Top Ten Albums Of 2008 1. Deicide- Till Death Do Us Part Read review I raved about this release back in May and didn't hear a stronger album all year. It's a brutal Death Metal attack on frontman Glen Benton's personal demons and is stunning in its viciousness. I was actually surprised to find out that many fans of the band have found it a disappointment after previous release The Stench Of Redemption. I genuinely can't find fault with the album apart from perhaps the title track not being quite as strong as the rest of the material found on it.
Not As Long As We Both Shall Live still takes my breath away every time I hear it.
2. Blaze Bayley- The Man Who Would Not Die Blaze had one of the most turbulent, tragic years of his long career in 2008. After finally finding a stable line up for his solo project and writing and recording some of the strongest music he has ever released he suffered the horrendous blow of losing his wife Debbie in September. It's actually impossible to listen to the already touching
While You Were Gone without your heart breaking at the thought of what he has had to go through in the past year. Like all his fans I was overjoyed when he made a commitment to keep playing Metal as songs like
Smile Back At Death and the simply brilliant
Robot need to be heard.
3. Avantasia -The Scarecrow I know what your thinking and don't worry I'm in perfect agreement. There is no way that this album matches the legacy of the Metal Opera Parts 1 and 2. Quite frankly I would have been shocked if Toby had managed to pull that off. He has however done himself proud by releasing a strong album with a completely different vibe from before. Sure, there are a complete of duds (
Carry Me Over and
What Kind Of Love) plus
Lost in Space is highly suspect (although I do like the chorus) but can you argue with songs like
Another Angel Down, The Toy Master and
The Scarecrow? Plus if you take out the dross and replace it with
The Promised Land and
The Story Ain't Over from the Lost In Space EP's it improves the album immeasurably.
4. Ihsahn- AngL Another highly impressive, technical feast from the ex- Emperor frontman. Having enjoyed his previous solo release The Adversary I was pleased to discover that AngL took these foundations and made them stronger. The beefed up production and a lessening in prog-noodling make for a more immersive listen. To give you and idea how fascinating an album it is, one song includes a guest appearance from the dull as dishwater Mikale Akerfeldt from Opeth and still manages to hold my attention.
5. Sabaton- The Art Of War More military metal bombardment from those fun loving Swedish Power Metallers. O.k. so they have a well established formula and stick religiously too it but you can't really argue when they can produce an album this enjoyable. Using the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu's famous Art Of War text as a thematic link for the material they draw on many famous battle for inspiration. The standout track for me must be
The Price Of A Mile which uses an attention grabbing riff (I would guess slightly inspired by Led Zep's Kashmir) and stirring keyboards to highlight the horrible, pointlessness of the deaths of solders during the trench warfare of World War One. Plus it has a chorus that simply will not leave your head no matter what you do.
6. Toxic Holocaust- An Overdose of Death Read review I'll keep this explanation simple as it's a pretty straightforward album. If you like breakneck, dirty Thrash about war, Armageddon, death and the like then you will not be able to get enough of this album. It's not original in the slightest but who cares?
7. Harvey Milk - Life.The Best Game In Town Harvey Milk are a band I had never came across until this year. Hailing from Athens, Georgia (The birthplace of R.E.M) they play Sludge/Stoner metal of the highest quality. The feedback ridden crawl of opener
Death Goes To The Winner (which cribs lyrics from both The Velvet Underground's Waiting For The Man and The Beatles Day In The Life) serves as a overture to the music ahead. The band manages to maintain a truly gut wrenching level of sheer sonic heaviness throughout and the song
Roses is jaw dropping. It can only be describes as Sludge meets the dynamics of Opera. It's both ugly and oddly beautiful at the same time and it's actually worth buying the album for this track alone.
