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I do this to Ryan Leas all the time. "Dude, you shoulda seen Blur in '97 at Roseland when they did 'Tender' with the Harlem Boys Choir, it was so mega." My fucking landlord who's in his 60s does it to me all the time: "Oh yeah, I saw Zeppelin in '77, Pink Floyd touring for The Wall..." One time, my landlord's brother sees me wearing a Maiden T-shirt and he just starts running down all the times he saw them: first with Paul Di'Anno, then every tour with Bruce Dickinson through Powerslave, like two times a year in the early '80s, at little places like L'Amour in Queens or some shit, just impossible to even imagine. I go, "Man I just saw them touring for Book Of Souls at MSG, they still got it!" He sighs super hard and just goes, "Eh, it's not the same."

Nah, total opposite (thank fuck). HHH just says a lot of high-concept stuff and assumes that will carry the music, but the music is garbage and he's a fucking charlatan. Julian says nothing, pretends to be kinda superficial and spaced-out, and makes music that is way more challenging and high-concept than ppl expect bc of the persona. Really interesting observation tho. (Of course u can disagree too, that's "just my opinion!" as they say.)

Here's another great comment (and response) on that Narg track, and then I will stop hijacking the Voidz convo with my stray observations about an unrelated and also unlistenable black metal song: Mitchfinder General 3 months ago Very unique and brave black metal track. Nobody knew what to make of this when it released. Some people gave it a chance and found a beautiful, flowing Nargaroth track. Others discard this as "happy black metal". Fernando L*****o 2 months ago Mitchfinder General si único pero patético y absurdo (Google translate: "Yes unique but also pathetic and absurd.")

No no, to be clear, that's the whole iceberg. The song does pretty much the same thing for 10 mins, BUT there is some sort of '80s Casio pre-programmed blastbeat-esque drum fill at about the 8-min mark that I think is supposed to feel like a big climax or something. It's just a wholly inexplicable piece of music, and it has haunted me for a decade after hearing it ONCE.

THAT IS WHAT I AM HEARING THANK YOU

@lobster Dude that is such a perfect take on this Narg track. Stick with it to hear the crazy programmed (?) blast beat (?) just after the 8-min mark. Wtf! Additionally, for an alternative view, consider this also-perfect response, which I have copied-and-pasted from the Narg track's YouTube comments: "That's sounds like a reggueton in my country... I am Kolumbien !!!"

@lobster man But you know what? This is REALLY weird in the way that, like, this weird and ultra-random Nargaroth song "Frühling" is REALLY weird, not like the way the Body are "weird" (though they are pretty weird). Like you said someplace else, it's almost like he doesn't even realize how weird it is, and that makes the listening experience legit freaky and unsettling, but also super fun. (If u don't know that song -- and trust me, I don't expect anybody to know that song -- I will share for u.)

And to think, he spent all that time working so he WOULDN'T have to try so hard!

@inthedeadofknight OK so yeah, this is a great point, and I shoulda dug into this in my writeup, but the stuff you are bringing up actually weirds me out EVEN MORE than if it were just random chaos. The song TOTALLY hangs together as a song. Pretty basic structure, pretty consistent melodic progressions, etc. I get that, and I agree. I feel like somebody like Ryan Adams could listen to this, break it down to its "core" elements, and cover it in a way that would make it sound totally normal. But doing that would totally rob the song of its magic and would also further reveal the limitations of Ryan Adams' imagination, his musical neo-conservatism, as well as his bloated narcissism. I'm absolutely not comparing you or your thinking to Ryan Adams, btw. I just realized that might come off as deeply insulting. I just meant that Ryan Adams is the extreme endpoint in the sorta "steady beat = song" but "off-the-wall shit = ephemera" dualism. I kinda feel like the off-the-wall shit IS the song. THAT'S THE SONG! Like, here is what I mean: This coulda been recorded straight-through in any one of the styles it fucks with: coulda been a krautrock/Devo-type song, coulda been an 808s-type Auto-Tune song, coulda been a low-camp Off-Off-Broadway goth-type song with faux Vincent Price-style narrative cutaways. Etc. It could also probably be a straight-up Strokes song. It's real simple and has a pretty strong, tight melody. But it's NONE of those songs. Or? It is ALL of those songs. (And more.) When I write about music, at my best, I try to assess the artist's intentions, and then, base my response on my perception of how well the artist achieved those intentions, divided by my own feelings about the music, whatever it inspired in me, etc., multiplied by broader cultural or historical context, plus some other random stuff related to, like, whatever I happened to watch on TV that week. In this case, I have NO FUCKING IDEA what Jules' intentions were, therefore: NO FUCKING IDEA how well he achieved his intentions. And even stranger than that, I'm actually totally confused about what the song should or even could inspire in me, or even what it DOES inspire in me. I can run down my gut-level responses. E.g., it makes me crack up, it kinda makes me groove, I get with the melody, I obviously respect the motherfucking craft... But mostly I just listen with this intense fascination and curiosity (or "QYURRYUSITY," if you prefer). Idk, I gotta save some of this stuff for when I actually write about the record, but I also have all these thoughts to burn off and I love talking about this dude's music. If you see some of this stuff (or stuff like it) in a PE at some point, I apologize the redundancy, and as always appreciate jabbering about this music with other ppl who care.

