[Updated 12/26/17: Added Power Trip's Nightmare Logic, which I recently went back to and loved, to the albums list below. Also added a short list of metal-related sites/publications I dig, and a link to the RS 100 Greatest Metal Albums list, at the end.]
Rolling Stone's year-end metal round-up is now live. Happy as always to help put this one together with my colleagues Chris Weingarten and Kory Grow. It was an interesting year for the genre in that there weren't quite as many mainstream/-ish tentpole releases to consider (like, for example, the Metallica album that rightly topped last year's RS metal list), so we were able to make room for a good amount of fringier picks like Oxbow, Pyrrhon and Krallice.
Likewise, my own listening ranged a little farther afield (emphasis on "a little"). Some of my favorite underground bands put out new records this year, including longtime DFSBP faves Suffocation, Immolation and Incantation, but these albums didn't really grab me like I was expecting or hoping. Same goes for the new Cannibal Corpse album, Red Before Black, though it wouldn't surprise me if I have a real moment with this one somewhere down the line, as always seems to happen with their LPs.
This set of circumstances opened up the field a bit, so I spent a good amount of time with Code Orange's Forever, for example, an album that represents a sub-scene I really don't follow closely (I guess I'd call it metalcore, for lack of a better term?). The band's over-the-top machismo often borders on the corny, but their obvious skill as players and writers — and, just as importantly, as overall architects of texture; the album is filled with industrial/ambient interludes that make the whole thing flow together like one long song — wins out. They really take the craft of extremity seriously, and conversely, they seem to think hard about the way their moodier, more dynamic elements only make the punishing climaxes hit that much harder. Speaking of those moody elements, the album's obvious crowning jewel to me was this extraordinary track, a song that nailed a sort of 1994–alt-metal sweet spot for me and rarely left my brain all year:
I certainly wouldn't have minded if all of Forever had sounded like that (if I'm remembering correctly, guitarist Reba Meyers only sings lead on one other song, the awesomely eerie closer "dream2"), but the fact that the track felt like an odd, alluring detour only made it stand out more.
Another album I blurbed for the list, Morbid Angel's Kingdoms Disdained, has been making me giddy since I first heard it a month or so back. We may never know the real backstory of this record, as Morbid Angel mastermind Trey Azagthoth isn't doing anything but goofball email interviews this time around (I tried hard to line up a feature based on a phone or in-person chat, to no avail), but the band's saga over the past few years (an almost universally reviled reunion-ish album that they all but ignored on tour, Azagthoth's subsequent parting of ways with classic-era frontman David Vincent and reunion with mid-period growler/bassist Steve Tucker, etc.) has been the stuff of a death-metal soap opera. Amid all the drama, I'm honestly shocked at how quickly Trey and Steve were able to right the course; in the absence of a return to the band's Vincent-era glory, which, it now seems clear, was never going to happen anyway, Kingdoms is better than any fan could have hoped for, a vicious, efficient and suitably batshit record that might just be stronger than any of the three albums from Tucker's initial tenure in the band. This track in particular is, as far as I'm concerned, a new Morbid classic:
(Check that nasty, writhing waltz riff that starts around :32.)
Moving on to metal's retro-prog, neo-gatefold wing, which seems to be really booming at the moment, thanks to high-profile bands like Mastodon and Pallbearer, Elder's Reflections of a Floating World was the one that really did it for me this year. Mastodon's Emperor of Sand is a very fine record, though a somewhat predictable one, proceeding in orderly fashion from their last couple LPs; in my opinion they still haven't quite figured out how to balance their sprawling-prog inclinations with their streamlined-FM-rock ones in a way that feels really wholesome and fully satisfying. And like their last record, the new Pallbearer LP didn't fully grab me the way I was hoping, considering how much I loved 2012's Sorrow and Extinction, though I admit I need to spend more time with Heartless.
