Sniff my dick, October 31st

Good evening. We interrupt this countdown for an urgent message:

Halloween is for lamers.

End of message.

(mp3) Rob Zombie feat. The Ghastly Ones - Halloween (she get so mean)
Available on V/A - Halloween Hootenanny (1998)

(mp3) Dead Kennedys - Halloween
Available on Plastic Sugery Disasters (1982)

(mp3) Sunn 0))) - Hell-0)))-ween
Available on V/A - Let There Be Doom II (2004)

...

The 6th Best Album of the 00s: Big Business - "Here Come The Waterworks" (2007)

My love for sludge/rock/whatever trio Big Business should come as no surprise to any avid reader of this blog. They've been featured on ten of my Friday mp3 shuffles, and a track from this very album even opener the very first one way back in February 2009.

A quick history lesson, perhaps? Alright:

Jarred Warren played in KARP, The Whip, and Tight Bros From Way Back When (all great bands, check'em out). His friend and KARP/The Whip drummer Scott Jernigan died in a boating accident in 2003. He decided to get a new band started and called up Coady Willis, drummer of The Murder City Devils.

The first album Head For The Shallow came out in 2005 to rave reviews. Great record, but at times it does feel a bit aimless. A bit too freeform and stream of consciousness. This problem was definitely fixed for this their second record. This is tighter, more focused and to the point. Phil Ek, producer of everything from Earth to Fleet Foxes, gave Big Business one of the most powerful and just downright badass productions I've ever heard.

Whereas the first album had a filler or two, this one doesn't have a dull moment. Not a single one. Every song is an anthem, the riffs will make your speakers fall off their shelves, Jared's mighty powerhouse bellows almost make me cry with excitement. Coady also happens to be the best rock drummer this side of Dave Grohl.

A near perfect record by a near perfect band.

And of course in 2005 Big Business was recruited by the Melvins to be their new rhythm section, making their Melvins debut with (A) Senile Animal, #7 on this list. A match made in heaven, as the Melvins are clearly a big influence on Big Business. But I must say with this one they managed to beat their mentors at their own game.

Fun but rather useless Melvins + Big Business trivia: current Big Business guitarist Toshi Kasai (he joined in 2008) engineered (A) Senile Animal, and David Scott Stone (sometime member of the Melvins) plays guitar on this record.

(mp3) Big Business - Shields
(mp3) Big Business - Start your digging

Buy it @ Amazon.com

The 7th Best Album of the 00s: Tool - "Lateralus" (2001)

Lateralus was probably the most highly anticipated album of 2001.

At least it was for me - after five agonising years since their last album, 1996's Ænima. I still remember getting the album in the mail on a rainy day in May, locking myself in my room and popped the cd into the computer and cranked that bastard right up. And then I listened to it again. And again.

I'd been waiting and aching for it for what felt like a fucking lifetime, I had read article after article on how good it was, what it sounded like, etc etc. The tension was unbearable. I somehow resisted downloading it as I wanted the first listen to be absolutely fresh. And I wasn't disappointed.

I adored it straight away. Everything I had read about turned out to be true - this was more progressive and fucked up and uncommercial and heavier and weirder than anything they had ever done.

As if the music wasn't monumental and fucked up enough, the cover art was the coolest I had ever seen, with a translucent booklet with layer after layer of a human body. Lateralus (which on my copy is mislabelled "Lateralis" - a superior title in my opinion) quickly became a favorite of mine and I still consider it Tool's best song.

After this Tool took another five years to produce a follow-up, 10,000 Days, which I have yet to warm up to. Perhaps one day it will click with me, but the prospects aren't good.

(mp3) Tool - The grudge
(mp3) Tool - Ticks & leeches

Buy Lateralus @ Amazon.com.

The 8th Best Album of the 00s: The Melvins - "(A) Senile Animal" (2006)

I've lost count of how many times I've praised the Melvins in general and this album in particular. It's their best, no two ways about it.

