<ol>
<li><p>Sixteen Saltines -- Jack White (Why not include one strong regular rock song and this one qualifies as well as having a cool video).</p></li>
<li><p>Your a Lie -- Slash/Kennedy (Nice to see him get off the deck with a better (and less crazy) singer than Axl).</p></li>
<li><p>I Miss the Misery -- Halestorm (One of the year's biggest surprises, Lizzie and the band show they can actually rock hard). </p></li>
<li><p>Intoxicated -- Lacuna Coil (Cannot go wrong by featuring Christina's vocals in a song with operatic grandeur). </p></li>
<li><p>America -- Deuce (Well deserved punch in the stomach to the political BS n the US).</p></li>
<li><p>Lemon Scent -- Dead Sara (The best new comers of the year with this song channeling Rage against the Machine and Led Zeppelin).</p></li>
<li><p>L' Enfant Savage -- Gojira (With the best drummer in the business and one of the year's great riffs, they take the fourth spot even though I can barely listen to their lead singer).</p></li>
<li><p>Whore -- In This Moment (No one does trashy better than Maria Brink, and this is her masterpiece). </p></li>
<li><p>Darkness Within -- Machine Head (Another operatic song with great riffs and harmonies throughout plus a weird video shot in spooky Prague). </p></li>
<li><p>The Diplomat -- Pig Destroyer (Grind has never sounded so good and the video, is one of the most innovative in year's. But it comes out on top due to the urgency of the message -- satirizing mindless machine gun violence -- in light of the Newtown, CT massacre).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I submit Black Tongue by Mastodon.</p>
<p>I don’t see the point of listening to rock from any time period after the 80’s.</p>
<p>I agree about new rock not really being that worth listening to in a lot of cases. Metal has continually been improved in most cases (except the introduction of core/grind and nu metal), while rock seems to have slowly declined. I listened to most of the songs, Gojira’s was alright, but I didn’t like some of the others.</p>
<p>I can’t help but long for the time when bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica, Megadeth, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Queen were more popular. New music by comparison is mostly either nothing new or interesting, or so out there in it’s attempt to be fresh that it sucks.</p>
<p>I did like White Wizzard and The Sword though, as far as hard rock/lighter metal goes. There are good bands out there, but most of the new ones (90s and newer, to me) are in metal. Vektor, Havok, Amon Amarth, Opeth, Green Carnation, stuff like that.</p>