I feel much more confident about my list this year than last. Last year's list was almost meaningless as I didn't listen to enough music to pick the 10 best. This was not an issue this year, and figuring out who to add or leave out was mostly easy (with the exception of Opeth`s Heritage, that was a hard one to cut, so it gets an honourable mention). For each of the albums, I`ve provided a link to one song off of the album to get an idea of what is going on. Let`s get on with the show.
10. Darren Korb – Bastion Soundtrack
What is Bastion, you ask? Bastion is a video game released by Supergiant Games. Imagine if the music of the show Firefly had more electronic beats underneath the western acoustic guitars and that`s about as close as I can come to describing it really. But put it another way, the fact that I actually bought a video game soundtrack should tell you all you need.
9. Amon Amarth – Surtur Rising
I had the pleasure of being introduced to these guys at their live show in Calgary this year, where they played their whole new album live in its entirety. The music these guys make isn`t particularly complex. It`s straight up death metal devoted entirely to the subject of Vikings/Norse mythology. But I`d be surprised to find a more fun metal band to listen to, both live or on record.
8. ††† - EP †
This is collaboration between Chino from Deftones and Shaun Lopez of Far. It bears a striking similarity to Chino`s other electronic project Team Sleep, but maybe a bit more aggressive. And really, if I can`t have more Team Sleep (their only album came out in `05), this will do just nicely.
7. Devin Townsend Project – Ghost
This album is the denouement of the four album Devin Townsend Project, and while you could mention the various New Age, ambient or electronic elements, the only way to truly describe this album is beautiful and peaceful. And the use of `beautiful` should not imply a sense of shallowness, as the album is as densely layered as pretty much any other of the Dev`s albums, but the goal isn`t to overwhelm, but to relax. And it totally works.
6. Mute Math – Odd Soul
After Armistice failed to live up to the magic of its predecessor, I was worried that the Mute Math I loved was done for. Interestingly, while Odd Soul does not recapture the magic of the self titled album, but that’s ok because that’s not what they are going for. At the risk of sounding horribly outdated, the riffs on this album have some seriously stomping groove to it. It doesn’t sound at all like their first album and that it completely fine.
5. Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn of Events
The considerably high interest in how this album would turn out could be traced directly back to the fact that this is the first Dream Theater album without drummer Mike Portnoy, having left the group in 2010. The funny part is that Portnoy`s exit might have been the catalyst for the remaining members to write the tightest, most cohesive album they`ve done in at least 10 years. There`s not a wasted note or section, and while they are still writing crazy complex stuff, none of it feels wanky in the way that the last decade of DT albums has. And while Mike Portnoy continues to have his midlife crisis, playing in crappy rock bands and continually trying to stir up drama, Dream Theater has classily not responded to the mud-slinging, but instead wrote a kick ass album.
4. Steven Wilson – Grace For Drowning
When I tried to convince my brother to listen to this and his response was `Isn`t it just more Porcupine Tree`, my response was `even if that were true, that`d be a good thing.` It`s true I can hear some similarities between this and Wilson`s main band, but this album feels a bit more free-form in some of its structures. It`s creative use of flutes, saxophones and other not-traditionally rock instruments recalls bands like King Crimson and Jethro Tull (which makes sense that members of King Crimson actually contributed to the album). It sounds like what Opeth tried to do on their Heritage album (which itself is good) but pulled it off better. For an album that recalls 70`s prog rock like it does, I find it to be refreshingly creative in today`s music scene.
3. Mastodon – The Hunter
Whereas Crack the Skye was hugely complex, sprawling and epic, The Hunter simplifies Mastodon’s formula and gets straight to the headbanging. It’s not unlike the transition from And Justice for All to Black Album but not quite as severe. Think of a more easily accessible version of Leviathan. The songs, while sonically similar to their predecessors, are much more concise this time, and meaning I don’t have to be in a certain frame of mind in order to listen to it. And special mention goes out to Spectrelight, 3 minutes of unrelenting fury which totally belongs with classics like Blood and Thunder, Iron Tusk and March of the Fire Ants.
2. Animals as Leaders – Weightless
This is the first AAL album that is actually a band effort as opposed to a Tosin Abasi solo album. This new dynamic is readily apparent on Weightless, a more riff-oriented album than the first album. To be certain, there is still plenty of Abasi’s guitar wizardry that defined the first album, but with more people collaborating on the music, it has more balanced structure, creating memorable riffs that get stuck in your head for days. It doesn’t hurt either that the guitar tone is so freaking good. And the use of chip-tune style electronics is confidently and thoroughly integrated into the music. I’d recommend this for anyone who can get into heavy music, but especially if the thing holding you back from metal is the growling, this instrumental band will definitely do something for you.
1. Devin Townsend Project – Deconstruction
This album comes before Ghost, and it makes sense because you’ll need to relax after listening to this polar opposite of an album. This is easily the most complex, overwhelming, densely layered extreme metal album I have ever heard. This album makes Strapping Young Lad’s Alien album look like a grade 5 math problem. If Danny Elfman did a lot of drugs and listened to a lot of black metal, the result would sound something like this. The music covers so many things, often simultaneously that I’m still discovering new things about it several months after I started listening to it. The orchestra, the choir, the industrial dance section of “Mighty Masturbator”, the guest musicians from Opeth, Gojira, Between the Buried and Me, Dillinger Escape Plan, Gwar, Meshuggah and more, the panic-inducing blast beats of “Pandemic”, the Planet Smasher-esque riffing in “Stand”, the “you can’t listen to this without headbanging as hard as gravity will allow” of the last minute of “Poltergeist”; all of this contributes to a giant swirling circus of insanity, with Devin Townsend in the middle conducting the madness.