Earlier this year I did a four part series of the Melvins which was much appreciated. I'm glad you have such great taste, dear reader. This is what I had to say:

As one of the originators of both grunge and sludge (I would say the sole originators of both, but I'm trying not to be hyperbolic), Aberdeen, WA's favorite sons The Melvins have been raising hell for almost thirty years, kicking ass and blowing minds wherever they go and influencing everyone from Nirvana and Soundgarden to Tool and Mastodon along the way.

They've never let their integrity budge even the slightest so it's no wonder Atlantic Records (who signed them during the grunge craze of the early 90's) dropped them after only a couple of albums. They were hoping for the next Nirvana, but only got mean doom, uncompromising punk, ugly metal and strange noise experiments.

It's such a cliche, but the only predictable thing about The Melvins is their unpredictability. They're far too unreliable for a major label and when you buy a new Melvins record you can never know for sure what you're getting.

Their strength is that all their fans (of which they do not have nearly enough) know perfectly well that Melvins can whip out a blasting beast of an album that blows all other rock and metal bands away, and they can do it without even trying that hard.

The band is fully aware that the fans know this and takes every chance they get to tease said fans a bit. This is something I have huge respect for, as there are way too many whorish crowdpleasers who give the fans exactly what they want. The Melvins know exactly what the fans want and go out of their way to needle and torture them just to see how much they can put up with. Just to see how much the rubber band will stretch, and just before it snaps they flippantly release a whole album of one epic, flawless song after another without a filler in sight (1993's Houdini or 2006's A Senile Animal) like it's nothing.

Nail on head, dear reader. Nail on head.

(mp3) The Melvins - Rat faced granny
(mp3) The Melvins - The hawk

Buy it @ Amazon.com.

The 9th Best Album of the 00s: High On Fire - "Blessed Black Wings" (2005)

It's Saturday night and I'm drunk (I'm naming my firstborn "Bacardi") so no one should expect this post to be coherent.

Oh how I love Matt "The Riffking" Pike. Anyone who follows this blog should know this, as both High On Fire and Pike's previous band Sleep have been featured numerous times on this your favorite blog ever. Pike is so metal it hurts, he is the metal equivalent of a fucking barbarian on a battlefield wielding an axe into the faces of anyone unfortunate enough to get too close.

Devilution kick-starts the album with the same drum pattern that ended the previous album Surrounded By Thieves, tieing the two together nicely. Steve Albini's production brought a much-needed clarity and ferocity to High On Fire's sound, and Devilution's Motörhead-meets-Celtic-Frost ass-kickery won me over straight away.

The best song though is the title track, which starts off with a nod to Slayer circa 1988 before it turns into a mighty battering ram of fucking metal in the last two minutes.

These thrashier influences were always there, but here they were not only brought up to the front thanks to the much clearer and increasingly non-bullshit songwriting, but also thanks to Albini's aforementioned skills at the mixing desk. The truly qualities of High On Fire had for the first time been unearthed from a thick layer of mud.

While Surround By Thieves had its moments, I've never been able to make it through more than a couple of tracks at a time. The muddy, murky production simply gets the best of me, for the same reasons that Blues For The Red Sun is my least favorite Kyuss album. Sacrilege, I know. Deal with it.

The follow-up, 2007's Death Is This Communion kicks a fair amount of ass as well and this year's Snakes For The Divine ain't too shabby either, but Blessed Black Wings remains the jewel in the High On Fire crown.

JOE PRESTON FTW!!!!!

My head will hurt tomorrow and I probably won't remember writing any of this.

(mp3) High On Fire - Devilution
(mp3) High On Fire - Blessed black wings (recommended!)

Buy Blessed Black Wings @ Amazon.com.

The 10th Best Album of the 00s: At The Drive-In - "Relationship Of Command" (2000)

Top 10! Woohoo!

