Great stuff, we definitely need jazz in chaotic times like these. The album I've been spinning a lot lately is Dan Rosenboom's "Absurd in the Anthropocene." Definitely one of my favorites so far this year, be sure to check it out if you haven't already https://orendarecords.bandcamp.com/album/absurd-in-the-anthropocene
Honestly my first impression of 'Art Angels' was that the first three tracks were some of the worst songs she had written to that point. I've since come to better appreciate those songs, "California" included, but I still tend to jump right into "Flesh Without Blood." AA would also probably be a top three, rather than like top 15/20, on my AOTD list without them. But that's just my own $.02!
"Mythological Beauty" and "Shark Smile" are just absolutely sublime. "Not" is also on a similar level, especially when they're playing it live and Adrienne just goes into feral beast mode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKmD6-piK2A&feature=emb_title
I had a similar reaction - all that's missing is Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (and maybe Radiohead to round out the weekend) for some sweet summertime '06 memories!
Honestly, my first reaction is that this lineup isn't a complete abomination like it's been in recent years. That said, that may say more about how bad the lineup has been in recent years than how good it is this year. On the other hand, this is easily the first time in more than a decade that I'm now seriously considering going again, which probably has something to do with the fact that a few of the same bands are playing from the last time I went (e.g. Tool, Oysterhead). There's a little of something I'd be interested in each day, and honestly seeing Orville Peck, Makaya McCraven, Slowthai, Mdou Moctar, and Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats on the side stages sounds pretty good to me right now.
Honestly when Paradise came out it was a contender for my AOTY in 2016, and I think it's *almost* as good as Deep Fantasy, and some of the standout tracks (e.g. "Below," "Hungry," "Paradise") are as good as anything they've written and are definitely on my list of fave songs of the decade. But overall I just find Deep Fantasy a bit more consistent, and the messages/themes of the album just hit me harder. Both are winners though!
facebook is my guess - most of the commenters seem to be coming from facebook-affiliated accounts (like mine), and the generational demographic seems to skew towards an older set of readers/commenters than the norm here (other than Bloc of course)
Happy 2020 y'all! I know I'm not a regular commenter but I've been at least lurking around these parts for the past decade or so. It's safe to say that not only is this one of my absolute favorite places on the internet, but fewer places have helped shape my taste in music over the past ten years.
I know there's been a lot of list-posting in other threads, but since I'm almost always late to the party, I figured I'd go ahead and post my top 10 metal and non-metal albums of the past decade. One of my resolutions last year was to go back through all the stuff I've been listening over the past ten years and compile a "comprehensive" list of my top metal and non-metal albums. As you might be able to guess, one of the most striking developments in my own taste, but also I think for the genre has a whole, has been the predominance of high-quality metal in the 2010s. I definitely considered myself a metalhead during the 2000s, when I first really started developing my own tastes as an adult, but let's be honest - the first decade of the 21st century was probably the worst overall in terms of quality since "heavy metal" first emerged as a genre in the 1970s. Which makes the quality of the output in the past several years all the more remarkable, IMHO. A sincere thank you to the Black Marketeers (including a lot of the holdovers from Invisible Oranges) and all the metalheads (and metal-curious folks) in the comments. Oh, and fuck Donald Trump, and fuck this ecocidal capitalist system!
Top 10 Favorite Metal Albums of the 2010s (other than #1, all others in no particular order):
1. Carcass - "Surgical Steel" - It's just simply the best pure death metal album of the decade, one of (if not the greatest) "comeback" metal records ever, and my favorite album of the decade, period. No other record combines the past and present in metal as well as this one.
-Mgla - "Exercises in Futility" (*I was a fan when they were anonymous and before the fascist-collaborations became public knowledge; needless to say, I have a much more ambivalent relationship to them now, but still consider this my favorite BM album of the decade)
-Panopticon - Autumn Eternal
-Yob - Clearing the Path to Ascend
-Elder - Lore
-40 Watt Sun - The Inside Room
-Ulcerate - The Destroyers of All
-The Ruins of Beverast - Exuvia
-Chapel of Disease - ...And as We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye
-Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction
Top 10 Favorite Non-Metal Albums of the 2010s: I was only able to finalize this today, again other than #1 everything else is in no particular order
1.) White Lung - Deep Fantasy - Just a flawless 22 minutes. My only regret is that I didn't catch it until year-end lists at the end of 2014, meaning that I missed out on several months of enjoyment. Seeing them live on this tour also sealed the deal.
-The Range - Potential - Perhaps no other album has as much emotional meaning and significance as this album btw
-Burial - Tunes: 2011-2019 - Strong case for artist of the decade
-Beach House - Bloom - I voted for "Lazuli" as my favorite song of the decade
-Sky Ferreira - Night Time, My Time - Other than "Omanko," this album is perfect
-Angel Olson - My Woman - Another flawless record
-The XX - I See You - Shocked this album hasn't gotten more love!
-Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City - What really needs to be said that hasn't been said already?
-The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding - Beans knows what's up
-Sons of Kemet - Your Queen is a Reptile - The album that spurred my 2019 resolution to "listen to more jazz." Check it out if you haven't already!
Absolutely love the new direction here - he's going much more in an explicitly club-centric direction for some time now (rather than music for riding home *after* the club), but the sci-fi vibes on this one are out of this world. Love the beat drop/switch in the middle of the track. This is so fucking good.
