Best Albums of 2013

Part of my love of Janelle Monae is that she's from the Kansas City area. Always fun to support the local girl.

Actually, I slightly prefer her first album, The Archandroid. I think it plays up the sci-fi elements a little more.

You definitely should try that Pinkish Black record too...very psychedelic.

I love this time of year; this is when I orgy on all the music people recommend from the last year and then I spend until Dec listening to it all.

So far I've really enjoyed rjd2's latest more is than isn't although it has a couple of missteps. And pretty lights' a color map of the sun. Both are fantastic to put on and work to.

On the classical/jazz front there is darcy james argue's secret society and their album brooklyn babylon which I've just heard a bit of and am eager to dive into.

I enjoyed the pentatonix arrangement of daft punk more than daft punk itself, sadly. Although in my defense pentatonix is ridiculous; if you're not familiar they're an a capella group who have amazing range and vocal abilities.

My favorite kid's song of the year is Recess by Justin Roberts which is just catchy and fun as all hell, and the video is great too.

Looking forward to hitting up lots in this thread as well!

Two most listened would likely be Blood Moon Rise by Jex Thoth and Henbane by Cultes Des Ghoules, which means they're also the best.

So Deafheaven is actually good? I never listened to them because I thought they were an indie rock band pretending to be black metal, i.e. posers.

Wait, I thought that was Liturgy...

It's totally modern USBM, just none of the usual lyrical/visual trappings. They're definitely not a Nargaroth ("Fuck Nowadays Black Metal") or a Nifilheim (who claimed to NEVER remove their corpsepaint), but it's definitely black metal and REALLY good black metal at that. But they also have more of the common Slint/My Bloody Valentine influence that's crept into USBM in particular. I like that though.

But I like the full on kvlt stuff too.

It's kind of weird what happened to Black Metal but I like Liturgy as well... I'm more into it for the music than the lyrical content or outfits I guess. I don't know. But I'd say the guys in Liturgy and Deafheaven (if I had to talk about this aspect) look more similar to the dudes in Venom than many other Black Metal dudes from the last ten years or so. Some of these guys with the corpse paint drinking red wine out of giant goblets look faintly ridiculous to me. I have to actively ignore that aspect of it to enjoy the music. They're a little harder to take seriously sometimes. I'm not sure there is any more authenticity either way. It should be about whether or not they make a good album. I seriously couldn't care if it was a group of all Priests over 65 years old who programmed it one note at a time as long as the album rocked. An album and a show are totally different things to me.

I've listened to more Deafheaven and am still loving them. I like the way these newer bands fuck with the formula a little bit here and there. It keeps me on my toes. I kind of skip from Venom to Ulver and Darkthrone right up to these newer guys. Although I did really like Deathspell Omega as well and a couple of others. A lot of this is thanks to Barnes who pointed me at a few bands to listen to and then those are the ones I settled on. Black Metal is something that interested me but I wasn't going to actively search out on my own.

I listened to that Janelle Monae a bunch more too. It could be an awesome album with some editing. There is a good 75% of it that I think is great and then another 25% or so that could have been cut. I'll take it as is and I'm happy you guys recommended her to me. She's an interesting artist and Princes guest appearance is great. These are both growing on me. The nice thing is my wife likes it too so we can enjoy it as a family.

This is why metal sucks sometimes. I put it on in the fucking morning and my wife will say (or my dad or my mom or any fucking body who isn't a metal fan) "isn't it a little early for that kind of music?" I put it on in the afternoon and someone will say: "we're all sitting here having a good time you don't need to put on such aggressive music" you wait till late at night and someone will say: "dinner time isn't really appropriate for that kind of music."

FUCK YOU ALL, when the fuck is it ok to listen to metal in my own house? ... of course I would never say that, but man it goes through my head some days.

Here's what's interesting to me though. Like Stockhausen said in a way.. .my 2.5 year old son doesn't mind. He'll rock out to Dead Skin Mask first thing in the morning. I can put on any old metal band I like, no matter how loud or how aggressive... he's cool with it. He doesn't have this preconceived notion that we have about how this music should be interpreted. We can put it on during dinner and he's fine... it's the adults who complain and even sometimes try to tell me that "it will scare him" ... no, it scares you, and that's something you should think about.

JonJacob wrote: FUCK YOU ALL, when the fuck is it ok to listen to metal in my own house?

There's a reason why headphones were invented...

At work I'm allowed to listen to music all the time, except when someone wants to talk to me of course. I work better under the influence of music anyhow.

Schweig! wrote:

JonJacob wrote: FUCK YOU ALL, when the fuck is it ok to listen to metal in my own house?

There's a reason why headphones were invented...

At work I'm allowed to listen to music all the time, except when someone wants to talk to me of course. I work better under the influence of music anyhow.

Work is fine for me too but I'm not wearing headphones when I'm hanging out with my kid at home. I don't actually mind that I can't listen to metal much at home but I find it funny/odd that people get so offended by that one genre and equally funny that Sunderland doesn't seem to give a shit and in fact likes it.

It's the older people who have created their distaste for metal that have a problem.

JonJacob wrote: Work is fine for me too but I'm not wearing headphones when I'm hanging out with my kid at home. I don't actually mind that I can't listen to metal much at home but I find it funny/odd that people get so offended by that one genre and equally funny that Sunderland doesn't seem to give a shit and in fact likes it.

It's the older people who have created their distaste for metal that have a problem.

Most of metal is loud and either aggressive or gloomy. Most people don't want to hear that casually.

It's not just metal though; try spreading your love for hardcore punk or emo.