But that Elder record is just pure majesty, total class. It's very rare to hear a fundamentally throwback-ish band whose channeling of various vintage sounds comes across as so natural and ingrained. It's like they've steeped themselves so thoroughly in the song- and riffcraft lessons of the past that they're able to just speak the Tongue of Epic Rock with utter fluency, almost as if these sounds and textures originated with them. Behold:
Speaking of pure majesty and total class, what to say about the no-nonsense creative dynamo that is Krallice, which released two more staggering statements within the past couple months? Doug Moore, a fellow writer and musician (and onetime DFSBP contributor), whose own band Pyrrhon made the RS list with the excellent What Passes for Survival, a mind-shreddingly intense and complex album that I feel like I'm just beginning to get some kind of firm grasp on after a few pleasurably bewildered listens, recently summed up Krallice's singular position in the metal underground in this sharp essay for the November edition of Stereogum's "Black Market" metal round-up. And it's a singularity that deserves to be celebrated, that of a group operating in essentially, to use Doug's phrase, "hobby band" fashion but producing such a great volume of rich, high-quality work that they put most "career" metal bands to shame.
Krallice's albums are, simply, oceans of content. I have become such an ardent fan that when they put out something new, it typically prompts me to trawl back through their entire, now pretty sizable catalog so that I can properly place the latest release in context. (I did this when Loüm, the first of their 2017 albums came out, and even kept a list of my favorite "holy fuck" moments from throughout the discography, of which there are many.) There is simply a grandness of scale to their music, coupled with a resolutely unbounded aesthetic, that I find deeply inspiring. They frankly make the idea of metal subgenres (and even the now-familiar "extreme" tag) seem deeply idiotic. It's clear from these two new albums, specifically Go Be Forgotten — at the moment I'm ever-so-slightly more in awe of this one, with its mystical, trancelike, often synth-bathed aura, than the gruff, frenzied, dauntingly technical Loüm, which features Neurosis member Dave Edwardson, though I stress that both are towering works that might take years to process — that they're simply making visionary art, period, with the style (and maybe even the very medium) being essentially incidental. In an attention-starved world, these exquisitely detailed, marvelously transporting sounds are a blessing to get lost in, and I can't wait for the next dispatch.
("Ground Prayer" is a phenomenal track, but make sure to hear it at some point in its proper album context, coming after the lengthy ambient piece "Quadripartite Mirror Realm.)
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, in aesthetic but not quality, is Unsane's Sterilize, which, like pretty much all their records, is a lean, brutally efficient smack upside the head. As discussed recently on DFSBP, I simply cannot stop playing this thing, along with Wreck, Visqueen, Occupational Hazard and the rest.
Though I didn't have quite as much of a prolonged moment with Obituary's self-titled LP, pretty much the same principles apply: This veteran band does one thing extremely well and their late-career, "cavemen of metal" cruise-control stage, which I wrote about for Rolling Stone, is a joy to behold in either its live or studio manifestations.
Other 2017 metal (and related styles) I liked a lot, had a moment with, etc.:
Rolling Stone's year-end metal round-up is now live. Happy as always to help put this one together with my colleagues Chris Weingarten and Kory Grow. It was an interesting year for the genre in that there weren't quite as many mainstream/-ish tentpole releases to consider (like, for example, the Metallica album that rightly topped last year's RS metal list), so we were able to make room for a good amount of fringier picks like Oxbow, Pyrrhon and Krallice.
Likewise, my own listening ranged a little farther afield (emphasis on "a little"). Some of my favorite underground bands put out new records this year, including longtime DFSBP faves Suffocation, Immolation and Incantation, but these albums didn't really grab me like I was expecting or hoping. Same goes for the new Cannibal Corpse album, Red Before Black, though it wouldn't surprise me if I have a real moment with this one somewhere down the line, as always seems to happen with their LPs.
This set of circumstances opened up the field a bit, so I spent a good amount of time with Code Orange's Forever, for example, an album that represents a sub-scene I really don't follow closely (I guess I'd call it metalcore, for lack of a better term?). The band's over-the-top machismo often borders on the corny, but their obvious skill as players and writers — and, just as importantly, as overall architects of texture; the album is filled with industrial/ambient interludes that make the whole thing flow together like one long song — wins out. They really take the craft of extremity seriously, and conversely, they seem to think hard about the way their moodier, more dynamic elements only make the punishing climaxes hit that much harder. Speaking of those moody elements, the album's obvious crowning jewel to me was this extraordinary track, a song that nailed a sort of 1994–alt-metal sweet spot for me and rarely left my brain all year:
I certainly wouldn't have minded if all of Forever had sounded like that (if I'm remembering correctly, guitarist Reba Meyers only sings lead on one other song, the awesomely eerie closer "dream2"), but the fact that the track felt like an odd, alluring detour only made it stand out more.