@Firexfighter Yr gonna get some downvotes for this, bc there is a small but vocal "Kult Of Saint Julian" contingent over here, same as we got for Kanye ("Kult Of Saint Pablo"?), and I'm in both those groups, for better or worse, so I know how this usually goes. But I'm upvoting you because I think you're getting at something really essential to the song and your reaction reflects something really poignant, I think, about how we connect with and care about music, and how deep it gets under our skin and into our psyches. You had a fucking pure visceral reaction to this song, it (momentarily at least) recontextualized your response to actual shit going down in your actual life, and that is a pretty rare experience. I don't know Julian Casablancas personally, but I bet he'd dig this comment more than anything else written here so far. And I also bet all this makes you hate the whole thing EVEN MORE. I don't wanna make light of your real-life problems, I just wanted to thank you for expressing this stuff.

Dust is such an '80s NYC white-kid pastime that it fits Jules' whole aesthetic like a glove. That said, "Krokodil" is totally a Voidz song title, so you have a point.

Genuinely excited to return to this conversation once we've all heard the album. Just to have this on the record before I forget, the five songs I heard were: "Leave It In My Dreams" "Qyurryus" "Pyramid Of Bones" "All Wordz Are Made Up" "Pointlessness" The four songs after "Dreams" are such a headfuck that I legitimately have NO IDEA what the rest of the record even MIGHT sound like. Also can't begin to guess what you guys are gonna think.

I just re-read my review of Tyranny and now I kinda wish I could publish it because it's got some good lines. I get a little queasy at the thought of actually listening to Tyranny again though.

I don't even want to look at it again, I just remember it being really exhausting (to construct, and surely to read as well) and sorta pissy. I think I wrote it soon after I did the Anniversary essay on First Impressions, so I was deep in the Strokes zone and felt like I was locked into Julian's creative brainwaves. But my main takeaway was like, "Even though I think this is a genuine atrocity, it's not really fair of me to review an album based on what I want it to be instead of what it IS." Like I either led or closed with that admission or had a whole section about our unfair and narcissistic expectations of artists. I knew I was being unreasonable. I didn't like Tyranny, but more to the point, I wanted Tyranny to be Phrazes Pt 2. (And I still do.)

@black sheep boy No joke, I've got a 10k-word/multimedia review of Tyranny buried in a drafts folder somewhere; I spent like a fevered week writing that thing, and then decided at the 11th hour that I didn't want to publish a long bummer review of an artist who was honestly following his muse. I considered some wise words that we'd all do well to remember: "We need to accept the possibility of a record so excellent we don’t understand it yet."

@tommind I agree w you 100%. Yr not a bad Julian fan at all. It sometimes drives me nuts to hear him bury or blow off these perfect melodies that could easily hold up entire songs if he built 'em that way anymore. I kinda feel like he knows in his heart he could write another all-time classic if he put his effort into doing so, but for whatever reason, he doesn't want the spotlight/pressure, so he's just hiding all this gold in these crazy-ass song structures. But remember, I only heard five songs, and none of those songs sound the slightest bit alike, so I truly can't predict what the other TEN songs will sound like (I didn't realize it was a 15-track LP till I checked the tracklist linked above). Maybe the sampler was a bait-and-switch and the rest of the thing is straight bangers. I wouldn't put anything past him tbh.

Yeah, pretty sure you'll fucking love this one, Tim, but you are also the biggest Julian superfan in this place. To my ear it was infinitely better than Tyranny, and arguably more uncompromising in its way, although way more melodic. Again, this is not like a deeply thought-out opinion -- I could listen again and hear it totally differently. But he's on his own wavelength in a way that few artists even aspire to being.