This is such a bummer though. Ever since I first heard The Mars Volta's De-Loused In The Comatorium seven years ago I've been telling myself I like The Mars Volta a lot better than the overrated At The Drive-In.

Imagine my devastation when I was putting this list together and I realised to my horror that I actually prefer Relationship Of Command over any Mars Volta record. My whole world was shattered and I wept in a fetal position for several days.

But if we're looking at the bands' complete discographies, Mars Volta completely smokes At The Drive-In though. I've been using that crutch comfort myself.

You see, as great as this album was, At The Drive-In took quite a while to get their shit together. They formed in 1994 but didn't get good until their second album In/Casino/Out in 1998, they didn't get great until their fourth EP Vaya in 1999 and they didn't get fantastic until Relationship Of Command. After which they split up. I wish more bands would fuck off at their peak, but most just don't know when to quit.

(mp3) At The Drive-In - Enfilade
(mp3) At The Drive-In - Quarantined (recommended!)
(mp3) At The Drive-In - Non-zero possbility

Buy it @ Amazon.com

The 11th Best Album of the 00s: Entombed - "Morning Star" (2001)

Like every album Entombed has done since 1993's Wolverine Blues, Morning Star was and continues to be misunderstood.

There are those who misunderstands Entombed in the sense of thinking everything the band has done since 1993 is unlistenable. These people are douchebags, don't encourage them. Just pretend they don't exist and perhaps they'll go away.

Then there are those who feel that after a few years of experimenting and releasing a couple of aimless records, Entombed returned to their old selves on Uprising (2000) and Morning Star (2001). These people are also douchebags and everything they say it rubbish.

I can't tell you how many reviews I've read that stated that Uprising sounded like everything Entombed had done up to that point rolled into one album. No it didn't. Not even close. Uprising retained much of the direction of 1998's unfairly slammed Same Difference, the only difference was a less polished production. Had Same Difference had the noisy sound of Uprising you wouldn't have heard any fucking difference between the two.

I would like to submit to the evidence the fact that guitarist Alex Hellid provided no material whatsoever for Uprising, leaving it up to fellow guitarist Uffe Cederlund to pen most of the material. And Cederlund was, as we all know, the main guy behind Same Difference. That album sounded they way it did because of him. Because drummer and main songwriter Nicke Andersson had left in 1998 and someone else had to take charge, and the charge was taken by Cederlund.

Similarly, reviews for Morning Star saluted the band's return to their roots. Utter bullshit. They returned to fucking nothing on Morning Star, it was yet another step forward in their evolution, just like every album they have ever released before or since.

Many made it out to seem like Entombed had reverted to their death metal origins. Don't listen to these people. I don't care what anyone says, Morning Star is not a death metal album. I'd go so far as to say there is nothing even remotely death metal about it in the traditional Entombed sense of the term.

No, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I will maintain til the day I die that Morning Star is a thrash metal album more than anything else. Certain tracks continue the trademark "death 'n' roll" they never abandoned in the first place (not even on Same Difference) but death metal? Don't make me laugh. It hurts when I laugh.

Somewhat Peculiar off of 1997's To Ride, Shoot Straight And Speak The Truth and Something Out Of Nothing off of Uprising may have had their fair share of Slayer-isms, but other than that thrash was pretty new for Entombed. Cederlund claimed in interviews that this album would be Entombed's Reign In Blood and he was right.

I For An Eye, Ensemble Of The Restless, Young Man Nihilist, Year One Now, City Of Ghosts and About To Die are pure 100% undiluted fucking thrash and nothing else, period. Get that through your heads.

Young Man Nihilist deserves a special mention for its immense badassery. How can you not adore a song that crashes through the gates with a guitar solo and thundering kick drums?

But most badass of all is About To Die. Two minutes and fifteen seconds of perfection. If the break towards the end where all hell breaks loose and L-G Petrov bellows with all his might doesn't make you bang your head like a maniac you're either deaf, paralysed from the neck down or you don't have a head.