That's just something I accept, nothing I get riled up about. As I said, I can still listen to it any time I want with headphones on. I'm not a proselytiser.

I like Moss Icon a lot, but wouldn't subject any unwilling person to it. Except their song Memorial maybe.

ouf..it's a little early in the morning to be talking about metal, no?

C-C-C-COMBO!!!

The thing with Black Metal is it is very tied to the whole "kvlt" thing, and there is a premium placed on isolation and obscurity...which is kind of at odds with, you know, being in a band and playing music. While wearing ridiculous outfits and makeup. But then there are a lot of one man "bedroom" acts (such as Burzum, Leviathan, Furze, and so forth) that really are more isolationist.

So you've got bands that very wilfully avoid having any kind of internet presence or information about who they are or what they look like. Stuff like the Les Legions Noire records, that are ULTRA obscure kvlt. For a while, you could only get their stuff on CASSETTE and in super limited, self-made runs. On the other end, you've got bands like Immortal, Graveland or Carpathian Forest or whatever that are ALL ABOUT the crazy photo shoot with fire, weapons, the woods, and so forth. There's something very obviously exhibitionist about all that. And now, over the past few years, here come the black metal bands with guys that just look pretty normal. That the hardliners immediately decry as "hipsters" or "indie rock". Despite the fact that bands like Liturgy and Deafheaven are just as BM as Ulver was and just as (if not more) innovative and taking the genre into new spaces.

The problem with the whole "image" is that it's really preposterous and there's this premium placed on "authenticity", but there's nothing authentic about it. It's really just cosplay, after a sense. Guys dressing up like what you THINK a black metal band would like, even though Venom and Celtic Frost didn't go to nearly the extremes that these bands do. But I _like_ the goofy extremity. I like seeing the dude from Graveland in his medieval battle gear or Mortiis with his silly goblin makeup. I don't see how anyone can take it seriously. I don't look anything like Maniac Butcher or whoever. You'd probably never know when you walk by me in the grocery store that I'm listening to Brenoritvrezorkre or Beherit, whatever. Because I'm into the music- the lyrics (usually either terrible or outright appaling) don't matter, the image doesn't matter to me as long as it stays away from far right/fascist content which I try to avoid.

The one man in the world that I've ever met that I felt was just completely, truly black metal 100% to his bones is my good friend Billy Motion (check your Ogre DE box for his name). You would never know that this guy is an encyclopedia of black metal. He's grim and woeful, trve kvlt. But he wears Nautica shirts and looks pretty normal.

A while back there was a band called Velvet Cacoon. They purposefully released very little information about themselves other than some cryptic, very leading and probably untrue things like one of the members committed suicide, they had a guitar powered by diesel motor, and so forth. They did a REALLY good BM record that was very Burzum but was also one of the first to really kind of show the shoegazer influence. Turns out they were a couple of "hipster" "indie rock" people. Not corpsepainters. The BM community immediately turned on them. Didn't matter that the record was great. What mattered is that they were "posers" for not buying into the image.

Unfortunate. But such as it is with many music scenes.

Schweig! wrote:

JonJacob wrote: Work is fine for me too but I'm not wearing headphones when I'm hanging out with my kid at home. I don't actually mind that I can't listen to metal much at home but I find it funny/odd that people get so offended by that one genre and equally funny that Sunderland doesn't seem to give a shit and in fact likes it.

It's the older people who have created their distaste for metal that have a problem.

Most of metal is loud and either aggressive or gloomy. Most people don't want to hear that casually.

It's not just metal though; try spreading your love for hardcore punk or emo.

That's just something I accept, nothing I get riled up about. As I said, I can still listen to it any time I want with headphones on. I'm not a proselytiser.

I like Moss Icon a lot, but wouldn't subject any unwilling person to it. Except their song Memorial maybe.

Not riled up (see bold section in case you missed it) and certainly not proselytizing. I guess the joking aspect was unclear.

The point of that post was way more about my son's reaction to music of this kind. Or even avant garde 20th century music in general. The point was about how a child doesn't seem to care one way or the other and is fine with it. It's really about how we grow into our tastes.

Does Barnes not like blues because of some outside influence? Do I have a hard time with pop (which I'm coming around on) or especially repetitive dance music because of outside influences? How much of what we enjoy is just us trying to create a persona for ourselves? Is it true what Stockhausen says about dissonance vs. consonance? That they are entirely relative. Does a perfect 5th actually have meaning beyond what we apply to it. Does a chord invariably sound best to the untrained ear when it just includes the 1 3 and 5? Is a minor chord actually a "sad" or "dark" sound?

I know that when I'm teaching I'm very careful not to describe certain sounds. If I play a chord I ask the child what it makes them think of and then I might play the same chord with the 7 added in, it's supposed to create tension, it's supposed to make the want the next logical chord in the series. Does it do that? Can an augmented chord exist on it's own or does it need support to sound "good".

I truly haven't decided yet. I am definitely leaning towards thinking that certain formula's do work for us and some formula's can work but that we have to learn them. The infamous metal (and blues) flat five sounds good to a lot of people. But I believe that this is a learned trait and essentially what I'm doing by exposing my son to music of this type so early is teaching him to enjoy it very early.

But I'm not totally sure of that and I'm willing to change my mind still.

The metal in the morning thing is something that has been at most a mild irritant in my life. But it was a fun and casual way to bring up a potentially overly pretentious and serious topic.

TL:DR, I'm not angry, I'm curious.

Black Barney wrote: ouf..it's a little early in the morning to be talking about metal, no?

I'm a farmer, I get up at 5:30 am.