Another album I blurbed for the list, Morbid Angel's Kingdoms Disdained, has been making me giddy since I first heard it a month or so back. We may never know the real backstory of this record, as Morbid Angel mastermind Trey Azagthoth isn't doing anything but goofball email interviews this time around (I tried hard to line up a feature based on a phone or in-person chat, to no avail), but the band's saga over the past few years (an almost universally reviled reunion-ish album that they all but ignored on tour, Azagthoth's subsequent parting of ways with classic-era frontman David Vincent and reunion with mid-period growler/bassist Steve Tucker, etc.) has been the stuff of a death-metal soap opera. Amid all the drama, I'm honestly shocked at how quickly Trey and Steve were able to right the course; in the absence of a return to the band's Vincent-era glory, which, it now seems clear, was never going to happen anyway, Kingdoms is better than any fan could have hoped for, a vicious, efficient and suitably batshit record that might just be stronger than any of the three albums from Tucker's initial tenure in the band. This track in particular is, as far as I'm concerned, a new Morbid classic:
(Check that nasty, writhing waltz riff that starts around :32.)
Moving on to metal's retro-prog, neo-gatefold wing, which seems to be really booming at the moment, thanks to high-profile bands like Mastodon and Pallbearer, Elder's Reflections of a Floating World was the one that really did it for me this year. Mastodon's Emperor of Sand is a very fine record, though a somewhat predictable one, proceeding in orderly fashion from their last couple LPs; in my opinion they still haven't quite figured out how to balance their sprawling-prog inclinations with their streamlined-FM-rock ones in a way that feels really wholesome and fully satisfying. And like their last record, the new Pallbearer LP didn't fully grab me the way I was hoping, considering how much I loved 2012's Sorrow and Extinction, though I admit I need to spend more time with Heartless.
But that Elder record is just pure majesty, total class. It's very rare to hear a fundamentally throwback-ish band whose channeling of various vintage sounds comes across as so natural and ingrained. It's like they've steeped themselves so thoroughly in the song- and riffcraft lessons of the past that they're able to just speak the Tongue of Epic Rock with utter fluency, almost as if these sounds and textures originated with them. Behold:
Speaking of pure majesty and total class, what to say about the no-nonsense creative dynamo that is Krallice, which released two more staggering statements within the past couple months? Doug Moore, a fellow writer and musician (and onetime DFSBP contributor), whose own band Pyrrhon made the RS list with the excellent What Passes for Survival, a mind-shreddingly intense and complex album that I feel like I'm just beginning to get some kind of firm grasp on after a few pleasurably bewildered listens, recently summed up Krallice's singular position in the metal underground in this sharp essay for the November edition of Stereogum's "Black Market" metal round-up. And it's a singularity that deserves to be celebrated, that of a group operating in essentially, to use Doug's phrase, "hobby band" fashion but producing such a great volume of rich, high-quality work that they put most "career" metal bands to shame.
Krallice's albums are, simply, oceans of content. I have become such an ardent fan that when they put out something new, it typically prompts me to trawl back through their entire, now pretty sizable catalog so that I can properly place the latest release in context. (I did this when Loüm, the first of their 2017 albums came out, and even kept a list of my favorite "holy fuck" moments from throughout the discography, of which there are many.) There is simply a grandness of scale to their music, coupled with a resolutely unbounded aesthetic, that I find deeply inspiring. They frankly make the idea of metal subgenres (and even the now-familiar "extreme" tag) seem deeply idiotic. It's clear from these two new albums, specifically Go Be Forgotten — at the moment I'm ever-so-slightly more in awe of this one, with its mystical, trancelike, often synth-bathed aura, than the gruff, frenzied, dauntingly technical Loüm, which features Neurosis member Dave Edwardson, though I stress that both are towering works that might take years to process — that they're simply making visionary art, period, with the style (and maybe even the very medium) being essentially incidental. In an attention-starved world, these exquisitely detailed, marvelously transporting sounds are a blessing to get lost in, and I can't wait for the next dispatch.
("Ground Prayer" is a phenomenal track, but make sure to hear it at some point in its proper album context, coming after the lengthy ambient piece "Quadripartite Mirror Realm.)
