OK, so technically there's 11 albums. To be even more specific, there's 15 releases in total. There were a bunch of great EPs that came out this year, but since I'm not counting them as full albums, I included 4 of those separately. It was a huge year for metal. I could have easily done a 25 favorite albums of the year in that genre alone. All of the metal releases blew away the non-metal releases that came out in 2011, so my entire list of full-lengths are all metal.

Last year, "dubstep" exploded onto the US music scene, despite most of what everyone thought was dubstep, well, wasn't. Throughout this year, there was a mega-ginormous amount of great new dubstep, electrostep, and electrohouse releases.  A good amount of artists put out full lengths, but of them, one was (in my opinion) leaps-and-bounds better than the rest. That's the "stand out" album below, and the reason there's an extra favorite album. Plus, it's my blog, so I can do whatever I want! 

So, with no particular prioritization, and no further adieu... here are my favorite releases of 2011.

EPs
††† (Crosses) – EP † (Spotify)
Glitch Mob – We Can Make The World Stop EP (Spotify | Rdio)
Knife Party – 100% No Modern Talking EP (Beatport)
Silversun Pickups – Seasick EP (Spotify | Rdio)

Full Lengths
Mastodon – The Hunter (Spotify | Rdio)
All Pigs Must Die – God Is War (Spotify | Rdio)
Trap Them – Darker Handcraft (Spotify | Rdio)
Entrails – The Tomb Awaits (Spotify)
Kvelertak – Kvelertak (Spotify | Rdio)
Red Fang – Murder The Mountains (Spotify | Rdio)
Tombs – Path Of Totality (Spotify | Rdio)
Embryonic Anomaly – Rings Of Saturn (Spotify | Rdio)
Demonaz – March Of The Norse (Spotify | Rdio)
Wolves In The Throne Room – Celestian Lineage (Spotify | Rdio)

Stand Out
Nero – Welcome Reality (Spotify | Rdio)

For your listening pleasure, I've made a Spotify playlist of this entire list (with the exception of Knife Party, which isn't available on Spotify). You can listen to that playlist here.