Every year we listen to a lot of music, and while some records might be superior, they don’t always contain the best songs. So, I started doing the “Top 10(ish) Songs o’ the Year” to point out the amazing songs that I love even if they come from records I don’t have to love. So here’s the first of my amazing Top 10(ish) lists from 2013. I’ll write a year-end look for my Top 10(ish) albums later, so without further ado…
In our first Angry Metal-Fi article, Alex pointed out exactly what’s wrong with Fleshgod Apocalypse’s Labyrinth — it’s compressed to within an inch of its life, ruining the music that the band worked so hard to create. It’s easy for us to sit and point fingers though and tell you how everyone is doing it wrong, (which they are). To really get a sense of what you’ve been missing, you need to hear some examples of bands and engineers that are doing it right. Once you’ve heard how good fully dynamic metal can sound, and how much better your favorite albums could have sounded had they been mastered with full dynamics, we hope that it will make you angry. You might even shed a tear for everything that’s been lost over the last 20 years, so many great albums ruined because of the insanity that is the Loudness War.
The worst thing that ever happened to London’s Haken was that someone once compared them to Dream Theater. In fact, enough reviewers compared the band to Dream Theater that on Metal Archives the only “associated act” is the unfortunate Berklee Music School graduating class of nineteen eighty-boring. “Why,” you ask, “is it a problem to be compared to DT? They have a long and storied career!” Because I am not alone in finding the band’s music to be void of creativity. It is insipid, lacking in feel, and often only an exercise in form. So when someone says to me, “Yeah, man! They’re like Dream Theater!” that’s an instant cue for me (and many others I’ve met) to shut down; to tune out; to back out of the room slowly and look for a shotgun. Still, being the daring man I am, I couldn’t help but listen to Haken’s new album The Mountain when it landed in my box a few weeks back. Honestly, the band has such a fantastic loyalty from its fans, that I felt like I had to at least give them a chance. In general, InsideOut is a trustworthy label and they put out good material [With a few notable exceptions, of course — F.t.A.G]—so what choice did I have?
After donning the blue and gold on AngryMetalGuy.com for a whole month and making every red-blooded Swede vaguely uncomfortable due to the latent nationalism that they can’t possibly ever admit to, it’s time for a change. Indeed, 2013’s first month has passed and while it hasn’t been extraordinarily explosive, it brought with it a few great releases that deserve a second (or third or fourth) look. So, without further ado…
Back in 2009 when I started this website, I was really getting back into metal and music in general, after having spent the previous year working on my own music and being really invested in learning a new language and trying to integrate into a new country. Upon having done this, I started up Angry Metal Guy with the purpose of giving myself something to do and a crash course in new music. One of the first labels I actually got a hold of was InsideOut (via Century Media) and received several very cool promos at around the same time. 2009 was actually a really good year, with several awesome releases that still stick out for me. One of these is the modern rock tinged opus Anno Domini High Definition with the slightly embarrassing acronym of ADHD. The record was modern, heavy and progressive. I was impressed and have been looking forward to the band’s follow up since.
It is, as you all know, difficult to keep up with the number of unsigned bands that we get music from. But, usually as a matter of luck, I occasionally decide that I have time to check something out (or I’m just avoiding my work). Fortunately, I followed the link to a Bandcamp (that’s usually a thing that gets me to click unsigned bands) for some itsy-bitsy, teeny, teeny, teeny-tiny Swedish metalcore-influenced prog-metallers Ennead who are writing music better than a lot of signed acts that I get these days when they can’t even grow facial hair. Sometimes I follow links and am unimpressed and turn the shit off, saving the band face. In this case, however, Ennead snuck up on me and surprised—and impressed—the hell out of me.
Progressive music is a vast category filled with all sorts of various constellations of bands from Dream Theater to Symphony X to Rush to Opeth to Death to Pink Floyd to Pain of Salvation to Coheed & Cambria (arguably) and so forth. It can be very difficult to keep all that shit in order and, frankly, to find good progressive bands because it’s such a huge category. Despite the fact that progressive music should be the biggest, best and most original music in the world it suffers from some serious problems. The first is a tendency towards living in the past (för svenskar: bakÃ¥tsträvande) and the second is unoriginality, oddly enough. So finding a progressive band that is excellent, modern and original is still a hard thing to do. But you’ll never guess who has some angry (but good) news.
You may have noticed that AMG doesn’t actually really do a lot of unsigned band reviews. Partially this is ’cause we don’t get a lot of unsigned demos, and partially it’s ’cause when we do they tend to be poorly delivered with little promo info and so forth. So I was pleased to get this promo from the Greek progressive modern rock band InTensity who delivered it to me via BandCamp, this is a highly recommended way of doing this, unsigned bands. Times is a four track EP that was self-produced by the vocalist/guitarist Ilias Iovis and is available digitally throughout the world today with future, physical versions to be announced.
Poland’s progressive rock and metal scene has definitely been strong of late. In the last year I’ve discovered some really great bands, particularly Indukti and Riverside which have just blown me away from the Polish scene. Turns out Poland doesn’t have just black metal and death metal in their veins, but instead there are a good number of proggy dudes who really dig the new wave of prog that has been pushing its way into metal in the last decade. Votum’s second album is another one of these Polish prog rock records that’s definitely influenced by neo-prog bands like Porcupine Tree, Opeth and Anathema. In 2008, Votum released their first album Time Must Have a Stop, which impressed some but left me cold. Metafiction is the next step in the band’s development, but still doesn’t impress.
Well, everyone else under the sun has been releasing their Top 10 lists, and for those of you faithful readers out there I’m sure you’re also interested in what I’m going to say about the best records of 2009. First, let me say that for the first half of this year I was not indeed Angry Metal Guy, but instead, I was just a normal guy buying my metal and hoping that it was going to be fucking awesome. Now, I’m a bitter critic. As a bitter critic I hear a lot more, but this year has still been characterized by some of the biggest bands on the scene for me. Mainly, Amorphis, who in my opinion have released the finest album of the year, if not the finest album of their very distinguished career. But, let me get to that later. There have been some great records this year, but there has been a lot of mediocre shit. Think of this list as being two-tiered, top 10 and then top 20. The top 10 are the records that I think were really awesome, elite albums, the second 10 are records that I think are great and worth your time and effort. Note that I haven’t heard certain albums that I’d like to hear due to that whole poverty not being offset by stealing music thing. With this, I hope to launch AngryMetalGuy.com into the new year on a new note: one where bands suck less.
