Seth's top 10 records of 2011

Arch/Matheos "Sympathetic Resonance" - what's in a name? A *lot* apparently. This album should have been released as a Fate's Warning record. The record is a reunion of the original lineup and if they would have more aggressively promoted this album as such it would be on many more top 10 lists. If you like progressive metal this is the sleeper hit of the year. Simultaneously classic sounding and forward thinking, these long winding songs are all layered with incredible production.

All Pigs Must Die "God is War" - Something about the gigantic noisy production, sheer brutality and black metal flourishes really hits the spot. This is a perfect marriage of hardcore and metal which doesn't pander to "crossover" sensibilities.

Opeth "Heritage" - I love that Akerfeldt and company had the courage to jump straight down the rabbit hole and indulge all of the progressive tendencies they've been hinting at on their previous records. I love even more that the songs are so strong.

Metallica/Lou Reed "Lulu" - I'm curious as to how people will see this record in a few years from now. Too base and brutish for the art heads and too arty for the metal heads it lives in a weird rock and roll limbo. I listen to this record on a regular basis and it gets better every time. If we didn't live in the type of
gut reaction culture where people had made up their minds from a 30 second sample more people would have probably come to this with an open mind. I don't like it because I'm a contrarian, I like it because it is good and has musical value.

Future of the Left "Polymers are Forever" - It is unacceptable how much better this band gets with every release. Moving away from the documentary recording style of Steve Albini and into more "produced" territory FoTL have gotten bigger and more ambitious. Synths? Sure! Black Sabbath riffing? Why not? This EP has given me more joy than any other release this year.


Anthrax "Worship Music" - The energy and excitement may have been because of the addition of Dan Nelson and not Joey Belladonna, but the fact remains this is an inspired kick-ass Anthrax record no matter who is singing. The layering and more "rock" elements of the Bush era remain while the band made an effort to go
back to the thrashy chugging of the early days.


Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - the stronger of the two Gallagher brother releases this year, it is a more subdued effort than Oasis but these songs are always sticking in my head.

Amebix "Sonic Mass" - They're doing Killing Joke better than Killing Joke themselves right now. This is the best kind of bleak.

Trap Them "Darker Handcraft" - The sound of demons grabbing at you as you are being pulled into hell. After this record you will feel compelled to wash your hands. The music is so crusty and so technical it sounds like Voivod was living in a squat.

Wild Flag "s/t' - Good old fashioned kick ass music by female rock royalty. This band is truly deserving of all of their praise. It is too weird to be mainstream, too slick to be indie, and too catchy to be ignored.

Else

 2nd Best Record From Band I Did See

Disapointments

Immortal : All Shall Fall

Dimmu Borgir : Abbacab (fuck you for firing Mustis!)

Band that is disturbingly huge that i wish would disapear : Insane Clown Posse

Best Jesu Song About Christmas

Looking forward to 2011

PJ Harvey : Let England Shake

Pulp live Reunion

Record of the Year from a band that was in town when I was out of town.

"Lawless Darkness"

Watian @Santoshouse Party

2010 Review- Emptyhell Edition

Most Unexpected Comeback

Seth's top 10 Metal (and non-Metal) albums of 2010

Important notes:
- The lists are numbered but *not* in any order. I never rank albums.
- Disappointments aren't random albums but ones I was specifically looking forward to.
-LCD Soundsystem and the Roots both put out two albums this year, both of which I really liked and wanted to include. I decided to give each band one slot on the list for both records. This way 40% of the list wouldn't be just two bands.


METAL
1 Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones
2 Nachtmystium - Addicts
3 Accept - Blood of the Nations
4 Cathedral - The Guessing Game
5 1349 - Demonoir
6 Melvins - The Bride Screamed Murder
7 Ihsahn - After
8 Electric Wizard - Black Masses
9 Darkthrone - Circle the Wagons
10 Kylesa - Spiral Shadow

Disappointments:
Iron Maiden - Final Frontier
Dimmu Borgir - Abrahadabra
Halford - Made of Metal
Helloween - 7 Sinners
Gwar - Bloody Pit of Horror

NON-METAL
1 Superchunk - Majesty Shredding
2 Grinderman 2
3 Killing Joke - Absolute Dissent
4 Swans - My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky
5 Roots - Wake Up!/How I Got Over
6 LCD Soundsystem - Everything is Happening/The London Sessions
7 Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart
8 Devo - Something for Everybody
9 Robyn - Body Talk
10 Off! - The First Four EPs

Disappointments:
Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever
Foetus - Hide
Bad Religion - The Dissent of Man

