Clint Mansell is part of the new group of film composers (Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Javier Navarrette) who have composed some of the best film scores of the past decade. Their background in music usually doesn’t follow the usual classical training like their older contemporaries like John Williams, James Horner and Hans Zimmer. Most started as members of rock bands and through the years branched out to other musical genres until finally breaking into the film composing side of the art.
Mansell has been linked with film director Darren Aronofsky. He’s scored every Aronofsky film going back to the filmmaker’s very first feature-lenght film, Pi. He finally entered the consciousness of film score fans everywhere when he composed and arranged the eclectic and haunting score for Aronofsky’s second film, Requiem for a Dream. That particular film score has become a cult classic that it’s main theme, Lux Aeterna, has become one of the go-to pieces of music for film trailers.
Aronofsky’s third film, The Fountain, once again has Mansell composing and arranging the musical score. What he came up with for the film has become the favorite of many music lovers everywhere. The score for the film was a progressive and impressionistic marvel as Mansell collaborates with the Kronos Quartet and the post-rock Scottish band Mogwai. Mos of the score uses the progressive influences of Bowie and Mogwai with the classical sound of Kronos, but it was the final song in the film which I found to be my favorite of all of them: Together We Shall Live Forever.
Originally composed to be an electronic piece with vocals, but at the last minute Mansell decided that wasn’t the appropriate way to end the film. Instead he took the same music he had already composed and played it as a haunting piano solo. The song perfectly defines the central theme of the film: love and death. It is really difficult not to listen to this song and not reflec back on one’s own loves gained and lost. While it is not what one might call “Valentine’s Day” music it is one for people whose experiences with love and death have had a profound impact on them.
While Mastodon wasn’t one of the five bands of 2009 which I fell in love with they are the 6th. I have the site’s resident music guru, necromoonyeti, to thank for recommending this band. It wasn’t just the band he recommended but their latest album, Crack the Skye, which he insisted I check out. I had no choice but to listen to the album since he insisted and he hasn’t failed me with his recommendations in the past.
The one song in the album which has become one of my current favorite songs and a recurring one in my playlist is Oblivion. The song starts very ominously with deep chords from guitar duo Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher before being joined by bassist Troy Sanders. Brann Dailor soon joins in on drums. The song is pretty much about a paraplegic boy learning how to use astral projection in conjunction with being set in Czarist Russia. Yeah, the song’s themes are quite a lot to wrap one’s mind around, but the music and the melodic vocals between Dailor on verses, Sanders bridging things in the center before moving onto hinds on chorus makes for a badass production.
Oblivion showed me that the specific sounds of sludge and progressive metal do not have to be mutually exclusive from each other. In an album that’s full of great songs, Oblivion in Crack the Skye is Mastodon pushing the boundaries of what they’re capable of musically beyond what their fans are used to. This is both a good and bad thing. Good in that new fans will easily gravitate to this particular track while hardcore fans may see it as a softening of the band’s style. Call it the “Bob Rock Syndrome” but I’d rather think that particular insult doesn’t belong with Oblivion and used more by some hardcore Mastodon fans as a last-ditch attempt to keep the band to themselves and not share with a new crop of fans.
Having seen 263 different bands live, and a good many of those more than once, I offer you a top 10 list based on ample experience. Oh there might be better live bands out there, but mark my words, these guys are among the very best.
10. Sunn O)))
1 time: 20090917
Recommended album: Black One, or their collaboration with Boris: Altar
Sunn O))) is what happens when an ancient mystery cult encounters electricity. This is probably the closest you can get in this day and age to a true pagan spiritual experience. This is amplifier worship in the literal sense.
9. The Mountain Goats
1 time: 20061029 No Children off of Tallahassee
Recommended album: All Hail West Texas
A funny looking man picks up an acoustic guitar and starts singing you a story about two young lads named Jeff and Cyrus. As the painfully awkward lyrics inform you of their botched efforts to form a metal band, accusing society’s lack of tolerance for holding their dreams at bay, you really start to wonder whether you should cheer the guy on or steal his lunch money. Then the story reaches its conclusion with a chorus of “Hail Satan! Hail Satan tonight!”, everyone in the audience is singing along, and you at last realize that it doesn’t really matter whether you understand the guy or not. This is delightful. If you bother to dig around a little, read more of the lyrics, catch the references here and there, you’ll come to find that John Darnielle absolutely “gets it”. The joke was on you. But it was a clever innocent joke, because everything this guy writes is just as honest as it is intentionally comical. Show up, sing along, listen to his stories, walk away smiling.
