North American readers may be unfamiliar with the Deutsch Alternative Charts, but darktronica music is alive and well in Europe, and the DAC is the best chart (akin to the American Billboard charts) rating its sales and radio play. A few metal and rock releases are counted on the DAC–such as Metallica’s Death Magnetic–and power noise more extreme than what typically is profiled on this site also qualifies. For the most part, though, the Deutsch ratings are a great way to discover some artists and albums that otherwise don’t get much exposure in the US.

Earlier this month, the DAC released their list of the Top 50 Albums of 2008 and the Top 100 Singles of 2008. Congratulations to Andreas Davids of Xotox for producing the highest-ranked non-compilation album of the year. Out of Line also deserves recognition for mopping the floor with other labels by releasing 3 of the top 10 albums, and 10 of the top 50.

The full listing of the Top 50 DAC Albums of 2008, as well as the Top 100 Singles list, is available here.

2008 was a great year for darktronica, and especially aggrotech, making it tough to narrow down only ten albums to honor. Starting with a short list of nearly 25 excellent releases, these are the 10 left standing when the dust settled. A few others that narrowly missed the final cut are Boole’s The Vital Few, Bella Morte’s Beautiful Death, Virgin Black’s Requiem - Fortissimo, and FGFC820’s Law And Ordnance. It’s clear that I need to break out aggrotech or terror EBM as genres distinct from industrial dance to keep up with the growing diversity of bands being lumped together in the current industrial dance category.

This year was pretty hectic for me, encompassing two cross-country moves within ten months and a return to grad school. As a result, I’ve missed out on a lot of music outside of the darktronica sphere and will be playing catch up for quite some time. A few notable albums I really enjoyed, however, are Saturdays = Youth by French dance duo M83, Opeth’s Watershed, Cross by Justice (also a French electronic dance duo), and Black Snow by German hip-hop producers The Snowgoons.