Music 2010-2019 (Part 1)

The last decade has been transformative for me as a music fan.  I spent most of the 2000s only casually listening to music, and it was almost entirely Neurosis, Converge, Mastodon, and a few old hardcore albums.  I went to only a few shows a year (a disaster given then I spent most of the decade childless living in Manhattan).  I had started a new job in 1999, moved to NYC in 2000, got married in 2001, etc.. etc... and back then it was a lot harder to just go online and enter an infinite wormhole of all the best new music. You had to work at it a bit more then, and between my job and parenting and semi-professional poker and dabbling in semi-professional Magic: the Gathering I guess I didn't have the time or energy to do the work.  

Converge- Axe to Fall

As that decade wound down and the new one began, a few pivotal things happened.  The first thing was a conversation with my friend Craig. I grew up with Craig in a town full of weirdos in Indiana that surely at one point had the highest per capita Neurosis fan levels of any place in the world. I don't recall exactly when this happened (somewhere in 2008-2010), but we were walking down the street in Park Slope, Brooklyn and Craig mentioned that he was mostly using music streaming services (I think he was using Rhapsody) now and he mostly only listened to music that had been released in the past couple years.  This sounded totally outrageous to me at the time. I did not know anybody who consumed music that way, and it sounded very exciting to me.  I signed up for Spotify shortly afterwards. The second thing that happened was the release of Axe to Fall at the end of 2009.  From the moment Ben Koller's drums kicked off Dark Horse, I was totally blown away by this album.  This was the first immediate, enthusiastically positive response I had had to a a brand new album in years (of course, I was not listening to many new albums...) and it really instilled a strong desire in me to find out what else was going on out there. Axe to Fall was so damn good that it could only mean that other amazing stuff was out there and I had been ignoring it.  The third important event was that in late 2010 I left New York City and took a job in suburban Philadelphia.  My subway commute was gone, and I'd be spending way more time in the car. I had primarily been using my subway time to read for years, and audiobooks were not appealing to me.  I was going to need to listen to a lot more music.

The Best of the Decade

I've called this section "the best of the decade" but really it is just a list of my favorites.  I like to think I have good taste, but I'm not a music critic, I'm not a musician, and I certainly have not had the time to listen to all the promising releases of the past ten years. This will be a selection of things over the past years that have appealed to me, and, in some cases, have woven themselves into the fabric of my life.  

A few rules, so people know how I'm approaching this:

1) The primary list just going to be heavy stuff. Metal/hardcore/noise/industrial/punk/whatever.  There will be a section for my other favorites later.

2) I'm not a pure metalhead. Death metal and black metal are the two dominating genres, and those genres tend to appeal to me less. It is very hard for a death metal or black metal album to make it onto a best of the decade list for me, because my tastes just lean towards weird stuff that lives between genres. I'll include some sub-genre lists after the main list, so don't despair if you are a death metal person!

3) Politics have always been a part of music, and things are no different today, and I just wanted to touch a couple issues. There will be albums talked about here that were released on Profound Lore Records.  Evidence is overwhelming that the person who runs that label has done a lot of shitty things. He has mistreated and antagonized women who have been the victims of assault, and his handling of bands who support racism and nationalism has been worrisome. I do my best to no longer support that label monetarily.  I've decided that I'd rather tell you about the whole situation rather  than ignore it, and I hope you will find a way to support these bands without supporting Profound Lore.  When it comes to bands being terrible people, I try to have a very high bar for what I find disqualifying. I don't know these people personally, I try not to put faith in internet rumors, and in general I believe in separating art from artist.  But, still, there are a few bands whose music I enjoy that I no longer feel comfortable recommending due to the behavior of the people in those bands, and they have been left out of this post. 

These are my favorite albums of the decade.  They are in approximate ranked order, but certainly on any given day I may shuffle them around a bit.