8. Enslaved-Vertebrae So what exactly is it that Enslaved play these days? Viking Metal? Nope. Black Metal? On occasion. Post Rock? Frequently. Shoegaze Indie? More often than you would expect. Whatever it is it makes for a very involving listen. As hinted at on their previous two releases Enslaved have left the Viking Metal of their past behind and have released a captivating, forward thinking album that will draw in fans from all kinds of musical spheres.
9. Judas Priest- Nostradamus When Judas Priest announced a couple of years back that they were going to record an album based on the life and writings of French mystic Nostradamus many raised their eyebrows. After all, the band had never attempted anything like this in their long, glittering career. And as expected it's a difficult album to get to grips with. It's occasionally weighed down by interludes and there are a couple of mid paced plodding numbers that it could have done without. But despite all that it makes a rewarding purchase as the quality of songs like
The Prophecy,
Pestilence and Plague,
Exiled and the touching ballad
Lost Love shines through. And in the title track they created a six minute thrashing monster that wouldn't sound out of place on Painkiller.
10. The Cure 4:13 Dream You never really know which version of The Cure are going to appear on an album. Is it going to be the epic dreamers, pop darlings, bitter narcissists or electro dabblers? On this release Robert Smith has decided to try and satisfy everyone with a little bit of everything from the bands past. The return of the much missed Porl Thompson on guitar is a major plus point and you can hear his influence all over the wistful opening track
Underneath The Stars. It's not the best album the band have ever released but it a more than worth addition to their back catalogue. And when you hear Bob purr like a cat about being in love on
The Only One you can't help but welcome him back with open arms.
Songs Of The Year Its not often that I can choose a couple of songs that I have treasured more than any others in the past year but this time round there are two in particular that I have listened to more than the rest. Since they don't feature on any of the above albums I figured they deserved a section of their own.
Black Francis- When They Come To Murder Me The last song on Frank Black's latest release under the Black Francis moniker is one of the highlights of his entire career. It's an aching, mid paced rock number which owns an addictive riff, plain weird subject matter and the killer hook line of
"Don't cry, when they come to murder me I'm already gone bye, bye" The way Frank spits out the line "
Baby I'm sorry, fucking prophesies" seemed to sum up the beginning of my year quite nicely. Plus it's got the most moving bridge about a mythical Northern Irish beast viciously killing a dog that you will ever hear. Fact.
Cloven Hoof- Reach For The Sky Going in a complexly different direction from the previous song is Cloven Hoof's towering Traditional Metal classic. I had never listened to the band before this year (see the top ten gig section below) and first heard this on their new release of re-recordings
The Definitive Part 1. From the very first listen it blew my mind, it's exactly the reason I got into metal in the first place. The opening riff grabs you straight away and Russ North's vocals are simply superb throughout especially those wonderful, glass shattering high notes in the chorus. I would recommend buying the album from their website
http://www.cloven-hoof.co.uk it's more than essential listening.
Top Ten Gigs 1. Manowar at the Magic Circle Festival I won't go into too much detail as to why Manowar clamed the number one spot with ease this year as you can read my full festival report
here I will say that if you ever get the chance to see them live then don't miss it as it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life.
2. Bruce Springsteen and The E-Street Band at Cardiff Millennium Stadium I honestly didn't think anything would top seeing The Boss live all year until my experience at Magic Circle the following month. The trip all the way down to Cardiff was more than worth it as Bruce stormed through a set of almost 3 hours of hits and rare tracks. The highlights were many but the band playing my favourite Springsteen song
Atlantic City then following it with
The River was simply magical (I've never heard literally 50,000 people collectively have a sharp intake of breath at the opening note of a song before). Also the rendition of
Thunder Road is impossible to describe as I was almost too choked up with emotion to sing along.
