Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

The big double-oh seven was a strange, oversaturated year for me. I got an even stronger push towards music despite the lack of money and some of the best stuff had managed to come out this year (Don't be surprised if I say this every year, people. It's like a constitution for any music fan). still the past two years have been nice. I connected more with my roots and found new things, like any (self-disrespecting) person with a perchant for (Hobby gone waaaaaaay overboard) things.

The point? I found some cool cds, and there's a dozen or so I highly recommend. Need I say more. Here's the top number I concocted just for you!

NOTE: There's a bunch of cds I missed this year. Well, that's because I saved my money for all the good ones.

15. Church of Misery - Live in Red Eurotour 2005
Let me start off cheating, with a ******** DVD instead of a cd. Even if it's not an actual album, I got a kick out of this mammoth grunt-and-riff quartet from the darkest holes of Japan. Two hours of footage consisting of a full live show in St. Etienne, France, an hour of tour footage at Eight other locations in the UK, France, and Germany....and a sick music video of the song "Filth b***h Boogie" rounds it out. Lastly, the label whom made it went under, meaning it's probably rare by now.

The best track?: Sick of Living in Liverpool. They get hugs from young girls and the crowd is half hot women.

14. Boris VS. Stupid Babies Go Mad - DAMAGED
One reason I got this? It was a high-quality picture disc vinyl AND a DVD for 22 bucks. By Boris no less. Shouldn't this have been like, 72 dollars without the shipping? I mean, they did release a 2LP with a 5-minute DVD for 200 after all...

But yeah, Boris' cover of SBGM's Double Vision is a beast featuring elements of Absolutego and Vein. Quite un-real but it's good. SBGM covers Ibitsu and sound like they lost their ******** minds. I love J-Punk. Bands like this come off like they should be in a ******** insane asylum unlike most other punks who are human toothpicks (Javelins?).

Did I forget to mention there was a DVD? Yes! 70 minutes, first of SBGM, who come off as the Japanese take on Danzig-era misfits and Boris, who have a fascination with shitty russian films. Yeah, it's worth the price even if you don't have a record player.


The best track?: Damaged 3 by Boris. It encaptures everything Boris is and is capable of. Catchy groove, painful shred, catatonic drone, and minimalist noise. The song may be a cover but it absolutely rules.


13. Blue Cheer - What Dosen't Kill You...
Hard rock the way it needs to be. Loud, raunchy, and cheesy. Blue Cheer sounds great even if they're 40 years old, they'll still play the same songs from Vincebus Eruptum and a few from this at every live show with the volume of a Hamburg tank going off! Speaking of old tracks, Just A Little Bit is re-done and Paul Whaley has still got it even if he's 350000000 years old. You whippersnappers!

The best track?: Gypsy Rider. It sounds like fast Pentagram taking a few doobies instead of heroin to slow down with really cheesy lyrics. But it rocks hard and bleeds gritty.

12. Mono - Gone (A Collection of EPS from 2000-2007)
Actually, it's more like two songs from 2000 and the rest from 2006 & 07. You can see a clear progression from rough post-rock to beethoven adding a rhythm section and guitars. The music is very nice but not something I listened to a whole lot this year. Though I do recommend it because it's cheap, and Yearning is a powerful song.

The best track?: Yearning. It's a long Mono track, and it's why people love Mono. The 10+-minute stuff is their most powerful and engaging.

11. Brant Bjork - Tres Dias
Very good, and very much worth the find because of it's sheer rarity, Brant busts out he, himself, and his acoustics for a solo release. On here is three classics of his, three off his new album (Which also came out this year), and two off-shoots. Of the two, I like this one the most because he just seems more passionate on this release for some reason. Plus 8 good, memorable tracks works better than ten okay tracks.

Lastly, Video is hilarious. "We're gonna getcha' ********' laid". You've never heard stupid lyricism until you've heard Brant Bjork.


The best track?: Love Is Revolution. It has a good rhythm and strong lyricism. A bit deep for Brant but it sticks. Plus the version on Somera Sol isn't too shabby either.

10. Earth - Hibernaculum
Know somebody with ADD? Buy them some Earth and make them like it and see what happens. Earth is the slowest thing I've ever heard. It's catatonic, it's monotnous, and now they sound like slow country gospel on methadone. Hibernaculum is basically an EP of three re-worked classics and a 16-minute warbling minimalism entitled "A Plague of Angels" that's kinda catchy in all the slowness. The music itself is very nice and personally I think Earth are only getting better with time. The new album of their's is due in early 2008 and only continues the country-fried drone.

Plus it has a DVD with live footage, the word "like" said millions of times, and fingernail fashion tips from everyone's favorite male cheerleader on downers. An absolute steal at 15 bucks!


