Show No Mercy (The Very Metal Top Half Of 2011)

Here's part 2 of my 2011 in music.

10. Wolves In The Throne Room - Celestial Lineage

I've just finally come to accept that I really enjoy black metal, particularly black metal from the U.S. that is more or less singing about nature and full of ambient tones. Don't get me wrong, this album is still crushingly bleak and full of blast beats, shrieking, and riffs that approach the sound barrier, (all prerequisits for solid black metal) it just does it so much better than nearly anyone else out there today. Celestial Lineage brings back female vocals which were sorely lacking from Black Cascade, but retains the rough and primal foundation that make Wolves In The Throne Room so great.

"Thuja Magus Imperium"




9. Decapitated - Carnival Is Forever

Technical death metal has always confused me in the past. I would listen to bands like Cryptopsy and just hear really fast and really complex notes but never really be able to connect to it. I could appreciate it, but that would be about it. Carnival Is Forever helped change that for me, (at least a little bit.) In 2007, their tour bus crashed killing their drummer and causing injuries to their vocalist causing him to have to pull out from performing permanently, (showing that god really doesn't like metal) and the band almost called it quits. Thank god they didn't. Riffs start and stop and reappear out of nowhere and the drum work is impeccable. I really had no idea that any person since Michelangelo was so skilled with their hands, but every member of this band on every single track show what dedication can produce. Oh man, it's so metal.

"404"


(Not from this album, but just watch the drummer, Krimh, wail away in this track) "Day 69"





8. Mastodon - The Hunter

Surprise, Stiche liked a Mastodon album. I was really worried how the album would sound when I found out that this album (a first for Mastodon) would not have an overarching concept to the album. No album on Moby Dick (Leviathan), or journey up a mountain full of cyclops and moving trees (Blood Mountain), or whatever the fuck Crack the Skye was about. No, this album was just a collection of songs played by a slightly tamer Mastodon and after a few dozen listens, that's just fine. Instead of racing guitars and shouted vocals, this album throttles it back just a bit and is full of groove (not Pantera groove, but groove groove). It's an album made by a group of (Manly) men who have beards and tattoos who are growing old and the music reflects it. The solos by Brent Hinds are bigger and even more spectral than anything he did on Crack the Skye and good god they're beautiful. It's nice seeing these guys not take themselves so seriously. Hell, "Stargasm" is about having sex in space. Yeah.

"Stargasm"


"Dry Bone Valley"




7. Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs

There is no doubt that Eddie Vedder is the man. I mean, come on, he's made classic grunge albums with Pearl Jam (and to a lesser extent alternative albums later in their career), and with his work on the Into the Wild OST, he showed that he can make beautiful music of the stripped down, insightful type with little more than a guitar or ukulele. It's not much of a shocker that when he named this album Ukulele Songs, he wasn't kidding. It's easy to call bullshit on an album featuring 16 tracks of Eddie all by his lonesome accompanied only with the aforementioned uke (and an occasional string accompaniment), but there is a certain charm and absolute zen-ness in this album that is painfully easy to get lost in. The concept is so simple - give Eddie Vedder an instrument that more or less sounds exactly the same regardless of how one plays it an boom, he makes an exceedingly enjoyable album. It blows my mind.

"Light Today"


"Can't Keep"





6. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

This band has arguably released either a masterpiece or a near masterpiece ever since they put out OK Computer in '97 (that's my opinion when I have my Radiohead fanboy blinders on). When they decided to release The King of Limbs with only a week heads up and requiring nothing more than just saying, "Hey, we have a new album dropping next week," (paraphrased of course) the music community went ape shit and rightfully so. I have a tough time coming up with any band more deserving of such hype. When The King of Limbs came out I was immediately disappointed and comforted all at once. I was disappointed because it didn't reinvent the wheel like Kid A did a decade before or define the alternative genre like OK Computer did. The tracks were good. They were very good. "Little By Little" was so full of anxious guitar-work that I could feel the strings sink into my skin with each strum. "Separator" was so enveloping in the way it was haunting and carefree all at once that I couldn't stop listening to it. And that's when it dawned on me. Radiohead doesn't owe anybody anything at this point. They can change the landscape of music only so many times and when they're done doing that, they still put out pretty damn kick-ass music. Also, "Lotus Flower" is amazing in nearly every conceivable way.

"Little By Little"


"Lotus Flower"