Ritual

Swedish psych-collective Goat brought their Live Ballroom Ritual set to the crumbling Rickshaw Theatre last night, right in the heart of Vancouver's friendly Downtown Eastside. Goat's World Music album has probably gotten as many spins on the altar as anything since it came out in late 2012, (although I didn't hear it until a few months later, and it didn't make my list of top favs from that year, natch. It woulda been way up the list.) so needless to say I'd been looking forward to this show for some time. Not only that, but I have a good number of friends of different tastes and walks of life who were also curious to see the group in the flesh, so wide and varied is its appeal. It promised to be the social event of the season.

I'm pleased to report that the show exceeded my expectations, although things got off to a less than promising start. My ticket clearly said the show was to start at 9:30, but when I arrived, I was told by friends that opening band Three Wolf Moon had already played. Clearly something was fucked up, which is a real shame as I'd been looking forward to seeing these locals live for the first time. The mellow, yet forceful classic rock jams of last year's self titled LP made an impression on me, though I always felt their golden, analog sound needed some work in the songwriting department to become more dynamic and memorable. It's a pleasant listen though, and I'm disappointed I didn't get a chance to see them with another year of seasoning under their belts. I'm told by reliable sources they put on a good set, although they were better opening for Dead Meadow at the Electric Owl a couple weeks back.

Holy Wave hit the stage next with a solid set of modern psych rock. The crowd seemed reasonably into it, as did many of my friends, but I wasn't as enthusiastic. Although they hit all the pleasure centers that I enjoy with this type of music, the influences stood out too starkly for the band to create its own identity. It was a bit of Spacemen 3 and Brian Jonestown Massacre, some Moon Duo and Wooden Shjips, and a lot of Black Angels and Dandy Warhols. The band were tight, with multiple good vocalists and some powerful grooves that got the place moving. Unfortunately while their set was at times quite intense and engaging, it was also uneven. At times songs dragged and got tiresome, a common problem for young bands honing their voice and songwriting chops. I have no doubt that given some more time, Holy Wave will continue to improve as they refine their approach, and I'd say they showed the talent and promise to become quite good someday.

At last, Goat hit the stage, immediately capturing attention with a stunning visual package. The seven-piece included a drummer, precussionist, bass player and two guitarists, all of whom were decked out head to toe in all manner of exotic African and Middle Eastern regalia. The band was fronted by a pair of dashiki-clad women who gyrated and screamed in time with one another, all while shaking and banging an assortment of precussion instruments and shakers. Together they conjured up a sonic stew that incorporated decades of musical history into a sound that's both comfortingly familiar and yet boldly fresh. From Fela Kuti to Funkadelic, from Can to Cream, all manner of mind-expanding music from the last 50 years was smeared together on Goat's canvas.

Stripped of the blaring saxaphones that brought a chaotic free jazz edge and a little Exile on Mainstreet-era sleaze to their sound, the band was instead heavier and more guitar dominated than on record. The band's primal stomp was elemental in its ferocity. From my vantage point on the top balcony I was able to witness the whole spectacle unfold, and the band's instrumental performances were all top notch. As loose as the music seems, this is a band that is completely attuned to the individual voices of its members, a collective that due to the massive empathy of the players is truly more than the sum of its parts.

The setlist was dominated by material from their fantastic World Music album which was performed in its entirety, albeit in a different running order. There were also some songs I didn't recognize... It would not be surprising to me if Goat had much more material than just what has been laid to tape. And of course, these songs were blown up and stretched out live... this is music that is in constant movement... pulsing, grooving, and undulating. It was electric and alive. And the incredible purpose with which the music was played was evident... it truly was a ritual, and we neophytes were privileged to take part. Ten thumbs up.

Indian - From All Purity

Artist: Indian
Album: From All Purity
Label: Relapse
Year: 2014

Indian’s 2011 album Guiltless was one of the heaviest records I’d ever heard, and From All Purity is just as crusty and ferocious as its predecessor. With a blast radius that’s roughly comparable to the payload of a B-2 bomber, From All Purity is as devastating and misanthropic a collection of music as you will ever hear. The Chicago doom metal/sludgecore unit has steadily refined its approach over the last decade with a series of mercilessly heavy releases that expanded their fanbase and earned them growing critical acclaim. Guiltless was a breakthrough for them, and the band has spent the time off since its release preparing a devastating followup. For all the accolades their previous album earned, I’m of the mind that From All Purity is even better, a further distillation of their repulsive essence.

This is an unforgivably harsh and abrasive record. It features horrific vocals and unbelievably heavy guitars caked in sheets of distorted noise which add an extra layer of demented insanity to the proceedings. Everything about From All Purity is crusty, blown out, and horrifying. These songs don’t let up for an instant in their hellish intensity. When played at a suitably damaging volume, these strangled, agonizing screams and massive walls of guitars scour all traces of thought from your mind. It’s not something you’ll find yourself humming to yourself, and nothing about it is at all catchy. Instead this is an album meant to be experienced, and given the chance it will punish your eardrums and scrub all trace of sanity from your mind.

“Rape,” as the title might suggest, is a suitably distressing opener. Its fitful pounding and unbearably heavy distortion are punctuated with excruciating screams and stabs feedback -- it’s like crawling through broken glass. “The Impetus Bleeds” is equally painful, downshifting further into a yawning chasm of blackness. One track is almost purely noise, veering into Yellow Swans territory. It’s called “Clarify,” and it’s really just a 5 minute interlude made up of sheets of raw distortion and agonizing feedback. Sequenced between the pounding sludge trudges that make up most of the album, it acts as a sort of palette cleanser, scouring the listener’s mind in preparation for the next megaton riff detonation. The hammer drops with the finale, and my personal favourite, “Disambiguation.” It’s almost 8 minutes of mournful, resplendent doom, at once more spacious and majestic than everything that had come before, while retaining the malevolent immediacy that is this record’s trademark. Even when the band seems about to ride the riffs into oblivion, a jarring blast of doublekicks and tremolo picking blasts through the centre of the mix, adding a further dimension to the extremity of the band. It’s a fitting conclusion, and one that suggests new possibilities for the band. Just think… with the final two tracks, they’ve shown the ability to be noisier and more powerful than they ever have before.

People have compared Indian to Eyehategod, and while the comparisons are warranted, there are very little in the way of that New Orleans crew’s sporadic hardcore-inflected sprints here. Even when they play a little bit faster, the standard “rat-ta-tat” polka beat used by rudimentary hardcore drummers isn’t to be found.  Instead Indian has always taken cues from the bottom-heavy tom-pummeling of early High on Fire. There is also more than a little of Khanate’s hateful malice on display here, from the shrieking feedback, to the gnarled, wretched delivery of the vocals to the swollen, galactic bass tones. The drums are gigantic, relentlessly marching into oblivion, relentlessly crushing everything in their path. Indian has learned to strike their own balance between space and cacophony, giving the music room to breathe even when the listener is given none. What started to change first with Guiltless and is now on full display here is Indian’s patience. They don’t try to overplay anything, instead standing back and letting these massive songs swallow the listener whole.

The key differences between this record and Indian’s early material are improved recording quality and Indian’s improved understanding of how to make their songs more immersive and continuously devastating. Previous records bludgeoned, but this one simply lays waste. Some doom metal can sound distant and cavernous. From All Purity is enormous to be sure, but it’s immediate. It makes your speakers sound like they’re bleeding. When the singer strains his larynx screaming unintelligibly at you, you can almost feel the heat of his breath on your face. And there are subtleties here that only become apparent with repeated listens – how the riffs are deliberately constructed, the depth of the sound, the way the cacophony is layered to maximize the claustrophobic terror of the music. Far from a bunch of malcontents bashing out tuneless noise, there is a real understanding of the form and physicality of the music at work here, and their expertise is enough to provoke a shudder in even the most hardened listeners.

From All Purity is notable in that it doesn’t adhere to the “more is more” philosophy of most doom metal, where albums routinely top the one hour mark and songs tend to linger for interminable amounts of time. Indian’s sense of economy comes from their hardcore leanings… most of these songs are 6 to 8 minutes long and agonizingly slow, but they make their point without lingering long enough to get tuned out. It makes for a more powerful listen, an addictive revenge fantasy that channels the hatefulness that exists within all of us. But its clarity of intension is somehow cleansing. We NEED records that help us deal with that negativity. Put on the record when you are having a shitty day, and in less than 40 minutes you won’t even remember why you were so upset. Your memory will be scrubbed clean.

