If I handed over an unlabeled copy of Myth and said “what you have here is the lost Opeth album. You know, the one that was recorded just after Blackwater Park and was collaboration with Katatonia but was never released” the less acquainted Opeth acolytes out there may well believe me on hearing it.

It’s impossible to talk about Stone Circle without mentioning Opeth – their debt to the Swedish masters is plain. However, the Brighton quartet aren’t simply a carbon copy. While Opeth tend towards 70’s prog groove and bleak, black metal atmospherics, Stone Circle bludgeon us with brutal death reminiscent of Morbid Angel melting into plaintive Katatonia-esque goth rock. Lacking the history and maturity of either band Myth doesn’t traverse the aggressive and melancholic as smoothly as Opeth and lacks the gothic majesty of Katatonia. That said there is some exemplary song writing here – moments of crushing heaviness and emotionally charged melody knitted together with a dark lyrical narrative. Epic, progressive and complex, Myth reaches musical highs most of their contemporise can only dream of.

Any criticism seems harsh when you consider that Stone Circle are unsigned Myth is entirely self released. This seems unjust given that the labels will rush out to sign 2nd rate carbon copies of bands who sell a couple of thousand units. The fact that a band of Stone Circle’s quality hasn’t been signed yet is as clear a sign of the skittishness of the music industry currently as you’ll see. Myth is accomplished and genuinely compelling. Stone Circle will need to step out from Opeth’s stately shadow to really stand out, but with the talent on display here I can’t imagine that this will be too difficult.

I stand (well, sit, slightly reclining to be more accurate) before you a broken man. But I laugh in the face of addiction and say to you all now I will fight this blight and become, once again, the man I once was. My name is Alex, and I am a scrobble-aholic!

It all started so innocently, I mean, what self respecting music fan wouldn’t jump at a service that logs all the music you listen to? We refer to this filthy habit as ’scrobbling’ and it has the potential to take over your life.

I began my ascent into scrobble addiction on the 22nd January 2007 with just a few scrobbles, just to see what it was about and to feel part of the crowd. It took a while for the addiction to really take hold, but within 6 months, I was logging in daily, often several times a day to satisfy my cravings.

The scrobble addiction is a pernicious beast. My music is important to me, and what I listen to on a daily basis is an expression of this. Keeping a log of what I listen to, over time, is like keeping a diary – a little expression of my inner self, and a document of my moods and tastes. To have this for myself is a wonderful thing, but my last.fm playlist is public, and that’s where the trouble starts. The concept of someone knowing exactly what I’ve been listening to and appraising it is an uncomfortable one for me. I pride my self (rightly or wrongly) as being open minded and having a diverse music taste. I’m happy with this conviction/delusion and the last thing I want is for someone to barge in and scupper my self-satisfactory conceit. But my playlist is out there, and public, so that’s exactly what could happen.

You can see the levels of paranoia that this foul addiction has driven me to? Is there really an elite of musically diverse fanatics out there queuing up to take their shot? These people certainly exist (I am one of them), but could they give a badger’s testicle about me? I think not. But the paranoia persists. For this reason I don’t friend people on last.fm, I attempt to remain on a happy island – an island like the Galapagos, diverse and special and protected. Stay of my land!

So at this point, my addiction and the accompanying neuroses were under control. I had a manageable addiction that wasn’t affecting my daily life, but like all addictions it developed and spiralled. Here we come to the second stage of scrobble addiction: taste distortion.

While opportunistically lingering around the various widgets and stats generators that gravitate round last.fm, looking for a stronger fix, I happened across a nasty concept called AEP. The Anti-Exponential Profile is an unsophisticated statistical algorithm that propounds to calculate your musical taste’s diversity. This uses your all time top 50 bands and the number of listens that they have, and give you an indication of skew – are you a fanboy for a particular band, or do you tend to spread it around a bit? This is a number between 1 and 5, where 5 is really diverse (the mythical state of having listened to everything an equal amount of times) and 1 (or below) means that you’ve listened to a few artists loads and not much else. In the AEP world of musical snobbery, 5 is ultimately virtuous, and 1 or less is slovenly, narrow minded, low-brow and reprehensible.

I ranked at something like 3.5, which is unacceptable. Utterly and totally. Un-accept-able.

The scene of the crime

Part of the problem was that, at that time, I’d spent rather a lot of time listening to The Dillinger Escape Plan’s latest album Ire Works, which has quite a lot of short songs and bears repeated listens. It had totally skewed by AEP! So I banned myself from listening to TDEP entirely until I’d got to at least and AEP 4. Why 4? Not just because it’s a nice round number, but once I achieved this number, I could join the last.fm group called “We don’t have exponential profiles” which is limited only to that elite of folks that have AEP’s of 4 or higher. I had to be a member of this group, not doing so, as soon as possible, would constitute absolute and total failure.

