Listen along with our 
Metal Roundup, February 2012 playlist.Given pseudoscientific doomsday theories of galactic alignment and geomagnetic reversal and Nibiru collision and all, metal can certainly look forward to an eventful 2012. What's more metal than the End of the World, right? Unless it's the Return to Darkness, as typified by the recent phenomenon of cities like Highland Park, Mich., and Rockford, Ill., extinguishing thousands of streetlights to save money at a time of fiscal crisis, and scores of other municipalities now considering the same option.
Here's Virginia Tech history professor A. Roger Ekirch -- who in 2005 published a book called At Day's Close: Night in Times Past -- in a recent New York Times streetlight switch-off essay: "Before the Industrial Revolution, darkness conjured the worst properties in man, nature and the cosmos -- brigands, witches, and rapacious beasts were thought to lurk everywhere." How metal is that??
That said, here's to 2012! Here are 15 albums with which metal has kicked open its year's door so far. (Well OK, we cheated: two, including the class valedictorian in our No. 1 spot, technically came out in the waning weeks of 2011, but who's counting?) And OK, one of the best albums comes from some old-fart Californians reunited in proper form for the first time in nearly three decades, and one of the others is from some even older-fart Germans who've been around in some form or other since the mid-'60s -- and who spend their 2012 platter re-recording their oldies and covering other people's. Nevertheless, rest assured that there is sufficient rapacious darkness from vastly younger and more frightening creatures further down below. Dig in, and let the countdown to Armageddon begin.
1. Midnight ChaserRough and Tough
Opening their debut in search of an "Awesome Party," these hilariously old-schoolish Bay Area-via-Pittsburgh heft-rockers proceed to throw one, with Scott Attwood's friendly, frantic high register leading the way to the booze. They sing about swords, shields, earthquakes, dynamite and dirty deeds with tongues half in cheek, like they stack Kix and Axe LPs next to the Motörhead at home. "Rough and Tough" seems to concern a latchkey brat, and the Grand Funk-cowbelled "Cougar'd" may well be the funniest, most danceable metal song about an older woman ("in her prime ... only 30 over 16") ever. [Chuck Eddy]
2. Van HalenA Different Kind of Truth
A Different Kind of Truth isn't quite on par with classic Van Halen: Fair Warning, II, 1984, et al. But it's an excellent album nonetheless, even when the band is obviously tweaking previously established templates. "As Is" is more or less a cross between "Hot for Teacher" and "Ice Cream Man," but that doesn't diminish its hard-rocking potency. Eddie sounds ferocious on just about every track, but particularly "Honeybabysweetiedoll" and "The Trouble with Never," both of which are slyly eccentric takes on the kind of over-amped boogie Van Halen perfected as a bar band back in the mid-1970s. [Justin Farrar]
3. Black PyramidII
For doom stoners, these dudes sure have memorable choruses. Catchiest is in "Mercy's Bane" (which concerns goddess-defiling, priest-flaying and Moloch), but there are more where that came from. Blunt, nasal vocals and a filthy-tentacled guitar tone, too. Their second album gets long-winded -- for parts of the 15-minute closer "Into the Dawn," the rocking is the kind a straitjacketed inmate might do in his chair. But they're pros at balancing battle-metal pillages and UFO-rock vortexes with hippie-jazz explorations (à la their Massachusetts state-mates Elder): "Tanelorn" is downright pastoral. [C.E.]
4. Behold! The MonolithDefender, Redeemist
This thrashy, doomy, mucky, extremely heavy L.A. trio heads in plenty of directions, sometimes all in the same song. Vocals range from Celtic Frost punches in the gut to Kylesa shrieks from the rafters to your usual ugly Lemmy-via-death-metal upchuck; the riffs can be chewy as pine tar; and there are synthesized spans of free space. But the building blocks often seem randomly assembled, and only "Witch Hunt Supreme" -- which starts out as a high-speed prog-chops demonstration, then doggedly breaks down a "Smoke on the Water" riff into its component parts -- leaves a huge lasting impression. [C.E.]
5. NightwishImaginaerum
Even before the penultimate "Song of Myself" -- nearly 13 minutes of opera arias and recitations by actors of many ages and genders -- the seventh album by Finnish fairy-tale metal troupe Nightwish seems to go on forever. Not necessarily in a bad way, though -- at least if you like music boxes, gypsy dance interludes, goth-pop panpipes, Dead or Alive hooks, Van Halen licks, piano torch jazz, old Disney soundtrack schlock and Carl Orff. Not to mention whimsical and/or scary bedtime stories about cobwebs, dragonflies, mermaids, spider tentacles and a naked old man who smooches mannequins in his attic. [C.E.]