This is not for everyone, obviously. Even some metalheads will find the lack of intelligible hooks, or the generally straightforward and blunt untechnicality of the playing to be unsatisfying. But the ugly, tormented ordeal that is listening to From All Purity will find its share of fans, particularly those who don’t care about singing along and just want to hear the most nightmarish noise imaginable. Indian have trumped themselves with this record. It’s also one of the best things I’ve heard this year.

Esoteric - Paragon Of Dissonance

 

Artist: Esoteric
Album: Paragon Of Dissonance

Label: Season Of Mist
Year 2011

Esoteric are not an easy band to get into. Their music is extremely oppressive doom metal that is disgustingly heavy, at times gorgeously cinematic, and always epic in scope. Every three or four years they release another colossal hour and a half long album with like 7 songs on it that proceed to suffocate the life force of the listener in their own cranky and miserable way. Led by guitarist/vocalist Greg Chandler and multi-instrumentalist Gordon Bicknell, they hail from the lung-blackening air of Birmingham, England. They use gigantic, deliberate drums and roaring walls of extremely downtuned and distorted guitar and bass, all topped by tormented vocals wrung through a battery of spacey effects. At times they’ve incorporated psychedelic interludes, progressive ambition, ambient drift, extensive use of keys and raw noise much like their American peers Neurosis. But while those guys started out playing hardcore punk and imbue their compositions with an elemental ferocity which is only made possible by an agile rhythm section ramping up the tempos, Esoteric never seem to rise beyond a crawl. Every moment, every bar of their music is massive, deliberate, and inexorable.

Paragon of Dissonance (fantastic title, by the way) was my first real experience with the band. I’ve been peripherally aware of them and what they were about for years, but didn’t get around to giving them a proper listen until a friend started talking them up to me a few months ago. When listening to a new album by a band that has long since-secured its legacy, one will often find themselves comparing it to previous triumphs. The question then becomes, “Does it measure up?” But when I’m new to a band, I like knowing what they’re up to now. And I can say this… Paragon of Dissonance is a fine introduction to a band whose every move is planet-sized. It’s a double album, like most of their records, and incorporates all the sounds and scope that fans of the band have come to expect. The tracks are long, with many twisting, suite-like arrangements that morph and transform and crush with relentless purpose. The intensity of the band is thrilling, and their ability to fold different layers and textures into the immense towers of sludge and overdriven fuzz that make up most of their sound means their records can sustain interest. What’s more, their patience allows them room for them to explore and try different ideas. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes you can find yourself getting numbed by the immensity of it all. But when given a close, active listen all of these tracks have incredible power as well as fascinating stylistic detours.

The album opens with the jagged, staggering riffs of “Abandonment” as spirals of feedback peel off and pounding double bass rolls devastate the landscape. Tortured, throaty vocals erupt bile and hatred over the proceedings. It’s all harshness, abrasive noise, impossible sonic decimation and hopelessness. But Esoteric can be tuneful too. Soon the song drops into a grandly epic doom trudge that recalls Paradise Lost, or Candlemass with Mike Williams from Eyehategod fronting the band. At 13 minutes it makes for an intimidating order, but if you take a gander at the run times for these songs, it’s pretty much par for the course; 5 of the 7 tracks top 10 minutes. Sometimes it seems as though the band is simply marching into infinity, though when the payoffs emerge, they’re generally pretty astonishing. As the band builds to a mighty finale, the toms are hammered relentlessly before the drummer launches into another grinding double bass assault and a triumphant figure emerges from the tangled morass of guitars and noise.

It becomes clear pretty quickly that Esoteric are not a band who plays slow and heavy because that’s all they can handle. These guys can really play. Many of these tracks have complicated polyrhythms, and tempos shift on a dime. It’s tight, complex, and adventurous music. Although they are used sparingly, the guitar solos here are very accomplished, showing a musical, neo-classical sensibility. Esoteric are a masterfully controlled group who are not afraid to grind an idea into dust. Such an approach for skilled players takes tremendous patience and discipline.

The album’s centerpiece is the 15 minute behemoth “Disconsolate” which encompasses everything Esoteric do well. The track opens with glacial synths that sketch ghostly figures across the night sky. Phashed guitars begin to mesh with the echoing synth waves. The affect is akin to seeing one’s breath on a winter’s day. The band members enter one at a time at a measured pace. A few minutes in, a lovely piano-led space interlude floats by, before it is swallowed by the monolithic riffage that one would expect. They begin building to the main theme of the song, cruising on a Neurosis-style cosmic doom passage that while not exactly uplifiting, is also not depressive. Somewhere along the way though, the bottom drops out, and suddenly we’re being suffocated in misery. This switch up is accomplished with masterful feel for timing and impressive subtlety. It’s surprising, and it’s powerful. About halfway through, it lurches into a blackened, thrashy kind of gallop, before settling back into a spacy, ambient drift. It’s a feint though. A few moments later, a million of the heaviest guitars in the universe flatten the listener with galaxy-crushing force. You might see the switch-up coming a mile away, but it’s thrilling nonetheless. And that’s what makes Esoteric great – the ability to recombine familiar ingredients in ways that still have the power to excite. A doom riff soon oozes out of the mire, as the drums begin their relentless march, and despondent, torturous vocals wallow in the quagmire of distortion. When the whole thing collapses into a wandering, searching psychedelic bridge, it’s only a breather, albeit one that finds time to show off some gorgeous lead tones. Soon the band ramps up the tempo, pummeling with grinding double bass rolls and slabs of thick, brutal guitars and heavily swollen bass. Ultimately, the track climaxes with a fleet-fingered classic metal tapestry worthy of Iron Maiden, topped by a thrilling, heroic guitar solo.

This thing tops out at an hour and thirty-four minutes, and it’s not exactly something you can listen to on your way to work. There is nothing particularly pleasant or hummable about these songs. Every song sounds like the end of the world, with the band summoning all of their skill to evoke utter annihilation. It’s a daunting listen, and one than can be outright exhausting at times. But there is a place for music like this, even if it ‘aint houseparties. Paragon of Dissonance evokes certain moods of despair and hatred that we feel in our everyday lives.  Because sometimes, life is just a terrible disappointment, and you wish everyone who was on your case was just fucking dead.

Rundown

The initial life cycle of metal and rock from genesis to the distillation of their various subgenres was more or less complete by the mid '90s. With high tech recording techniques, fully developed distribution systems, worldwide fan bases and codified musical parameters, extreme metal had smashed barriers and exceeded expectations, but now the music risked obsolescence. Nothing could sensibly be more brutal or heavy than the metallic extremities reached in the wake of modern black, death, and doom metal. By the time death machines like Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse had become semi-popular bands on major labels and the media circus surrounding the teen terrorists in Emperor and Mayhem subsided, things were as fast and technical and brutal and evil as metal could possibly be. Meanwhile the worlds of sludgy doom and metal-inflected hardcore were looking beyond mere velocity (or lack of it) as a barometer for their artistry. The world of heavy music began to see these disparate strains  re-connect with the lineage of Sabbath (with an assist from the glut of decidedly non-metal grunge and heavy alternative bands now saturating the modern rock scene) and even start to incorporate industrial, psychedelic, drone, space, classical, garage rock, experimental, electronic, post rock and noise elements into the music.

The new frontier became making songs interesting and listenable and musical while still retaining the core of malevolent otherworldliness and primal aggression and power that made this stuff so darned cool in the first place. Also, the void that had existed for hard rock in the 1980s was now being filled by grunge and stoner rock bands that absorbed punk and psychedelic traditions and married them to metal musicianship. Combine this with the mainstream media virtually ignoring real metal altogether from about 1992 to 2004 (Pantera notwithstanding) and what you have is the makings of a complete organic regeneration of the heavy music underground. Young bands wanting to make a lot of noise suddenly had much wider palette to work with.

