Angry Metal Guy

It’s hard to make this kind of broad list, I just want to say that from the get-go. How do you do this? Do you choose your favorites, or do you choose the genre defining records? Because saying, for example, that some of the following records are really genre defining wouldn’t be true. On the other hand, these are the records that when I go back and look at the 2000s I think of pretty immediately as some of the best stuff and the things that I keep coming back to.

But the 2000s have been an interesting time for metal in a lot of ways. One of the things that happened was that death metal and death metal-influenced music really hit the mainstream in a lot of ways. For the first time since the 1980s there were larger groups of young people who really started getting into metal and there is an entire generation of musicians who have been influenced by the heavy metal of the 80s and the underground of the 1990s (particularly black and death metal). While I believe that metal is on the ebb again (in a popular music sense) and will once again retreat underground to lick its wounds and come up with something fascinating, interesting and new, the 2000s have been a great time to be a fan of the genre.

This list is going to take a lot of hits. I can already hear some of them, and some of them will come out of left field. But, as usual, I refuse to apologize for my taste. The focus on “magazine metal” bands will probably irritate some, and others will argue that my choices from one genre or another aren’t representative of the best of that genre during the period (specifically death metal in this case). But when I look back on the last 9 years, these are the ones that stand out. And trust me, there’s some stuff that I wish I could get on there, but I didn’t include an honorable mentions section since I expanded the list to 15. But there are some amazing records (Moonsorrow‘s Hävitetty, Anata‘s Under a Stone with No Inscription and The Conductor’s Departure, Agalloch‘s The Mantle, Turisas‘ The Varangian Way, Necrophagist‘s Epitaph, Ásmegin‘s Hin Vordende Sod & Sø, Absu‘s Tara, Rhapsody‘s Power of the Dragonflame, Anathema‘s A Fine Day to Exit, Nile‘s Black Seeds of Vengeance, Otyg‘s Sagovindars Boning, Obscura‘s Cosmogenesis, Watain‘s Sworn to the Dark, Akercocke‘s Antichrist, Enslaved‘s Below the Lights are just a few of my major oversights) that came out during this period that haven’t ended up on this list and I’m aware of that.

Anyway, I hope you find this list enjoyable, shocking, provocative and maybe even dead on. Backwards this time…

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Ihsahn // After
Rating: 3.5/5.0 — Very good, but not as compelling as angL
Label: Candlelight
Websites: ihsahn.com | myspace.com/ihsahnmusic
Release Dates: EU 25.01.2010 | US: 01.26.2010

Easily one of the most anticipated records of 2010 for me has been Ihsahn‘s new offering. While I was a passing Emperor fan, really just a fan of In the Nightside Eclipse and Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk-era, I was taken by Ihsahn‘s solo stuff. The Adversary felt fresh—progressive enough, a step away from the later Emperor material of which I wasn’t a fan—and it captured the sonic styles and textures that he was never quite allowed to explore while in Emperor. The record didn’t stick with me as I had hoped, while I listened to it occasionally it didn’t hold a steadfast position in my discography. On the other hand, angL blew me away. Probably the finest record of 2008, angL has maintained a steady place in the rotation and is a record that I’ve showed to dozens of people. Perfectly produced, perfectly composed and smartly written, angL contained everything that I wanted out of a new progressive metal record. So, of course, when I heard that Ihsahn would be releasing a new record in 2010, I became justifiably excited.

After, the third album in Ihsahn‘s initial trilogy, has once again separated itself from the pack and from Ihsahn‘s earlier work—something that the man seems compelled to do with every release. The first album composed primarily for his new 8 string guitars, After possesses a more organic sound than the earlier two albums. While the style hasn’t changed dramatically—if you’ve heard the first two albums, you certainly would recognize it as Ihsahn—the composition feels less tightly contained and controlled. The addition of saxophone to certain tracks also offers a more natural dimension to the music, similar to that of the excellent Solefald, and the saxophone is also relatively unconstrained, unpredictable and has the sound of being highly improvised.

