BlueZer0.net

Disclamer I: I am not an employee of a major magazine, and do not get CDs for free. Also, I am a “broke-ass,” meaning that I gave up my (shitty) job, moved ~five hundred miles away, then had two surgeries that caused me to go ~$30,000 in debt on my own dime (because COBRA is turning out to be worse than useless). All of which means it’s amazing I had the loot to buy any CDs this year, so even the fact that I bought as many as I have is kind of surprising. Therefore; if I left out something you bought and think belongs on the list, my bad. But I do have a decent excuse for not having heard it.

Disclaimer II: You’ll notice that this list contains almost exclusively metal CDs. That’s cause I like metal. I also like punk rock quite a lot, but, well, punk didn’t have a good showing in 2007. I’ll hope for better next year.

Record of the Year:

Devil Driver: Last Kind Words

Devil Driver’s Last Kind Words is outright killer. If you don’t know Devil Driver, I’ll have to start by telling you something off-putting - the singer is the guy from Coal Chamber. I always, even when I was listening to nu-metal, thought Coal Chamber was mediocre. But there’s none of that here. The lyrics are dumb, but it’s metal so let that go. The vocals are brutal-as-fuck death metal-style growl/screams that never let up. That is, Dez never lapses into wussy emo/screamo/bullshit. Straight brutal grown-man metal. No kids or whiny-voiced wimps allowed. The compositions themselves are surprisingly fast and surprisingly complicated. There are lots of changes and catchy riffs that keep you interested, but you never lose sight of the song structure. You always know right where you are, even though you’re traveling 120MPH. And the most interesting thing is that, despite the speed and brutality, they managed somehow to make the songs catchy. Who would’ve thought?

First Runner-Up:

Down III: Over the Under

It was really hard not to call this the album of the year. I almost called it co-album of the year with DD, but if you aren’t going to make any assessments, you don’t really have an albums of the year list, do you? At least not a vertical list. But anyway. . . So, I’m a fan of Phil Anselmo, who is famous mostly for being the singer of Pantera. I’m not into Pantera, but some of Phil’s other bands, specifically Down and the now-defunct Superjoint Ritual, are raw, and fierce, and under-produced in a good, punk rock kind of way, and this release is no exception. This record is composed almost entirely of ragged mid-tempo songs, with very little screaming compared to Pantera and Superjoint releases. But every riff is memorable, and Phil’s singing is much better than the uninitiated might have expected. A lot of Down fans apparently hoped that they would revert back to their old NOLA-era sound. That didn’t happen, and at this point we should probably just accept that the shift that came with A Bustle in Your Hedgerow is pretty much a permanent marker of their sound. But that isn’t a bad thing. I’m in the minority here, but I like the new sound better - it has more personality and atmosphere, and it’s more versatile. But, that much aside, Down III: Over the Under is an awesome record and you should buy it. Stand out tracks: The Path, On March the Saints, Never Try, Beneath the Tides, Nothing in Return.

Second Runner-Up:

The Shins: Wincing the Night Away

Yeah, it’s wuss rock, but it’s excellent wuss rock, and James Mercer’s lyrics are about as pessimistic as Thomas Hardy on downers, which suits me just fine. After their outstanding debut Oh, Inverted World, they kind of missed the mark with Chutes Too Narrow. But The Shins definitely made a comeback with this release. A lot of rock critics said that Mercer’s lyrics were too cryptic, and that they wanted something more personal, but that’s a stupid criticism, especially when you’re talking about a post-modern wish-they-were-the-Beatles band who’ve always written lyrics about “rhino-barking sparrows” and being “under the power lines seeking shade.” These people are excellent, even though they sold out twice and licensed songs to Apple and Microsoft for iPod and Zune commercials. Stand out tracks: Australia, Phantom Limb, Turn On Me, A Comet Appears.

Third Runner-Up:

Behemoth: The Apostasy

After 2005’s ridiculously good Demigod, you had to expect a slump, and there was one. But The Apostasy is still a great record, and worth every cent. What I’m trying to get across here is that even though it isn’t as good as their previous record, it blows the vast majority of death metal releases out of the water, and you should buy it. You should just buy Demigod first, that’s all. . .

Fourth Runner-Up:

The Black Dahlia Murder: Nocturnal

IDIOTIC LYRIC DISCLAIMER: At some point in the 1990s, a trend appeared in American metal, and that trend was writing lyrics about killing chicks and having sex with their bodies. Ethics/morals aside, it’s in no way a good idea to have sex with dead people, and it’s only good to kill chicks when you’re talking about idiots like Ann Coulter and Phyllis Schlafly, who are essentially committing suicide anyway. I thought everyone realized these two very basic facts somewhere around 1996, and that that was why this particular musical trend died the ignominious death it deserved. Apparently not, though, because some of that stupid shit shows up on this release. So, be informed that the lyrics here are worse than just low-brow, they’re outright idiotic.