8. Týr
2 times: 20080516, 20080517 Hail to the Hammer off of various albums
Recommended album: Eric the Red
“Viking metal” is as much an ethos as a musical style. Indeed, I hesitate to label any but the most undeniable bands “viking”, as opposed to “folk” or “pagan”. But in Týr we find the true third generation of the genre, following Bathory and Falkenbach, with whom they share little stylistically save a knack for writing anthemic heavy metal pagan hymns. I never got into Týr much until I saw them live, but was impressed by their great vocal harmonies, trance-like song progressions, and most notably the confidence with which they could hold the stage even when singing a cappella. By the end of the night I was making arrangements to drive three hours away to see them again.
7. Cracker
3 times: 20060614, 20071031, 20090527 St. Cajetan off of Cracker
Recommended album: Garage D’Or best of compilation
Cracker are the most underrated band of the last 20 years. I’ve been a fan since Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now) and Low were radio staples in the early 90s, but when I finally saw them live for the first time in 2006, I was blown away by their energetic stage presence. Johnny Hickman is a rock guitar guru, blending the established melodies with bluesy improvisations that at no point feel forced. David Lowery, nearly 50, rocks out harder than most younger musicians today. You’ll show up with limited hopes of tapping your feet to a few old familiar songs and discover a band that ranges from head-banging rock to slow tongue-in-cheek ballads to plodding blues-worship masterpieces.
6. Explosions in the Sky
1 time: 20070429 Your Hand in Mine off of The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
Recommended album: The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
The name says it all. Granted I saw them main stage at Coachella on a sound system set to support Rage Against the Machine’s first gig in nearly a decade, I have to imagine their music completely encompasses any venue. Explosions in the Sky write songs so compelling that you will completely forget you’re at a gig. The music penetrates everything in its vicinity and thrusts itself into you so forcefully that no amount of distractions will diminish the experience.
5. The Decemberists
4 times: 20040627, 20040628, 20061024, 20090814
excerpt from The Hazards of Love
Recommended album: The Crane Wife
The Decemberists have evolved from a thoroughly entertaining sideshow into a complex, operatic experience, without losing track of their original nature. Last time I saw them they performed the Hazards of Love rock opera in its hour long entirety without breaks, then returned for a good half hour of interactive fun. Audience participation is required, but hard to resist when they’re marching up and down the aisles in parade, awkwardly yanking people out of their seats to perform weird skits set to their older songs.
4. Boris
3 times: 20070316, 20071019, 20080629 Farewell off of Pink
Recommended album: Akuma No Uta
A youtube comment for this video described Farewell as “probably the greatest sludge ballad of all time”. Remember that feeling of disintegrating into the world that you got the first time you listened to Converge’s “Jane Doe” or Explosions in the Sky’s “The Birth and Death of Day”? A video of Boris can’t possibly do them justice. The shear volume of sound is their most distinguishable characteristic. On songs like “Farewell” it will disolve you. On songs like “My Neighbor Satan” it will implode you. On songs like “Naki Kyoku” it will chill you out in a mellow bliss.
3. GWAR
5 times: 20060723, 20061124, 20070707, 20071006, 20090923 Womb with a View off of War Party
Recommended album: Beyond Hell
Ever seen a man in a pig suit get a spear jammed up his ass and split out the top of his spine? Ever get soaked in the blood and puss launching forth from the gaping wound, while a monster with a three foot dick sings about raping your girlfriend and feeding her to bears? …What, that doesn’t sound fun? Everyone should see GWAR live at least once. You will either become a cult follower or start going to church more.
