Angry Metal Guy

Shining // VII: Född förlorare
Rating: 4.0/5.0 — Jag säger NEJ (NEJ!) till etiketter!
Label: Spinefarm
Websites: myspace.com/shininghalmstad
Release Dates: EU: 2011.05.24 | US: N/A

Shining is about as hip as it gets among so called “underground” black metal bands, though really at this point, what with being signed to Spinefarm now, I guess they’re not super underground anymore. But whatever, success does not make a band sucky by its very nature—no, it’s Angry Metal Guy’s Law of Diminishing Recordings™ that does that. And with the anticipation building around VII – Född förlorare (English: Born Loser[s]) due to the myriads of issues that surfaced in the process of recording, mixing and getting the album even out, it pretty much should go without saying that I’ve really been looking forward to this record. Haven’t you been looking forward to it? Damn straight.

But first, I have an admission to make. When I reviewed VI, I got carried away. With the exception of one or two songs, I really can’t say that the record has lived up to the review I gave it. I was just so excited that the record had finally gotten to me and I reviewed it in the heat of a listening frenzy instead of letting it get ripe. When the best song on a record is a cover, then your record doesn’t deserve the score I gave it. So, I give VI a revised 3.0, because it was still good, but there were some glaring issues. The writing felt strange and forced and certainly didn’t live up to the expectations that Halmstad had set, and the guitar solos just really throw me for a loop. They were a bit like if Kvarforth were to go on stage in a Hello Kitty shirt or something. Vastly out of place.
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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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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.