For better or for worse, here’s my attempt at a top 10 albums of 2009 (in no particular order).

• Alice in Chains – Black Gives Way to Blue
• Mastodon – Crack in the Skye
• The Devil’s Blood – The Time of No Time Evermore
• Photonic – Recorded Contact
• Griftegard – Solemn.Sacred.Severe
• The Devin Townsend Project – Addicted
• The Devin Townsend Project – Ki
• Baroness – Blue Record
• Cloudkicker – The Map is Not Territory/Portmanteau
• Lamb of God – Wrath

In truth, given that this list is restricted to albums recorded/released in AD 2009, it’s still a work in progress. For example, I recently purchased Napalm Death – Time Waits for No Slave and Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough. Both are already tantalizing my eardrums, but I believe that any album needs 2 weeks and 10+ listens before they can conscionably be considered for such a list.

Since I restricted myself to 10 albums (a convention that I’m obviously not revolutionary enough to buck), which is clearly not enough, here are some notable omissions:

• Revocation – Existence is Futile
• Om – God is Good
• Shrinebuilder – Shrinebuilder
• TrippyWicked – Movin On
• Necro Deathmort – This Beat Is Necrotronic
• No Made Sense – The Epillanic Chorigi

Compiling this list was neither easy nor enjoyable. Like most music addicts the experience of music is a continuum of discoveries, rediscoveries, epiphanies and disenchantments. No arbitrary period can constrain the cycle of subjective musical experience. As such a list like this is never satisfying as it so poorly represents the music that I have loved this year – most of which wasn’t recorded this year. For me this is a more acute counterpoint this year than in any year I can remember. Since beginning this blog in earnest over the summer it has taken me on such a paradigm-shifting voyage of musical (and personal) discovery that asking ‘what was the best stuff released this year?’ seems somewhat beside the point. In an effort to redress the balance, here some other bands (both familar and new) that I have loved this year: Earth (particularly The Bees Made Honey… and Hibernaculum), Electric Wizard, Valient Thorr, Opeth (as ever), The Pax Cecilia, Torche, Pavement, GBV, Extreme, MC Rut, *shels, Boskk, Sunn O))), Pelican, Eagle Twin, Deathspell Omega, <code>, Dycian Maze, Thin White Rope, Emperor, Sleep, Swervedriver, Jesu, Nadja, (lots and lots of) Neil Young, Virus, Pentagram, Monster Magnet, Cymbiotic, Stone Circle, The Drones, High on Fire, etc. fucking etc.

There’s so much more out there to discover, many back catalogue albums to hear from bands I discovered this year, new bands on the scene, anticipated releases from established heroes (expect more surprise and more disappointment), that regardless of what actually comes out next year, it promises to be another vintage year for music in my world. Please do join me as my voyage continues.

Whilst recovering from the festive indulgent customary at this time of year I happened to find myself watching the 3rd installment of the Ice Age franchise which we bought as a Christmas present for my kid. The film itself is reasonably diverting which is nice, because I’ll be forced to endure it many many more times. More interesting than this animated child fodder is the fact that distributor has chosen to include a digital copy of the film on the DVD and are openly encouraging folk to stick it on their laptop and iPod to enjoy on the go. Now you may remember that this is precisely the sort of behaviour I have been suggesting for the music industry. It makes some sense to include either a digital copy with the CD/Vinyl or a promo code to download it for free – after all, the vast majority of buyers will simply rip the CD before they even listen to it. The latter option seems like a terrific opportunity for further cross sell and upsell as the download site would be crammed with advertising. Bands could even withhold hidden tracks or downloadable extras to incentivise fans to download rather than rip it.

I’ll be interested to see whether a) this becomes common practice for film and TV distribution and b) whether the (infuriatingly retarded) music industry will take the cue and start doing the same. We can only hope.

Let this be known by all bands: Album samplers are a really bad idea. What I mean by ‘sampler’ is a single track, usually placed on MySpace, made up of bits of other tracks spliced together. You see, I’m a huge fan of Devin Townsend. I own pretty much everything he ever recorded (including Strapping Young Lad), and not all of it is good (let’s be honest, Ziltoid is a bit pants). After hearing the album sampler of Addicted, Townsend’s second album this year, I thought “oh well, you can’t win them all”. I actually didn’t bother rushing out to buy it after hearing this. After all, attempting to record 4 albums in a year was always going to result in a bit of dross right? Obviously Townsend decided to get that over and done with on one album.