By the time I was old enough to know, the story for heavy metal was over. Iron Maiden and Metallica and blah blah blah. Modern rock meant Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. I loved those bands, but it was a thing of the past. It wasn't the shit that was going down now. Nu metal was the stuff I had access too, that and the lingering remnants of the alternative explosion a decade previously. The new hip rock coming out of the underground was in the rave-up style of the White Stripes. I liked that stuff, but I also played bass. I needed the heaviness that garage rock didn't bring, and I quickly grew disenchanted with the overly slick and calculated "Fuck you!" and hip hop posturing of the likes of Limp Bizkit that was on TV. This is the environment that I came to heavy music in as a teenager in the early '00s. I had no older siblings and few friends who were in to music the way I was, so I figured most of this stuff out on my own.  I listened to our local radio stations and learned some there, but most of my education came from books, and eventually, the internet.

Only once I could download music was I really able to grasp on to the fact that there were awesome bands making music right now. And I had access to them. Sure, some of the knowledge was second hand, but just knowing that these bands were going concerns was enough to make me feel like I was for once part of the zeitgeist, not wishing I was in Seattle in 1992 or San Francisco in 1985, or Detroit in 1968. So here is a list of some of my favorite records during the time I was learning about just what kind of music I liked. Sure, in some cases I didn't find out about these records until years after they were released. But they hadn't been canonized. No one was telling me they were classics. I just decided for myself.

Neurosis - Through Silver In Blood (1996)
Neurosis were pretty entrenched as icons of the metal underground went by the time I got into them. I did try a few times to get into them, but it didn't quite click. Still, I didn't know anybody who actually listened to them, so the first time I heard this on my headphones late at night while walking through a misty moonlit field, the sheer universe-collapsing force of "Purify" was a revelation. I couldn't believe anything could be that heavy. It introduced me to post-metal, in which the elemental force of the riffs could be married to dynamic arrangements and psychedelic layering in a way that still seems fresh to me today. A thousand imitators have come and gone, but no one has done it better than the originators.

Boris - Amplifier Worship (1998)
These guys had to be insane I figured. A crazy Japanese metal band named after a Melvins song who released a new album like every month in a totally different style? Ridiculous. Feedbacker, Floods, Rainbow, Pink, Absolutego, Heavy Rocks, Dronevil and Akuma No Uta all have their charms, but this one has always been my favourite. (And, incidentally, the namesake for this here blog.) Godly heavy walls of guitar, droning palls of feedback and an agile rhythm section that could downshift from meaty thrash to an ocean of fuzz and noise, incomprehensible vocals and titles to die for. ("Vomitself"?) I've worshiped at their altar ever since.

Electric Wizard - Dopethrone (2000)
At first, this band was just a rumor to me. Stories of a bong-blasted trio of basement dwellers in deepest, darkest Dorset singing hymns of burning witches and black masses at midnight captured my imagination. The internet was a different place then, and I had a hard time discerning much about them, other than that these were bad people up to no good. Finally I came across a few of their records. And while my personal favourites are still Supercoven and Come My Fanatics, this is the LP that all others will be measured against. It's not as spacey or as raw, but it's definitely the heaviest thing they ever did. Or anyone else for that matter. To me, they're still the heaviest band in the universe. Dopethrone is an obelisk, a monument, a giant heavy thing. It's irreducible, ireeductable and irreplaceable. Fuck off. The wizard canes harder.

High On Fire - The Art Of Self Defense (2000)
I was already way into Sleep when I heard that Matt Pike had a new band that was more overtly metal influenced. Needless to say it wasn't long before I was in love with this and their second record, Surrounded By Thieves. Behemoths like "Baghdad," "Blood From Zion" and especially "10,000 Years" took the lumbering sludge of Sleep, ramped up the tempo and turned in that band's stoned majesty for sheer bloodlust. George Rice's bass tone on "Fireface" could liquefy solid tissue. While I believe they eventually bettered themselves as a band as Pike's vocals improved and they found their sound by rotating through different bassists and producers, sometimes I still think this is my favorite from them.

Tool - Lateralus (2001)
When Schism hit the airwaves at my local rock station, I didn't know what to think. Who are these guys with their 6 and a half minute songs and weird claymation videos? The singer from A Perfect Circle? I like those guys! And this is his other band? They played a show in Vancouver in about November of 2001, and I toyed with the idea of going to see them. I didn't, but I bought the record about 3 weeks later, and I've regretted missing out ever since. Lateralus is a desert island top 5 record for me. After all these years I can still get lost in it, the hidden meanings and mathematical allusions and coded messages of it continue to fascinate me, while the brooding instrumental attack of the band is still as powerful to me as anything.

Sunn O))) - Flight Of The Behemoth (2002)
I first read about these guys in a magazine which had a picture of them with their hooded robes. I knew they did kind of an update on the first couple Earth records, none of which I knew too well. I didn't know at the time that they were the same guys in Burning Witch, Khanate and Goatsnake, other impossibly heavy bands I was getting into at the time. So I basically bought this on a whim. And it immediately fell flat for me. I dug the heaviness, but it was too monolithic, too boring. And the Merzbow tracks wierded me out. I liked the idea of the band far more than their actual music, and soon filed the disc away to be forgotten about. It wasn't until several years later did I revisit it and finally -got- what this was about. And to be honest, it's not their best album. But the day it finally clicked for me was when I decided to give it another try on maximum volume and realized that the last song is actually a slowed down version of Metallica's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" and that this is the very essence of pure sound, slowed down, stretched out and distended. It's the moment that huge riff drops, but continued on into infinity. And I still have a hard time with Merzbow's out of tune piano pounding.

Comets On Fire - Blue Cathedral (2004)
This was the first really cool record that I got into without any outside hype at all. I at least knew who most of these bands were before I heard their music. But Comets was a total impulse buy. I read a single review and dropped the cash. And it was like nothing I'd ever heard. They took parts of the Blue Cheer/Hawkwind/Iron Butterfly type acid rock I'd been digging for a long time by then, slathered it in all kinds of noise and feedback, and kicked out the jams in a way that sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard. It was new, and it was some of the most exciting music I'd ever heard. And it was all mine.

Isis - Panopticon (2004)
I listened to a little of Oceanic when it came out, but I didn't love it... I felt like Isis were mostly Neurosis clones, and I wasn't all that interested in them either. It wasn't until I finally did see Tool live with Isis opening that I truly got it. The circling drift of "So Did We" and "Backlit" captivated me while the walls of guitar washed over me. For whatever reason, it was the experience of seeing them onstage that unlocked Isis for me... and suddenly the albums made sense. I can't really explain why, but I do know that I still come back to this record time and time again despite having grown weary of the avalanche of post metal copycats that saturated metal in the late '00s.

Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)
Mastodon were a whole new thing for me. They were a metal band, but they rearranged the pieces of Voivod and Metallica records and brought in all kinds of other influences that completely turned my understanding of music on it's head. Not to mention, I actually read Moby Dick because of this album. And you know what, the beginning and the end are great, but the middle is really just an 1850s whaling manual.

Black Mountain - Black Mountain (2005)
These guys are from Vancouver and are still responsible for some of the best live shows I've ever seen. But we before that, I remember reading an article about them in which they were compared to "glue-sniffing shredders of yesteryear like "Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd." That still seems on the money. I just remember those endless sustained synthesizer washes exploding into a lurching triple time riff march on "Don't Run Our Hearts Around" followed by the kraut-riffing of "Druganaut" blowing my mind. It was like hearing classic rock for the first time.

Dead Meadow - Feathers (2005)
Dead Meadow took shoegaze and stoner rock and spliced them together to create something that to me will always evoke hazy summer afternoons. I was already into stoner rock, but when I heard these guys for the first time, it seemed different. They were ethereal and pretty, but still had heavy riffs and gorgeously fuzzed out wah-guitar leads. When most of the shoegaze type stuff I'd heard seemed overly precious, these guys were heavy. They were rocking out. And it had the transportive, meditative feel I loved about psychedelic music. I love all their records, but this one stands the tallest.

The Top 50 Albums of 2013

Usually I write a big long overview of the year that was here, but these things are plenty long as it is. Besides, if you're not interested enough to find your own stuff that you like by now, you're beyond saving.

