Rolling Metal Thread 2009

I'm ok with that list. A bit surprised to not see YOB or Sunn 0))) on there... Great that Asunder, Warhorse and Ewiz got the doom nods though.

on quick review it seems to be mostly lacking in doom

What's new? It's always been the ugly duckling genre of metal. And we like it that way, right?

true i guess i hoped decibel of all ppl would include at least as much doom as metalcore but hey what can you do

The fact that the specific complaint of the first person complaining there is that the top 100 doesn't feature Bad Religion, Ignite or Propagandhi really says it all about the tsunami of list-obsessed retardation that this part of the decade is creating

i think i posted this on another thread, but this was my ballot for the decibel decade list:

Top 40 Of The Decade

1 – Agalloch – Ashes Against The Grain
2 – Celtic Frost – Monotheist
3 – Katatonia – Last Fair Deal Gone Down
4 – Primordial – The Gathering Wilderness
5 – Converge – Jane Doe
6 – Deathspell Omega – Kenose
7 – Orphaned Land – Mabool
8 – Neurosis – A Sun That Never Sets
9 – Intaglio – S/T
10 – Eyehategod – Confederacy Of Ruined Lives
11 – Grave In The Sky – Cutlery Hits China: English For The Hearing Impaired
12 – Amok – Necrospiritual Deathcore
13 – Vog – S/T
14 – Necrodemon – Ice Fields Of Hyperion
15 – Harvey Milk – Special Wishes
16 – Celestiial – Desolate North
17 – Blood Of The Black Owl – S/T
18 – Heinous Killings – Hung With Barbwire
19 – Magane – Beginning At The End
20 – Metsatoll – Terast Mis Hangund Me Hinge 10218
21 – Ahab – The Call Of The Wretched Sea
22 – Indesinence – Noctambulism
23 – Minsk – Out Of A Center Which Is Neither Dead Nor Alive
24 - Negative Reaction – Under The Ancient Penalty
25 - Ea – Taesse
26 - Skinless – Trample The Weak, Hurdle The Dead
27 - Tristwood – The Delphic Doctrine
28 - Virgin Black – Requiem – Fortissimo
29 – Gospel – The Moon Is A Dead World
30 – Kylesa – To Walk A Middle Course
31 - Destroyer 666 – Cold Steel…For An Iron Age
32 – The Black League – Ichor
33 – Tyr – Eric The Red
34 – Falkenbach – Heralding The Fireblade
35 – Opeth – Deliverance
36 – Caina – Some People Fall
37 – Gorguts – From Wisdom To Hate
38 – Electric Wizard – Dopethrone
39 – Moonsorrow – V:Havitetty
40 – Raging Speedhorn – How The Great Have Fallen

New Alcest! Split with Les Discrets:

http://www.prophecyproductions.de/cache/02f1b1bd074fa96b47b8573b50b32ff6.jpg

As promised, Alcest has the harsh vocals this time, and it's very strong, even though I really loved the clean vox of the last record. Bodes well for the full-length.

I'm doing a week-long trawl through the Decibel list; here's my take on #s 100-81... http://bit.ly/6vFsQf

I see the decade issue is available exclusively from their website and from "select indie record retailers'-- anyone got a tip on where I can buy it in NYC?

Phil -- dissecting the decibel list is a fine idea, but it should be noted that decibel considers itself an "extreme music" magazine, not just metal. That being said, the "The Top 100 Greatest Metal Albums of the Decade" is perhaps an inaccurate name.

i seem to remember the same thing said about a certain book :)

also, and I think this is a valid question, are you going off of what was actually written about each record's inclusion in the magazine, or are you just going by the list as a list? Because I think it would be at least worthwhile to read the justifications before going off blindly on an entry not being metal enough. I'm not blindly defending the list just because I'm a contributor, God knows there's a ton of stuff that I disagree with on there (Converge? Really?), but I do think it's at least unfair to instantly dismiss it without the full picture. If anything, I think that the decibel list speaks to two things: first, the sheer diversity of what could be considered to be metal in this past decade, and second (and probably less important from an academic standpoint but more important to understanding why the list is so seemingly random), the sheer variety of the tastes of the contributors to the magazine. Considering that the magazine is one of the few still afloat, and a lot of people from other late, lamented publications have wound up there, it's also kind of an interesting look at extreme music/metal journalism from this past decade as well.

I find that the likelihood of anybody's best-metal-of-anything lining up with my idea of Metal decreases rapidly once the size of the opining body rises above zero. Groups of 1 sometimes produce reasonable lists, but not so often once the 1 starts to include people other than me. Put more than a handful of people together and it's totally hopeless. That Decibel decade list has, out of 100 slots, only 10 bands I'd even consider, and at least half of them seem to me like the metal bands that people who don't really like metal like. Converge, Isis and Mastodon were collectively responsible for 10% of the 100 best metal albums of the whole decade? Of the 14 bands who have multiple albums on the list, I like only Enslaved.

But I'm sure it goes both ways, too, at least a little bit. HIM's Love Metal is likely to make my top 10 for the 2000s.

yeah, I think this is exactly what's wrong with that list. when a bunch of people vote, consensus picks take the top spots and the whole thing ends up blander.

heh, but even that doesn't excuse...

15. Pelican - The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw

Only one Southern Lord album(Warhorse). Did decibel fall out with sunn o)))?

sunn o))) stroke?

sunn o))) poisoning?

I wrote that Pelican blurb!