2. Dropkick Murphys
3 times: 20070913, 20080307, 20090629 Kiss Me, I’m Shitfaced off of Blackout
Recommended album: The Meanest of Times
If you’ve ever drank a beer and liked it, you are a Dropkick Murphys fan. Their gigs are more like giant parties… Well, parties with bagpipes and Guinness.
1. Blind Guardian
2 times: 20061210, 20061211 Mirror Mirror off of Nightfall in Middle-Earth
Recommended album: NiME or A Night at the Opera
Hansi Kursch is the King of the Nerds, and we must give our worthy sage the rightful placement he deserves. What happens when you combine Iron Maiden stage presence with the most epic melodies ever written and lyrics about the Dark Lord Sauron? Click and see my friend. Click and see.
Listed below in no particular order of importance are the film soundtracks I consider as being the best of the 2000’s. All of these soundtracks have the distinction of not just great pieces of music in their own right, but also adding another layer to the film they’re scoring. Most are orchestral soundtracks with a couple a mixture of both orchestral work and licensed songs. For franchises which contain repeating music cues and motifs I’ve decided to combine as one entry.
I’ve added a video link of a favorite track from each soundtrack.
I must have really been out of it these last three months. I was looking over some year-end lists and saw Arkona… then Kalevala… then Nokturnal Mortum… Since when did they all have new albums out? So I decided enough of this and got out my shovel. 1,097 album topics flagged as metal later, I had nine new releases by great bands between October 1st and now, and one from September that seemed sufficiently overlooked to merit mention. Some came as complete surprises. Others I’d acquired and then promptly forgot. Krallice aside I haven’t heard any of these prior to about two days ago, if at all. But these aren’t just arbitrary bands. They are all groups that have released albums I’m quite fond of in the past:
Arkona – Goi, Rode, Goi!
Аркона – Гой, Роде, Гой!
Napalm Records, October 28th, 2009 Russia
Arkona stand, in my mind, alongside Pagan Reign/Tverd’ at the forefront of pagan metal today. Ot Serdtsa K Nebu might have been too good to be topped, but this is bound to be an enjoyable album.
Dark Funeral – Angelus Exuro pro Eternus
Regain Records, November 18th, 2009 Sweden
I expect more completely standard Swedish bm… but who can complain?
Ihsahn – After
Candlelight Records, January 26th, 2010 Norway
Emperor’s frontman needs little introduction. For those of you who were, like me, disappointed with angL, note that I did listen to After once and I think it’s pretty solid. Expect the usual prog black metal that only Ihsahn can really pull off.
Kalevala – The Cuckoo’s Children
Калевала – Кукушкины дети
Metalism Records, October 3rd, 2009 Russia
Possibly my favorite folk metal band, these guys play songs that would stand up in any epoch if you took out the metal guitar and drumming
Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough
Profound Lore Records, November 10th, 2009 United States
Krallice’s self titled was an easy contender for the greatest album of 2008. They take the concept of post-black metal started by Agalloch and Klabautamann and tie it to the end of an atom bomb. This will probably turn out the best album out of the ten here listed.
Månegarm – Nattväsen
Regain Records, November 19th, 2009 Sweden
An incredibly underrated folk metal band with tendencies towards black metal
Nihill – Grond
Hydra Head, October 13th, 2009 Netherlands
Ambient, spooky American-style black metal
Nokturnal Mortum – Голос Сталі (The Voice of Steel)
Oriana, December 26th, 2009 Ukraine
Nokturnal Mortum stand at the forefront of nsbm, their music so brilliant as to compensate for all radical ideologies, though their new album is a disappointment in my opinion. It’s still better than most else out there. See my review from last week for more details.
Temnozor – Haunted Dreamscapes
Темнозорь – Урочища Снов
Stellar Winter, January 3rd, 2010 Russia
Very folk-influenced nsbm, and much better than the new Nokturnal Mortum album if you ask me. (Not that it need be said, but we don’t ideologically support nsbm. The music still kicks ass.)