Metal Method, Part 1 - Shipping

This is what you can do when you are the only one posting

Watain North American Tour 2010

Of course I wont be in town for this one. (sigh).  Eriks doing vocals only, wonder who'll be playing bass?
Tour Itinerary:

11/06/2010 Mr. Smalls - Pittsburgh, PA
11/07/2010 Reggie's - Chicago, IL
11/08/2010 Station 4 - St. Paul, MN
11/10/2010 Marquis Theatre - Denver, CO
11/11/2010 Club Vegas - Salt Lake City, UT
11/12/2010 Branx (Loveland) - Portland, OR
11/13/2010 Studio Seven - Seattle, WA
11/14/2010 TBA - Vancouver, BC
11/16/2010 Boardwalk - Orangevale, CA
11/17/2010 DNA Lounge - San Francisco, CA
11/18/2010 The Ruby Room - San Diego, CA
11/19/2010 The Whiskey - Hollywood, CA
11/20/2010 Clubhouse - Tempe, AZ
11/21/2010 Club 101 - El Paso, TX
11/22/2010 The Loft - Dallas, TX
11/23/2010 Emo's - Austin, TX
11/24/2010 Numbers - Houston, TX
11/26/2010 The Bar - New Orleans, LA
11/27/2010 Back Booth - Orlando, FL
11/29/2010 Masquerade - Atlanta, GA
11/30/2010 Sonar - Baltimore, MD
12/01/2010 Peabody's - Cleveland, OH
12/02/2010 Santo's New York, NY
12/03/2010 Les Foufounes Electriques - Montréal, QC
12/04/2010 Opera House - Toronto, ON

Drautran : Throne of the Depth

Holy Fucking Shit Does  This Record Sound Like This Picture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCe3XZSu_Cw

The Sword - "Warp Riders" due 8/24 Near Perfect Cover???

Dave Lombardo Jamming with bee swarm

from Cremaster 2

Dimmu Borgir : Abrahadabra

Released on September 24, 2010 in Germany, September 27, 2010 for the rest of Europe, and October 12, 2010 in North America

"Abrahadabra", loosely translated as "I will create as I speak", was created by author Aleister Crowley in his work, Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law. This album is the second in the band's repertoire to deviate from the traditional three-word title. Silenoz explained, ""[It made] a lot of sense for us to move on from that. It has served its purpose. We are a band that's all about change and moving forward. An album title consisting of one word goes hand-in-hand with the new material." In addition, Silenoz referenced the changes in the band's "musical and lyrical content", as well as changes in the band's line-up playing a role.

Some More About The Discordance

A follow up on the last post about The Discordance: the most excellent Islander over at No Clean Singing was inspired enough by my statifying to do some digging of his own into Encyclopedia Metallicum's database, and did me one better by finding a feature that not only adds in population (by millions of people, rather than straight population statistics), but strips out inactive bands from the totals list for the country. The results are basically the same - Finland, Norway, and Sweden are still the places to go to get metal out the ass - but tiny places like Lichtenstein, Monaco, and Faroes Islands fall out of the list, removing the statistical oddities of my list. Good stuff. Gives me another reason to want to visit Iceland, too.

Geekery in The Discordance

I've been playing with Encyclopedia Metallicum's The Discordance, which is pretty much a metal geek's wet dream: the site's database of information - genres, locations, release dates, etc. - presented in forms like grids, lists, maps...it's like they took two of my favorite things and smashed them together in a comprehensive if slow-moving package.

Long-time readers may remember my series of posts on the most metal country, mainly from a few years ago when I found out that Finland had most of Metallica's catalog in their top 40 chart. After clicking through for a few minutes, I realized The Discordance, with its totals of bands by country, could give me an answer. So I took that list, compared it to the list of population by country from Wikipedia, and came up with the number of bands per population total, only to find...

...that I knew the answer all along: Finland, with 0.00046 bands per person, is the most metal country on Earth. Scandinavia scores full top 10 representation, with Sweden at number 2, Norway at number 3, and Denmark at number 8. Germany, which has the second largest number of total bands, scores well at number 16. The United States has the highest number of bands, but also has the world's third-largest population, and falls to number 33 on my list. Want to see the whole list? I've made the spreadsheet available through Google Docs.

Alcest

Its Spectral ShoegazeFrenchEmoBlack Metal for me and somedays thats exactly what i'm feeling. Sometimes.