Also, "bland" is not a word I would use to describe that list, whether you like it or not.

The lack of Sunn love from dB is not surprising!

Oh, and apologies for the Iron Maiden blurb in the decade issue, the band is refusing all interviews right now, so we were stuck using an old one from 2000.

i have never seen a opy of decibel anywhere so how is the lack of southern lord stuff not surprising?

Well, some folks just plain don't like Sunn O))). People either love them or loathe them, as we all know.

aww i was hoping that the magazines editor was butthurt over the abuse it took from the old southern lord message board hehe

yeah they were a rough crowd over there

http://www.delawareonline.com/blogs/spaceballs2.jpg

too rough for greg anyway he kicked us off

Magazine lists always feel boring, predictable and least-common-denominator-ish.

Also i know this is a massive xpost but I still think that the whole experimentalism-over-purism argument is a giant strawman for lazy journalists. After all, nobody has problems understanding that rap in the 90s was shaped by Wu Tang and Jay-Z and not by 2 Unlimited's bold combination of house and rap.

i kinda wish hip-house had dominated the 90's instead of jay-z, to be honest.

more wu in your music is never a bad thing though.

we all need a little wu in us.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uSOtp4gq6ls/SRcqBJy2SjI/AAAAAAAAAAg/um_BGljhds8/s320/All+the+Woo+in+the+World.jpg

...or whatever that groundbreaking record somewhere mid 90s was with rappers doing opera tunes. Anyway you get the point.

doesn't bother me not to see "avant" metal like SunnO)) on the decibel list. if they were on it i couldn't really get all pissy about pelican being on it. neither are very metal imo. wtf at no WiTTR tho.

many x-posts:

I wrote that Pelican blurb!

Also, "bland" is not a word I would use to describe that list, whether you like it or not.

hey, no offense intended! it was more of a lolsy aside than anything. I just think pelican are kinda boring and that position was waaaay too high for my liking. should have added a ";-)"

and the decibel list leans waaaay too heavily on hydrahead-friendly bands, imo. and I say this as someone with a high tolerance for that stuff. AND as someone who thinks the discordance axis album is possibly the best thing towards the top of the list!

but yeah, that plus the scarcity of records I'd never heard of is what I found "bland," though your mileage may vary.

also...

i kinda wish hip-house had dominated the 90's instead of jay-z, to be honest.

it did! but only if you managed never to step outside of a sports stadium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHO6thJFLBQ

HE
COULD
GO
ALL
THE
WAY!

http://www.terrorizer.com/content/grand-magus-sign-roadrunner

^quite unexpected, no?

Part Two of my troll through Decibel's best-of-the-decade list is up, covering #s 80-61: http://bit.ly/7IW1iy

http://www.terrorizer.com/content/grand-magus-sign-roadrunner

ewww... what will roadrunner do with a metal band?!

Maybe someone there found some Mercyful Fate in the warehouse and got thinkin'

man, the intro to "the gnashing" (blue record) gives me serious neu!/michael rother vibes. and now that I think about it, the fuzz guitar that pops up from time-to-time definitely has shades of the classic rother sound too...

really love this record. deserves the praise its been getting.

yet some people think its not as good as Red, yet those who loved the ep's but were disappointed by Red love this one.

yeah, I'm in that boat. I never warmed to red completely but I think they've really come into their sound with this new one. really focused.

Too prog for me, unfortunately. I like the idea of Baroness, and their sound, just not their songs.

the father befouled/helcaraxe split on enucleation is fucking incredible. finding more information about it I was sad to learn that the drummer from father befouled had killed himself last month - it's weird to find a band, go digging for further information on them because they kind of rule, and learn that tragedy has only recently struck them. if you like good black metal anyway the split is top shelf; I just ordered most of helcaraxe's catalog because they're really good & interesting, a little throwback but not in an annoying way. or maybe I'm softening toward stuff that's a little throwback.

Alan, im in that boat with you too, tho i do love Red now.

reading Phil's Decibel list dissection - didn't realize Phil & I shared purist tendencies/sympathies! (although Siegbran's right: "purist" is an easy way of dismissing valid criticisms, and most "purists" don't hate experimentalism; speaking as a po-faced purist type, what I hate is boring stuff being touted as forward-looking because it has a fucking sitar or super-exciting analog synths!! or sounds like eighties shoegaze only louder or whatever "chocolate in my peanut butter" variant you wanna call "experimental")

...having said that, I think Hymns is a tremendous, tremendous record, outlying what I'd call metal but deserving of a place on the list. (I didn't submit a ballot, I kinda hate ballot-lists/polls as I've said 10000 times)

OTOH Phil Phantom Limb rules over Terrifyer any day & is more metal besides

i like all kinds of things. i like things that adhere strictly to a formula/genre constrictions and stuff that doesn't. if my orphaned land review was unfair to strawmen its only because i am often unfair and often feel the need to blame someone for something that doesn't actually exist. i'm pathological like that.

Ugh, what is Hatebreed doing on the Decibel list?

And am I the only person who thinks Meshuggah's Nothing blows Catch 33 out of the water?

is it wrong to laugh when you see this?
http://i48.tinypic.com/2ni7i8n.jpg

oh man
http://c1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/85/l_51e2f0bf1cc25db9b774305a7f16b6cc.jpg
http://b5.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/00636/55/17/636927155_l.jpg

It would be cool to hear some words from ILM legend 'animal' on a day such as this, imo