M
mankatron2001
Guest
now that last year is finally over, i thought i'd instigate a thread for discussion of people's top 5 albums of the past year (re-releases obviously exlcluded). i guess i'll set the ball rolling...
not having bought all that many albums this year, i've not got much of a range to choose from.. however, starting with number 5...
5. Therapy? - Shameless
as a fairly big fan of the big T?, i had great expectations of the album when the advance EP was released Gimme Gimme Gimme Back My Brain, a compilation of two new T? tracks and covers of songs with the word "gimme" in the title. Covers ranging from Abba's Gimme Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight, to AC80R's Gimme Nyquil (All Night Long) were certainly pleasant ear-candy but failed to deliver much excitement. When the album was released, however, it was a pleasant surprise. It turns out that the two tracks they released as singles (I Am The Money and Gimme Back My Brain) were also the two weakest songs on the album. Twelve tracks of typically T? style moving on drastically from the previous album Suicide Pact - You First and gladly disregarding the two previous new songs on So Much For The Ten Year Plan the Northern Irish metallers deliver an album with songs that demand your attention, with T?'s brand of strange humour and irreverent lyrics dripping all over songs like Tango Romeo, with Cairn's singing tell us not to sneak into his underpants, because we only have to ask. Key tracks include the ode to and the spiteful This One's For You. My view of this album might be slightly jaded by the fact I saw them live a few weeks after it was released, and it was utterly astounding.
4. Radiohead - Amnesiac
The sequel of sorts to Kid A, and in my opinion the much better album. The album starts immediately with Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box, an electronique fest reminiscent of Idioteque, minus the urgency. Personally, I feel that Pyramid Song, Knives Out and I Might Be Wrong undoubtedly give Amnesiac the edge over Kid A, which lacked any particularly strong tracks for me. Although I'm not particularly a fan of Radiohead's new style, after buying the Knives Out single, the b-side Cuttooth utterly blew me away. Many have said it's particularly like their early days, when they were collectively known as On A Friday. Myself, I'd be inclined to agree, and certainly hope their new material follows in this vein, and take band members and fans wishes for 'more guitars' into consideration. Key Tracks: Pyramid Song, and Knives Out.
3. System Of A Down - Toxicity
For me, the only nu-metal(ish) band worth listening to are the mighty SOAD, and although this album lacks some of the agression of their debut album, and generally feels alot more commercial, the album is still a fun fest of insane vocals, thrashing metal riffs and an energy that is unsurpassed by most bands today. The album as a whole feels lacking in some of the agression the previous album held, probably due to the lack of as much swearing as their debut album had, but nevertheless this does not detract from the experience too drastically. Key tracks would have to be Chop Suey! although the overplaying of the video on music channels got quite irritating, and Science, which when I listen to I cannot stop thinking about Iron Maiden. Weird. Serj doesn't seem to utilise his voice quite as much as he did on the previous album unfortunately, and some of the vocal sequences leave a lot to be desired. Despite that, it is on the whole quite a strong album, but nowhere near as good as the next two...
2. Opeth - Blackwater Park
For anybody who has never heard of Opeth (which is probably a lot of you) they're a Swedish death metal band, and the album is nothing less than a beautifully crafted piece of art. Don't let the death metal growl put you off at all, because it's only present half the time, and when vocalist/guitarist Mikeal Akerfeldt's is singing properly, the album is perfect. The songs, mostly averaging at around 10 minutes in length are your typical metal opus, but with more. Beautiful riffs, hammering bass lines, wonderful drums combined with the meaningful lyrics of Akerfeldt and the metal growl which although off putting, is not out of place on this album. It's hard to pick a favourite track, because they're all extremely good, but if I had to choose one, it would be Bleak. This amazing track encompasses everything I could possibly want in a song, and goes from various degrees of riffage, from full on hammering to acoustic intermissions in the music, which all wraps up together perfectly. Unfortunately, Opeth are not a band that you're likely to hear much of, and the album isn't particularly accessible for your casual music listening. Besides that, I strongly recommend it to anybody who is into metal. Key tracks on the album include the aforementioned Bleak, the opening track The Leper Affinity and the lovely acoustic driven interlude of Harvest.