50. Monster Magnet – Last Patrol
Monster Magnet’s always struggled to live up to their early career space rock mastery. For a while they didn’t seem to mind, trending inexorably from Powertrip onward into an overproduced cock-rock behemoth. Records like God Says No and Mastermind have excellent moments, with a few vintage Monster Magnet atom-smashers and the odd interesting twist on their classic heavy rock toolkit, but it’s hard not to miss the lo-fi, blacklight-lit basement feel of their early 90s work. Last Patrol seeks to change that. “I Live Behind The Clouds” starts off with minimal, quiet picking that ultimately explodes into a gorgeously fuzzed out lead line. It’s a startling choice to open the album, far from the slick arena rock that dominates this band’s recent records. Dave Wyndorf ups the ante on the second track, a 9 minute workout that’s more monolithic than anything the band has done in a decade. Throughout, you get periods of spacious drift and wooshing synthesizers, and the sound is much muddier and darker than the ultra compressed radio-ready sheen the last few records had. Monster Magnet aren’t gonna surprise people anymore. But they’re still making decent records which should appeal to fans, and this is as good as anything they've done in the past ten or fifteen years.

49. Jex Thoth – Blood Moon Rise
I absolutely worship Jex Thoth’s self titled 2008 debut. The Master of Reality trudge and gothic cemetery ambience of that record hooked me in a way that only early Witchcraft and possibly Graveyard and Blood Ceremony have done in recent years. I’m pleased to say that while Blood Moon Rise isn’t the candle-lit fertility ceremony that first record was, it is an excellent slab of doomy occult rock in a world quickly becoming overpopulated with also-rans. Everything I liked about that record is here. Bewitching female vocals, classic 70s riffs, B-movie horror film vibes, grooving psychedelic interludes, ripping guitar playing and a thundering rhythm section.  My only complaint is that it isn’t nearly as raw as their self-titled LP, which was a big part of the charm. But I suppose that’s always the way.

48. Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn
This is gonna be the soundtrack to my next Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Longtime black metal loremasters Summoning have been releasing records based on Tolkien’s Middle Earth since the mid ‘90s. This was my introduction to them, a grandiose mix of somber chanting, marching drum machines, sheets of dense, distorted guitars and epic war horns. The Viking metal of Bathory and Enslaved are obvious touchstones, but somehow this record feels less inclined to loot and pillage and more likely to pose heroically over sweeping vistas in a mythical world before time. It rarely goes faster than mid-tempo, and there aren't any blast beats. If only Peter Jackson would smarten up already and hire these guys to soundtrack the next Hobbit movie.

47. Darkthrone - The Underground Resistance
So I didn’t know this, but apparently Darkthrone has reinvented themselves in the past decade. I’ve always been a fan of their seminal early  records, particularly A Blaze In The Northern Sky, which were at the forefront of the second wave black metal movement in early 90s Norway. Thing is though, while their peers were burning churches and spending time in jail for murder, Darkthrone decided to take their music seriously, churning out about a dozen albums or so and generally accepting their transformation from teen terrorists to career musicians. And what’s more, while some of their peers clung to a doctrine that rejected earlier and more populist strains of metal and punk, Darkthrone went back to all the hardcore and classic heavy metal that they loved as kids. The result? In 2013, Darkthrone is a vanguard classic heavy metal band, incorporating their grim early sounds into a more musical albeit conventional framework not too far removed from Judas Priest or Iron Maiden.  And this is an excellent example of that transition, with twisting and interesting compositions that feature uplifting peaks, gut-wrenching lows and accomplished musicianship. I did not see that coming.

46. Destruction Unit – Deep Trip
Deep Trip is a record aptly named. Similar to Comets on Fire or the Psychic Paramount, Destruction Unit play noisy, heavy garage psych. There are no cool drifting interludes to speak of here, just full-throttle rocking out slathered in feedback, distortion, and all manner of sound-warping effects pedals. It’s spacey, but fuzzed out and aggressive, exactly the way I like my rock. With an opening track called “The World On Drugs,” you pretty much know what you’re gonna get right away. Just be prepared to have your plastic brain melted like an army man in a microwave.

45. Mouth Of The Architect – Dawning
This vast collection of well-written and superbly performed post metal epics is Mouth Of The Architect’s first record in five years, and it’s probably the finest album of their career. From impossibly dense Neurosis-style catharsis to absolutely gorgeous shimmering guitar interludes and fabulous use of silence, Dawning is a dynamic, gloriously textured and multilayered masterpiece. Stunning, triumphant guitar melodies duel with guttural, bellowed gang vocals to form a sound that’s psychedelic, crushing, and beautiful. The blueprint for this kind of stuff was laid out at least a decade and a half ago, but there is still valuable music being made in the style by bands with skill, creativity and ambition.

44. The Flaming Lips – The Terror
I dig where the Flaming Lips have gone the last few years. As much as everyone thinks Soft Bulletin is an indie pop masterpiece, I rarely listen to it. I always preferred the weirder and funnier Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, or for that matter, noisy stuff like their early classic “Jesus Shootin’ Heroin.” That’s why I absolutely adored 2009’s Embryonic, a twisted, dark and experimental double record without any “hits” and whose best song was a riff monster called “Worm Mountain.” The ghosts of Saucer Full Of Secrets or Ummagumma were palpable, as this iconic and tremendously popular band used their status to make the most overtly weird and experimental record of their career a good 25 years after they started. Here, they've gotten even darker, drawing out druggy krautrock grooves and exploratory jams. One of the writers at pitchfork called it "unforgivably bleak," but I'm cool with more of this.

43. Vista Chino – Peace
The Kyuss Lives! reunion didn’t take long to get squashed by Josh Homme’s lawyers. (Fair enough, Scott Reeder too… I love him but come on, don’t be a dick, be a dude.) The result was that Brandt Bjork, Jon Garcia, Nick Oliveri and former Arsenal guitarist Bruno Fevery formed this groovy desert rock project. And maybe the name change in the end is appropriate, since this is a much mellower and more psychedelic album than anything Kyuss ever did. Sure, with this kind of firepower in a band, you’re gonna find some blasting rockers and cruising riffs, but on the whole the record is a much more chill, laid-back slow burner. There’s plenty of gorgeous shimmering clean tones here, and Fevery sounds right at home, playing in his own unique style. Hewing far closer to Yawning Man than Black Sabbath, Peace is a perfect album for a sunny day with friends or a long drive with the windows down. A lot of people don’t dig Jon Garcia’s voice, but I think he totally nails the vibe here, and honestly stays out of the way enough when the band gets cooking that it shouldn’t even matter. Plus, it kicks the shit out of that new Queens record. Let’s be honest here. Josh Homme is a dick, and he hasn’t made a good record since 2005 and hasn’t made a great one in a decade.

42. Cathedral – The Last Spire
One of my favourite bands ever is ending their career on a high note. Having retired from live performance the previous year, all that remained was to make this understandably named record. Everything you want to hear from Cathedral is here. Gaz Jennings lays down some of his heaviest riffs to date and calls down the Iommi-like thunder and lightning. Lee Dorrian brings a healthy dose of the macabre... although very little about this record is tongue-in-cheek. It probably shares the most musical DNA with 2001’s superb Endtyme, and is nowhere near as overtly proggy as the last few albums. It’s a little under an hour long, and says everything it needs to say and no more. It’s a graceful end to a fantastic 25 year career.

41. Atlantean Kodex - The White Goddess
I didn’t really give this record a chance until it started popping up on so many year-end best of lists. For whatever reason, I just assumed it to be another sword and sorcery power metal tome in the style of Wintersun or Epica… not there is anything wrong with that, just that I haven’t been craving those sounds as much the last couple years. Turns out I was wrong… The White Goddess is much darker and heavier than that, while still showing off the veneer of something grand. These German metallurgists take the grandiosity and compositional complexity of classic heavy metal as a template while shooting for something a little bit darker and heavier. There is of course, plenty of Helloween in this band’s speed metal DNA, but you can also think of classic metal like Exciter with Iron Maiden’s pretentions, or Metallica’s version of that Mercyful Fate medley. They don’t exactly muddy themselves in the gutters of hardcore punk and extreme metal, but if you like your heavy metal rousing and anthemic but you can’t deal with harpsichord solos, you should give this a listen. Also, I’ve seen a lot of people singing the praises of In Solitude’s “Sister” on year-end lists. I like that band, but that record didn’t really stick with me. Atlantean Kodex have with a similar sound, but I think they did it much better.

