The Top 50 Albums of 2007

37 Down
Over the Under (Down)
Ex-Pantera singer Phil Anselmo now has a full-time job in this former side project, and it's about time. His backwoods-devil growling in "Never Try" and "Beneath the Tides" attest to his victories over hard drugs and the viciously public breakup of Pantera. But Anselmo's avenging Southern soul comes fortified with double-guitar dynamite — the harmony riffing and hellhounds' debate of Kirk Windstein and Corrosion of Conformity's Pepper Keenan — that sounds like it crept out of a Louisiana swamp.

38 Imperial Teen
The Hair the T.V. the Baby & the Band (Merge)
Polymorphous indie pleasure-seekers trade noise for sweetness, and stick with guitar parts that merge both rhythm and melody and sexuality and vulnerability. Singing about the point in your life when you trade late-night drinking for early mornings at the gym has never sounded so cool.