3. Avantasia at Sweden Rock Despite all the sound trouble and the obvious lack of cohesion at the start of the set, Toby and his wide array of guests pulled off the performance of this year's Sweden Rock. Again you can read my festival report
here 4. Cloven Hoof at Zicos Bar in Wishaw The announcement of NWOBHM legends Cloven Hoof playing a bar we had never heard of in Wishaw had us scratching our heads. Put it this way, in the past 10 years that I've being going to gigs not one band of note (metal or otherwise) has played Wishaw which is basically the arse end of the Glasgow suburbs (apologies to anyone from there). We really didn't think anyone would turn up and sadly our worst fears were confirmed when the band took the stage in front of about 15 people (and that's including the bar staff). Talking to the band afterwards it was obvious that the gig had been set up at short notice with little or no promotion.
But to be honest for the hour that the band were on stage the lack of a crowd didn't matter as they performed like heroes to the lucky few that were there. The Hoof played their hearts out and sounded superb (full credit goes to the venue for the sterling sound). The guys promised to come back and play again for us and I'm praying that they do as it could be even better with a bigger crowd.
5. Blaze Bayley at King Tuts Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow Before the release of The Man Who Would Not Die and the awful events in September Blaze took his new look band on the road for a U.K tour. I had seen Blaze a few years before and thought they were terrific but this time they managed to be even better. The packed crowd radiated a charged elation which the band fed on and gave right back. It was a mammoth set including a little something from pretty much all of Blaze's back catalogue. The highlights were a show stopping
Stare At The Sun and a lightning rendition of
Man On the Edge. And the good news is they have just announced another Glasgow gig in May, see you down the front!
6. Helloween at The Bloodstock Festival Watching Helloween live is always a fun experience and this set was no different. Just pipping Iced Earth to the post as band of the festival the band kicked off with the ten minute epic
Halloween and barely paused for breath for the full hour and ten minutes of their allotted stage time.
March Of Time and
Eagle Fly Free sounded as timeless as ever but it was the sing-along
Perfect Gentleman which put a smile on every single audience members face.
7. Witchcraft and Danava at Ivory Blacks in Glasgow I love it when a support band you have never heard of turns out to be something special. Danava play space rock with heavy Purple/Sabbath influences. Even the fact that the singer goes by the slightly ludicrous name of Dusty Sparkles doesn't stop them from being awesome. Witchcraft in turn put in an incredible show with some spellbinding 70's retro doom. I was a bit disappointed that lead singer Magnus has got rid of his shaggy coat which seemed to have been made up of my great grandmothers carpet but with a set that included personal favourites
Wooden Cross and
No Angel Or Demon, I had no cause for complaint.
8. My Bloody Valentine at the Barrowlands Ballroom Glasgow The Barras is still the best venue in Glasgow and was the perfect setting for Kevin Shields and co's big comeback after around 15 years away. With amps turned up to breaking point (They were almost as loud as Manowar) they laid waste to the venue and the audience's ear drums in the most beautiful way possible. The wall of sound created by the band was phenomenal and when overlaid with Bilinda Butchers tantalisingly sweet vocals was an almost out of body experience. And well done to those in the audience that survived the twenty minute feedback jam (dubbed the Holocaust section) without earplugs, God knows I didn't.
9. Shellac at the ABC, Glasgow Steve Albini has always been a hero of mine. Whether it's producing albums by The Pixies, Jesus Lizard or Nirvana or writing bizarre, ear-splitting music to accompany the end of the world in his own bands Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac he never fails to impress. Shellac's primal performance was testament to that. That the band manage to create such powerful music with a minimalist set up is incredible. The look of twisted rage on Albini's face as he screamed "
Fucking Kill Him" over and over again during Prayer To God was worth the ticket price alone.
10. Alice Cooper at the Magic Circle Festival Despite his advancing age, Alice Cooper still knows how to put on one of the greatest rock shows on the face of the earth. Sure, he plays basically the same set every time you see him but would you want it any other way? I for one look forward every single time to seeing him straightjacket-ed up singing The Ballad of Dwight Fry before being hanged or decapitated then making a grand comeback with Schools Out. As a famous American once said, "We're not worthy!"