I only listened straight through one time (and like I said, I only heard five songs) and I thought that after this one, they all sounded like music from another galaxy as influenced by obscure/bizarre music from this galaxy. I liked it much more than Tyranny, but I hated Tyranny, so I'm not sure what that's worth. I'm gonna cautiously say "good weird" but I don't know if I'd actually recommend it to people unless they were Julian superfans (I'd put myself in that category) or people who really go for the absolute weirdest music because they take a lot of drugs or something. But this isn't like my PE or anything, just what I remember about five songs that I heard two months ago. (I wanna write a PE, so if I do, plz don't hold me to anything I'm saying here.) That said, it definitely stuck with me and made me very curious to hear in full, and you gotta credit the guy for just doing whatever the fuck he wants, because he could easily make a top-to-bottom Petty-level rock-pop-punk classic, he's just so fucking gifted. You also gotta imagine the other Strokes absolutely hate him, because he is light years away from the Strokes at this point (with the exception of this track, which has a definite Strokes-y feel, and incidentally, after one listen, this was my favorite track of the bunch I heard.)

I heard like half the record and I promise you, this track is a total anomaly -- everything else I heard was 50 billion times weirder than this, and frankly weirder than Tyranny, if not quite so consistently abrasive. It is a very fucking weird record, if what I heard is any indication of the whole.

Yeah, re: ATG, just listen to Slaughter Of The Soul -- I could give you a whole bunch of arguments for their other records, but Slaughter is obviously the true game-changer. Their other stuff is both proggier and more trad-metal -- and it too rules -- but Slaughter is their Nevermind. It might not click for you, but that's the big one. I love it so much, I get hyped just thinking about it.

Yeah back in 2015 I kinda felt that AWWR would reveal itself over time as a work on par with SOS or TSD, but people had to get beyond their expectations/knee-jerk reaction to give it the proper assessment. That band just doesn't write bad songs and Tompa Lindberg's voice is peerless IMO. (Admittedly I'm not a huge fan of their pre-TSD stuff but I know people swear by those records too.) I do feel that Live The Storm features Tompa's best vocals of any project I've ever heard (and I've heard a lot of 'em), which I chalk up to Kurt Ballou. It actually might be my single favorite "extreme" metal (i.e., non-melodic) vocal performance of all time. It's just a pure physical force; it makes my skull feel like it's on fire. I genuinely come back to this album very regularly, to the point that it seems weird that it's already 10 years old because it never really left my rotation. It is, to my mind, unquestionably a classic.

I'm not even sure if Terminal Spirit Disease is the best At The Gates album front to back but it has my two favorite songs and I'm mostly just happy this is a purely academic argument and I live in a world where I can access Terminal AND Slaughter Of The Soul AND Live The Storm (and At War With Reality) at any moment, because I never know which one I'm gonna need RIGHT AWAY but I will, before long, need all of them.

That's an indefensible position but this is legitimately one of my very favorite albums of all time.

I'm hesitant to share this information, because I'm not sure if it's my place, but I'm going to do so anyway, only because you brought it up: I talked to Andrew W.K. after his session, and he told me he was pretty unhappy with his piano-playing throughout. He was reluctant to blame the instrument we'd provided for him, but there is no question in my mind that was the primary culprit. It's an impressive-looking piano, but I'm not sure it's up to the technical standard he would need to deliver the performance he'd intended to deliver. I reassured him as best I could, told him I was (and am) a fan from Day One and I had been BLOWN AWAY by what I'd just seen and heard. This was all true, and I think he recognized it as such and reluctantly decided that other fans would benefit from seeing and hearing it, too. But I imagine his own feelings are more in line with yours than mine. He's a virtuoso player and a painstaking perfectionist, and I could see his consternation in having made such a compromise. I expect there's a part of him that's glad someone pointed out the flaws in his performance, and I hope there's another part that's glad I've shared this behind-the-scenes detail, because both deserve to be addressed.

Thank you RJ. I cannot find words to express how genuinely fucking amazing it was to witness this performance in real life. It's been three days and I'm still hyped.