Wrong. Addicted takes a bit of getting used to. Harking largely back to Townsend’s earlier solo work, these darkened pop songs are about as far removed from SYL as he’s likely to get, and a massive departure from the progish restraint of quartet opener Ki. There’s heaviness here aplenty but it’s tempered by Townsend’s keen ear for melody. Vocal duties are a tag team effort between the bald one and Dutch chanteuse Anneke van Giersbergen, which sometimes feels a little disjointed, but for the most part softens and brightens proceedings.

This collection not only hangs together, but taken as a whole is actually quite affecting. Even ill-advised Coldplay pandering dirges like Ih-Ah! don’t manage to spoil the party. Highlights Awake! and the magnificent re-interpretation of Hyperdrive (which originally appeared in more muted form on Ziltoid) will have Townsend fans slavering for more.

Addicted just can’t be digested in little chunks, it needs to be lived with, which is why the sampler was such a bad idea – it just doesn’t do the album justice. This is no shallow pop album, but an asserted statement from one of metal’s grand conjurors. It’s not his best – it’s a far cry from the heady heights of Terria and Alien – and I think that Ki will stand the test time more gracefully. It’s also probably his least experimental, daring or (dare I say it) zany recording. So no boundaries pushed here, just a display of first class pop artistry.

Townsend will continue turning the rumour mill on what the final 2 DTP albums will sound like. The next instalment, Deconstruction, was originally touted as SYL by any other name. Townsend has since retracted this rumour, but as long as he keeps this sort of quality up, I’m not sure if I’ll mind that much if it sounds like M-People.

Sunn O))) and Om are two extreme (and very distinct) interpretations of the doom/stoner genre. Both contain members from very distinguished doom/stoner bands (Goatsnake/Khanate/Thorr’s Hammer & Sleep respectively). Sorry to state the obvious, but this seems appropriate given the crowd that have turned up to this gig, at this one of the trendiest of London venues, seem largely oblivious to this fact. Instead of the usual gnarled, bearded and blackened misfits (who are here but lurking ominously in the shadows wielding the claw of doom) I am surrounded by NME kids (‘good’ hair aplenty) and art school ATP fops (more ‘good’ hair, but with stupid hats and glasses too). The fact that Sunn O))) have become ‘trendy’ is one that I was largely oblivious to until now, but the ‘lambs to the slaughter’ atmosphere it lends to the evening makes it feel perfectly appropriate.

Om seem totally out of place in this largish, bright venue, and struggle to really get out of the starting blocks. The mix is all over the place particularly with the drums, which instead of underpinning Cisneros’s hypnotic bass sound more like someone was cooking popcorn somewhere out back. The addition of a crazy ascetic frantically wafting a tambourine and providing multi-instrumentalism accompanied by intermittent, semi-tuneful pig squeals does nothing to elevate this muted performance. I’ve never seen Om live but I always imagined that they belong in a small, dark auditorium with the bass turned up to 12, where the crowd shuts up, closes their eyes and saturates in the cosmic vibes. Wrong place, wrong crowd for Om then.

Any worries that Sunn O))) would befall the same fate are soon dispelled. A good 10 minutes of solid, bone rattling guitar/bass drone from the robed duo have the trendy kids looking decidedly confused and perturbed, but this is mere whimsy compared to what is to come.

Sunn O))) have essentially taken the doom and black metal aesthetics and turned them into minimalist performance art. On record they are interesting, but it’s impossible to really appreciate the truly malign spectacle that it is supposed to convey. If you want to experience this at home, then turn the stereo up full blast, switch off all the lights, set light to the sofa and then invite a serial killer in to join the party.

As the dense smoke (or perhaps funeral fog) billows across the stage you catch fleeting glimpses of messrs Anderson and O’Malley – dark spectres in ceremonial garb, statue-like but somehow frantic and intense. Towering in front the harrowing master of ceremonies Attila (a renowned black metal vocalist by the way NME kids) is imposing as he narrates our demise. Illuminated from below by a green haze, his snakelike hands signal dark semaphore while his terrifying growl threatens to bring the roof crashing in on us. For a period of a cappella snarling and chanting his magnificent voice tears through the crowd leaving those of good hair looking terrified and the rest of us awed.

As the drone returns and intensifies, Attila writhes, wraithlike in a column of thick smoke and green haze – smoke pours out from the arms and face aperture of his robe making for a truly ominous spectacle. By now the auditorium is thick with smoke and the view across the hypnotised heads of the crowd is like tombstones in cemetery mist.

Attila leaves Anderson and O’Malley to worry the foundations (and the indie kids) for a deafening while before returning in a multi-coloured, metallic, spiky suit. Like an evil technicolor dreamcoat, lasers shoot from his fists piercing the gloom to magnificent effect. The insane chanting and osteoporosis inducing noise finally builds to a pounding finale that’s both frightening and elating.