40. Pond – Hobo Rocket
There is no doubt that the guys who made Hobo Rocket had a good time doing it. Afterall, their main gig is for psych pop iconoclasts Tame Impala. And although there are obvious similarities, (both make multicoloured psych records that make extensive use of the recording studio to manipulate their performances) Pond are much more laid back. Where Tame Impala’s records are meticulously assembled and tasteful, Pond’s albums have a goofy “let’s try this!” charm to them that seems more immediate and laid back. And as much as I enjoyed last year’s Beard, Wives, Denim, I have to say that Hobo Rocket is a step up for Pond. It’s a little bit harder and freakier, with the band intent on rocking out and filtering their concussive jams through an excessive array of guitar store gadgetry. But it also sports a sense of humor that most bands lack. Sure, not everything here works, but on the high points, like on “Whatever Happened to the Million Head Collide?” and “Aloneaflameaflower” (The Flaming Lips want their song titles back.) the band has a bong-blasted, fuzz-fried good time while working in plenty of mellow grooves amid the crunchy dollar-store riffs. In other works, Hobo Rocket is a sunny, fun record for that goes well with blacklights and headphones, but its best for drinking beers in a park with friends.

39. Morne – Shadows
Morne are a Boston doom metal band known for sprinkling bits of ambient noise, ghostly vocals, weeping strings and uptempo thrash into their trudging torpor. This time out however, they’ve cut back on the frills to collapse their sound back to its essence. The result is a 5 track album that’s just a shade under 50 minutes in length, a lumbering, suffocating riff monster that swallows up the listener in a sticky pit of blackness. This is traditional doom metal, similar to Pallbearer’s fantastic Sorrow and Extinction from last year. Morne draw from the Candlemass school of classic doom, meaning it’s arching, epic, and powerful, and not really abrasive at all. Instead it’s a highly enjoyable doom record for those who love their low frequencies.

38. Savages – Silence Yourself
Without getting into the politics and the manifestos and the hype surrounding this furious blast of monochromatic post-punk, let me just get right to the point. This is a very good record, packed front-to-back with great songs. Aggressively picked basslines, spare, driving precussion, guitars that stab like knives and braying female vocals combine to make a sound that owes a lot to the early 80s UK underground. But pissed off tracks like “Shut Up,” “City’s Full” and “Strife” are as catchy and exhilarating as they are noisy, and that’s reason enough to like them in my book.

37. Carcass – Surgical Steel

I didn’t expect to like this record as much as I did. But as soon as the opening Thin Lizzy-style twin melodic leads exploded into a full tilt thrasher, these long defunct veterans grabbed my attention back like I was 16 hearing Heartwork for the first time. I was never among the legions of fans who slagged the gothernberg take on alternative rock that was Swansong, and I’ve always enjoyed the updating of classic heavy metal stylings that Arch Enemy has made their career on. Still, it was quite exhilarating to hear the old band raging with a level of brutality and technicality not seen since the early '90s. Make no mistake, this is just like a mid-period Carcass record, complete with jaw-dropping lead guitar work and no attempt made to compromise their sound for the sake of mass acceptance. The sound is a little cleaner and sharper, but it really just enhances their attack. A very welcome return from a band I had no idea I missed so much.

36. Vhöl - Vhöl
This unforgiving blast of decimating, state-of-the-art metal is the work of a supergroup formed by members of Ludicra, YOB and Hammers of Misfortune. Very similar in approach to their east coast counterparts Krallice, Vhöl mix ultra-proficient technicality with remorseless brutality in a way that doesn’t fit comfortably into either a black metal or death metal box. What’s more though, despite the restlessness of these compositions, they are a little bit more concise than Krallice, with the odd snatch of melody appearing here and there. I’ve always been a fan of YOB’s Mike Scheidt, and hearing his voice divorced from the trudging morass of those doom metal titans and placed in a more hyperactive context is truly a revelation.  I don’t know if the project was intended to be a one-off, but if it is, they truly hit the mark.

35. Skagos – Anarchic
This mysterious black metal band is best known for a split release they did with Kentucky contemporaries Panopticon in 2010. Apparently they're from Vancouver Island, but I've never seen any mention of them locally. I was familiar with them through their excellent 2009 record Ast, a record that defined them as part of the Cascadian black metal movement by melding shoegazey atmospherics to frigid blastbeats similar to Wolves in the Throne Room. In fact, I was able to find out very little about them period. In any event, this sprawling, multiheaded beast of a record impressed me immensely. There are no song titles, just three 18-24 minute tracks, each divided into multiple chapters. The intent is obvious… Anarchic is an album meant to be swallowed whole. That would be an intimidating proposition if the record weren’t so immediately enjoyable. But these sprawling compositions are immensely rewarding, with long post-metal builds leading to huge payoffs of furious blackened thrash, and some absolutely gorgeous tones. Somehow Skagos seem warmer and more authentic than your average post-black metal band, and the organic approach works for them. I’m just hoping they come out to play around town soon.

34. FIDLAR - FIDLAR
I have a feeling that acronym starts with some variation on the word “Fuck.” FIDLAR do rambunctious and heavily inebriated garage rock. From the first track to the last it’s non stop loud guitars and odes to getting wasted. I can’t not love a song that has “I drink cheap beer! So what? Fuck you!” as it’s chorus.

33. FUZZ – FUZZ
Ty Segall formed a power trio to play drums with and the result is a fuzzed out, high-energy rock and roll band. Shocking.

32. Clutch – Earth Rocker
In over 20 years of trying, Clutch have never made a perfect album. There’s always something holding them back from releasing that defining record. I’d pick 1995’s Clutch, or 2004’s Blast Tyrant if forced to nametheir best, but really you always know what to expect… a handful of absolute no-nonsense kickass rock n roll classics, an oddball experiement or two, and then a whole lot of generic but generally pretty ballsy riffs. Neil Fallon will make you laugh a bunch of times and maybe even blow your mind once or twice, and Tim Sult will tear a whole in the universe with his guitar a whole bunch. Every few years they do something to shake up their sound a little bit, but more or less they’ve always remained a straight ahead American hard rock band. And while Earth Rocker is no different in this regard, it does seem to be invigorated by the band’s prospect of rocking out after a five year wait since the last Clutch record. Make no mistake, Clutch came to ROCK, and they do it with the kind of single-minded determination they haven’t shown since the aptly titled Pure Rock Fury. “Crucial Velocity” is the best track here, sporting a relentless drive, vicious chorus, and mindbending guitar solo by Sult all into a perfect four minute rock song. At just over 44 minutes, its leaner and packs more of a punch than anything they’ve released in years.

31. Castevet – Obsian
Mounds of Ash was one of the best metal albums of 2010, although I just became aware of these guys about a year ago. Similar to the kind of ground Vhöl explored this year, Castevet play with constantly shifting rhythms and tempos to keep the listener continually off balance. The harsh vocals and heavy use of tremolo picking mark this as black metal, but that’s too limiting a term for what they do here. And while there is no doubt these Brooklyn firebands are a punishing collective, they also take the time to add subtle harmonic-drenched washes and a definite sense of melody. The excellent production is clear and extremely listenable without seeming at all too slick. It’s continuously restless and aggressive music that still manages to create space through effective sonic layering, allowing the details to shine through. There are endless details here which reward close listening on headphones, but the whole thing is so powerful that it works equally well as a soundtrack to violent video games or a night of raising hell. There is no post-anything to be found here, no comparisons to Deafheaven or anything that could be expected to cross over. Instead it’s a complex, aggressive modern metal album that doesn’t fit easily into one particular style.

30. Tim Hecker – Virgins
Canadian Tim Hecker has been consistently releasing quality ambient drone records for over a decade to ever-increasing critical acclaim. On Virgins, he continues to expand his sonic palette, recording a group of live musicians in a room together and essentially cutting up these sounds and letting them decay.  The effect on the source material is spacious and natural, as this music is as much about the live performance as Hecker’s post-performance sound manipulation. This makes for an immediacy that many of his records lack. Hecker’s music has always retained an organic quality that has kept it largely out of step with prevailing trends in electronic music. Although personally I preferred his last album, 2011’s Ravedeath 1972, Hecker’s newest opus is sure to please fans and win converts.