Soon I was policing the very music I was listening to. “Hmmm, feels like an Opeth moment” I would think to myself, but then, “hold on, no, listened to too much Opeth lately, it’s starting to skew my list, need to listen to something further down”. On other occasions: “Why is my AEP not moving? I know, if I listen to the stuff at the bottom of the list, then that should help even things out a bit, and by bottom end will be nearer to my top”.

Crises would occur frequently. Accidentally not syncing my iPod before listening to something on iTunes (and thus negating my ability to scrobble the tracks recently listened to on the iPod) would leave me in a seething rage. On occasion, I would accidentally leave my iPod playing over night. Once, right from the beginning, so my iPod thought I was on an AC/DC binge. This posed a horrible dilemma – do I sync the iPod and have my profile skewed towards AC/DC (clearly not what I’m into at the moment!) and see my AEP plummet, or do I not sync, and lose the ability to scrobble all the other tracks that I really did listen to before? No choice really, the AEP is paramount.

I finally achieve AEP 4 and hastily joined the elite group of anti-expontialers. Heaven. But was my appetite sated? No!

The next escalation came when I discovered a tool that calculated my “long tail”. Basically, the percentage of your overall scrobbles that were generated by bands not in the top 50. This is a further indication of musical diversity, and thus overall righteousness. Subsequent to finding out that my long tail was less than 50% (unthinkable!) I largely stopped listening to anything in my top 50 (still at around AEP 4), basically all my favourite bands.

This didn’t seem like utter madness to me until I started to have anxiety about Opeth (now way out front on my scrobble count), TDEP, Radiohead or anyone in my top 10 bands releasing new albums. Should I listen to these and run the risk of liking them, thus skewing my AEP?

Every recovering addict has a moment of self realisation – the pure moment where cold, hard reality floods in on you – and this was mine. This had to stop!

So here I am today. My last.fm account is still alive, but I have resolved to stop looking at it. Is this enough to break the cycle? Maybe not, after all I’m still scrobbling. Baby steps, and over time I’ll conquer this. I feel a sense of relief, but the urge to take a peep is sometimes overwhelming.

But has this changed me permanently? What exactly is my taste in music? How will I know if the stuff that thought I liked was not just a product of my addiction? Only time will tell I guess…

This has been very hard for me to write, but at the same time cleansing and cathartic. I hope others reading this who have suffered as I have are able to take some strength from my words – brothers and sisters, we can fight this together.

I’m revelling in the unfolding drama that is Metalsucks’ 21 best metal albums of the 21st century so far. It is a brave thing that they do. Already proving controversial, this list, compiled from the votes from a load of metal community notables, is nothing if not fantastic entertainment. I don’t buy the metal elitist derision that’s going on around inclusions such as Deftones White Pony and System of a Down’s Toxicity. These albums were critically acclaimed, very influencial and above all, extremely popular. And herein lies the heart of the problem. Music snobs (like myself) world over have inate sense of intimacy with our music; we spend countless hours singing the virtues of our favourite underachieving musical saviours, only to forsake them the moment the rest of the world sits up and listens. I’m as guilty of this as the rest of you, but in the fulness of time the good will out. I’m pleased about the inclusion of these albums in the list – they are quality albums that have stood the test of time – and let’s not forget, a large selection of real people contributed to this list; people actually like these albums. If left to neigh sayers, it’d be a list of recent, flash in the pan wannabe’s, or long term underacheivers. Does not the inclusion of Opeth’s Ghost Reveries and Gojira’s From Mars to Sirus legitimise the list somewhat? Probably not unless the top 5 happens to include Sunn O)))) or Cynic.

Update 28th June 2009:

Now gentlemen, you’re just not playing the game. I was being open minded – placatory even. Then you had to pull this out of the bag. I mean really, you could have doctored the results or something and saved embarrassing yourselves. OK, it’s not the worst album in the world, and title track is excellent, but #6? Really? What next? Linkin Park? Saint Anger? Common gents, give me back some hope…

Update 08th July 2009:

Well, what can I say. The list went from bad, to worse, to excellent to not too bad. Opeth’s Blackwater Park appearing at #3 seems the most positive thing this list has to offer. KSE at #4 is just plain dull and Lamb of God As the Palaces Burn at #2 seem so awkwardly placed between Opeth and the stately #1 Mastodon’s Leviathan – surely an impressive album, but the best of the decade? Only the fullness of time will tell. This list seems very of its time. Try this again in 2 years and I think the list will look VERY different.