1. Tool - Lateralus
Tool's strongest album to date brings together each of the bands members strongest talents and features them in great length. This is an album I find extremely difficult to write about, but is undoubtedly one of the greatest rock albums ever made. Carrying on from the now five year previous Ænima, the album lacks as many of the now signature Tool segues, and now splits huge songs into different parts. Tool's most adventurous album heavily utilises Danny Carey's brilliant drumming, especially on Ticks & Leeches, alongside some of the greatest metal vocals ever have been recorded by the astounding Maynard James Keenan. The combination of Parabol and Parabola makes for one of my favourite songs, and one hell of a track in means of chugging a riff along. The whole band really comes to fruition on this album, and is a most for anyone who is open-minded about music. It is impossible to pick out a key track on the album, because as a whole it is perfect, and taking it apart would ruin it.
Other honourable mentions
Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy
As a huge Manics fan, I was rather disappointed with this album, which is fairly decent, but lacks the depth of the other Manics albums, and only has three particularly decent tracks on, one of which is the hidden McCarthy cover We Are All Bourgeois Now which is a fairly straightforward cover, but JDB's vocals really give it the edge. Intravenous Agnostic sounds lovely, but the lyrics sounds like Nicky Wire regurgitating a theasaurus onto paper. The only other decent track is Dead Martyrs which really has a feel of old Manics, and at times reminds me especially of the Gold Against The Soul era. Probably their worst album to date.
Tori Amos - Strange Little Girls
Utterly disappointing, was hoping for a lot more and it failed to deliver. Undeniably Tori, and her interpretations of the songs are extremely creative, but unfortunately I don't particularly like any of them. With the exception of her brilliant cover of The Stranglers' Strange Little Girl which sounds like it was written for her to perform.
Muse - Origin Of Symmetry
'A bit messy' sums the album up really, with quite a few strong tracks but not really that decent an album. The lush riff of Plug-In Baby is just something you can play over and over again, and New Born is another wonderful track, both of which stick out on a particularly wishy-washy album.
A rather long post, congrats for reading this far... bit of a rant, something I've needed to get off my chest for a long time! Amateur journalism, huh? :]
not having bought all that many albums this year, i've not got much of a range to choose from.. however, starting with number 5...
5. Therapy? - Shameless
as a fairly big fan of the big T?, i had great expectations of the album when the advance EP was released Gimme Gimme Gimme Back My Brain, a compilation of two new T? tracks and covers of songs with the word "gimme" in the title. Covers ranging from Abba's Gimme Gimme Gimme A Man After Midnight, to AC80R's Gimme Nyquil (All Night Long) were certainly pleasant ear-candy but failed to deliver much excitement. When the album was released, however, it was a pleasant surprise. It turns out that the two tracks they released as singles (I Am The Money and Gimme Back My Brain) were also the two weakest songs on the album. Twelve tracks of typically T? style moving on drastically from the previous album Suicide Pact - You First and gladly disregarding the two previous new songs on So Much For The Ten Year Plan the Northern Irish metallers deliver an album with songs that demand your attention, with T?'s brand of strange humour and irreverent lyrics dripping all over songs like Tango Romeo, with Cairn's singing tell us not to sneak into his underpants, because we only have to ask. Key tracks include the ode to and the spiteful This One's For You. My view of this album might be slightly jaded by the fact I saw them live a few weeks after it was released, and it was utterly astounding.
4. Radiohead - Amnesiac
The sequel of sorts to Kid A, and in my opinion the much better album. The album starts immediately with Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box, an electronique fest reminiscent of Idioteque, minus the urgency. Personally, I feel that Pyramid Song, Knives Out and I Might Be Wrong undoubtedly give Amnesiac the edge over Kid A, which lacked any particularly strong tracks for me. Although I'm not particularly a fan of Radiohead's new style, after buying the Knives Out single, the b-side Cuttooth utterly blew me away. Many have said it's particularly like their early days, when they were collectively known as On A Friday. Myself, I'd be inclined to agree, and certainly hope their new material follows in this vein, and take band members and fans wishes for 'more guitars' into consideration. Key Tracks: Pyramid Song, and Knives Out.