The best track?: Miami Morning Coming Down. Really gloomy piano intro but the progression the track shows is good stuff. It's a good track to sleep to.

9. Candlemass - King of the Grey Islands
This would be much, MUCH higher had I been a big fan of Candlemass (Or just even a fan of Rob Lowe and Solitude Aeturnus). But, what can ya do? The music itself is epic doom. Take Stratovarius and cross it with pentagram. Powerful suicide, perhaps? (There's na oxymoron if there ever was one.)

Welp, with a new singer, this band is 20 years stronger than ever. Oh, and not fat anymore. And thank god they got Lowe and not say, JB from Grand Magus cause' then it'd look like Old Man's Child with a couple extras. No offense becaus JB is great too but goddamn that would suck in an aesthetic sense.

But music isn't about looks, it's about music, right? Right! And the music here is crushing, and depressive, although some songs stick and others just do the job the best they can.


The best track?: Embracing the Styx however is the best song you will ever hear related to suicide, hands down.


8. Boris with Merzbow - Rock Dream
Boris win again because it's a 2-disc die-cut special package for 15 dollars. And thank god for Southern Lord for putting this ******** out because there's no way in hell this is worth 35.

The live set is shockingly good and Merzbow sets his pace as the background noiseman while the drummer plays a one-man crowd and the guitarists crunch through with the most stoic stage presence ever. Still the first disc has some good psychadelia and the second is blistering with fierce rock and progressive. It's limited to 5000 copies, though, so if you want a hard copy badly, get it well....take your time cuz 5000 won't run out THAT quick, but if it does, you'll be stuck spending 35 dollars on the Japanese version with some other packaging.


The best track?: Just Abandoned My-Self. It's ******** MASSIVE.

7. Orange Goblin - Healing Through Fire

I'm absolutely loving these CD/DVD or LP/DVD whatever sets. Good music and live footage in a bundle! And Orange Goblin delivers the bleakest, doomiest album yet in their lot. From Tolkein-inspried stoner to Great Plague-inspired doom with a tinge of crusty punk for a speed factor. Could it get anymore hard driving than this? Except for a gay medieval filler instrumental, this album is 100% kickass.

The DVD is also great, because watching it, lead singer Ben ward is a giant with an awesome stage presence. He's probably 6'5" in real life, but on-screen in this you're sure he's 9'9" and ready to breathe radioactive whiskey flames as he belts out songs like "Blue Snow" and "Hot Magic Red Planet". He's BENZILLAAAAAAAAAAA!


The best track?: They Come Back. The best rocker on there, and totally one that comes out good live. good variation in the vocals too.

6. Ruins - Refusal Fossil Special Edition

The dark horse of my list. I really didn't think I'd be captivated by hyper-precise bass-n'-drums but Yoshida Tatsuya is the closest thing to God on drums. I mean, NOBODY can drum like this guy when he gets into the zone. Not Dale Crover. Not Bill Ward. Not your average metal moron on blast beats. Probably not even Buddy Rich! He's like a human octopus with a fruity singing voice!

This re-released cd is 26 tracks of studio and live stuff on a boat. The music really hits some awkward notes but it's fun as hell to listen to and unhealthily loud, which is why I love it so much. Songs like Still Life and Stara Planina capture some eccentric imagery disturbingly well and songs like Uskildos Zaimm and Hyderomastgrogronigem are truly only something Ruins could think of. Flat-out, it's good weird music and truly something you'll never quite hear the same of.


The best track?: Stara Planina. It's a quirky tune that ends with the band just playing and doing the same thing over and over but faster each time. It's a wacky experience.

5. Witchcraft - The Alchemist

Hands-down the best new band of the 00s to come into music, Witchcraft's third album sheds the Pentagram worship and goes into a new light of some damn fine hard rock. Songs like If Crimson Was Your Colour and Remembered are some of the best stuff you'll ever hear from a rock band, plus the opener is a powerful rocker and Samritan Burden has a good tempo with a fantastic drum intro.

However, this album does have one noticably odd track, which would make this album perfect if it weren't really on there. The Alchemist is a somewhat mellow number with a stupid bit of silence-then-useless-bonus-track. No band on planet Earth has made this silence-then-bonus-track s**t work simply because the bonus never seems to fill the craving it teases for, or it just flat out sucks.

But I don't know. I still look forward to more from this band.


The best track?: If Crimson Was Your Colour. It's catchy, gloomy, and sounds like something right outta anything BUT the 90s and 00s.

4. Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Pariaso U.F.O. - Crystal Rainbow Pyramid From The Stars

Speaking of good and weird, Acid Mothers Temple put this out along with 350000 other releases this year. Three songs and seventy minutes of trippy psychadelics and demonic guitar solo-ing. The first being p***y Head Man From Outer Space, a song that bursts right into high gear and lasting only eight minutes, but still neat with plenty of speed, loud bass, and shining female vocalization.