You're crying like a woman!
When you're about to die!!
DIE!!!
JUST FUCKING DIIIIIEEEE!!!!

Recognise the power of Entombed or remain a slightly less enlightened human than the rest of us. You will suck for the rest of eternity in your sad little hole of neglect.

(mp3) Entombed - Young man nihilist
(mp3) Entombed - Year one now
(mp3) Entombed - About to die (recommended!)

Buy Morning Star @ Amazon.com.

The 12th Best Album of the 00s: The Dillinger Escape Plan - "Ire Works" (2007)

I suppose most people would pick 2004's Miss Machine, not only The Dillinger Escape Plan's first album with vocalist Greg Piciaitaoaiiociaoaitato but also the first album where they stepped away from the hysterical and ultimately quite boring and tiring mathematical hijinx they explored with previous singer Dimitri Minakakis. It was simply a musical dead end they had to get out of sooner or later. Luckily for all of us, they chose sooner.

Minakakis actually makes a guest appearance on this album. Brent Hinds from Mastodon also sings a bit on one track. But anywho:

Whilst Miss Machine is an excellent record, I prefer this one where they took yet another step towards something a little bit different. Spastic mathcore/mathmetal/mathwhatever freakouts like Fix Your Face, Lurch and Nong Eye Gong are still prevalent but the majority of the thirteen tracks are of a more experimental, progressive nature. And those are the ones I tend to gravitate towards. I can't resist neither the electronic elements nor Greg Picioaititoto's falsetto crooning previously exhibited on their Justin Timberlake cover Like I Love You off the Plagarism EP.

Instead of time signatures that make no sense to anyone and shrilling screams at random we get jazzy shit, some Faith No More-eqsue shit and some Nine Inch Nails-ish shit. Just like on Miss Machine in other words, but in my omnipotent opinion done even better. I named this album the 5th best of 2007 for a reason.

First single Milk Lizard had more than one fan turn their nose up at the horn section and its offensive non-mathcoreishness, but I can't get enough of it. A fucking great song. The album closer Mouth Of Ghosts might just be the band's all-time best song for a number of reasons.

A special mention goes out to drummer Gil Sharone, definitely my favorite of the three drummers they've had so far. Those who swing by the nuts of Chris Pennie can kindly step off a cliff and break the fall with their ass. The same goes for those who won't shut up about Calculating Infinity. That was eleven years ago, get over it. Losers.

Enough babbling - download the damn songs, hear how damn good they are and then buy the damn album. You realise it's possible to actually pay musicians for the music they provide, don't you? You kids today... Not everything is free and available whenever you fucking feel like it, you know.

(mp3) Dillinger Escape Plan - Sick on Sunday
(mp3) Dillinger Escape Plan - Milk lizard

Buy it @ Amazon.com.

The 13th Best Album of the 00s: Neurosis - "A Sun That Never Sets" (2001)

I had an idea for what this post would contain, but then I read a single sentence about Neurosis here which knocked me on my ass, as it summed up everything: "The cerebellum gets all the credit, but this music comes from the stomach."

Neurosis aren't an unintellectual band, far from it - any interview proves these guys knows their shit. But when it comes to their music they act purely on instinct, if it comes naturally and feels right, it is right, end of discussion. A point driven home by the fact that they don't spend ages in the studio fiddling with details like a bunch proggers - most of their recordings are done live with only vocals, samples and other instrumentation (which can be anything from violins to bagpipes) added after the fact.

And in doing so they manage to tap into something completely primal and spiritual, almost animal, that only a handful of bands active today can even come close to it. Their music is pure energy and pure emotion, it's the reptilian brain speaking. It's from the earth itself, a call from an ancient wilderness, the undiluted raw forces of the universe channeled through five weather torn men from California that look like they just stepped right out of Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man or any novel by Cormac McCarthy.