Inter Arma- Paradise Gallows

Inter Arma- Sky Burial

Since the early 2000s until recently, if someone asked "who are your favorite bands", I answered Neurosis and Converge.  Today I answer Neurosis, Converge, and Inter Arma. I don't take this change lightly.  It took me a surprisingly long time to get to this point.  I listened to Sky Burial when it came out in 2013, and I recall liking it okay but setting it aside.  I completely missed The Cavern in 2014- the album is a single forty-five minute long track, so maybe people weren't talking about it as much?  When Paradise Gallows came out in 2016, I found it really easy to enjoy An Archer in the Emptiness,but I found the rest of the album weird and confusing and it didn't click for me. I tried to get others to listen to the album, my instincts told me there was something here, but it didn't really take. Many people found the vocals on An Archer off-putting, and there was also confusion about who to recommend the album to in general. It was essentially genre-less, covering the whole range from death metal to Pink Floyd-ish psychedelia, so there wasn't anybody who was obviously going to love it.  In late 2016 Inter Arma did a "small market" tour with Deafheaven and Carcass, and my friend Skott (another Indiana weirdo) and I headed to Reading, PA for the show. I know that we listened to Paradise Gallows on the way there, but I don't recall much about Inter Arma's set that night. My memories focus the solid minute my face spent pressed against George Clarke's chest, and how amazing it was to see legends like Carcass in such a small place. Still, I knew something was there and I pressed on. I listened to Paradise Gallows all the time, and I started to get it.  The vocals on An Archer in the Emptiness no longer bothered me- I started to enjoy them.  Potomac, a track that I just found completely confusing and out of place at first, started to hit me so hard I began to think it could potentially bring me to tears.  The piano is devastating? Has anyone ever said that?  The Summer Drones and The Paradise Gallows were stoner masterpieces from completely opposite ends of the stoner world. I went back and listened to Sky Burial more. In April 2019 Sulphur English was released. I listened to it non-stop. I went back and listened to The Cavern.  It was amazing. I was missing the Inter Arma tour on the east coast due to the timing of my son's spring break, so I engineered a work trip to the Chicago office so I could see them in Chicago instead and  I was flabbergasted when Reggie's was half empty during their set.  A second set of tour dates was announced for the end of the summer, and I'd be able to catch both the show at Kung Fu Necktie in Philadelphia and at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn.  If you follow me on Twitter you surely saw my transformation in real-time over the course of the year, but the Philadelphia show was the final step for me. For some reason they played a very Sky Burial heavy set, with The Long Road Home, Destroyer, and 'sblood.  Seeing those songs live, and being so close to to TJ as he absolutely destroyed everything around him pushed my appreciation of Sky Burial to the next level. I now felt as strongly about those songs as I did about the tracks on Paradise Gallows. I could go on and on about the little details and moments on these albums. The buildup towards the payoff at the end of Destroyer is almost unbearable to live through, and then you can't believe that TJ just keeps galloping forward.  The pure desire to headbang that The Survival Fires produces. The point at which the drums kick back in after the transition at the 4:10 point in 'sblood. The emotional weight of The Long Road Home and Potomac.  And all the weird, unexpected screeching.  And, on top of everything else, they are one of those bands that is even more remarkable live than they are recorded.

In the grand scheme of things Inter Arma isn't particularly popular, likely because they aren't a death metal band and they aren't a black metal band and they aren't a doom metal band and they aren't a stoner band.  They do not have a built-in audience of genre enthusiasts. But, on every album there is a moment where they are the best death metal band in the world, and the best black metal band in the world, and the best doom metal band.  Paradise Gallows and Sky Burial are my favorite albums of the decade, and The Cavern and Sulphur English are not far behind.  

Nux Vomica- Nux Vomica

The first time I heard the Converge song The Saddest Day, I had a hard time really grasping what was happening.  Hardcore songs were not supposed to be seven minutes long, and they weren't supposed to be super weird while simultaneously giving off a whiff of epic-ness.  Nux Vomica is not very similar to Converge, but when I first heard this album I had that "Saddest Day confusion" a number of times.  So much of the sound of this album is inspired by punk and hardcore rather than metal, and the juxtaposition of those inspirations with an average song length of fifteen minutes was completely unexpected.  This album is unique and incredible, epic and punk rock (and let's give a shoutout to Relapse Records for releasing yet another masterpiece).  This album is a exceptional example of how a band can weave together a diverse set of influences and aesthetics and create something beautiful. 

Converge- All We Love We Leave Behind

Converge- The Dusk In Us

I might be able to delude myself that there is a need for me to be out there every day preaching the word of Inter Arma, but it is difficult to to make that case for Converge. When it comes to "Best of Decade" lists, Converge already has sat atop the most prominent list in heavy music with 2001's Jane Doe taking the top spot in Decibel Magazine's ranking for the 2000s.  I am not going to try and convince anyone that these albums are as good as Jane Doe, but I am strongly of the belief that they are very close to being on the same level. Ben Koller is as phenomenal as ever, and remains a highlight even among a cast of heroes and legends.  People can call this band metalcore or hardcore or whatever they want to, but the reality is that, like so many of my favorite bands, Converge inhabits a realm above the world of genres.  I've had people tell me that some band "sounds like Converge" a million times, and it has never ever been true.  We all knew that this band was something special from the moment we heard The Saddest Day, and Converge has been proving us right for twenty years.

