Broken Bells: Broken Bells
The first record in the 2010 album review is one that loomed large over this year’s articles, Broken Bells’ eponymous debut. As I have explained elsewhere, Broken Bells is a duo (at least in the studio they’re a duo) composed of James Mercer of The Shins, and Danger Mouse. My take on this record is: The Shins are freaking awesome, and this is essentially The Shins with weirder music. The one problem is that sometimes the gratuitous weirdness gets in the way of the songwriting. However, on the stand-out tracks “The High Road,” “Vaporize,” “The Ghost Inside,” “Citizen,” and “October”, you’re essentially getting Shins songs if The Shins went a little Radiohead and started playing with synthesizers or whatever it is that Danger Mouse plays. And five stand-out tracks is pretty decent for a ten-track record. The hit single, “The High Road” is so good that it’s hard to not use it here, but you may have heard it already, so I’ll highlight the third single, “October,” which did not chart even though it’s just as good, and sounds like a straight-up Shins song.

1349: Demonoir
The next record in our 2010 album review is Demonoir by Norwegian black metallers, 1349 (because I prefer contrast to continuity). The fact that they’re Norwegian is important for indicating the degree to which they take themselves and black metal seriously. Norwegian black metal bands (as opposed to Swedish, Danish, and Finnish black metal bands) are the ones who don’t just write songs about burning churches, they burn churches for real. They also kill people for real, and make necklaces out of bits of their friends’ skulls after they commit suicide with shotguns for real. And trust me, you don’t want to look here. Really. Don’t do it. Anyway, as you can imagine, the new 1349 record is pretty goddamn intense. Frankly, it isn’t that remarkable in terms of its sound or production values. It's somewhat treble-heavy, but that’s par for the course with black metal. It also doesn’t wow you with insight, or have any interesting subject matter. What makes Demonoir a great record is the songwriting. Most black metal bands (particularly the Norwegians) focus on brutality and dissonance. They want to sound ugly and awful and screechy and high-pitched and super satanic. And most of them do. What most of them fail to do is write catchy songs that you’ll remember as something other than static with blast beats. But 1349 manages that nicely. I personally wouldn’t have picked it for album of the year, but what the hell. If you like black metal, this is way above average (as is most of 1349’s catalog), and is #1 on several extreme metal top-ten of 2010 lists. As good as this record is (assuming you like black metal) it does lose points for the seven interlude-type tracks that are titled “Tunnel of Set” and numbered XI through XVII. They’re essentially space fillers that make Demonoir look like a full length record, when really it’s an EP. The plus side of that, though, is that you can get the meat of the record for like $5.99 if you only buy the actual songs on iTunes. Word. Best track: “The Devil of the Desert.”

John 5: The Art of Malice
John 5 was a session guitarist for more than ten years before he was hired by Marilyn Manson just after the recording of Mechanical Animals, and he’s presently Rob Zombie’s guitarist. But he’s also one of those weird virtuoso-types (think Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Gary Hoey, & c.) who record instrumental solo albums that pretty much nobody buys except guitar-obsessed kids – and that’s the kind of record this is. The thing about this kind of music is that it doesn’t allow for lazy song writing. It just isn’t enough to come up with a riff and a couple of decent solos because there’s no singer to interest people. You have to interest people different ways – by coming up with new riffs, playing variations on those riffs, constant soloing, or whatever. John 5 does that throughout this record, but it’s also highly allusive, and pays homage to bands that he obviously likes. For example, about two minutes into “Portrayed as Unremorseful” John lapses into the riff from Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” just long for you to realize it, and “Ya Dig?” sounds like about five different Van Halen songs. All told, it’s an awesome record if you can stomach the idea of listening to 45 minutes of guitar noodling. I like the whole record (almost the whole record), but the opening track, “The Nightmare Unravels” is one of the best:

So, here are the first three records. Send in your vote by emailing sexcult@BlueZer0.net, and check back for the next three!