Can't speak to the rest of this, but I am 1000% Chidi. (That said, I get a little frustrated by his occasionally facile or uncharacteristically inconsistent application of ethical philosophy to the situation in which he finds himself, even though I recognize it's necessary from the perspective of the show's writers, who need him to follow such lines of thinking just to keep the plot moving. A person of his background should pretty immediately be able to recognize a clear and even objective structure of ethics within the rubric outlined in that particular reality. If anything, he'd be questioning the validity of that rubric, especially considering the fact that [SPOILER ALERT] his guides always begin the experiment by misrepresenting that reality and their respective roles therein. Perhaps Chidi's ostensible inability to functionally apply his understanding of ethical philosophy to his situation is its own form of narrative misdirection, to be revealed as additional layers are peeled away. I love him as he is, though, and I thought last night's ep was fucking awesome.)

Hahaha, nice job! So basically my comment above was pretty much identical to his response to the question, just phrased slightly differently. I appreciate their commitment to that conceit, but at a certain point in life, you really have to ask yourself why you're doing this, who is benefiting, and is it worth it?

I never heard that before, but it wouldn't surprise me. They are one of the bands who do that carcass-and-blood stuff onstage. I've seen them a few times, and it's not so pungent in the bigger rooms, but the show they played at Santos in 2010 was packed to the door, hotter than a laundromat, and the whole place stank like an entire nest of rats had died in the vents. My jacket smelled like rotten animal flesh for days afterward. And I was there for, what, two hours? Now imagine being on that tour with all that dead meat 24/7 for two straight months. Someone is bound to get sick at some point.

Yeah I agree that Sworn To The Dark is a masterpiece and also the best Watain album, all things considered. It's got this swirling claustrophobic intensity but also tons of melodic guitars and thick grooves that kinda lay back while the momentum builds and then just jump out to sock you in the jaw when you're not expecting it at all. Danielson is really gifted at composition and arrangement, and I think that's what sets Watain apart, but that's also what made The Wild Hunt such a dud. It's not that he was writing slow songs, but boring slow songs.

I remember when the metal snobs on Hipinion called Wolves In The Throne Room "Wolf T-Shirts In The Dorm Room." Oh 2009, so much to answer for.

Here, start by listening to "Reaping Death," which is really peak arena-size Watain, just so you can get a feel for how they packed these massive hooks and choruses into their songs. (Also it's just an incredible song, period.) Then listen to "They Rode On" so you can see where the went AFTER "Reaping Death." Then listen to any song on the new album. That'll at least give you some context for how hard they're going here.

Honestly, if this is your first time listening to Watain, I wouldn't advise you start with this album, because this is INSANELY brutal and discordant by pretty much any standard, but especially Watain's. I'd start with Sworn To The Dark or Lawless Darkness, which are still heavy as fuck but also have these killer hooks that make them sound almost catchy. I can't even imagine how this would sound to someone who's never fucked with Watain till now. I'm a longtime fan and it knocked the wind outta me.

Wait, we left Andrew W.K. off the list? That's like my sixth most anticipated album of 2018! Gah. My near-scientific anticipation-gauging probabilistic formula seems to have failed me. And everyone else. That W.K. record is gonna be a banger! (I haven't heard a note of it, so don't blame me if it's not a banger. But I feel strongly that it's gonna be a banger.)

Cosmo is our patron saint and true north. It sounds trite to say "we wouldn't be here without him," but in this rare case, it's a simple statement of fact and it applies on multiple levels. (It's literally impossible for me to imagine what my life would look like today without Cosmo's influence, and I think Doug, Wyatt, Aaron, and Ian would say the same thing regarding their own lives and experiences.) It's not unreasonable to think that both Doug and I were, in some respects, following Cosmo's example when we chose to step away from metal writing. And maybe we'll all return at some point. Regarding your note re: lawyers: As I was saying to Doug on Twitter a few days ago, the funniest part about the whole "law school" meme generated by Doug's exit essay here is the fact that, in the five years since we started doing Black Market, Aaron has ACTUALLY gone through the whole horrible LSAT/application/law school/bar exam process, and is now a lawyer, and nobody has even mentioned it. And Aaron is the greatest guy in the world! We love lawyers! Except Full Metal Attorney. That guy is a troll. (Just kidding FMA, you're great too.)

