So, what are people's top 10 albums lists for this year of 2009?
There have quite a few great records released this calendar year, so what are your top 10 favourites?
So this post is going to be fucking long, because I`m explaining each pick. Here goes.
10. Alice in Chains- Black Gives Way to Blue
Last year, I watched a YouTube video of AIC playing Them Bones with William DuVall, and I fucking hated it. I don't know if the sound quality of the video sucked, or if it was his equipment, or just an off day, or maybe he just sucks at that one song, but it was terrible. Although I wasn't a huge fan, they had some classic songs I love, and I thought their legacy was going down the toilet. I was wrong. Last of My Kind has a rage in its chorus I thought had died with Layne (RIP).
9. Megadeth- Endgame
Another old-school band I just started getting into. The opening song Dialectic Chaos kicks ass, it's basically just shredding. This Day We FIght starts off the 'true' songs of the album well, and it never slows down. I'll be damned if the chorus riff to Headcrusher doesn't blow me away each time.
8. Immortal- All Shall Fall
Before this CD, which I bought entirely on a whim, I hated every black metal song I had ever heard. This CD was on a sampler at my local CD Plus, and after listening to about 45 seconds of the title track, I went and bought it. I went home, opened it, saw the dudes in their facepaint, and went "Oh fuck, I accidentally bought a black metal album." This CD is the exception to my rule that black metal sucks however. So fucking good. Rise of Darkness is fucking epic.
7. Dethklok- The Dethalbum II
I love me some Metalocalypse. The show is hilarious, easily in my top 3 TV shows ever, so when the Dethalbum came out, I was excited. The songs were good, but not great. Here, they were great. Murmaider II, The Cyborg Slayers, I Tamper With the Evidence Murder Site of Odin, Burn the Earth, The Gears, all sound like legit death metal from serious bands, albiet with (slightly) goofier lyrics. Saw Dethklok live in October with Converge and Mastodon (more on them later) and the songs were excellent live too. Brendan Small really stepped up his vocals here.
6. Priestess- Prior to the Fire
Priestess, along with Cancer Bats, are enough to balance out the aweful music my homeland has cranked out in the likes of Nickelback, Celine Dion and Simple Plan. Prior to the Fire isn't as good as their debut Hello Master, but it kicks some ass anyway. I fucking love Communicating Via Eyes, the transition from the acoustic, folkish intro into the slow, deadly riff is epic.
5. Pelican- What We All Come to Need
A month ago, I couldn't have even told you Pelican was an instrumental band. I had heard of them, but knew essentially nothing about them. I had the song Dead Between the Walls reccomended to me, and loved it. I went to my local CD store to get a copy of their CD City of Echoes, but found it out of stock. Their new album What We All Come to Need, however, was there. The band is instrumental post-metal, so it's pretty sluggish and laid back at times, but it kicks teeth in its own right. An Inch Above Sand and Ephemeral are damn good songs, but The Creeper and Specks of Light are fucking amazing songs. A really cool album that is doomed to relative obscurity, even in the metal scene.
4. Converge- Axe to Fall
This is only my third favorite Converge CD, behind Jane Doe and Petitioning the Empty Sky, but those albums set such a high bar that even a CD failing to match them has great potential. Converge was totally alien to me when I saw them open for Mastodon and Dethklok, but they fucking blew me away. This CD starts with Dark Horse, one of their best songs IMO, and from then til the excellent 5th track Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast, the album rips by with speed and intensity almost unheard of. Cruel Bloom, featuring Neurosis singer Steve Von Trill, has a bluesy sound totally out of place on the record for most of the song, but it stands out in a very good way. There is a reason this band is fucking legendary among those who know them.
3. Baroness- Blue Record
I still haven't heard anything from "Red Album", but I can attest that Baroness is headed for great things based on this album. It's got a laid-back, stonerish sound to it, with more emphasis on melody than a lot of metal, but still manages to be heavy. A Horse Called Golgotha, Jake Leg, and The Sweetest Curse are all mind blowing, but Swollen and Halo (one songs) is the true standout. Plenty of instrumentals are scattered about, but they aren't like a Metallica instrumental, they're generally shorter, more interlude type pieces.By no means are they throwaway tracks though, as O'er Hell and Hide (which technically has lyrics, but they are spoken over the song) evidences.
2. Between the Buried and Me- The Great Misdirect
Complete. Mindfuck. BTBAM is a complex band playing complex music, with 10+ minute songs cramming everything from death metal to prog rock to the occasional polka being the norm. This band is fucking wierd, and it seems almost made to alienate people no matter how open their mind. The opening song Mirrors is a quiet, introspective song with sparse yet great lyrics, and as soon as it ends, it's off to the races with Obfuscation. From here, each song is longer than the last (with the exception of the great acoustic Desert of Song) leading up to Swim to the Moon, an epic that falls just under 18 minutes long. Guitar solos, drum fills, clean and screaming vocals all abound in an album wich is truley hard to peg into one genre. I can't really reccomend any one songs, you need to listen to all 6 together.
1. Mastodon- Crack the Skye
This band is the best to ever grace our planet Earth in my humble opinion. From the dirty hardcore of Remission to the epic Leviathan (my personal pick fo album of the decade) to the more progressive Blood Mountain, they are consistantly mind blowing and different from everyone else. Crack the Skye is their most melodic, softest album yet, although I refuse to call it mainstream because it is anything but. Every song on this album is a classic. When I first downloaded it, I didn't listen to anything off it but Oblivion for about a week, because I was just stunned by how fucking good it was, and it's not even one of my top 3 songs on the album (Last Baron, Divinations, The Czar, in that order, for the record). Mastodon defy expectations with such regularity that it is now expected, and I absolutely cannot wait to see what comes next.