Alcest is a French band created by Neige (also in Amesoeurs, Peste Noire and Forgotten Woods) in early 2000. ...The first chapter of this journey was Le Secret EP, which was released in 2005 by Drakkar Productions. In 2007, Neige agreed to a contract with the German label Prophecy Productions and released Alcest's debut album Souvenirs d'un autre monde the same year.


These two tracks taken from newest release Écailles De Lune.
ouvenirs d’un autre monde – Full Length [20uvenirs d’un autre monde – Full Length [2007]
Écailles De Lune (Part I)



Écailles De Lune (Part II)

June Metal Gleanings

A quick rundown of what I've been churning through recently during my prime listening hours:

• Keep of Kalessin - Reptilian. This album has completely lived up to its promise, becoming the disc with the sounds so infectious I have to limit myself to listening once a day. "The Awakening," with its bridge hook that begs to be shouted through one of those Swiss Alpine horns into a gale (seriously, go to 3:03 in this clip and check it out) has replaced early favorite "The Dragontower" as the song of choice, but the whole thing is an easy sell because it's brutal and catchy all at the same time.
  
  
• Nachtmystium - Addicts: Black Meddle Pt II. Between this album and the Twilight disc I had a whole Blake Judd bloc yesterday afternoon, which was pretty fantastic. My first feelings after hearing the sequel to Assassins were of awe at Nachtmystium's ability to switch gears so easily from track to track. The overall aesthetic is still that fuzzy Nachtmystium we know and love, but an album that includes everything from a very poppy chorus in "Then Fires" to old school industrial touches in "Blood Trance Fusion" to a heavy dose of EBM in "Every Last Drop" offers a lot to explore. I'm psyched to be seeing these guys again tomorrow.
  
  
• Odem Arcarum - Outrageous Reverie Above the Erosion of Barren Earth. As I've mentioned in the past, this album owes a great deal to Emperor's later work; there's a good bit of 1349, too, especially in the vocals. A bit derivative, perhaps, but these guys offer up so many textures in their 10 minute epics that there's still plenty to enjoy. Definitely take the whole album as one dose, though.
  
  
• Nevermore - The Obsidian Conspiracy. Just got this one a few days ago, so I'm still forming impressions, but thus far the band's seventh album is in keeping with expectations: impressive musicianship, ear-bending vocal lines, and a broad mix of lyrical topics. "Your Poison Throne" seems like the most traditionally Nevermore track thus far, while "And the Maiden Spoke" stands out with a particularly challenging chorus.
  

Victory for the forces of DARKNESS.

Watain's "Lawless Darkness", released June 7th,  is the musical equivalent of the Gulf spill. Totally relentless, life killing, and a thing you can see from space.

Its got chops, atmosphere, songs, hooks! In other words, another victory for the forces of DARKNESS.

This is the kind of metal in the lineage of Venom and Bathory. Its ferocious, breathes fire and blood.

I didn't think it was possible for them to best 2007's "Sworn To the Dark".

They have, and you may too.

"Reaping Death"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrOfvhFiq6E

Kicking Ass on the Final Frontier

Above is the cover for the first single - and man, do I feel like I should putting quotes around both of those terms - from Iron Maiden's upcoming album, The Final Frontier, as offered - along with a download of the song - on the band's website. It is fantastic: the pulp theme and the representation of evil-looking, puppetmaster Eddie mesh perfectly with the song's straightforward story of greed and the album's (presumed) sci-fi theme. Really, every band should do artwork like this piece - and by "artwork like this piece" I mean art that kicks ass - for every pre-release single, because even though the song itself loses steam midway through, I'm still excited to hear the rest of The Final Frontier when it comes out in August. Of course, the bonus release of the album cover artwork doesn't hurt:

Look at that shit. That's fucking giant Space Eddie doing some weird-ass shit to alien astronauts with a big glowing key. That painting is precisely what I want out of my Iron Maiden art.

Remembering Hear 'N Aid

Yet another of Dio's many contributions:

"Hear 'N Aid : The Sessions" documents the making of a record, a very special record called "Stars", that will raise for famine relief. It is a behind the scenes journey through the process of rock 'n roll record-making, from the basic tracks through vocal solos and chorus to performances by 11 stellar guitarists that form A SINGLE GUITAR SOLO (my emphasis)".

"40 artists from the hard rock music community and hundreds of volunteers donated their time and talent over four months to make Hear ' N Aid a reality. "Stars" is a plea for unity in the fight against world hunger."

Dennis Hopper, Counter-Culture Icon Dead At 74 -- Signs of the Times News

Dennis Hopper, Counter-Culture Icon Dead At 74 -- Signs of the Times News