperate and desperately happy. Hollow, one-note guitar that brims over with longing. That these kids are barely 20 years old only adds to its charm; they’ve given voice to the sort of manic teenage melancholy that haunts us all, even those of us damn near (or well into) our 30s. So lonely. So desperate. So perfect.

Original Bloglin Review

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2) Baroness - Blue Record [Relapse]

In the 6 years together Barnoness have successfully conquered the realms of Stoner/Sludge metal… So what are they to do now? Set their sights higher of course! The Blue Record is on some straight up Hammer of the Gods type Rock ‘n Roll. This isn’t merely this year’s best Stoner/Sludge album or even the #2 album of 2009, this is one of the decades greatest Rock albums. Period. Get those lighters up!

Original Bloglin Review

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1) Fever Ray – S/T [Mute]

We knew Karin Dreijer-Andersson’s post-Knife solo debut was going to be great the minute she streamed an early version of “If I Had A Heart” from her website. I mean, my god, even that unfinished track was better than almost anything released so far this year. But I’m not sure any of us expected Fever Ray to be this incredible. Similar to The Knife in its dark, tropical vibe but studded with a sense of blind hope, Fever Ray is Andersson at a personal best: wide-eyed and haunted, with slow, throbbing rhythms and ghastly sweet melody. It’s less dancefloor-intended than anything The Knife has ever done, but Fever Ray isn’t without beat. It’s just pulsing, undulating, almost seasick. And totally fucking amazing.

Original Bloglin Review