6. SlaviaIntegrity and Victory
Only Slavia's second full-length album since they formed in 1997, Integrity and Victory is a highly experimental foray to the outer reaches of Norway's black metal scene. Middle Eastern yodeling, classical music, found sounds, tape effects, guitars distorted beyond recognition, two 15-minute tracks -- it's all here. Despite the somewhat willy-nilly collage of ideas here, the album is anything but boring. If Ulver hadn't gotten bored with black metal, they might be putting out records like this in 2012, too. [Mike McGuirk]
7. ScorpionsComeblack
With two venerable members both 62 -- and Kentucky drum and Polish bass recruits well into their 40s -- Germany's eternal hurricane-rockers opt for an easy way out of retirement: re-recording seven classics, from 1980's sleazy night on the town "The Zoo" to 1991's perestroika anthem "Wind of Change," then covering six songs made famous by British bands from the Stones to Soft Cell. Klaus Meine can't shriek so high anymore, but Rudolf Schenker can still punch out riffs. And judging from the news sample in the T. Rex "Children of the Revolution" remake, they were watching in 2011 when England rioted. [C.E.]
8. Blut Aus Nord777 - The Desanctification
Over seven tracks titled "Epitome VII" through "Epitome XIII," this French art-metal act turns a few new twists on the usual oceanic wallpaper-metal snooze. They mix spooky horror soundtrack effects into 20th-century atonal composition approximations and seemingly hired a menagerie of gremlins, goblins, ghoulies, monkeys and monks to grumble indecipherable and sometimes backward-masked conversations deep in the mix. And judging from all the nearly subliminal tack-hammering going on, it's possible the recording studio abutted a construction site. Still, "Epitome X" sounds rather heavenly. [C.E.]
9. Lacuna CoilDark Adrenaline
Perhaps determined to cement their position on U.S. airwaves, Italy's co-ed metal goths enlist Don Gilmore of Linkin Park fame to produce, and they cover R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" to boot. More and more, with Andrea Ferro's woeful accent countering Cristina Scabbia's versatile octave-traversing, they come off like radio metal's answer to Lady Antebellum: a man and woman sheltering each other from a world of disaster. Scabbia sounds Madonna-like in "End of Time" and Middle Eastern in "Intoxicated," and the guitarists offer some sand-dune moments as well -- not to mention a few halfway heavy ones. [C.E.]
10. LoinclothIron Balls of Steel
This amusingly titled metal album is the work of three guys from Richmond, Va., and Raleigh, N.C., but has no amusing lyrics to match -- in fact, there are no lyrics at all. Several of Loincloth's 16 instrumentals are over well before they hit the two-minute mark, and only a couple ("Angel Bait," "Clostfroth") slip briefly into shoegaze atmosphere. Individual tracks never quite function as discrete units, either. But the sonic architecture certainly stays brawny -- marked by grimy guitars, hard-hitting drums and math-doom rhythms that occasionally hint at harmolodic jazz fusion. [C.E.]
11. Lamb of GodResolution
As on its 2009 predecessor, Wrath, the 2011 album by these Virginia death-metal lifers lurches and pounds within predictably prescribed perimeters. Given Elmer Fudd-enunciating Randy Blythe's oppressive but orthodox screech-grunting at a world of lazy liars, it's no shock that the most intriguing track is probably the drowsy, buzzing instrumental "Barbarosa." Still, the radio-friendly chorus of "Insurrection" lets some psychedelic melody seep in; "To the End" hides hard classic-rock swing under Blythe's retch; and closer "King Me" mixes in Mozart motions, Latin lingo and dusky monologues. [C.E.]
12. DetrimentumInhuman Disgrace
Fans of Morbid Angel's Altars of Madness are directed here, to the second album from this U.K.-based death metal unit. Marked by extreme technicality, Inhuman Disgrace is part of a growing worldwide death metal resurgence that appears to be reanimating the breadth of death metal styles, from the old school to melodic, brutal and technical branches. As such, this album could easily have come out in 1991. Still, Detrimentum come off as anything but retro; instead, this band, and the increasing legion of like-minded metal dudes, are an extension of what came before. [M.M.]
13. PsycropticThe Inherited Repression
Psycroptic's fifth album offers more Tasmanian tech death -- that's "technical death metal," which means they play really fast and you need a slide ruler to figure out what the hell's going on. Marked by the band's highly advanced musicianship, the record nevertheless gives up nothing in terms of toughness or heaviness. This is likely due to the ultra-manly vocals of Jason Peppiatt and guitarist Joe Haley's reverence for cramming superb hammer-on riffs in every corner. [M.M.]
14. CryptbornIn the Grasp of the Starving Dead
This Finnish death metal band is dedicated to keeping the fires of the '90s scene aflame. Cryptborn's first full-length, In the Grasp of the Starving Dead occasionally veers into doom territory, but for the most part sticks to the left-handed path of thrumming guitars and a bludgeoning double-bass drum attack. An eternally damned soul grunts underneath the caterwaul. Basically, the salad days of death metal are effectively resurrected, even down to the grave-robbing, cadaver-obsessed lyrical imagery. Good times. "Rotten Gates of Heaven" and the title cut are highlights. [M.M.]
15. Spectral MortuaryTotal Depravity
Denmark-based lovers of the old school (think Floridian) offer a second album that is less groove-metal oriented than their 2007 debut, From Hate Incarnated, and more dedicated to an overwhelming crush and all-out brutality. These guys don't want you to move. They want you to sit still while they treat your Eustachian tubes to an MMA-style beatdown. That said, "Bestial Sanctity" offers a slight respite with some practically danceable moshes. Singer Morten Jørgensen consistently steals the show. Potential Song Title of the Year candidate: "Found in Feces." [M.M.]