29. The Growlers – Gilded Pleasures
These guys have really grown on me in the past year. In early 2013 they released their excellent Hung at Heart album, and then in the autumn, this record appeared. I prefer it over the first, mainly because I found a few of the songs to be more immediate. But their surf-soaked roots rock and interesting word play has a way of sinking itself into your brain. Whether its an odd turn of phrase, or a sentiment that strikes a chord, There always seems to be some new detail to examine. And it’s pretty awesome that the best song on the album is called “Pretend I’m Gay.”

28. Iceage – You’re Nothing
Iceage is a band that’s aptly named. Everything about them seems chilly, claustrophobic and unforgiving. This album’s opening track “Ecstacy” is two and a half minutes of pure terror, ripping through a noise punk rager for the first half, and then dropping to a catastrophic half-time rumble punctuated by a relentless kickdrum and a tortured wail of “PRESSURE, PRESSURE, OH GOD NO!!!!” before a piercing feedback solo swallows the vocals. It’s the kind of song careers are built on, and although nothing else on the record can touch it, You’re Nothing is still a solid listen all the way though. At 28 minutes, it’s a lean, powerful blast of noisy art punk that owes a lot to the likes of Joy Division’s existential dread and the malicious growl of the Jesus Lizard, as well as the more recent A Place To Bury Strangers. Plus it sounds amazing too, with a suffocating production job that hits hard and draws you in. I bet we’ll hear plenty more about these guys in the coming year.

27. Woe – Withdrawal

This is a flesh-ripping beast of a black metal record without a trace of fat on it. Unlike so many black metal bands these days, Withdrawal does not comfortably fall into either the opulent experimentalist or the raw, traditionalist camps. These songs are lean, vicious and hungry even at 6 or 7 minutes in length. They’re full of relentless instrumental twists and turns, but Woe don’t forget to incorporate subtle little touches to keep things interesting and toy with dynamics a bit. The production is sharp, powerful and in your face, but not slick or glossy. Unlike some of the 2013’s other top metal records, like those by Deafheaven, Inter Arma and Oranssi Pazuzu, this will not appeal at all to non-metal heads. And that’s kinda the way I like it… afterall, this record isn’t for them.

26. Jon Hopkins – Immunity
I was not familiar with Jon Hopkins before a friend played his newest album for me, but I immediately adored it. Immunity is a pot-pourri of all the things about weird electronic music I like. Skittering glitch, 90s style IDM, death-disco dance beats, ambient drift, ominous sub bass and textured synthesizer washes all come together to form an engaging, interesting listen. Works equally well as futuristic party soundtrack that’ll make you look really cool, or as a solitary headphone listen to soundtrack a long walk home after dark.

25. Boards Of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest
It’s like this, see. If you like Boards Of Canada, you’ll think this album is a fantastic expression of their genius for texture and mood. And if you don’t, it’ll seem like paint drying. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from these guys, but they do manage to build tension and vary their tonal colours quite a bit throughout. it sounds amazing and it’s a satisfying listen from beginning to end. If you ask me, it’s better than Geogaddi but not as good as Music Has The Right To Children, and about on par with The Campfire Headphase. The first track opens with what sounds like my first computer starting up.

24. Church Of Misery – Thy Kingdom Scum
This Japanese stoner doom quartet returns with an album that barely messes with their winning formula, and that’s totally fine with me. Lineup turnover has caused their activity to be sporadic at times over their going on two-decade career, but the constant has been their ass-kicking take on very heavy Black Sabbath-inspired psychedelic hard rock. This isn’t some mournful dirgefest or another addition to the phalanx of occult rock bands coming out of the woodwork – Church Of Misery are here to rock out. Once again they name a bunch of their songs after serial killers and the riffs pack a mean gut punch. One of the best heavy rock albums of the year from a bunch of vets who are sticking with what works.

23. Earthless – From The Ages
The first Earthless studio record since 2007’s Rythms From A Cosmic Sky is also their most sprawling and dynamic ever. Granted, when talking about this band, “dynamic” is a bit of a relative term – if you didn’t come looking to hear endless face-melting guitar solos, you might as well just check out now. Still, the guys play with a few gentler textures and bits of floating ambience throughout. It’s also a little bit more layered and overtly psychedelic than earlier records. Still, by now you know what you’re getting with these guys. It also features a studio version of the title track, which had previously appeared on their Live at Roadburn album. That alone is worth the price of admission.

22. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Unknown Mortal Orchestra II
Jagjaguwar’s Unknown Mortal Orchestra do an eclectic take on prog-laced psychedelic pop. Off-kilter harmonies and odd time signatures abound as all manner of psychedelic effects bedeck this immersive headphone record. The odd fuzz guitar is balanced with delicate acoustics as the band works with a wide palette of sonic colours. These enjoyably catchy yet weird songs are chock full of unsettling and amusing lyrics, and I rarely pay much attention to lyrics. Not many overtly psychedelic records this year really caught my ear, but this was definitely one of them.

21. Primitive Man - Scorn
The debut album by this crusty Colorado sludgecore unit opens with an almost 12 minute long  blasted-out hatefest as malevolent as anything in Eyehategod’s discography. But while those misanthropes were content to wallow in pools of feedback and agony, Primitive Man are far more hyperactive. Just as a doomy riff seems prepared to collapse on itself, the band explodes into raw, full speed blasting that rivals some grindcore bands for paint-peeling harshness. This is a example of modern metal, with no “post” or “black” prefixes attatched to it.

20. Haxan Cloak - Excavation
The swinging noose on the cover of this album pretty much says it all – Excavation is a very dark electronic record. Its bleak soundscapes and ominous pulses seem to imply creeping dread at every turn. There is plenty of deep, deep synthetic sub bass going on here, but it’s about as far removed from Stadium-filling IDM and candy-coated bro-step as you can get. This isn’t a comedown after the party… it’s the soundtrack for the shut-in who never went.

19. Howling Wind – Vortex
Opening and closing with a pair of palette-clearing dark ambient numbers, the meat of Vortex is relentless, icy black metal, done huge and punishing. Sharp playing, bottomless energy, fierce compositional complexity and a healthy dose of evil atmosphere add up to a powerful statement from a band that’s shown an impressive ability to reinvigorate a tired formula. You won’t find any post-anything crescendos or meandering psychedelic interludes here. Instead, Vortex gets in, makes its point with a vicious beatdown, and then fades into the night. It might leave your head spinning, but you’ll have no doubt that SOMETHING just ran you over in the winter night.

18. Nails - Abandon All Life
It took longer for me to write this review than it will take these sludgy west coast hardcore stalwarts to kick your ass.

17. Kadavar - Abra Kadavar
When people say that there aren’t any rock bands anymore, what they really mean is that they aren’t listening to bands like Kadavar. And while it may be true that radio programmers won’t touch them and they’ll probably never fill a stadium, you can’t tell me these guys don’t know how to rock like its 1971. Longhaired and loud, bell-bottomed and bold, this German power trio plays the kind of “real rock and roll” that supposedly died out decades ago. Well, that’s a fucking lie, it is. ‘Cuz when these guys lay down the thunder, complete with swinging, strutting drums, fuzzy slabs of pig iron bass, overdriven tube amp guitar riffs, melodic, wailing wah-heavy leads and strained, doped-up rock god vocals,  all topped off with a vintage analog production and gotta-be-recorded-live immediacy, well kids, you just gotta fess up.  Abra Kadavar bests their self-titled debut by tightening up the songwriting and working more than a few ratty earworms into the riffs, and the effect is as pleasing as it is pummeling. Even though it’s longer than their first record, the better and more concise compositions here make for a more engaging listen. “Black Snake” does that thing where the vocals follow the guitar that Hendrix and Led Zep loved to do, but with a more raw, dungeon-dwelling Sir Lord Baltimore-on-a-bad-trip-vibe to it. “Rythm for Endless Minds” rides floating, psychedelic effects over a stone groove, and “The Man I Shot” tops it off with Bloodrock-worthy morbidity and 7 minutes of off the rails jamming you just KNOW would have gotten them banned from the radio back in the day. These guys ‘aint trying to wield the hammer of the gods, they just want to hang out with the bong in the basement. And the ultra-catchy stop-start riffs of “Doomsday Machine” are simply the best thing this band has ever done. Rock and roll never left. You just need to look for it.

