Gaza mash up blast-beat obsessed grindcore, sludgy death metal and filthy crust punk into a rigid extreme metal alloy that is as rigid as it is ferocious. This 44 minute monster slams the listener against a wall and steals his lunch money. There are some extremely heavy riffs here and plenty of hyperactive breakdowns amid the pummeling, but Gaza never let things get too complicated. Everything goes towards establishing a malicious, hate-filled atmosphere with a minimum of technical frills or filler. The result is the work of a band who don’t fuck around. With Kurt Ballou manning the boards (who else?!) you know the production here is dead on, thick, heavy and totally in your face. They might not fit easily into one particular category or subgenre, but it’s pretty clear that Gaza has crafted one of the finest metal albums of the year.
Veterna French power trio Glowsun were one of the few stoner rock bands who to me seemed to rise beyond mere homage to their influences this year, although it’s hard to pinpoint one thing that makes them stand out from a raft of retro-rock revivalists. Heavy on the grooving jams and only a few vocals peppered in here and there, this is an extremely well recorded, fuzzed out take on psychedelic hard rock with plenty of highly melodic and wah-drenched lead guitar work. Used as background music it can get your head nodding, but those lead breaks will get stuck in your brain for days, while uber-fuzzed bass and caveman drums hammer the riffs home with authority. Glowsun know how to build a mountain of sound slowly, adding the kind of layers and nuances that reward close listening and enough spacey effects to send you to the moon. A highly enjoyable rock album from a band that deserves to see it’s star rise in 2013.
28. Candlemass – Psalms For The Dead
It’s surprising to me that in a year that saw so many bands mining the epic funeral bell doom metal that Candlemass helped birth, more people aren’t talking about what a great record this is. What’s more, it is supposedly the Swedish institution’s final album, at least according the guys in the band. If they are running out of steam, they sure don’t sound like it, as “Prophecy” immediately blows the doors of their hinges with one of the finest up-tempo sludge rockers the band has ever put to tape. Elsewhere things settle into a classic Candlemass death trudge as songs like the title track and the truly awesome “Waterwitch” bring crushing but awesomely memorable riffs that stick in your head for days. “The Killing Of The Sun” even opens with a bone-simple drum beat that sounds like total “Iron Man” played in double time before smacking the listener upside the head with a shatteringly heavy riff. The band is of course in top form, and Robert Lowe, one of many vocalists to front the band over the years, gives a top-notch performance. His powerful vocals and excellent phrasing help engrave these songs in your brain, unlike the work of snail-paced crushers like Anhedonist or Corrupted who are content to mearly suffocate with atmosphere for half an hour at a time. Unfortunately he left the band immediately after the album was completed, and although they have announced that they will continue to play live for the time being, this will be their final studio album. If they really are finished, then Psalms For The Dead is a fine capstone to a legendary career.
You could be forgiven for thinking this album actually came out in 1984. These guys lay down some vicious blackened thrash that recalls the earliest days of extreme metal. Nekromantheon’s music falls squarely into that sweet spot where primitive heavy metal, nascent, speed-obsessed thrash, and raw black and death metal meet. The album kicks the door down with the raging “Cast Down To The Void,” which sports a hyperspeed groove and raspy vocals that Kreator would be proud to claim as their own. The rest of the album is no less intense, getting its point across in just over half an hour and featuring 8 face-ripping, neck snapping assaults on the eardrums. It’s much darker and rawer than most thrash offerings you’ll hear these days, and if you’re anything like me, that means it should be your cup of blood.
As far as I know, Anton Newcombe has been holed up somewhere in Iceland for the past few years, gotten clean and possibly married, and immersed himself in all kinds of world music. I haven’t looked any of this up, since online rumors about the man can get pretty murky. What I do know is that Aufheben is the best BJM record in at least a decade. Anton’s role here is less as a player or singer than as a sort of arranger and musical shaman similar to Miles Davis’s role on his gigantic mid-70s acid funk double LPs. He’s taking elements of different musical styles and running them together in interesting ways, such as the motorik groove, elegant synths and arresting middle eastern instrumentation that open the record. There are a few classic jangly psych pop classics here as you would expect on any BJM album, with “Gaz Hilarant” getting my nod as the most immediately likable song on the record. This is probably out of necessity given the nature of working with Anton, but his increasing experimentation with synthetic precussion has opened up new avenues for his songwriting while still retaining the classic BJM sound, as on “Walking Up To Hand Grenades.” What’s more, his willingness to keep his own voice and role somewhat in the background, particularly on the first half of the record, allows Aufheben to come off as more of a collaborative effort than some of his most recent albums. It’s this feeling that the record is the work of a full band that makes the album that much more inviting.
