#GreatAlbums2000s - #Baroness – Red Album (2007). This Georgia metal band vied with Mastodon for the southern rock metal mantle, allowing a tad more air into the mix with acoustic interludes and a friendlier hard rock rumble (as much Rainbow as Sabbath). Still, John Dyer Baizley roars like a lion through the lurking “Rays on Pinion” and headlong “Wanderlust,” keeping the various evocations of prog rock firmly in service of music (metaphorically) out for blood.
#GreatAlbums2000s - #Boris – Pink (2005). This Japanese experimental trio denies they are metal, but after the shoegazey opener “Farewell” they crunch and grind as assuredly as any metal band on the planet. Can’s Damo Suzuki haunts bassist Takeshi’s (largely incomprehensible) vocals, while guitarist Wata and drummer Atsuo ooze bile like your favorite hardcore band fed through a meat grinder. Take your survival pills before hitting play.
GreatAlbums2000s - #CelticFrost – Monotheist (2006). Zurich’s metal legends waited 16 years between albums, before laying this authoritative set on the metal world. Heavier songs like “Progeny” and “Os Abysmi Vel Daath” (a nod to Aleister Crowley) feel like pressure zones in the brain, while Frost’s gothic influence bleeds through “Drown in Ashes” and the slow churning “Obscured.” The neo-classical “Winter” is a lovely coda to an album fully in its control of dark emotions.
#GreatAlbums2000s - #Mastodon – Leviathan (2004). Just two albums in, Atlanta`s Mastodon created an album rightly viewed as a modern metal masterpiece. Based on Moby Dick, the set deep dives the existential dread of Melville’s classic, using bone-shaking riffs and disorienting time signatures to steal the listener’s breath. Songs like the “Seabeast” and “Megalodon” reference classic prog, thrash, and southern rock as they evoke the mystery and terror of the white whale.
#GreatAlbums2000s - #Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions (2009). The kings of drone metal invite a bevy of guests on this triumph of compressed energy and Stygian mood. Lack of drums made the music very strange to the uninitiated, but the jazz-infused closer “Alice” (as in Coltrane) indicates these are artists willing to explore the deepest chasms between genres. Ridiculous or sublime? It’s up to you, but nothing obliterates conventions quite like this astonishing set.
#GreatAlbums2024 My 20 favourite albums this year...
#Opeth – The Last Will and Testament
Former death metallers turned prog revivalists, Opeth split the difference between the two forms with lushly adorned riffs and guest narration by Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson.
#GreatAlbums1980s - #Slayer – Reign in Blood (1986). 1986: The Challenger explodes, Chernobyl melts down, and Iran-Contra heats up – yet the thing the PMRC wants youth to fear is a group of LA metallers who refuse to sound like they're pretending as they articulate the grinding collapse of western civilization. "Angel of Death," "Necrophobic," "Jesus Saves" and the raging finale "Reign in Blood" are protest music for the age of inhumanity, the folk music of the dispossessed.
#GreatAlbums1980s - #Megadeth – Peace Sells… but Who's Buying? (1986). Dave Mustaine carved out his own space among thrash metal's "Big Four," using his evil-gnome voice to full effect on songs, like "Wake Up Dead" and "Peace Sells," which delivered hooks on top of lightning guitar work by Chris Poland and Mustaine himself. A bizarro cover of "I Ain't Superstitious" revealed classic rock affinities the other thrash heroes wouldn't dare admit until much later.
#GreatAlbums1980s - #Metallica – Master of Puppets (1986). Metallica could have stopped after this electrifying set (some wish they would have) and their legacy as masters of 80s thrash would have lasted. "Battery" is the battering ram opening the gates to the "The Thing That Should Not Be," "Damage, Inc." and Cliff Burton's unwitting elegy "Orion." Nods to Ray Bradbury and Bowie inform lyrics allegorizing the angst of every jean-jacketed kid in a mid-80s suburban wasteland.
#GreatAlbums1980s - #Metallica – Ride the Lightning (1984). Elements of thrash inhabited the metal cosmos for years before Metallica distilled a potent alloy of heaviness, precision, and speed. The acoustic intro to “Fight Fire with Fire” ignites the explosive fury to come. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “Creeping Death” are two enduring epics, and “Ride the Lightning” and “Trapped Under Ice” crystallize aggression to top the exciting but underproduced debut, Kill 'em All.
Great_Albums