16. Batillus - Concrete Sustain
I was a big fan of this Boston doom metal group’s first record, 2011’s Furnace. It’s crushing riffs and suffocating density made it one of the year’s heaviest offerings. I’m happy to report that Concrete Sustain one-ups that excellent debut by improving the band’s sound in terms of musicality and expanding their use of industrial textures without sacrificing an iota of heaviness – these guys are as harsh and unforgiving a band as you will hear. The mechanical pulse of the album lends it a rigid, martial quality that's lacking in the more droning or mournful approaches favored by most doom metal bands these days. And although the vocals are heavily distorted, there is still somehow room for tunefulness amid the throat-shredding terror. From the opening track’s mantra of “SUSTAIN AND DOMINATE” to the almost nine-minute closer “Thorns”, Batillus have created one of the most abrasive yet musically satisfying metal albums of the year.

15. Purling Hiss – Water on Mars
Water on Mars’ opening track “Lolita” is the best Nirvana song the band never wrote. Purling Hiss mainman Mike Polizze has Kurt’s trademark laconic drawl and strained bleating down, not to mention the fuzz guitar is a dead ringer for a prime Incesticide cut. Saint Kurt’s ghost is there in the self-pitying refrain of “Hey man… I’m feelin’ cold and lonely!” as amps overheat and crash cymbals get punished. Purling Hiss then pull an abrupt left turn on “Mercury Retrograde,” a slacker anthem complete with fuzzed out and melodic leads that J Mascis would be proud of. It’s all very fun stuff, particularly if you happen to be the right age to have grown up with late 80s or early 90s alternative music, but is the record more than a sum of its influences? Well, yes and no. You’ve probably heard these songs, or variations of them before. But Polizze has a way with words and he knows how to hammer home the hook. “Rat Race” name checks the Stooges “Real Cool Time” but discards the nihilism of that band for an altogether catchier sound, while “The Harrowing Wind” lays down some dynamite “Whoo-ooo’s” in the verses that’ll get stuck in your head for days. Not only that, but Water on Mars finally boasts a production job that enhances the songs rather than detracts from them… a serious stumbling point on their earlier lo-fi records for me. Polizze’s decision to record the album as a power trio rather than just as a one-man project is also a plus, as these songs rock harder and deliver more heft than anything they’ve managed previously. Water on Mars is the kind of rock album that has been made many times before, but Purling Hiss re-arrange the pieces to produce a compelling and memorable record.

14. ASG – Blood Drive
ASG are a modern psychedelic heavy rock band that nods to metal, classic, stoner and southern rock, and the heavier end of 90s alternative. With a great singer and hooks to spare, it’s not too hard to imagine some of these songs getting played on the radio. Jason Shi has the kind of soaring voice that gets metal horns and lighters in the air, while the band has a strong command of dynamics and songcraft. This record is a real “front to backer,” with one solid and memorable tune after another. The first time I listened to the record I found myself noting the title of every track as I went, because each song sounded so good on its own. Similar to recent records by Baroness, Kylesa, Torche, the Sword and Red Fang, ASG are another excellent rock band that could be very popular if the right media outlets embraced it.

13. Inter Arma – Sky Burial
This Richmond, Virginia unit has truly outdone itself with this imposing monument of an album. Much like Deafheaven’s successful incorporation of shoegaze and extreme metal influences, Inter Arma’s gorgeous multicoloured take on sludgy post rock is a forward-thinking hybrid of heavy metal, mind-expanding psychedelia and rural Americana. These are epic, ambitious compositions, five of which are between 9 and 14 minutes in length. But the ingredients are mixed in such a way as to maximize impact and emotional heft. Far from another exercise in Isis-worshipping post rock, Sky Burial is a record which breaks new ground for metal, while still making such advances accessible to a wide swath of music fans. That excites my very much.

12. Blood Ceremony - The Eldritch Dark
Every October I get into this phase where I become obsessed with occult rock. Maybe it has something to do with Halloween, the darkening days, or maybe it’s just the fact that everything around me seems to be dying. Somehow, the spookiness of ceremonial proto-doom heavy rock like Pentagram, Pagan Altar, Witchfinder General (and ya know… Black Sabbath) seems to suit the mood of the season. And while those torch bearers kept the flame alive for many years, it seems that these days occult rock bands are crawling out of the woodwork. Ghost BC got far more attention for their major label debut than that disappointing record deserved, but the fact is, this stuff isn’t too hard to get into. Far better are these Canadian heavy prog freaks, who mix plenty of Hammond organ and Jethro Tull-style lead flute in with their heavy rock workouts. Singer Alia O’Brien possesses a bewitching voice ideally suited for songs about pagan ceremonies and drudic rituals. The band meanwhile play a nifty blend of psychedlia, dark proto metal and gothic prog. This is their third album, and it’s roughly on par with the first two, which is to say, excellent.  You might hear about plenty of occult rock bands in the next year or so. This is one of the best.

11. Forest Swords – Engravings
I was a tremendous fan of Forest Swords’ 2011 album, Dagger Paths. It’s mix of ambient, dub and electronic influences made for an ultra-chill full-immersion listen. Well I’m happy to report that Engravings is a trip that delves even deeper into their singular headspace. Forest Swords know how to let dark vibes bleed into their music while keeping things groovy. I listened to it once after a night of heavy drinking when I had to get up early and go to work and I’m pretty sure it saved my life.

10. Kvelertak - Meir

Meir is the second album from this Norwegian 6-piece group, and it basically follows the same blueprint as the first. Cram all flavours of metal, hardcore and classic hard rock into one diamond-hard sound that mixes accessibility and brutality. This time out however, the songs are better, and the production is bigger. The guitarmonies are that much catchier, the builds even more triumphant. This is crust punk with stadium sized ambitions, and though none of the lyrics are sung in English at all, one can almost imagine an arena full of non-Norwegians screaming along. For you see, Kvelertak have mastered the lexicon of rock and roll, one of the only universal languages we have. And in doing so, they’ve managed to put together one of the catchiest and heaviest punk metal hybrids ever heard, and this record’s potential to appeal to fans of any type of loud guitar music is enormous.
 

9. Oranssi Pazuzu – Valonielu
These Finnish black metal experimentalists have really outdone themselves this time. Valonielu blends black metal holocaust with King Crimson’s sense of study, Pink Floyd’s synth arsenal, Queensrÿche’s bombast, Tool’s fondness for elemental grooves, and weirdness on par with the Flaming Lips. For all the attention Deafheaven’s gotten for their bold and expansive Sunbather, these guys deserve just as much credit for their ambition. Afterall, one might find extreme metal and dusty 70s prog and space rock to be strange bedfellows. Valonielu makes it work in a way that makes me wonder why it took this long for someone to figure it out.

8. Thee Oh Sees – Floating Coffin
With Thee Oh Sees having announced their hiatus just a few weeks ago, I might finally be able to catch up on all their records. I’ve heard and enjoyed most of them, but I’m sure a couple must have slipped between the cracks. John Dwyer and co have recorded music at such a torrid pace for the past 7 years or so, they certainly deserve a break. But if Floating Coffin is to be the last Thee Oh Sees record for a while, it’s yet another career peak for them. Kaleidoscopic and fuzzy in the tradition of all the best garage rock, this is neither as weird or rocking or raw as some of their more extreme records. It's also not the studio-crafted opus Castlemania was. But for sheer quality, and incorporating all of the aspects of the band’s sound that make them so interesting and fun, Floating Coffin is clearly on the same level as their very best records, and I’m not sure it’s not the best.