Well, if you're inquiring because it's lower than you might expect on this list, it should be known that I had no involvement in compiling this. Had I voted, Pallbearer would have been a lot higher than #25. (Kreator would have been on here too, and it would have been in the upper tier.) When I submitted my final ballot for the Stereogum staff 50 Best Albums list, I had it as my third favorite album of 2017, after War On Drugs' A Deeper Understanding and Counterparts' You're Not You Anymore, two brilliant, boundless, incredibly rich and detailed albums that just dominated my life from the moment I heard them. In a broader sense? I mean, one's relationship with art is always evolving, is it not? And my feelings about an album are generally strongest when I'm immersed in it. Furthermore, when I'm writing about an album, I'm DEEPLY immersed in it. Once I'm done writing - and especially months (or years) later - I can't recreate that particular immersive state. I can only remember it. That said, if you're asking if the album has dropped in my estimation, I can honestly say it has not. I sincerely think it's a monumental work, easily the band's most ambitious, interesting, and unique, and there is truly no single thing in the entire world to which it can be compared. It's not a derivation of anything, not an update or a distillation. That's so rare in music, but it's almost unheard-of in metal, which tends to be dogmatic to the point of absolute rigidity. (That said, Heartless is really a prog album with metal influences more than a metal-genre album.) It demands a pretty substantial commitment from the listener, but it delivers a massive, memorable return on that investment. I mean, IMO, YMMV, etc. I hope that answers your question? Thanks for asking!

AARON: "I know this is an unpopular opinion, but guys hear me out: Morbid Angel should be our consensus #1 album of 2017." ALSO AARON: [puts Morbid Angel at #10 on his personal ballot]

Just so we're clear, to the extent my "fitting metaphor" is indeed fitting, I'm Tompa Lindberg and you're Ben from Goatwhore (the rightful "Sexiest Dude In Metal" btw). Which, I guess, would mean that Ian is Kevin Sharp? Eh, that CAN'T be right. Anyway, I'm glad we cleared that up. Thank u for being a jean vest friend.

Imma let you guys comment on this list, but before we get to that, I wanna make sure y’all saw the absolute BULLSHIT being announced in the third graf of Doug’s beautiful intro essay. In response, I would like to say the following: Doug Moore is literally the best writer and an even better person. I’ve known him since 2011, when we worked at Invisible Oranges together, and we’ve been friends since the day we met: at a bar in Brooklyn, nerding out over Star Wars, pregaming the Lock Up show at Europa. (Both Doug and I were/are huge fans of Tomas Lindberg, who was fronting that band at the time. Tompa came out to play, but after one song or so, it was evident he was too sick to sing, at which point the dude from Goatwhore valiantly took the mic and finished the band’s set. Maybe a fitting metaphor? Idk. True story, tho.) Anyway, from the moment we started doing Black Market together, I knew the day would come when Doug would call me and say, “No mas.” That’s life. I get it. But I still hate it. Doug is abdicating his throne (initially) against my most strenuous opposition, but (ultimately) with my full support. Fortunately, the three dudes who will author this column going forward — Ian, Aaron, and Wyatt — are ALSO the best writers and even better people. If any one of them were leaving instead of Doug, that guy would get a sendoff every bit as sappy and sentimental as this one. I’m so glad they’re sticking around. If they didn’t want to do this anymore, we’d pull the plug. But God love ‘em, they were pretty adamant. Doug has a host of reasons for calling it quits, all of which I find totally insufficient. And also totally understandable. I’ll let him talk about that stuff if he wants. I’ll say only that I’m happy this column is continuing, and that, between us, Doug isn’t really going anywhere — he’s still gonna be here behind the scenes, wasting his downtime in the Black Market Slack channel, trying to convince everybody to listen to amelodic, arrhythmic, geekoid tech-death. You just won’t see his byline anymore. As he put it in an email to me: “It'll be an Eggos-in-the-forest-type situation!” As someone who (SPOILER ALERT!) HATED the way Eleven was apparently sacrificed (or was she?) at the end of Stranger Things Season 1, I find this is a nice, reassuring way to look at the future of this column and our lives. Doug didn’t save anybody from any demagorgons or anything, but he’s made our D&D campaign way more fun. And he’s still alive, still playing. THAT is the thing that matters most to me. I owe him a lifetime of favors for everything he’s done, but THAT is the thing for which I’m most thankful. OK sorry to hijack this thing. Commence arguing about metal.

Thanks man! No lie, swapping out "Eve" for "Cosmonauts" was the final move I made on my list, after 25+ previous drafts. By that point, the depths of my logic are so convoluted that the details of my internal arguments and counterarguments barely make sense even to me. But the fact that you noticed makes it all worth it.

Killed me not to include "Eve" on my list. KILLED me. That's an unreal piece of music, and on another day (say, last Thursday, or maybe tomorrow), it woulda been on my list, too.