Sunn O))) gigs are not an occasion to guzzle beer, punch the air and sing along. They’re all about the intimidating atmosphere and earth shattering noise. At times it was a little tedious and laboured but the sheer majestic perversity of it all just keeps dragging you in to Sunn O))) nightmarish world, and oh what a wonderful world!

Revocation’s hype stateside has failed to translate into a particularly big splash either side of the Atlantic. Their confusing mix of thrash/death and guitar god faux-eclecticism may go some way to explaining this. Broken into its constituent parts it’s very convincing indeed, and perhaps this is why Cosmo Lee mistook them for “the next great metal band” – they may well be at some point, but they ain’t there yet.

There’s some riffery to die for here driving some brutal thrash that will turn the head of even the most sceptical. But from beneath the maelstrom seeps a latent melody that sets them apart from the Death pack, although it’s often flattened by unsubtle sub-death vocals – competent, but perhaps the least impressive part of Revocation’s armoury.

Then there’s the godlike guitar virtuosity from new kid on the block David Davidson who any point he sounds like Satriani, Petrucci, Vai, Bettencourt (yes, you heard me right) among others, each with their respective stylistic ensemble. This is lovely, it really is. However, on too many occasions these virtuoso passages are clumsily tacked on the end of, or shoved into the middle of songs that they have no right to be in. Occasionally this works, but for the most part it just makes you think “That’s really cool, but why did you put it there?” This is not a merging of styles, it’s different songs being clumsily selotaped together, and it’s just a distraction from the main event – state of the art metal.

I commend Revocation’s efforts to do something different, however it just doesn’t hold together. Davidson needs to go exorcise his frustrated guitar god and make a solo album, then concentrate on making Revocation the great band they could be.

Enough has been said about Alice in Chains’ comeback minus the late, great Layne Staley – over the past year the band have done more than enough to be judged on their current merits alone. A sold out Brixton show seems to demonstrate this.

First up, a quick note on support bands. Surely a band of AIC’s calibre would warrant some slightly more heavy hitting or at least suitable support? What we got were two unknown British acts that seemed disastrously out of place on the same bill as these legends. We started with a spirited performance from Little Fish – a 3 piece with a lady vocalist who can really belt it out – sounding sounding somewhere between PJ Harvey and The Datsuns. Entertaining but somehow inappropriate. Then the truly dismal Healthy Minds Collapse – somewhere between Foo Fighters and McFly. Their performance was competent, but supporting Alice in Chains? Really? I can think of a dozen local doom/grunge acts more appropriate/deserving then these acts. The promoter should be shot.

Alice in Chains, on the other hand, are not in the business of disappointing. Kicking off with a medley of Dirt stompers – Rain When I Die, Damn That River, Them Bones – the crowd were ecstatic. And so the mood remained throughout the show. The set spanned almost their entire back catalogue (only Sap remaining unrepresented), and contained little in the way of surprises. This is just fine, at least for the moment. The fans starved of an AIC fix for a decade would have expected a greatest hits set, and that’s largely what they got.

Perhaps the only surprise was William Duvall, finally being allowed to show of his vocal skills, belting out a convincing performance of Staley set-piece Love, Hate, Love. Both Duval and Cantrell seeming exceptionally pleased with themselves about this, and so they should be; it felt like the extra present that you missed at the bottom of your stocking.

The show was bisected by a 3 song acoustic set comprising of new track, Your Decision, live favourite No Excuses, and a muted performance, dedicated to Staley, of Black Gives Way to Blue which culminated with images of the great man himself projected on the big screen drawing solemn applause from the audience.

This was not a case of a band relying on former glories though. The new album was well represented here, with at least half the tracks off of it being included in the set. These were received well, but with nothing like the rapture of the old classics.

After being treated to live favourites We Die Young, Angry Chair and Man in the Box, the band disappeared to return minutes later with the second highlight of the show – a stunning version of the beautiful Nutshell culminating in an extended signature Cantrell solo. Perennial favourites Would? and Rooster are delivered with gusto and the crowd bounce out of the auditorium, throats raw and once again convinced that Alice in Chains are still truly legendary.

I’m not ready to publish my top 10 albums yet – I have to torture myself over this for a little while yet, plus there’s some bits and pieces that I’ve not heard yet that I wish to hear before making my choice.

These are my favourite tracks recorded this year as they stand right now. I have no doubt that this will change within minutes of me hitting publish, but I’ve got to stick a stake in the ground somewhere. They are in no particular order, as attempting to do so would certainly prove too much for my fragile musical sensibilities.