This is music meant to be absorbed, not analysed. You don't listen to Neurosis, you experience them. If you can't get into Neurosis it's probably because you're trying too hard to understand what they're doing and why.

"The cerebellum gets all the credit, but this music comes from the stomach"... Goddamn, that is so fucking good.

(mp3) Neurosis - The tide
(mp3) Neurosis - A sun that never sets
(mp3) Neurosis - Stones from the sky

Buy A Sun That Never Sets @ Amazon.com.

The 14th Best Album of the 00s: The Mars Volta - "Amputechture" (2006)

Am I weird for thinking this the best Mars Volta album? For preferring it over De-loused In The Comatorium? Perhaps.

Actually, I'm not being completely honest here: I do think De-loused In The Comatorium is the better album, I really do. If I look at it objectively I can clearly see I should prefer it to Amputechture. But I don't.

After the relatively easy-listening of De-loused... and the total freak-out of Frances The Mute (also a fan favorite) many say The Mars Volta just went too far with this their third album. Not melodic enough, not enough memorable songs, not enough hooks. Simply too proggy and weird and jazzy and complicated for the band's own good.

It's also considerably quiter and moodier than any other Mars Volta record, and more tracks than I'd care to admit remind me of Portishead. Especially the amazing opener Vicarious Atonement. Just when you think the song is never going to go anywhere that first piano chord hits at 4:50 and suddenly the whole song makes sense.

But perhaps that's exactly why I Amputechture. Because it lets songs linger for almost five minutes before it brings the point home. Because it doesn't kiss your ass, doesn't try to lure you in. The album just sits there looking at you going "Well, are you gonna dig this shit or not, asshole? No? Then fuck off, buddy. It's not like I don't have better things to do than try to please you and your dumb ass. Douchebag."

It's the equivalent of being naturally drawn in to the girl who couldn't care less about you. Why won't she give me the time of day? What have I done wrong? She's intriguing and a little rude, she won't talk to me hence she must be hiding something and I won't stop until I figure out what it is.

That was a strange analogy, I've never been good at those. I'm starting to sound like Dennis Miller: "It's like a Lithuanian belly dancer doing hoolahoops next to a pickle!". What the fuck does that even more?

Wow, even that analogy sucked. I'll shut up now and let Amputechture do the talking. The cookie-jar percussion inferno nine minutes and forty-five seconds into Day Of The Baphomets rules your face.

(mp3) The Mars Volta - Vicarious atonement
(mp3) The Mars Volta - Vermicide
(mp3) The Mars Volta - Day of the Baphomets

Buy it @ Amazon.com

The 15th Best Album of the 00s: Portal - "Swarth" (2009)

Top 15! Woohoo!

We've now reached an album which I named the second best album of 2009 last December. The piece I wrote for it was fucking good so here it is again:

True evil always lurks where you wouldn't expect it.

This is why crossburning corpsepaint posers who name their bands "Christfucker" and talk about how amazing Satan is offer little but hollow provocations. This is why the most evil people, the ones will ultimately destroy the world as we know it aren't devilworhippers with guitars, but rather innocuous-looking old white guys in fantastic suits.

This is why the world's most revered horror fiction writer looks like an accountant and why the most feared terrorist in history looks gentler than a garden gnome.

Fuck, there I go rambling again.

What I'm trying to get to is that this is also why the most nightmarish soul-rape of a record released this year comes from the land of koalas, from a group of people who call themselves Portal (a name so mundane you don't stop to think just how sinister it really is) and wear grandfather clocks on their heads.

No traditional song structures to speak of, just continuous eruptions of black slime from the darkest corners of the underworld. Imagine Evoken playing Deathspell Omega covers in Arkham Asylum and you're halfway there. Had black metal existed in 1925 it would have sounded like this. Lovecraft's ancient, slithering tentacles set to music.