7. Hookworms – Pearl Mystic
As much as I love psychedelic music, I haven’t come across too much of it that’s really blown me away in the last couple of years. It seems that most bands trying to affect the out-of-body experience have either gone the psych-pop route of Tame Impala or gone down the bong-blasted genre service path traveled by the likes of the Samsara Blues Experiment. But though this stuff has generally been competent and enjoyable, none of it is particularly mind-expanding. The real masters of auditory transfiguration have gone deeper and deeper into drone, ambient and noise music in recent years. And that's great, but I still need the rock! It sustains me! Bands that try to strike that balance between the physical and the mental aren't really exciting to me the way Dead Meadow, Black Mountain and Comets on Fire were all those years ago. But the UK's Hookworms really impressed me with this excellent debut record. Far from mere sunshine addicts, Hookworms have created a dark, powerful album in the truest sense, well sequenced and dynamic. Pearl Mystic delivers the kind of sky-melting amplifier worship that I crave, without seeming like the work of a bunch of hack revivalists. Periods of ambient drift connect the heavens-scraping jams for a seamless trip through the centre of your mind. The record ebbs and flows with a perfect balance of listenability and atmosphere. When the waves of fuzz and reverb do crest, their jams truly bring the thunder, while delicate and downright gorgeous passages demonstrate their grasp of tonal colour and subtlety. It’s not the best record of the year, but there were times this year I thought it could be.

6. Deafheaven – Sunbather
People keep asking me about this band. Deafheaven’s 2011 debut album Roads to Judah was a vicious melding of black metal and post metal that took the grimness of the kvlt and the full colour textural washes of a legion of Isis imitators to create something unique. While nodding to Wolves In The Throne Room at times, Deafheaven go farther afield to work with a sound that’s brighter but just as brutal. Sunbather is the followup, supersized and widescreen. This is a lush, gorgeous opus that blends strains of shoegaze, indie rock, noise, ambient and drone music with its metal DNA. With multiple songs exceeding the ten minute mark, one might think this is a difficult record. But in fact it’s exceedingly listenable, making use of a broad range of sounds and musical techniques, and it’s all pulled off with the nuance of a band in absolute command of every aspect of their sound. As solid as their first record was, Sunbather is an absolute revelation, one that’s catapulted them to the very forefront of today’s best metal bands. Actually, they’re just one of the best bands you’ll hear anywhere, period.

5. Black Boned Angel - The End
Black Boned Angel have made a career out of recording endlessly distorted drone doom soundscapes that seem to go on forever. The End is a culmination, at once larger and louder than anything they’ve done before. Walls of guitar noise wash over you as guttural vocals neck-shackled to pillars of distortion roar in agony and drum machine patterns march inexorably into the distance, undulating in volume and presence. At no time does the record attempt to speed up or rock out…there is very little forward movement. Instead the towering monoliths of distortion crush and suffocate the listener, offering only texture and volume. It’s huge in scope and huger in sound, and impossibly monolithic. Truly a grand achievement in sonic devastation.

4. Baptists - Bushcraft
Baptists have been one of the best bands in Vancouver now for a couple years. Relentlessly aggressive and blisteringly fast, they channel all the bottomless vitriol and instensity of the best d-beat hardcore into a sludgy, crushing metal-influenced sound that’s tailor made for smashing stuff too. The record is just a shade over 27 minutes long, meaning it hardly qualifies as a full length. Still, the economy of the record works for it. These songs get in your face, pummel you, and then leave you in a ditch. I mean come on... the drumming on this album is ridiculous. The vocals sound like the singer chews glass. The guitars are just devastatingly heavy. It's a freaking ripper. And if that’s not enough for ya, consider this little couplet from the title track, “I WANNA PRACTICE BUSHCRAFT! AND LEAVE THIS SHIT BEHIND! I WANNA PRACTICE BUSHCRAFT! AND LEAVE THIS FUCKING SHIT!” Amen brother.

3. Powertrip - Manifest Decimation

I’ve read a number of articles and heard more than a few metal fans write off the mid-00s thrash revival as old hat. Someone must have forgot to tell the guys in Powertrip that, because this is the most intense and exciting metal record I’ve heard all year. There is nothing, absolutely fucking NOTHING about this record which hasn’t been done somewhere else. But the blunt ferocity, advanced songcraft and razor sharp musicianship that Powertrip manages on this record revitalizes a tired formula to create an addictive blend of thrash, death metal and crossover hardcore. With nods to the full-speed aggression of prime Slayer and Kreator alongside the meaty galloping riffs of Sodom, it’s a record that wears its influences on its sleeve, updating them without slavish imitation, and incorporating deft touches of other styles without being gimmicky. It’s similar to Black Breath’s incredible Sentenced To Life, though the production is darker and muddier and the band’s approach less overtly hardcore-influenced. At just under 35 minutes in length, Manifest Decimation makes its point in a hurry and doesn’t overstay its welcome. A fantastic debut from a band with the skill, energy and chops to give a familiar sound a much needed boot to the ass and make it fun again.

2. Kurt Vile - Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze
This is a laid back wander down an open highway. In the past, Vile's material had taken on a rambling feel that felt directionless at times. And’ while it’s neither as raw or rocking as his early records, nor is it as intimate as Smoke Ring For My Halo, this is Kurt Vile’s best album to date. Its sprawling jams shamble through a dusty, sunny haze. Cloaked in shimmering reverb, Vile’s voice and guitar are difficult to make out at first. But this is the clearest expression yet of Vile’s gifts as a songwriter. Although the edges are blurred, warm, engaging melodies are generously sprinkled throughout, interconnected with plenty of laguid, grooving guitar jams. Most of these songs seem to sharpen in focus the more you listen to them. Take the nine-minute opening track “Wakin on a Pretty Day.” Vile’s chiming, ringing guitar lines soar and reverberate in a beautifully assured manner, as he intones his barley intelligible vocal parts… in Vile’s case, the old “It’s not what he’s singing, it’s how it sounds” cliché is very much in effect.  He is as patient a guitar player as you’ll ever hear.  “Shame Chamber” meanwhile is probably his catchiest song to date, all while paired with self-loathing lyrics about isolation. I listened to this record so much and in such a wide variety of situations that I feel like I’ve internalized it, and yet I can barely recall any of the song titles. Although it’s well over an hour long, it’s a very easy record to get absorbed into. The whole thing ebbs and flows, drawing the listener in, and hooking them almost before they realize it. I got more… “Who is this, anyway?” questions from people after putting this on than any other record this year. And somehow, even in the dark days of December as I write this, it makes me feel like the sun is shining on me.

1. The Men - New Moon
In the past 3 years, this Brooklyn 5-piece has climbed to the top of the heap by continually refining and focusing their aims, to devastating effect. Their Ramones-referencing debut Leave Home was a jumble of everything from Melvins-style sludge to Rolling Stones-esque roots rock. It was the kind of record young bands make all the time, but of exceptional quality. They were kids, new to the game of playing and listening to music for a living, completely in love with rock n’ roll of all types, and they wanted to sound like all of it. Last year’s Open Your Heart refined their sound, dropping some of the more abrasive aspects and generally moving away from the punk tag this band is often saddled with a far more organic and musical classic rock sound. Though still stylistically scattershot, it was a big improvement, and in fact landed at #21 on this list last year.

New Moon is a further refinement of these trends, a record that reveals a massive Neil Young And Crazy Horse jones that was only hinted at on the earlier platters.It’s downright shocking to hear them open with the barroom piano shuffle of “Open the Door,” a song that wouldn’t sound out of place on After the Goldrush. Following that up is the epic full tilt rocker “Half Angel, Half Light,” a track that kicks in the door like a shotgun blast and doesn’t let up. Desperate, longing and powerful, it’s a glorious life-affirming burst of rock n roll, and perhaps my favourite song I heard all year. And it’s a love song.

It’s worth noting again that their first record came out in 2011. They’ve covered an enormous amount of ground in an exceptionally short time. This time out, the emotional baggage dealt is heavier and more adult, but there is an irrepressibly fun quality to the band too. And these songs rock, but they do it in a shit-kicking kind of way that recalls ‘70s AM radio gold as much as it does CBGB’s. The vocals are ragged and worn but deliciously full of character and charm. These songs are perfect for shouting along to, preferably while drinking a beer or whisky late at night with friends. The guitars are dirtied up with distortion but not soaked in it, and the rhythm section is sturdy and powerful. The songs have great hooks but still work tremendously well as a directionaless, raging racket, as all great rock n' roll must. And when the exhilarating 8 minute guitar and feedback workout of “Supermoon” that closes the album descends into winding strands of noise and amp buzz, and eventually echoes into nothing, you’re left with a deep feeling of satisfaction. New Moon is a fantastic rock and roll record, and the best evidence around that rock music is still a vital and exciting force in today’s world.