Here we go:

• Pelican – Glimmer (What We All Come To Need) – A gorgeous instrumental slow burner
• Om – Thebes (God is Good) – Hypnotic, epic, looooong
• Alice in Chains – Looking in View (Black Gives Way to Blue) – Like being sat on by a house
• The Devil’s Blood – The Anti-Kosmic Magik (The Time of No Time Evermore) – A guitar duel to die for
• The Devin Townsend Project – Heaven Send (Ki) – Wacky, but in a mature way
• Griftegard – Charles Taze Russell (Solemn Sacred Severe) – The album title pretty much describes this perfectly
• Photonic – Customer Loyalty (Recorded Contact) – Randomness from New Zealand
• Mastodon – The Czar (Crack in the Skye) – Epic, schizophrenic, progressive and loud
• Middle Class Rut – I Guess You Could Say (25 Years EP) – It’s shallow but cheerful
• No Made Sense – The Epillanic Chorigi (The Epillanic Chorigi) – Neurosis style progressive heaviness

Notable omissions:

Various other tracks from both Black Gives Way to Blue, Recorded Contact and Crack in the Skye could have made it in there, but I didn’t want to clutter it with multiple tracks from a single band. Baroness’s Blue Record deserves a mention – as a whole it’s a brilliant album, but individually none of the tracks stood out enough to warrant inclusion. Other top tracks include:

Lamb of God – Reclamation
Extreme – Run
Pixie Lott – Boys and Girls
Dycian Maze – The Hand Inside
TrippyWicked – Movin On

This is all very nice, but the fact is, I’ve had a year of musical discovery, so much of the stuff that I’ve loved this year wasn’t recorded this year, which is why I don’t feel very satisfied with this list…but I’ll save those for another post.

Me, Yesterday.

It’s been a while since graced this dark corner of the internet with my presence. It may come as a surprise to you but I do have a day job, and these things have a habit of getting in the way of real life. I’ve spent the last couple of months being totally occupied by a project that has been progressively swallowing up my life for the past 2 years. It finally reached its zenith and now things are starting to calm down a little bit, hence my return to my ‘hobby’ – essentially talking shit to anyone who will listen.

There’s possibly an irony to be read into the fact I have a 9 – 5 (if only!) job, when many of the bands that I write about hold me in some level of contempt for doing so. Many a song has been written damning the ‘rat race’ – it seems to be a preoccupation for some bands. Cathedral damn me to the Corpsecycle, while Cancer Bats urge me to keep my chin up on Deathsmarch. Radiohead just want me to slow down.

I’m not going to defend the repetitive cycle of daily toil for an uncaring master, but it does have its benefits (like a regular salary), as does life in a band, however in the latter’s case these are often short lived or entirely illusory. The glitter and glory of life in a band is rarely what people expect. Layne Staley complained that his all consuming heroine habit “seems so sick to the hypocrite norm” while progressively removing himself from the gene pool – he was not a happy guy. Mustain’s and Hetfield’s foray into the rock and roll dream nearly destroyed them, and in Kurt Cobain’s (and countless others) case it actually did. These are just a few high profile cases shadowing countless others.

There’s glamour to these grubby tales, but for the vast majority of musicians a much more terrifying fate is to befall them: normality. Most artists don’t get to live the dream for very long, and when the fickle and unforgiving masses forsake them they more often than not have to join the merry rat race with the rest of us. Q magazine used to run (and may still do) a morbidly entertaining regular titled ‘Where are they now?” (or something similar) which tracked down short lived bands in their current purgatory. Cue quotes like “I haven’t seen John in a while, last I heard he was selling shoes in Birmingham”, or “I’m happy in my life as a full time mother and community worker, it’s far more fulfilling than being in a band”. However, there are countless stories of rock stars dropping off the radar to lead a mundane existence only to reappear decades later to pick up where they left off, a process documented in the gloriously deranged rockumentary Anvil.

Obviously assimilation into the rat race doesn’t need to be the end of a life in music, in many cases the day job exists largely to facilitate the music. As the money drains out of the music industry this will more and more become the norm, and certainly shouldn’t be shied away from. But is it possible to have a serious career as well as maintaining a fruitful career while maintaining a productive band?

Of course plenty of folks go on to have well paid and fulfilling jobs helping other bands pass through the music industry grinder.

I fully intend to break the shackles of the rat race at some point. At my age it’s probably a little late to try my hand at the rock n’ roll dream, maybe I’ll just take up cheese making instead, after all if it’s good enough for Alex James…