Horseback’s unique take on black metal based experimentation is one of the more interesting threads running through music in 2012. Building on the sounds of their excellent 2009 record The Invisible Mountain, Half Blood is a curious mashup of tortured vocals, dark, groovy bass vamps, powerful drumming, and psychedelic jamming. I’ve seen people refer to this band as being some sort of vaguely metallic version of an atmospheric roots rock band akin to Earth on their recent albums, but the droney psychedelic elements present here are less spacious and rustic sounding. There are some hypnotic bass lines and fuzzed out guitar that skirt much closer to a jamming stoner rock band or even some trippy krautrock from the '70s than any Norwegian Kvltist. At times it reminds me of the never-ending synth and bass jams on side 2 of the first Black Mountain record, particularly during the “Hallucigenia” trilogy that closes the album. Half Blood is a genuinely new layer of resin in the burning bowl of rock, and should appeal to fans of any number of musical styles.
24. Torche – Harmonicraft
It’s been five years since Torche released its last album, the excellent Meanderthal, but it seems like time hasn’t changed their approach very much. Their blend of bright riffage, ultra-economical songwriting, punchy production, crusty sludge and radio-ready hooks is still an interesting hybrid. No one really makes these kinds of heavy alternative rock records anymore, and it’s a damn shame. These guys are too heavy to ever seriously make a dent on the airwaves, but metalheads and rockers who can appreciate a good pop song will devour Harmonicraft, and maybe a few adventurous indie kids, grunge fans from the ‘90s or classic rockers will find something to like amid earworms like “Letting Go” or “Reverse Inverted.” “Walk It Off” should have been a hit and it’s better than anything Dave Grohl has written since that Probot record, but you know it’ll never happen.
23. Meshuggah – Koloss
Once again Meshuggah have unleashed an ultra-heavy, technically superb collection of skull-grinding downtuned riff syncopation. At this point it’s not particularly surprising to hear anything that Meshuggah does; they always sound like themselves regardless. What is interesting to note is that since their last album dropped in 2008, a number of bands have popped up proudly wearing Meshuggah’s influence on their collective sleeves. A sound that was once exclusively theirs has now been copied by a raft of disciples wielding 8 string guitars and 7/13 time signatures. What’s impressive is how excellent Koloss is. There is still no one out there who can pull off this style any better than Meshuggah. They might finally be getting their due as one of the most significant bands in the history of the heavy music, but it doesn’t look like they’ll be running out of gas any time soon.
22. Xibalba - Hasta La Muerte
Xibalba remind me of Nile and Morbid Angel in that they have a way of making very heavy music that retains a sense of mysticism and tribal primitivism. This music sounds ceremonial, as appropriate for rituals to honour the dead as to make moshpits full of the living collide with one another. But unlike those technically advanced high priests, Xibalba comes from a hardcore background rather than a metal one, meaning their music is more straightforward and less complex. Perhaps a better comparison would be to Sepultura, who also managed to streamline and simplify their sound to accentuate the bottom end and maximize the gut-punch impact of the riffs. The focus here is on slamming physicality rather than fleet-fingered fretwork and mathematical drumming, complimented by vocals so filthy and dirt encrusted, they sound like they’re emanating from the centre of the earth.
21. The Men – Open Your Heart
The Men followed up their very good 2011 record “Leave Home” with a great one. Open Your Heart takes about the last 45 years of guitar rock and compresses it into 45 minutes of raw, raccous rock ‘n roll. You’ve probably heard people say that there are no good rock bands anymore… people have been saying that for as long as there’s been rock. Open Your Heart is for those people. It has all the minimal production and cranky guitars a rock fiend could ever want. As if the title of that first record weren’t enough, the opening track on this one kicks in the door like prime Ramones, while “Animal” rides a big chorus all the way down your spine. “Country Song” is a languid, Quaalude-doped junkie blues complete with ragged slide guitars, and “Candy” is even a straight rip of the Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers.” Let your dad take a listen.
