Best of 2011

 #4 - 40 Watt Sun - The Inside Room

When I first spun this it didn’t quite click. But as the year limped on, I kept listening to it and it started to melt into my perception of what 2011 was. This album is pure pain and longing drowning in subterranean distortion, guided by someone who has a better grasp on writing hooks than anyone in the business. I sang along to this album more than any other in the past year and every time it left me right on the edge of an emotional breakdown. I’m so happy the Warning crew is back picking up where they left off. Picking up the task of bringing grown men to tears.  

Best of 2011

 #5 - The Atlas Moth - An Ache for the Distance

I've played the song Holes in the Desert off this album so many times... An absurd amount. Everytime I hopped in my car and wanted to feel just fucking cool, wanted to drive fast, take turns wide and fucking blast the doors off of compact KIA's and Ford Fiesta's, I put on Holes in the Desert. It makes me feel like James Dean, like Steve McQueen. Just for that one song, this album makes the list, BUT THE OTHER TRACKS ARE GOOD TOO.

Best of 2011

#6 - Corrupted - Garten Der Unbewusstheit (Garden of Unconsciousness)

There are some people who have fantasies about creating the perfect football team, their dream team of athletes who have proven themselves worthy on a personal level. Since I'm indifferent to sports the dream teams I fantasize about are collaborations of musicians, groups that should get together because a shared project would be undoubtedly captivating. The vague interest took on a new form when I first listened to Altar, a collaboration between drone veterans Sunn 0))) and Boris. That album was perfect, and I wanted more. And it wasn't until 2011 until I heard something of a similar genre that really effected me. Garten Der Unbewusstheit by Corrupted was the album I was waiting for.

This is not a collaboration though, so prefacing this review the way I did might seem awkward, until explaining that the only way I can describe Corrupted's sound is Earth+Boris. The beginning of Garten is very Earth-like, with clean guitars, a slight twang, played excruciatingly slowly. For every gently strummed chord there is a melody written to emphasize the feeling of being lost. Each line leads into the next seamlessly with a low whispered vocal acting as a guide through endless layers of dark reverberating atmosphere.

Then like a landslide of molten lava, a very Boris-esque riff comes in accompanied by a subterranean growl and the word heavy is instantly and forever redefined. This is perfection in composition, this is an example of veteran musicians who know exactly how to manipulate their listeners. Even though it might take a little patience for someone not accustomed to drone, given time, Garten Der Unbewusstheit will raise the bar for drone, for great album-writing in general.

Best of 2011

 #7 - Pantheist - Self-Titled

There were a few very high profile funeral doom albums released this year but this is the only one that really hit home for me. Funeral doom is a tough genre; it might be slow, it might not focus on technical ability or knowledge of complex music theory, but it requires perfect compositional song writing. Within each track, usually spanning up to 10 minutes and beyond, the composers really have to pour their hearts out while making sure they don't bore the listener or alienate them with chord or time changes that would be less startling in faster, shorter songs.

On their self-titled album, Pantheist really stretched the boundaries of funeral doom, bringing quite a bit of beauty along with the sadness that defines this particular sort of music. The most prominent example of this is definitely the abundance of soaring clean vocals. So few funeral doom bands employ the use of clean vocals, it's refreshing to actually hear the vocalist's english accent and hear him stretch for those really heart-wrenching notes in counterpoint with the guitar leads. Each track on this album is well worth your patience especially "Be Here" which earns my award for saddest song of the year (which is a good thing).

Best of 2011

 #8 - Ulcerate - Destroyer of All

There's nothing that gets my attention more than originality. Sure, I respect each genre and respect bands who achieve absolute mastery within their niche, but to hear unrecognizable music, music that can't readily be categorized, is a special treat. When I first heard Ulcerate's "Everything is Fire" I was blown away by the hideousness of it, the razor sharp tones, the dissonance, but it never quite clicked. As much as I like chaos in music, I might still need some sort of foothold to grasp onto and "Everything is Fire" didn't give it to me.

With Destroyer of All, Ulcerate redefined their sound, polished it, sanded off some of the rough edges. I think the biggest improvement is a more consistent sense of groove over the course of the album. The drums are punishingly brutal with a kick drum resembling a machine gun, but the consistency of attractive grooves gives each track a contained environment, trapping the hideous chords and leads that would otherwise be unchained chaos.

With such a dramatic shift of character between their last two albums, I have no idea what to expect from their next one, which makes me very excited to hear it.

Best of 2011

 #9 - Orne - The Tree of Life

If not for Opeth's leap of faith into the chasm of noodly prog rock I would never have found this little album. I remember the moment of discovery quite vividly. I was spinning Heritage thinking, "where are the hooks?!" while surfing the message boards of metalreview.com. Scrolling through the ever present Now Playing thread, the cover for this popped up and I knew exactly what it was before reading a single word of the post itself. The cover is unmistakably prog rock, the sort of prog rock about temptation, damnation, death, in a very biblical context. Upon the first spin of this I knew that there was no need to ever pull out Heritage again. This example of vintage prog rock has hooks, so many hooks, glorious memorable hooks, the sort that grow like vines around the part of the brain where songs get trapped and repeated endlessly.

The most fascinating thing about this album though is how historically accurate it feels. If handed The Tree of Life without the knowledge that it was written this year, I would have guessed it was some recently discovered relic of the late 70's. The production has the warmth of a purely analog signal, the guitar tone has a perfect gain structure that has just the slightest amount of break-up, and this vintage feel makes the prominent proggy organ feel right at home. The finished product is really impressive, really catchy, really beautiful, and it proves that really good prog rock isn't dead yet.