Couch Slut- Contempt

I've been lucky enough to become acquaintances with Megan Osztrosits, Couch Slut's vocalist, over the past year or so.  She is a lovely person- really friendly and fun to be around.  But, she has been through a lot, and there are things she is pissed off about.  When she performs with Couch Slut, her friendliness tends to melt away.  She is not lovely or fun.  She has been hurt, and she is angry, and she lets the you know it. She is not asking you to acknowledge what she has gone through- she is absolutely demanding that you do so.  Couch Slut is the ugliest kind of noise rock- they frequently get compared to Unsane and Today is the Day, but to win my Indiana friends over my friend Jeff (a leftist with little use for political correctness or careful words, he is far and away my friend most likely to be seen on television punching a nazi) called them "Deadguy with a chick".  I'd maybe say "Deadguy with a chick, but also things are really fucked up".  

Couch Slut's first album, My Life As A Woman, is also excellent, especially the first track Little Girl Things. I did not post the cover in case some of you opened this post at work.  

Bongripper- Satan Worshipping Doom

For years I avoided bands with stupid marijuana names.   This was a mistake. This album is basically perfect. Hail Satan, worship doom.

Deafheaven- Sunbather

Even moreso than Converge, nobody needs me to write a word about Deafheaven or Sunbather.  Andy O'Connor wrote a very good piece entitled "Deafheaven Is the Artist of the Decade" over at Noisey, and I'd encourage people to read that.  When I heard Dream House I'd never heard anything like it before (I had not yet learned about Alcest, the French band often credited with pioneering the "blackgaze" sound), and it still has a pretty strong effect on me sometimes.  It is strangely thrilling and uplifting music, and I'm always blown away by how many non-metalheads tell me they really enjoy it. Don't believe the haters- Sunbather is one of the best albums of the decade.

Deafheaven's 2015 release New Bermuda and 2018's Ordinary Corrupt Human Love are both quite good as well, but have never quite affected me the way Sunbather has. 

YOB- Clearing The Path To Ascend

Sometimes small touches make a huge difference, and there is something perfect about In Our Blood's opening words "Time to wake up".  This album splits the difference between Neurosis and doom metal, and does so flawlessly.  It is crushingly heavy.  A friend from work came with me to see Voivod and YOB as her first metal show.  Afterwards she said "I actually really liked Voivod, but I liked YOB much better. I felt like the world was going to end."  I can't really say it any better. 

Oranssi Pazuzu- Varahtelija

Another unique band- I can't say I know of any other bands attempting anything close to this strain of psychedelic black metal.  I saw Oranssi Pazuzu's first ever show in the United States, at Saint Vitus, and it was one of the best live music experiences I've had of the past few years. Lahja, the unusual second track off this album, was a particularly incredible experience that night.  

Oranssi Pazuzu's 2013 album Valonielu is also super weird, super cool, and very much has its own vibe. I recommend it as well. 

Sleep- The Sciences

Along with Bongripper and Oranssi Pazuzu, this is the third album on this list which could arguably be called a "stoner" album.  This is certainly nothing new for Sleep, who, as many of you will know, are most famous for their album Dopesmoker, a single track sixty-three minute long journey into the riff-filled land.  This is no Dopesmoker, but with the help of new-ish drummer Jason Roeder (of Neurosis!), this is album takes a more traditional "a few songs" approach to things and delivers exceptional results.  All the tracks are really strong, but Giza Butler probably stands out as the highlight for most people. Also important- this album was dropped as a surprise out of nowhere on 4/20, in true stoner fashion.  If you are not seeing Sleep this week in Chicago, you may never see them, because they have said they are going on "indefinite hiatus". I hope they return some day.  

Pallbearer- Sorrow and Extinction

This album was at the top of a number of "best of 2012" lists, and that is what led to me first checking it out.  Because I was still getting back into music in 2012 and pretty much a noob, I had never really heard anything in this style before.  So slow and patient and powerful, and clean vocals!  I was not used to hearing people actually try to sing.  This is another one of those damn near perfect albums- as you hear it everything just feels like it could not have been any other way.  This album is obviously inspired by Warning's 2006 album Watching from a Distance, but that is something I didn't figure out until much later, and honestly it doesn't detract from the album in any way. Hearing them take a sound and make it their own is very satisfying.

Pallbearer's 2014 release Foundations of Burden is a proggy evolution of their sound, and it is also very good.  

That is it for my absolute favorite stuff of the decade. My next post will have some honorable mentions, and some genre specific favorites, and maybe I'll get to the non-metal stuff!