With 2008 firmly behind us, it's time for our top list of the year. Produced in the SPB labs using highly secretive algorithms and formulas, the final list is now available for your perusal. After a year of solid releases from established acts and exciting new sounds from bands we hadn't heard of even during our Mid Year feature, it's quite the exciting read. So start reading!
But first, in time-honoured tradition, some graphs and data.
What the bands and labels thought
This graph shows the most popular albums as nominated by the music community this year in our Pass The Mic feature.
A look back at SPB
This complex graph shows the rise (and in some cases, fall) in SPB's content rates over the years. Charting the growth of our reviews and news since records began in 2004, we can see that on the whole, we've steadily rose! Unfortunately for stat-hungry readers, we neglected to store the post dates of our features, so they're absent from this graph. I'm fairly sure they've gone up this year, though.
And now for something completely different
In a repeat of last year's graph, a staggering loss has hit the community of bands with animals in their name. When compiling this graph, SPB was also faced with dilemmas: is 'Leviathan' an animal? Moby Dick seems to think so. Note: "Lemuria" was deemed worthy of inclusion due to it containing the word "lemur".
Enough stats - onto the list!