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.