This year we — we being the angry, arguing voices in my head — just couldn’t come up with a decent list of Top 10 local albums. Sorry. We tried. But every time we made up a list we thought we liked, we soon found reasons to be unhappy with it. So instead we present the Top 10 (give or take) reasons your band aren’t on this list.

You are a Bosstone, or you were a Bosstone, or your record was produced by someone who was in the Bosstones, or you are managed by someone who plays in a band with a guy who used to be in the Bosstones. Nothing personal, we liked your album, there’s just too damn many of you.

See: Mighty Mighty Bosstones, A Jackknife to a Swan (SideOneDummy); Avoid One Thing (SideOneDummy); Kickovers, Osaka (Fenway Recordings); Lost City Angels (Nitro); Dropkick Murphys, Live on St. Patrick’s Day (Hellcat).

Two years ago your album ended up in our car on a blank CD-R, and then it became our favorite local rock album of the year, but by the time we figured out who the hell you were, Allston pubs were already filling up five minutes before your set time and emptying five minutes after you left the stage, and then you were just too damn cool for us and it was too late anyway. Initially we had you pegged as rookie recruits from Albini boot camp, but the more we listened, the less you sounded like Shellac and the more like Bleach: bleating on brats, wishing slow death on your enemies, blacking out in the white room.

See: Officer May, Helping Others Help Themselves (Random Noise).

Half-drunk thugs wasted on Oasis and GNR and Turbonegro? Exhibiting suicidal tendencies and wandering the dark Boss-headed back streets of Boston? Of course we love you, and we wanted to put you on our list, too, except we were afraid none of our politically correct pals would ever speak to us again. It’s enough to make you start to hate your friends.

See: Sinners and Saints, The Sky Is Falling (Bridge 9).

Sure, you were a primary influence on Mission of Burma, but nobody’s making a documentary about you, are they? Plus, you haven’t been a band in, like, 20 years — in other words, you are unlikely to buy us drinks next week.

See: Girls, Live at the Rathskeller 5/17/79 (Abaton Book Company).

You promised the cover of your next album would not be, in contrast to your previous two albums, a photograph of a woman spreading her private parts. So instead you put a drawing of a woman spreading her private parts under the CD tray. And since our mom still reads everything we write, we can’t mention it. Even though we’re sure she would have dug the Iron Butterfly and Steppenwolf covers, even more so now that she likes the White Stripes and you’ve pared down to a kicking-against-the-pricks guitar-drums duo.

See: Tunnel of Love, Rock N Roll N Bitches (Mr. Records).

Your next record is going to be huge, and it sold in malls from Tallahassee to Tokyo, and the children of new metal will skulk through the halls of their high schools blasting it on their iPods, and those children will be reborn in the light of the new, new superheavy emo-metal jam-kicking ministry that is you. In the meantime you put out a pretty good EP of indie-prog metal, and we liked it a lot, but we’re saving our huzzahs for next year.

See: Cave In, Tides of Tomorrow (Hydrahead).

Your band are really heavy and spooky and signed to Mike Patton’s label, but we’ll never forgive you for moving Hydrahead to LA. We’re not naming names, are we, Aaron "Fuckface" Turner?

See: Isis, Oceanic (Ipecac).

You’ve just made the best thrash album since Master of Puppets, but scene policy dictates that the only neo-thrash outfit we’re allowed to like is Shadows Fall. You didn’t get the memo?

See: Beyond the Embrace, Against the Elements (Metal Blade).

You sloshed coffee at Diesel this summer, but secretly you live in Athens and are friends with Neutral Milk Hotel. Do we care? No, we do not. Especially since yours was the only album we played the death out of this year and yet couldn’t listen to all the way through because in the middle there were parts where we’d have to go outside and walk around the block and stare at the moon and smoke six cigarettes and come back in and play that song again. Why do good things never want to stay?

See: Lovers, Star Lit Sunken Ship (Orange Twin).

There’s no good reason you weren’t on this list. We just totally blew it. Oops.

See: Damn Personals, Standing Still in the USA (Big Wheel); Mr. Airplane Man, Moanin’ (Sympathy for the Record Industry); Milligram, This is Class War (Traktor7); Benders, II (PigPile); John Rifle, Fracas Nurture (self-released); Mary Lou Lord, Live City Sounds (Rubric).