And last of all, for a band that never fails to confuse me:
Stíny Plamenů – Mrtvá Komora
Naga Productions, September 1st, 2009 Czech Republic
“The name of the project, Stiny Plamenu (meaning “Stinky Sewer”), was born from the feelings and emotions experienced while watching the sewer expanses illuminated by a flickering fire, the fascinating places beneath the town of Plzen became the inspiration for the lyrical content of the project. Mythological characters of the world of sewer lore soon appeared: Pan Cistirensky (“The Sewage Disposal Lord”), Pani z Vodarny (“Lady of the Waterworks”), Syn Poklopu (“Son of the Manhole Lids”), Mistr Jimac (“The Cesspool Master”) and some others. Stories about these figures are told in the guise of black metal pieces with a truly bestial sound.”
Ok, well I might have edited the English translation of the band name……
Being single once again and slowly getting back on the dating scene (wasn’t easy at 26 and it sure as hell hasn’t gotten easier at 36) I started looking at my music collection and realized that I subconsciously always had a specific set of songs as a playlist to help close the deal, so to speak. While I’m sure my own charm and skills have a lot to do with it I do think this playlist helps things along.
So, here’s the top ten songs which helps seal the deal. Some has to be clicked to be seen…If someone does try using this list and fails then don’t blame game…blame the player. 😉
10. Closer – Nine Inch Nail
9. Ready or Not – After 7
8. Brown Sugar – D’Angelo
7. Wicked Game – Chris Isaak
6. Between the Sheets – The Isley Brothers
5. Anytime, Anyplace – Janet Jackson
4. My, My, My – Johnny Gil
3. Sexual Healing – Marvin Gaye
2. Let’s Get It On – Marvin Gaye
1. Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite) – Quincy Jones
I think every gamer worth his console and controller knows that old-school awesome includes anything Mega-Man. People who love their rock knows that one must give proper homage to the Mercury, May, Deacon and Taylor…more known as Queen. What would be more awesome than either two? I’m glad you’ve been asking that question. There’s only one good and proper answer: Mega-Man and Queen together.
What better way for the two to come together than what you shall witness below…prepare to GRIN.
Can a truly fair assessment really be made? Like any other year, 2009 offered a vast assortment of great albums across many genres. How does one weed through all the hype to extract them? I for one listened to over one hundred new releases in 2009, yet the top 30 I compiled out of this fell into very few other lists. With so much music available these days, my year-end list is like picking up a handful of seashells and calling one the prettiest in the entire ocean. What I want to do here instead is couple my own experiences with two other sources and come up with a more balanced top ten of what we should all go back and listen to, whether I’ve heard it or not.
Let me qualify each.
*The Pitchfork Reader Poll – Pitchfork used to be the most widely respected source of music news around, and while their editing staff has fallen into irredeemable disrepute, the reader poll maintains a degree of legitimacy that few other sites with a 10,000+ voter base are likely to attain.
*An anonymous music group’s poll – My anonymous source requires a level of interaction, diversity of taste, and depth of exploration that qualifies the bulk of its hundred or so voters as thoughtful individuals with enough experience to make legitimate choices.
*Me – I’m a metalhead with indie inclinations, and completely distanced from media hype. (No, I don’t read Pitchfork, and I only realized Phoenix were popular when I heard 1901 playing at a Steelers game.)
So here are ten albums of 2009 you should go listen to. Never mind what styles they are. Never mind that I haven’t heard half of them:
1. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
This ranked as my second favorite album of the year, #9 in my anonymous group, and #28 on the Pitchfork reader’s poll. Why should you hear it? Pitchfork’s reviewers gave it a pathetic 5/10. This album got voted in because it was so damn good that no amount of negativity could stop the masses from voicing their opinion.
2&3. Mastodon – Crack the Skye
and Converge – Axe to Fall
I placed Crack the Skye at #6. My music group gave it 14th, and Pitchfork 33rd. Axe to Fall got 15, 25, and unrated in the top 40 overall but #2 in metal albums. Why should you hear them? Metal doesn’t get much attention these days, but unlike Wolves in the Throne Room, these two bands rose to celebrity status through quality releases. Sure they ranked high due to hype, but I can attest that both are good, albeit not the best, metal albums of the year. It’s safe to assume you’ve already heard them if you’re a metal fan, so I speak to everyone else in saying these are your best bets for sampling what the genre had to offer in 2009.
4. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
In the top 5 on both sites, I haven’t heard it myself, but a metal fan who I respect marked this as the best album of the year. That’s enough to tell me that hype alone didn’t place them so high.
5&6. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
and Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Both placed #1 on one site and in the top 5 on the other. Both were also hyped more than perhaps any other releases this year. But I have heard and enjoyed WAP, not on any provocative level but enough to recommend it. Animal Collective have released decent enough albums in the past that I am confident this one would have at least made my top 30 had I heard it. With music this hyped one has to ask “is this actually great, or am I just fooling myself?” Well, I can safely count these two as “pretty good” in their own right. Great? You be the judge.
7. Peste Noire – Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor
This French black metal masterpiece is hands down the best album of the year that I’ve heard, but it didn’t make any group charts so I respectfully held it until #7. Here is my reaction the day I first heard it: This is brilliant, fascinating, unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Their ambiance of hate is gone. What replaces it is something I can’t quite define, but it’s captivating. If Famine hadn’t coined it “Black’n’Roll” I think the term still might have popped up, but it’s also a whole lot more than that. The 60s-70s rock and roll styles it incorporates, while similar in construct, conjure nothing of the sort to mind. Instead, it gives this sort of ironic (I hate that term applied to music criticism, but it fits here) lively essence to a dismal, filthy Dark Age. Take my irc reaction: “Track three feels like I’m dancing circles around someone in a torture chamber randomly sticking hot pokers into them and really enjoying it.”
8. The Fiery Furnaces – I’m Going Away
I placed this album at #4, and again no one else gave it attention. I have no idea why. I haven’t heard any of their other albums. Perhaps their earlier releases are even better? This jazzy indie disc contains some of the catchiest songs I’ve ever heard. Just listen to the last track, Take Me Around Again, and try and tell me you don’t walk around singing the barely sensible lyrics for weeks on end.
9. The xx – xx
Here’s another album I haven’t heard yet. The reviews I’ve read of this really make me think I’ll hate it, but as the only other album that made both polls’ top 5 there surely must be some merit to it. I said the same thing about M83 last year, and Saturdays = Youth became a staple album for me in the months that followed. Maybe I won’t be so lucky this go around, but love it or hate it I would be doing my music sensibilities an injustice to not check it out. The same goes for you.
10. N.A.S.A. – The Spirit of Apollo
Has this discredited my entire list? Maybe. It didn’t place in either poll, but the Pitchfork editors gave it a 1 out of 10, so there must be something good about it. They went so far as to write up an eight paragraph review about how impressively unpretentious it is. “[The] beats on this album are total washed-out dorm-room funk . . . “The People Tree” is an excessively polite bloopy organ groove. “Way Down” is the reason acid jazz no longer exists. “Hip Hop” is a horribly boring attempt at ca. 1998 sunny smiley-face West Coast indie-rap. And on it goes.” In other words, this album ignores all expectations of taking music to a new level and just gets down to business with fun, catchy, simple songs that anyone can enjoy. You mean hip-hop doesn’t have to be angry or arrogant? Amazing! I ranked it my 3rd favorite of the year.
While I’m not as well-versed with all sorts of music genres like some friends of mine I do have a well-rounded taste when it comes to music. Growing up during the 80’s it was hard not to get into the hair-metal which dominated the scene. Yes, I fully admit to being a Motley Crue fan and even listened to the random Poison track here and there. In addition to hair-metal I also got into rap and hip-hop during the 80’s and early 90’s which I still consider the Golden Age of the genre.
Young people nowadays can have their Lil’ Wayne or Soulja Boy (but why would they want to) and the Dirty South crew and all that. I say I’ll take giants of the genre like Eric B. and Rakim, EPMD, Wu-Tang Clan, Afrika Bambaataa, Paris, N.W.A, Ice-T and Ice Cube over these new youngbloods any day of the week and Sundays included. While rap and hip-hop have become too much about commercialization I do like current acts like Mos Def and Talib Kweli of Black Star, Common, OutKast, Mobb Deep and Goodie Mobb.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve branched out from those two genres and embraced all types of music (though folk music still escapes me most of the time). It doesn’t matter now whether the artist/band plays some subgenre of metal like Norwegian Black, Viking, Pagan or combinations in-between. Or if they’re more classical genres like baroque, chamber and symphony. If they sounded good and I got into them I couldn’t care less what sort of genre they went under.