The title tracks is a warbling number with chipmunk vocals and lawnmower-style shred solo-ing that goes on for a good 8-10 minutes.


The best track?: Still, the highlight is Electric Psilocybin Flashback, a 40-minute hard driving acoustic epic that warps into spacey peaceful music with the softest female vocals, then alternating back to the acoustic mayhem and forthward into the soft, blissful ending. It may be one song longer than your average album, but it's amazing and expected of any 30+-minute numberby this band. In fact, AMT will make you love lengthy, drawn-out tunes because that's simply how the band manages to shine when the music isn't just a song but rather an aural theater. And this track can go really well with classics like Pink Lady Lemonade and La Novia. Too bad you couldn't put all this on one CD-R for the most bad-a** mix EVAR.

Definitely a must buy for people on LSD or people who love a good long jam.

3. OM - Pilgrimage
Only 32 minutes long, but still one of my favorites of the year. Om have only written a total of eleven songs in their career, but they haven't really made a bad tune yet even if all the songs aren't shattering the ten-minute mark. The music has progressed into a spiritual loop ad infinitum that only ends because of what it's contained in. A musical cd (OR LP for those sporting big black 12-inchers instead of silver 5-inchers.)

This album isn't really some songs but a spiritual journey with some loud ******** bass and grueling drums. I highly recommend this.


The best track?: Bhima's Theme. This song is a spiritual hurricane.

2. Black Sabbath - The Dio Years
Somebody has to say it, and it took a compilation album of Dio for me to say it.

******** Ozzy Osbourne.

No seriously, ******** him. This year, he churned out what it probably the worst album of the decade with Black Rain, an aural document of proof he dosen't have a voice anymore yet Ronnie James Dio, at a ripe 65, can still hit the strong notes with three incredible new songs!? And they can't call themselves Black Sabbath!? Again, ******** Ozzy, as he's only Ozzy, and not Sabbath, and wasn't any good for Sabbath for the past 30 years.

This compilation will introduce you to the one Sabbath line-up that couldn't drop the ball no matter what happened. The songs presented from the powerful, energetic early eighties (Nearly all of Heaven & Hell & half of The Mob Rules), the Wayne's World-cameo'd, we're-not-sure-what-to-think nineties (Three songs off Dehumanizer), a live track capturing that Sabbath live rules no matter who's singing (One whole track from Live Evil, and that track being from Heaven & Hell) and three new songs to shatter the monotony of the generically delicious 00s.


The best track? (Okay, they all rock, but the best of the three new tracks then.): Seriously, the Devil Cried is Cathedral-styled doom without the vegan cokeheaded muppetry and instead a midget elf who throws the horns belting the words of the Devil crying over being loved. It's incredible, has a great riff, great downer solo, and is probably the best song of the year. Period. The other two new tracks are good, but not on the same level as this. It'll make you cry for joy for four guys who seem past their prime.

1. Electric Wizard - Witchcult Today

I'd just recommend reading the big review I did of it, but still. Could you expect anything less!? I knew this album was gonna be good, but not ********' OUTSTANDING.

They call Electric Wizard the heaviest band in the universe for a reason. And the reason is albums like this.

The best track?: They all kick a**, but I especially love Satanic Rites of Drugula. Probably the most un-real track this band's put out in years, and could easily fit on Dopethrone. No wait, no it couldn't. This song is heavier and somehow even more occult than some of the stuff on that album. It rules rules rules!


And some honorable mentions....

Honorable Mention 1 - Ween - La Cucaracha
You will never hear more different genres on any other album. Nor will you hear "She's gonna be my c**k professor, studying my d**k! And she's gonna get a master's degree in ********' me!" on any other album either.
Honorable Mention 2 - Monster Magnet - 4-Way Diablo
Give em' credit, they kept their word when they said the album would not suck. Plus the cover looks like a Motorhead cover gone pornolicious.
Honorable Mention 3 - Sunn O))) - Oracle
It's droning music with a jackhammer as a musical instrument. Yeah, the other track is nothing new but the first one is inspring in a disturbing way.
Honorable Mention 4 - Merzbow - Merzbear
Who's to say they all gotta be musical masterpieces? If you need an album to torture someone's ears in a dark room, this is for YOU! It's the anti-Stephen-Colbert type of album.
Honorable Mention 5 - Ween - The Friends EP
Just because it's so gay with a DDR-inspired title track and a somber 80s number about two guys blowing each other. But it's ween so it works.
Honorable Mention 6 - Boris VS. Doomriders - Long Hair and Tights
For being the stupidest live album ever made. But still hilarious.