Wow, this is truly terrible and shockingly sad news. I was just telling my wife the other day that the Purple Mountains album is probably my favorite (non-metal) album of the year so far. Take care of yourself and one another - RIP
I had a similar reaction, normally I scroll through these and think half (or more) are shit but this is a really solid list IMHO. Very happy to see Lizzo getting some love too, despite being stunned not more people were stanning for her in the comment thread for the original post. But of course "Old Town Road" was a lock, and a deserved one at that.
Awesome playlist idea! Here's a few of my own faves:
anything Bob Dylan
anything Prince
Guided by Voices - "Bee Thousand", "Alien Lanes"
The National - "Alligator," "Boxer" (or High Violet cause it has "Bloodbuzz Ohio")
Jason Molina / Songs: Ohia / Magnolia Electric Co. - "Songs: Ohia," "Magnolia Electric Co."
Thunder Dreamer - "Capture"
Strand of Oaks - "Heal," "Hard Love"
Sun Kil Moon / Red House Painters / Mark Kozelek - "Ghosts of the Great Highway," "Benji"
Lydia Loveless - "Real"
Pity Sex - "Feast of Love"
Connections - "Midnight Run," "Body Language"
The Black Swans - "Occasion for Song"
The Afghan Whigs - "Gentlemen"
The Replacements
Tech Nine
Bone Thugs
Tortoise and/or the whole Chicago post-rock/post-metal scene (e.g. Pelican)
Keelhaul - "II"
Gates of Slumber
not a lawyer, but I'm gonna guess this has something to do with this taking place in Florida, where lax gun laws allowed a self-appointed neighborhood vigilante to kill an unarmed black boy for similar reasons.
I too love this feature, and this is a particularly great write-up, but I also wanted to acknowledge that I kinda love the fact that despite being inspired by the 25th anniversary of "Mellow Gold," there's no link to song/album itself! So here ya go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=641Jzkf0Fqs
Yes this is a good thread, I heartily second almost all of the recommendations here (Mgla, Orannsi Pazuzu, Darkthrone). A few other of my favorites I mentioned in the Deafheaven post the other day. For my two cents I'll a few albums that I think bridge the gap between 'traditional' and 'experimental' pretty well:
-Enslaved "Mardraum: Beyond the Within" - I've been on a bit of an Enslaved kick lately, and I think this one definitely flies under the radar for most people. For me it might be my personal favorite Enslaved album as I just love how both raw and experimental/progressive it is or tries to be.
-Moonsorrow "Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa" - It's fucking Moonsorrow, they are maybe the most epic black (or "pagan") metal around, period, and this is their best album
-Chaos Moon "Eschaton Memoire" - I just love the *sound* of this album, to me it's like the most sublime quintessence of atmospheric black metal.
-For something more contemporary, I'd say it's a toss-up between Saor's "Forgotten Paths" and Vehemence's "Par le sange verse" for my favorite BM album of 2019 so far. Both, like Moonsorrow above, can be considered "folk metal" to the extent that they bring folk instrumentation to their black metal, and thus are progressive/experimental in that sense. On the other hand, it'd be a stretch to say that they defy traditionalism to the extent that they play traditional (read: pre-electric) instruments, and thus have very much an "old world" sound. Saor's sound is more 'contemporary' while Vehemence are clearly medieval. Check em both out!
Also I would be remiss if I didn't suggest some of the bands that have had a major influence on contemporary USBM/atmoblack/Deafheaven at large: Alcest (especially "Souvenirs d'un autre monde"), Weakling, Agalloch, and Wolves in the Throne Room.
Yeah, for sure! First a couple preliminaries: it's not that I actively dislike Deafheaven or anything they've put out really, but rather I've simply found them to have diminishing returns since their early stuff (ie "Roads to Judah" and Sunbather of course). Second, there's also the question of just who exactly their contemporaries are, in other words, the genre/scene question. Personally, while some will deny that they're black metal at all (ie the old schoolers, for whom black metal begins and ends with the first and second waves, e.g. Bathory, Darkthrone, Emperor, etc.), and others (like some folks commenting here) call them "post-black metal," I tend to lump them in with what is sometimes called the "atmospheric black metal" scene (since I don't think they're actually "post-" anything, and certainly not like a band like Fleurety or Sigh could be considered post-black). Atmoblack is arguably my favorite metal sub-genre, and also perhaps one of the strongest scenes right now (along with death metal, period), but it's also one of the most saturated. So when I say that I've kinda had enough of Deafheaven's sound, or that others do it better, it's also because there's a lot of stuff that *sounds* like Deafheaven, but is also derivative of it to a large extent. So maybe that's not entirely a fair criticism of the band itself, but it does mean that I have less patience for their sound when I feel like it's not progressing like I'd like, than I might otherwise.
Ok, so on to the recommendations! Some of my favorite Deafheaven-adjacent, atmospheric black metal artists and albums of the past decade include: Panopticon (especially "Autumn Eternal" and the most recent one, also check out the split with Falls of Rauros); Mgla "Exercises in Futility"; Woods of Desolation ("As the Stars" and "Torn Beyond Reason"); Altar of Plagues ("Mammal" and "Teethed Glory and Injury"); Mgla ("Exercises in Futility"); "The Dreaming I" by Akhlys; the "Resonance: Crimson Void" split EP by Mare Cognitum and Aureole; "Eschaton Memoire" by Chaos Moon; and a whole bunch of others but that should be a good start :) Enjoy!
Comments