Portal aren't the fastest, the heaviest or the most technical, but what they do have in spades is the Feel. Yes, with a capital F. That feel of nihilism and utter despair that so many bands, particularly in black metal, try to achieve. The feel of lurking chaos, inescapable terrors and a suffocating descent into a madness darker than the deepest chasm.

You dont believe me? Try listening to Swarth with headpones in the dark all by yourself and the volume cranked all the way up. It's the closest thing possible to a waking nightmare, one of the most terrifying, claustrophobic musical experiences you will ever have. You can psysically feel it slowly engulfing your soul, one track at a time.

A landmark record.

(mp3) Portal - Swarth
(mp3) Portal - Larvae

Buy it @ Amazon.com

The 16th Best Album of the 00s: Disfear - "Live The Storm" (2008)

D-beat veterans Disfear may be into their third decade as a band, but things didn't really click until Tompa Lindberg (At The Gates) joined on vocals and Misanthropic Generation was released in 2003. Five years later Uffe Cederlund from Entombed had joined on guitars and their career-defining masterpiece Live The Storm (produced by Converge's Kurt Ballou) came out.

To break this record down into the most simple of terms: Imagine a cross between Discharge, Motörhead and Converge. An eye-popping scenario and seemingly too good to be true, but Live The Storm lives up to it.

Extremly few albums get me more pumped up than Live The Storm. Music to punch people in the face to. Music to throw bricks at cops to. Music to have a vomiting hobo give you a rusty coat-hanger abortion in an alley to.

Perfect production, perfect performance and songs that kick your in the nuts and put you in a chokehold and make you cry and beg for another kick in the nuts. Badassery on a scale too badass for the human brain to comprehend. Listen to this loud.

LOUD!

Then punch someone in the face and have an abortion.

(mp3) Disfear - Get it off
(mp3) Disfear - Deadweight
(mp3) Disfear - Maps of war

Buy it @ Amazon.com

Disfear live in 2009:

The 17th Best Album of the 00s: Death Breath - "Stinking Up The Night" (2006)

Almost a decade after leaving the drum kit in Entombed to front rock & rollers The Hellacopters, Nicke Andersson could no longer resist the pull of the mighty death metal tractor beam. You can try to stay away, but death metal will always find you again.

He had played plenty of drums since then in The Hydromatics, Super$hit 666, The Solution etc, but his return to his roots was met with both glee and anticipation. But did he still have it in him? Of course he did. This is a man who after 25 years in the biz still hasn't written a bad song.

He hooked up with guitarist/vocalist Robert Pehrsson from Thunder Express, Repulsion's Scott Carson and Jörgen Sandström from Grave, Entombed, The Project Hate, Krux, Torture Division and fuck knows what else. I was sort of hoping that Nicke would handle vocals as well, as he did it so brilliantly on Entombed's second album Clandestine (the best album of the 90s, remember?) but apparently he gave it a shot in the studio and decided it sounded like shit.

However, it appears he has indeed provided some classic death grunts for the upcoming Necronaut project. Can't wait to hear it.

But those expecting a return to the classic Entombed sound of the 90s were disappointed. Death Breath went right back to the very early days of the death metal, the days when the genre was not yet fully formed and no formula or rules existed. It was just extreme metal, period. Celtic Frost, Death, Autopsy, Slayer, Venom, you name it, they're all in here, mingling and getting to know each other.

This probably won't even sound like death metal to those used to Nile, Behemoth, Vader etc, but this is the real deal, folks. This is exactly what it should sound like, pissed off and punky, with some piss stains and ragged edges, with acne and a beer belly, and a morbid sense of humor.

That, my friends, are the true ingredients of what we call death fucking metal.

Priests hung by the thousands
Hell's gone to war
Christ all fucking mighty
Is mighty no more

'Nuff said.

(mp3) Death Breath - Death breath
(mp3) Death Breath - Christ all fucking mighty (recommended!)
(mp3) Death Breath - Flabby little things from beyond

Buy it @ Amazon.com