1. Chimaira, "Six" (from Resurrection, Ferret/Nuclear Blast)
2. Avenged Sevenfold, "A Little Piece of Heaven" (from Avenged Sevenfold, Warner Bros.)
3. Machine Head, "Clenching the Fists of Dissent" (from The Blackening, the All Blacks S.V.)
4. Dillinger Escape Plan, "Black Bubblegum" (from Ire Works, Relapse)
5. At All Cost, "The Wall That Divides" (from Circle of Demons, Century Media)
6. Pig Destroyer, "Loathsome" (from Phantom Limb, Relapse)
7. Marilyn Manson, "Evidence" (from Eat Me, Drink Me, Interscope)
8. Rwake, "Leviticus" (from Voices of Omens, Relapse)
9. Nights Like These, "Samsara" (from Sunlight at Secondhand, Victory)
10. Between the Buried and Me, "The Decade of Statues" (from Colors, Victory)
11. Through the Eyes of the Dead, "A Catastrophe of Epic Proportions" (from Malice, Prosthetic)

There wasn't really any unifying theme in 2007's best metal, other than bands stretching out to try things both ambitious and unexpected. But "ambitious" and "unexpected" are words both vague and relative, so let's dig a little deeper.

Dillinger Escape Plan and Marilyn Manson—not two musical acts you'd necessarily expect to see grouped together—both pretty much ditched their respective signature sounds, and both seemed all the stronger for it. While DEP are known primarily as a "mathcore" band—that is, highly technical music-dork pyrotechnics fused with hardcore punk rock—they allowed themselves to get considerably punkier on this year's Ire Works, often seemingly using late Faith No More at their catchiest as a reference point ("Black Bubblegum" is a prime example). Manson, meanwhile, decided to stop aping former mentor Trent Reznor, and pretty much made a straightforward hard rock album devoid of the usual industrial flavors. I don't know if the credit lies with Manson or guitarist/bassist/producer Tim Skold, but the results, as evidenced by, um, "Evidence," were the best mid-'90s mainstream alt-rock since, well, mid-'90s mainstream alt rock.

Nights Like These and Through the Eyes of the Dead, meanwhile, just dropped whatever hip "core" influence we've come to expect (and by "expect," I mean "dread") of our Headbanger's Ball stalwarts these days, and concentrated on making the scariest, heaviest shit possible. Needless to say, they succeeded.

Avenged Sevenfold—who really should be the most irritating suburban arena rawk act this side of Korn—created the album I'm almost positive Axl Rose thinks he's been toiling away on for the past decade and a half. The Nightmare Before Christmas-esque show-tune (!) "A Little Piece of Heaven," complete with orchestration from Oingo Boingo's Steve Bartek, proves that sometimes a clusterfuck of influences can actually, y'know, work. Between the Buried and Me and At All Cost seemed to operate under the same principle, but hipsters can feel less guilty about liking them, since they don't wear their baseball caps sideways or support our current President. I don't really know what Pig Destroyer and Rwake proved to anyone, other than the fact that there is Evil with a capital "E" in the world, and it makes very good music.

And then there's Chimaira and Machine Head. Both bands, in their own way, tried to simultaneously update and re-live the glory days of thrash, when bands like Metallica and Megadeth were at their most progressive, and being smashed on Jaeger didn't necessarily mean you had a short attention span (each song is around ten minutes long). Both bands obviously did pretty well, but there's a reason that "Six" is at the top of the list: a Middle Eastern-style intro gives way to death metal vocals and galloping, Slayer-style riffs, before a soaring, epic guitar solo that wouldn't have been out of place in an early-90's Ozzy or even GN'R song. Simply awesome.

Matthew Goldenberg is co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the snarky and unnecessarily mean-spirited blog MetalSucks, where he writes under the name "Axl Rosenberg" to embarrass his friends and family.