I don't have a list, but I can't think of too many (any?) other artists who have been so consistently innovative/ prolific/ rewarding for the last ~25 years. Kozelek maybe? Incredible catalog but nowhere near as daring as Damon. PJ Harvey? Not prolific enough. Bjork? (To be clear I'm not counting someone like Kanye for instance who's only got like 10+ years under his belt or whatever.)
Yeah I got an advance copy a week or so ago. I haven't listened closely enough to have nuanced opinions on individual songs but on the whole I'm really enjoying it.
I agree completely. I'm a huge Hold Steady fan and was totally bored by Heaven Is Whenever. I love this song and most of the new album, and while this style of production might not seem to be the most natural choice for them, I think it works largely because they really had to make a change just to keep things fresh. This approach shifts the focus of the band's sound pretty adeptly, in that everything that makes them unique and great is still here, yet the hooks are at the fore and Craig is deeper in the mix (and sounds like he's sing-singing rather than talk-singing). I expect a lot of people will feel a bit put off by the slickness but frankly I think they made a bold and successful decision. No it's not Boys And Girls In America, but no matter what they did, it wasn't going to be Boys And Girls In America, and I'm glad they're trying something new rather than trying to recreate something old.
Well she does sing "I hope I'm not pregnant," implying the subject is a man, but I don't think any of us here voted for that song because it's a feminist statement (though I can only speak for myself in that regard); it's just a really great song. FWIW I actually don't think it IS a feminist statement, or any kind of statement. It's just a miniaturist short story with a great vocal and melody set to an elemental punk track. I love the Real Estate song too, though.The top three probably could have appeared in any order and I would have been fine with it.
I agree with all that. I think song for song though it might actually be better than Sunbather but it aspires to something much different, and I definitely don't think the mainstream media will pick up on it the same way. But I also think it's a genuinely great record and the kind of thing that will be a genre touchstone almost instantly, and it will probably find a lot of fans outside the genre, too, because it provides such an immediate rush and continues to deliver new thrills after many listens.
You have to consider some non-musical factors, too: WOD is an Australian band who don't/won't tour or even play shows, and Northern Silence is releasing the physical edition of As The Stars in super-limited quantities (I think 1881 copies total, at least initially). I don't think WOD will be in Apple ads anytime soon, but I do agree the record deserves that sort of reception!
Ha! Honestly, I didn't want to talk about it in the context of Sunbather because Woods Of Desolation predate Deafheaven by like half a decade, and it would be easy to wrongly infer that they're creating this music in Deafheaven's shadow. But I do think fans of Sunbather would do well to listen to Woods Of Desolation. I also think that people who didn't like Sunbather might still like this record, because it's much rawer, and the vocals aren't as prominent in the mix, but it has those anthemic melodies and progressions.
Never. I was referring to the Judd Aparow-Billie Joe Armstrong skit to which I linked at the beginning of that paragraph. My point was that it's bad enough when humorists lazily conflate/confuse black metal and death metal. But it's completely insane to call Judas Priest a "death metal" band for no reason.
Max, I've only heard "Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel" (which I wrote about here) but I think it sounds really promising -- maybe it's just the time away, but they sound fresher than they have in a decade. That said, as a song, it's pretty anticlimactic -- a lotta build-up without a huge payoff. I'm assuming they wanted this to serve as a "trailer" more than a "single," though, and my issue with the song will become a non-issue in the album context.
Upon reading this comment, I decided to actually go to iTunes to see what the top-selling metal albums of 2013 were, and compare it to our list above. They are:
1. Deafheaven - Sunbather
2. Amon Amarth - Twilight Of The Gods
3. Carcass - Surgical Steel
4. Gorguts - Colored Sands
5. Death Angel - The Dream Calls For Blood
6. Pelican - Forever Becoming
7. Kylesa - Ultraviolet
8. Watain - The Wild Hunt
9. Cult Of Luna - Vertikal
10. Exhumed - Necrocracy
Three of those were on our list. If anything we are UNDER REPRESENTING iTunes best sellers.
I can't believe you guys like Fast Animals so much. I woulda gone with Tap Out and Made In Japan before Fast Animals. You know, I actually don't even really like Fast Animals at all, and I LOVE Slow Animals.
We did this like a fantasy baseball draft: Once the person ahead of you in the queue chose a song, it was unavailable to everyone else (thus no overlap on any of these lists). That said, I don't know if there would have been much overlap anyway. And thanks!
Carson, never thought you were coming down on us, it's fun to talk about this stuff. Thanks for chiming in here all year.
I'm gonna take this as an opportunity to thank everyone here for the kind words shared in this comments section. I'm truly humbled by it. I'd thank everyone individually, but it would make this comments section twice as long, and break up the flow of conversation, but to be clear: I'm reading every single one of these comments, and I am fucking floored. You guys rule.
We had Deafheaven, Gorguts, Carcass, Windhand, and Kvelertak on our sitewide top 50. This just gives us an opportunity to talk about a lot more metal deserving of mention.
I got an email from a publicist one day with the subject line: "New NEKROFILTH and SHITFUCKER promos available now!" And that Shitfucker record was pretty damn good actually!
Yeah I mean part of this I sort of allude to in my Cara Neir blurb -- black metal lends itself better to hybridization than death metal which is fairly static tonally (with some variance between subgenres). I think there's a good balance of BM:DM institutionally as Wyatt and I tend toward black metal while you guys tend toward death metal, but I'm really the only one of the four of us who listens to stuff like Torche and Baroness or whatever, while Doug is the only one who listens to Gigan, etc.
Sorry, I wasn't at all referring to that spoken-word segment in my "he/she?" line above -- I just have no idea WHO Burial is, and I don't want to assume anything.
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