3. System Of A Down - Toxicity
For me, the only nu-metal(ish) band worth listening to are the mighty SOAD, and although this album lacks some of the agression of their debut album, and generally feels alot more commercial, the album is still a fun fest of insane vocals, thrashing metal riffs and an energy that is unsurpassed by most bands today. The album as a whole feels lacking in some of the agression the previous album held, probably due to the lack of as much swearing as their debut album had, but nevertheless this does not detract from the experience too drastically. Key tracks would have to be Chop Suey! although the overplaying of the video on music channels got quite irritating, and Science, which when I listen to I cannot stop thinking about Iron Maiden. Weird. Serj doesn't seem to utilise his voice quite as much as he did on the previous album unfortunately, and some of the vocal sequences leave a lot to be desired. Despite that, it is on the whole quite a strong album, but nowhere near as good as the next two...
2. Opeth - Blackwater Park
For anybody who has never heard of Opeth (which is probably a lot of you) they're a Swedish death metal band, and the album is nothing less than a beautifully crafted piece of art. Don't let the death metal growl put you off at all, because it's only present half the time, and when vocalist/guitarist Mikeal Akerfeldt's is singing properly, the album is perfect. The songs, mostly averaging at around 10 minutes in length are your typical metal opus, but with more. Beautiful riffs, hammering bass lines, wonderful drums combined with the meaningful lyrics of Akerfeldt and the metal growl which although off putting, is not out of place on this album. It's hard to pick a favourite track, because they're all extremely good, but if I had to choose one, it would be Bleak. This amazing track encompasses everything I could possibly want in a song, and goes from various degrees of riffage, from full on hammering to acoustic intermissions in the music, which all wraps up together perfectly. Unfortunately, Opeth are not a band that you're likely to hear much of, and the album isn't particularly accessible for your casual music listening. Besides that, I strongly recommend it to anybody who is into metal. Key tracks on the album include the aforementioned Bleak, the opening track The Leper Affinity and the lovely acoustic driven interlude of Harvest.
1. Tool - Lateralus
Tool's strongest album to date brings together each of the bands members strongest talents and features them in great length. This is an album I find extremely difficult to write about, but is undoubtedly one of the greatest rock albums ever made. Carrying on from the now five year previous Ænima, the album lacks as many of the now signature Tool segues, and now splits huge songs into different parts. Tool's most adventurous album heavily utilises Danny Carey's brilliant drumming, especially on Ticks & Leeches, alongside some of the greatest metal vocals ever have been recorded by the astounding Maynard James Keenan. The combination of Parabol and Parabola makes for one of my favourite songs, and one hell of a track in means of chugging a riff along. The whole band really comes to fruition on this album, and is a most for anyone who is open-minded about music. It is impossible to pick out a key track on the album, because as a whole it is perfect, and taking it apart would ruin it.
Other honourable mentions
Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy
As a huge Manics fan, I was rather disappointed with this album, which is fairly decent, but lacks the depth of the other Manics albums, and only has three particularly decent tracks on, one of which is the hidden McCarthy cover We Are All Bourgeois Now which is a fairly straightforward cover, but JDB's vocals really give it the edge. Intravenous Agnostic sounds lovely, but the lyrics sounds like Nicky Wire regurgitating a theasaurus onto paper. The only other decent track is Dead Martyrs which really has a feel of old Manics, and at times reminds me especially of the Gold Against The Soul era. Probably their worst album to date.
Tori Amos - Strange Little Girls
Utterly disappointing, was hoping for a lot more and it failed to deliver. Undeniably Tori, and her interpretations of the songs are extremely creative, but unfortunately I don't particularly like any of them. With the exception of her brilliant cover of The Stranglers' Strange Little Girl which sounds like it was written for her to perform.
Muse - Origin Of Symmetry
'A bit messy' sums the album up really, with quite a few strong tracks but not really that decent an album. The lush riff of Plug-In Baby is just something you can play over and over again, and New Born is another wonderful track, both of which stick out on a particularly wishy-washy album.
A rather long post, congrats for reading this far... bit of a rant, something I've needed to get off my chest for a long time! Amateur journalism, huh? :]