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, in aesthetic but not quality, is Unsane's Sterilize, which, like pretty much all their records, is a lean, brutally efficient smack upside the head. As discussed recently on DFSBP, I simply cannot stop playing this thing, along with Wreck, Visqueen, Occupational Hazard and the rest.
Though I didn't have quite as much of a prolonged moment with Obituary's self-titled LP, pretty much the same principles apply: This veteran band does one thing extremely well and their late-career, "cavemen of metal" cruise-control stage, which I wrote about for Rolling Stone, is a joy to behold in either its live or studio manifestations.
Other 2017 metal (and related styles) I liked a lot, had a moment with, etc.:
Oxbow, Thin Black Duke
Luxurious and unsettling. Haven't even begun to reckon with this band's decades-long legacy, but this one (and the live show I saw) really pulled me in.
Converge, The Dusk in UsEven having really dug Converge's prior LP, All We Love We Leave Behind, as with Oxbow, I still feel like an outsider with these guys because I'm a late convert: That legendary early stuff (Jane Doe, etc.) just isn't in my blood the way I know it is with many people. But I find their recent output, this new record very much included, remarkable in its poise, power and effortless variety. Kory Grow's write-up for the RS list really nailed it.
Mutoid Man, War Moans
A party-time spazz-prog-thrash blast. Lead track "Melt Your Mind" is an absolute stunner and one of
my favorite metal tracks of the year.
my favorite metal tracks of the year.
Memoriam, For the Fallen
Rumbling, elegiac U.K. death metal from former Bolt Thrower frontman Karl Willetts, who helped invent that style, and friends.
Loincloth, Psalm of the Morbid Whore
A second, and sadly final, full-length helping of obsessive math-doom wizardry from an American underground treasure. (Can't wait to hear what's next for longtime DFSBP favorite Steve Shelton, also of Confessor.)
Mayhem, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive
Honestly, this one got more play time from me than the original ever did. I love being able to hear these gnarled and creepy epics in something resembling higher fidelity. Read Kory Grow's essential feature on the band and the album. (Note: This one came out very late in 2016, but what can you do.)
The Lurking Fear, Out of the Voiceless GraveSort of like the Memoriam of Sweden: proudly regionally flavored death metal (in this case, cold, nasty, unrelenting) from At the Gates' Tomas Lindberg and other dudes who have been around the block.
Husbandry, Bad Weeds Never Die I wrote the bio for this one, FYI — you can read that on the Aqualamb website — but I was already a huge fan. This band sounds like no one else in NYC right now and I hugely admire their unabashed ambition to write badass, fearlessly eclectic post-hardcore that's as catchy as it is jarring.
Couch Slut, Contempt
Friends of mine and another one of the best bands in town. Seething, explosive and sicker than just about any other music on the planet right now.
Quicksand, Interiors
This is a strange one. One of the most treasured bands of my youth finally returns (sans their vital lead guitarist Tom Capone, who ran into some personal issues that kept him from participating), with mixed results. I admire how Walter Schreifels, Sergio Vega and Alan Cage pushed their sound into newly reflective areas here, but I admit that this record's sometimes sleepy, downbeat, almost post-Radiohead-ish vibe — in light of the taut fury of their classic work — left me a little stumped. Still, I'm glad it exists and I'm curious to see if it'll bloom a little more over time. (Wrote a few words on this one for a November new-release round-up at RS.com.)
Power Trip, Nightmare Logic
I may have snobbishly underattended to this one in light of all the praise it got, which I fully admit is just plain stupid. As you may have heard, this record completely smokes. An unabashedly unoriginal sound — thrash meets hardcore in the 1980s; retro to the point that its almost cosplay— done extremely well. Gorgeously full, crisp, monolithic throwback production and killer songs, especially "Executioner's Tax (Swing of the Axe)." Rock!
/////
Shout-out to some outlets and writers that keep me inspired and informed:
Last Rites
Stereogum's Black Market
Revolver
Decibel
Metal Bandcamp
Invisible Oranges
Andy O'Connor
Kim Kelly
Adrien Begrand
Burning Ambulance
Ian Christe
Lastly:
So glad I got to work with Kory Grow and various other folks on this dream project. And that I finally got to see Iron fucking Maiden live.
So glad I got to work with Kory Grow and various other folks on this dream project. And that I finally got to see Iron fucking Maiden live.
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