That Ihsahn is a fantastic writer is undisputed, but how well this record plays with you probably depends on your personal tastes. The first half of After plays very similarly to his earlier material; black metal influenced progressive metal with excellent riffing, smart transitions and some acoustic parts. This culminates with track “Frozen Lakes on Mars,” which might be the best on the album, before continuing into the second part of the album. The track “Undercurrent” marks the halfway point (trackwise, as it’s track 5) and where this album started to transform to a slower, more progressive album. The riffing and writing loses some of its crispness on the second half of this album—particularly on “Undercurrent” and “Austere” which are both quite slow—and, instead relies on atmosphere, texture and feel. By the time one makes it to “Heaven’s Black Shore,” after the 16 minutes of down time, the record seems to have lost a little bit of its punch. The last two tracks are great, though again a little bit more plodding than the earlier material and the whole album comes to a major epic close that is worth the wait.  How this will play definitely depends on what you like about the earlier Ihsahn material, I think. If you’re a fan of more atmospheric black metal, bands like Shining, Solefald, or even something like Wardruna (or from a totally different angle, if you’re a big fan of 70s prog and neo-prog like Opeth, Porcupine Tree, etc.) you’ll probably appreciate these things musically. If you’re more of a fan of the technical, fast, groovy, structured Ihsahn stuff—well, then this might take some time to grow on you if it ever grows at all.

There is always a danger in re-inventing your sound, and while this record is good, it just doesn’t live up to standard of what I was expecting after angL. That said, I would still recommend this album to others because it’s still heads and shoulders above a lot of the stuff that’s being released today. The musical performances are amazing: the rhythm section (Asgeir Mickelson & Lars Noberg from Spiral Architect) is tight and tremendously talented. The saxophonist (from the Norwegian Shining) offers a stellar performance and production and mix is also tight, clean and clear without feeling sterile. Musically, the record is still epic and compelling for the most part and it shows just how multi-dimensional Ihsahn is as a writer and performer. The question for fans is, of course, what comes after After?

Wow. Things have been busy around here, honestly. One of the downsides of doing this for fun is that one makes no money doing it and has to come up with other ways to pull together an income. I’ve been trying to do that, plus, other things. Anyway, this is the stuff that I’ve been up to and listening to in my freetime (of which there is actually very little). In this time, however, I have pieced together a list that I would call the “best albums of the 2000s.” I don’t know if I’d actually call them the best, so much as the ones that have really stuck with me. As a guy who thinks that it was actually the mid/late 90s that were really the defining point in heavy metal for the modern era, and that what we’re dealing with is very much the outcome of this, this list was actually very difficult for me to produce.

1. Opeth // Ghost Reveries — This is always the toughest for me. Choose which Opeth record I think most defines the modern era. I finally always decide on GR, which incidentally I hated when it came out. But it totally grew on me after that and now it’s probably my favorite.
2. Katatonia // Last Fair Deal Gone Down — Again, this is tough. I love all of their modern stuff, but I think this is probably the most consistent of all their albums. Another defining record in my life, I think, too.
3. Turisas // The Varangian Way — I consistently come back to this record over and over. It pretty much represents everything that big, awesome extreme metal should be. I also think it was very much new. It combined much of that power metal and viking metal stuff that’s been threatening to merge for years into a cohesive whole.
4. Vintersorg // Visions from the Spiral Generator — Again, how do you really choose? I chose this one because I think the whole album is fantastic. But they’re all fantastic. It’s definitely between this one and Cosmic Genesis. I chose this one ’cause I love Digorgio and Mickelson’s performances.
5. Amon Amarth // Versus the World — Again a hard one to choose. But this record has some of the best tracks these guys ever wrote and some of the best melodic death metal ever.
6. Anathema // A Fine Day to Exit — This record is fucking tremendously written and perfect from first note to last note.
7. Amorphis // Eclipse — The rebirth of Amorphis is quite possibly one of the greatest things that happened in the two-thousandsies. This album, and the two that have followed since, are some of the finest metal records produced in the modern era.
8. Rhapsody // Power of the Dragonflame — Sets the bar for orchestrated, ridiculous over-the-top metal. They’ve never produced anything like it since, nor has anyone else for that matter.
9. Ihsahn // angL — I love Ihsahn’s solo stuff. It’s a perfect blend of extreme metal and prog. His writing is massively improved since being out of Emperor, in my opinion, but I’m sure there’s a black metal guy on this board who will shriek in horror at those words.
10. Shining // V:/ Halmstad — This record hooked me immediately and hasn’t let go.

You have absolutely no idea how difficult it is to write a list like that. And I do really like writing lists, I think it’s a good time. A game for me has always been top 5s or top 10s.