That much being said, the compositions on Nocturnal are really impressive. Though they’re American (from Detroit, I believe), The Black Dahlia Murder are more black than death metal, both vocally and musically, which is the same as to say: There are lots of precise, complicated riffs that seem almost impossible to play, and they play them at warp speed. Bass is pretty much non-existent, which is par for the black metal course, but the drummer is above average. Plus the singer (his stupid lyrics aside) has the kind of two-sided versatility that helps keep otherwise monotonous black metal slightly more interesting. That is, he can do both the death metal growl, and the black metal shriek, and he does them both tolerably well. Plus he switches up where it seems appropriate. For the most part he uses the black metal shriek as the standard voice, and then shifts down into the death metal voice for emphasis, which seems like a good strategy when you only have two choices. It works. But the thing to pay attention to is the music. I don’t know how these people managed to play anything that fast, and that complicated, but they did, and it’s very cool to listen to. And even if you object to the lyrics, it’s not like you can understand what the guy’s saying anyway. . .

Honorable Mention:

The Hives: The Black and White Album

Honestly, I was disappointed. Their first two records were so freaking good and fast, and had such quick-witted lyrics that I didn’t even check this record out ahead of time. But when I got it, I realized that there were some issues. I guess the main problem was that they never got as famous as they were supposed to - that is, they caught Ramones’ Syndrome - so not unlike The Ramones, they started experimenting. The result was better than Too Tough to Die, but there are still too many bad songs. That is, there are about seven good songs and seven bad songs, which is a shocking ratio considering Veni Vidi Vicious had like an 11:1 good songs-to-bad ratio and Tyrannosaurus Hives was like 10:2. The problem with this record is that they relied too heavily on irony. The thing about irony is that if no one gets it, or they just plain aren’t amused by it, it falls flat -- failed irony has zero redeeming qualities. The same can be said for the seven bad songs on this CD. But the other seven are pretty good. Maybe they could release them as an EP or something. . .

Bad Religion: New Maps of Hell

Bad Religion had a late-career renaissance, staring with the release in 2002 of The Process of Belief, which is without question the best of their latter-day records. New Maps of Hell is good, but. . . I don’t know how to end this sentence. It reminds me of Empire Strikes First in that it’s a solid release without too much to distinguish it from the rest of their catalog. But Bad Religion gets honorable mention just for being Bad Religion.

Chthonic: Seediq Bale

These people are complicated. They are a Taiwanese black metal band that writes about Taiwanese history and mythology. For example, this particular record is about the medieval colonization of Taiwan by the Japanese, and the Taiwanese resistance (or so I gathered from the videos on the disc, and some cursory research). If that didn’t fill your diversity quota for the day, here’s more -- in addition to the normal line-up of drums, bass, guitar, and vocals, they also have a keyboard player, plus their bass player is a chick who does really soft, feminine backing vocals, and they have a full time “er-hu” player. The “er-hu,” is a traditional Taiwanese instrument which they claim “can be described as an oriental violin” even though it neither sounds nor looks anything like a violin. (The analogy is based on the fact that it’s a string instrument that you play with a bow.)

But this record isn’t gimmicky. It’s a full-blown black metal record by a band with a distinctive sound, and their arrangements are excellent. I might even have named Seediq Bale record of the year if not for the fact that technically this record came out in 2006, and that it’s only this version of the record that came out this year.

Ken Nordine: You’re Getting Better: The Word Jazz Dot Masters

I don’t even have this record, but I’m listing it here anyway. Why? Because it’s freaking awesome, that’s why. I first heard Nordine’s The Best of Word Jazz Volume 1 in the summer of 1997, and I was instantly hooked. I don’t really know how to describe what he does, but it’s sort of like a cross between story-telling and making wise-ass comments, and there’s a jazz band playing in the background, so he named it Word Jazz. I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous, but most of the time it isn’t, and I was instantly hooked on it.

Nordine’s body of work, though, is problematic. His body of work can be divided into two parts: his First Four Albums which were released on the old-school record label Dot, recorded between 1957 and 1960 - and Everything Else. One problem is that the First Four Albums were never released in any format but vinyl, and they went out of print even before Dot folded in 1977. That is, they’re impossible to get. The situation with Everything Else only seems better. Everything Else is also difficult to get, though not impossible, but Everything Else (except Colors, circa 1965) is bad. Sorry, but it is just plain bad. I know - I broke my back tracking down copies of Devout Catalyst, and Upper Limbo (no links to them because you can’t get them anywhere except my house), and they were just plain not good. Holding out hope, I even bought A Transparent Mask when it came out in 2001. I was probably the first person in America to have it. It was better than Devout Catalyst and Upper Limbo, but still not as good as (or even very much like) the old stuff.

So, this combination of irritating circumstances made the old Dot stuff the holy grail for Nordine fans, but none of that material was available except the 18 tracks on The Best of Word Jazz Volume 1 (Volume 2 was never released). Those First Four Albums, highly sought-after by collectors and nerds like myself, haven’t been available anywhere, in any format, for like 40 years. Then finally, for some unknown reason, utterly out of the blue and apropos of nothing, they arrived this July -- the 49 total (31 previously unavailable) tracks from the Dot sessions. So, as I said, I haven’t heard this record in its entirety, but I have heard 18 tracks worth of it, and they are a sample sufficient for me to say that this should have been in the top ten records of the year, somewhere around number five or six, but since I haven’t heard it, and didn’t even get a total of ten records this year, I’m slapping it here in the honorable mention category. But still. It’s got to be excellent.

If that’s so, then why don’t I have this holy grail now that it has been located? Well, it’s $40, and I’m broke, and that’s what life is like -- they only grant you the priviledge of buying what you want when you’re moving away and your bank balance is zero. Fuckers.