2009 was a good year for me in terms of discovering some new bands and artists. These were not new in the way that they’ve just been making music recently. All five I’m about to mention have been making music for at least a decade or decades for a couple.
1. Altan Urag
Altan Urag is a folk-rock band from Mongolia who have combined traditional Mongolian folk music, Western rock stylings and traditional Tuvan/Mongolian “karkhiraa” throat singing. It’s just very difficult to try and explain Altan Urag who has never heard of throat singers and folk music from the region. I’ve pretty much scoured every music store in my area, the net and other shadowy options to find their music. To say that I fell in love with this band would be one of the major understatement of the year.
2. Bathory
Bathory is one band I’ve heard of in the past but never really bothered to try. I was still very leery of the subgenres of metal that went by labels such as Norwegian Black, Pagan, Viking, etc. I was very much still a child of the NWOBHM movement of the lat 70’s and early 80’s and the rise of trash/speed metal of the 80’s. But the last two years I’ve branched out to try more types of metal and in 2009 I finally gave Bathory a chance and was instantly hooked. I’ve wondered since why I never gave them a chance. My favorite track of theirs has to be “Hammerheart” from their “Twilight of the Gods” album. It’s a much more subdued Bathory, but every time I listen to it I feel like I should be at a pub or some Viking hall downing a few pints of ale or horns of mead with my buddies before going off to battle. I definitely feel like Odin is watching over me when I listen to Bathory.
3. Blind Guardian
What is there to say about Blind Guardian that its most ardent fans haven’t already said ad infinitum about this greatest of all power metal bands. Power metal have been a genre I’ve dabbled in here and there in years past but never really paid them much attention as they truly deserve. Blind Guardian changed all that for me in 2009 and I now count Power Metal as one of my favorite type of music. Blind Guardian’s epic and quite operatic 2002 album, “A Night at the Opera”, was my first introduction to this power metal band of all power metal. While I’ve come to love all the other albums of their pre- and post-Opera I found this album of theirs the most accomplished and musically complete. Even people who are not typically fans of metal would find this album as something they would enjoy listening to. My favorite track is also the longest and most complex in the album, “…And Then There Was Silence.” It is an epic 14-minute track that tells the story of the Trojan War. If there’s a song more epic than this one I haven’t heard it.
4. Boris
Whenever I used to think of Japanese popular music and rock I always thought of J-Pop and it’s rock equivalent. I’m not wrong in that assumption as those type of music coming out of Japan have become quite popular due to the rise in the popularity of anime in the West. So, color me surprised when the same friend who introduced me to Blind Guardian and Altan Urag told me to check out Boris. The band is the power trio of Atsuo (vocals/drums), Wata (lead guitar) and Takeshi (bass guitar/vocals) out of Tokyo who simply cannot be hobbled by any particular genre of rock. One album may be stoner rock while the next all about doom and drudge metal. They’ve even released ambient rock and noise rock albums where one would think the music was just amps feedbacking back on themselves. I’ve come to call Boris the mad scientists of rock and their albums attest to that. My favorite track of theirs come from their 2003 album, “Akuma no Uta.” The song in question is called “Naki Kyoku” and one just has to listen to this song just what sort of musical geniuses the trio of Boris really are.
5. Tom Waits
Tom Waits. There’s just nothing much I can say about my love for Tom Waits other than people who have never heard him should just listen to “Pasties and a G-String” and be amazed. To try and describe Tom Waits would be an exercise in failure. One either loves The Waits or just don’t get him. There’s no middle-ground when it comes to The Waits.
So that makes the 5 bands and artists I fell in love with in 2009. Honorable mentions must go to these others: Mastodon, Turisas, Isis, Otis Taylor, Mantic Ritual, The Black Keys, Mirrorthrone and Nightwish just to name a few.
Through the Shattered Lens 