Best of 2013

5) Magic Circle – Magic Circle

Just like with food, occasionally I'll get a craving for certain music. One of those cravings is for old occult doom, Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Saint Vitus, etc. When I feel it I'll pull out one of their albums and spin it until the craving is satisfied. I know there are a lot of bands out there that try to pull off that occult doom style even to this day, but none of them do it nearly as good as those three bands. None of them except Magic Circle apparently.

This album effectively quashed my urge for Black Sabbath this year. It won't replace them as the years go by. I'll still listen to Black Sabbath, but Magic Circle have managed to design an image and delivery that sounds authentically 70's-80's occult doom. The thick, groovy power chord riffs with that sweet spot of power amp saturation, the soaring leads and solos, the charismatic vocal yelling lyrics of warning and repentance. And, with each spin the album charismatically grows in your memory as something special, something epic. Even the production sounds authentic with a little noise and reverb that makes it sound like it's from one of the dustier shelves of the collection. This might be a turn off for some, but at a good volume with a little wattage behind it, the album sounds so warm and organic. From now on my occult doom binges will be mostly stuff from the 70's-80's and one very special album from 2013.

Best of 2013

6) Katalepsy – Autopsychosis

Everyone hates death metal, especially brutal death metal. I completely understand. It's an easy target. You can't understand the lyrics and when you look them up they're usually pretty gross. The guitars shred along with hardly anything to hold on to. The song structures are chaotic and disturbing making any normal person edgy and anxious. Death metal presents a challenge to which there is no discernible reward.

But, I can't help loving it. When I was younger it was like someone flipped a switch and death metal was all I could listen to. And I was never completely satisfied with any one band. There was this insatiable hunger for something more brutal, more complex, more disturbing than anything I had heard before. Though I listen to a lot more these days, that hunger stays with me like an itch I can't help but gouge at. And lucky for me, there is no limit to how brutal these bands can get. Granted, it's the rare band that can impress me at this point, but a few still manage to do it. This year it was Katalepsy, a band that hasn't had a full-length in 6 years.

Autopsychosis came out of nowhere and it can easily compete with any modern death metal album and win. The leads are so memorable, full of perfectly timed pinch harmonics and frantic jumps between octaves. The percussion is so dynamic, swapping out neck-breaking rhythms with lightning precision. The vocal is ferocious, literally frightening. The lyrics are surprisingly thoughtful, each song reading like a modern H.P. Lovecraft. Even the album art is an intricate work of horrifying surrealism. I just hope it doesn't take them another six years before the next masterpiece of brutality.

Best of 2013

7) Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels

I don't listen to much rap and hip-hop, but once in a while an album will make a few waves on the blogs and my attention will be stirred. It's great fun to listen to with a beefy subwoofer and though I may not relate to it well, I can pretend long enough in the summer months to provide a welcome break from the heavier stuff. But, I have the same expectations for it that I do for anything else. It has to be well-written, it has to have depth and originality, it has to be a good mix of interesting words and captivating music, and Run the Jewels is all those things. When everyone was slobbering over Robin Thicke's tired track saying things like, “This is the song of the summer,” I was spinning this.

Run the Jewels is a collaboration from El-P and Killer Mike, two artists I honestly don't know much about, but after spending so much time with this I'm going to try to remedy my ignorance. These two guys are brilliant. The lyrics cover so much ground, sometimes sticking to misogyny, but mostly just being unabashedly clever. The standout for me is the track, “No Come Down.” It's about getting high, but it really tries to bring you there. There's a description of a surreal psilocybin trip with equal parts sex and death. There are even a few nods between these two guys, just complimenting each other on their form which is great to hear when you have the perception of a genre as mostly ego-fueled and self-centered.

Best of 2013

8) New Keepers of the Water Towers - Cosmic Child

I've spun this album a whole lot, but this is the first time I happened to see where New Keepers of the Water Towers were from, that being Sweden. This is a fairly major surprise for me because this music sounds very American to me. The music is heavily psychedelic rock/metal with plenty of thick amplifier worship, but there's a depth here not many similar American bands seem to achieve, complex chord progressions, smooth but captivating key changes, progressive song structures. Then it occurred to me that there's another Swedish band with a similar sound and a similarly complex delivery, Dozer. I don't know if there's any connection between these bands as they are very unique and take the music in different directions, but the existence of these two bands is going to make me take a closer look at the Swedish psychedelic rock/metal scene because as with a few things, the Swedes might just be better at it than we are.

Cosmic Child is really a stunning record from beginning to end. There might be a few naysayers taking a snooze during some of the more mellow or atmospheric passages, but it's because of all the weed and subsequent short attention spans. The album flows beautifully, creating tension and then resolving it in brilliantly creative ways. There are so many memorable passages, some with obvious influences. I would say there's a big Pink Floyd presence, maybe even a little Opeth, but everything sounds fresh, displaying a distinct personality. Even the production job is wonderful, each instrument mixed perfectly, complementing each other as the vocal guides you through very cosmic territory.

Best of 2013

9) Witherscape – The Inheritance

Before death metal even had a shape, rules of conformity within the genre, there were two bands that seemed to transcend anything that was happening in heavy metal. They were Death and Edge of Sanity, led respectively by two visionaries, Chuck Schuldiner and Dan Swanö. Unfortunately we lost Chuck some time ago, but Swanö has been with us for the duration, hardly ever in the spotlight, but contributing his musical brilliance to countless projects, either as a vocalist, guitarist, or sound engineer. His latest being this remarkable album.

Witherscape could easily be mistaken for a full progressive death metal quartet with years of experience under their belt, but this is a collaboration of two people covering all instrumental duties, Dan Swanö and Ragnar Widerberg. The chemistry between these two musicians is unmistakable. Each track is full of catchy guitar leads, vocal hooks, interesting rhythms, even some really great, restrained synth work. Obviously I'm biased because this is Swanö and his voice sounds just as good as it did twenty years ago alternating seamlessly between passionate croons and guttural growling, so I could be overlooking some flaws, but I really don't see any. If you dig Edge of Sanity and miss the times when death metal was thoughtful and not hopelessly focused on violence and misogyny then this is an essential album.

Best of 2013

10) Tim Hecker – Virgins

I saw Time Hecker a couple years ago at a local venue. At the show little pamphlets were handed out, sort of like a playbill, but it described how Tim had designed the sound system for this particular theater over a period of weeks, positioning certain speakers in just the right places, making absolutely sure to have the audience in a state of complete immersion during his performance. It was one of the most unique musical experiences I've ever had. 

At first it was very chaotic. His signature sound is less about pleasant melodies and consonant harmonies and more about aural texture and frequency contrast. Soon the overwhelming vibration of low bass and upper register frequencies became a little more comfortable and I closed my eyes for the rest of the set, completely at the mercy of the enveloping sound. The performance was a journey, at times uncomfortable, at times hypnotizing, at times very calming, and ultimately a very emotional and rewarding experience.

Virgins is a continuation of his signature style, which is to say unlike any other electronic music you're likely to hear. Using sampled percussive beats, distant breathy instrumentation layered into lattices of hypnotic texture, Hecker tries his absolute hardest to immerse you. And without any words or obvious emotional direction, it's up to you what kind of experience a spin of this record is going to be. For me it's exactly the type of album I want playing on long, lonely drives at night.