Here’s the rest of my top albums list, which is a continuation of Pt. 1. Can I now admit that approximately 50 through 10 are ranked randomly? They’re more expressions of what I’m listening to and I’m indifferent as to how they relate to each other when enumerated. It’s going to be OK.

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  25. Lvmen – An Anthology of Previously Released Songs/Mondo

  My Slovak friend Michal Mesko (from the Internet) turned me onto this hardcore band from the Czech Republic. Did you know there’s a genre of music called, “czechcore”? Well these guys teeter between emocore and post-rock with a sound similar to Japanese band Envy. They don’t name their songs, simply assigning numbers in succession for each album. I’m cheating a bit here since An Anthology of Previously Released Songs is composed of their 1998 debut LP and 2000 album, Raison d’être, so they’re really not 2006 albums. Since I haven’t heard them until now, they’re getting thrown in the mix, because it’s my fucking list! So there.

  Their songs are epic in scope, with plucked guitar and jazzy drumming found in post-rock bands, such as Do Make Say Think, morphing into ascending, aggressively strummed electric guitars, discordant synth atmosphere, and tom-driven drums culminating to massive crescendos. They also throw in some other elements, such as the female operatic vocals in “#3″ and “#7″ and the spoken word sample in “#2″. Below is a rough transcript of said sample, translated to English by Michal. Its source is from 1967 Czechoslovakian film, Marketa Lazarová, in a story called Straba:

  Amongst wolves grew up a man,
  And among men he became a wolf.
  Their contempt feeds his pride,
  Non-love will inspire him with hate.
  Despised by all Straba began to despise everyone;
  Greets the elders with mockery,
  Desecrated the sacred places of forefathers.
  Doesn’t want to be submitted to people nor gods.
  He is free like a wolf; like a forest animal.
  But he still has a human heart.
  And the human heart aches.
  Aches and cries…
  No! Crying is a gift of alleviation.
  Men know nothing about it.
  And their pride is pursued by eternal punishment.

  Other than the samples, vocals are in English, from what I can tell when they’re not screaming… the majority of songs are instrumental in nature, so it’s not a huge deal. Mondo takes a slightly difference approach, abandoning the grungy riffs of Raison d’être for more post-hardcore-layered guitar, a little less hooky, but a bit more powerful.

  Just to close: you best Czech yourself before you wreck yourself.

• 
  24. Hybrid – I Choose Noise

  1999′s Wide Angle introduced this team as an unprecedented force in electronic music, combining complex breaks and orchestras to compose epic numbers for the dance floor. Four years later, Morning Sci-Fi had a lukewarm response, with the sound more brooding and low-key, drawing more comparisons to rock bands than dance music. With I Choose Noise, Hybrid returned to the cinematic, grandiose sound of their debut. Also involving were guest vocalists including Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell (on “Dogstar”) and film composer Harry Gregson-Williams, whose credits are scores to many Tony Scott productions along with the Metal Gear Solid video game series. Similar to that soundtrack work, these songs are full of breakbeats and synths that fill the stereo space, with violins to accentuate emotions. The sound design is ace, so look to this act for some of the best produced dark dance music available.

• 
  23. The Mars Volta – Amputechture

  Always with a flair for the experimental, this album opens with “Vicarious Atonement”, an over seven minute song of psychedelic blues and jazz with nary a percussive instrument to be found. Guitars duke it out in the left and right channels, effected sci-fi sounds warp around the 3D space, and a wallowing vocal builds anticipation, only to transition into a lounge piano and wailing saxophone with a repeated mantra, “don’t let these hands sharpen your eyes”. Yeah, it’s what I come to expect from The Mars Volta. Expect the unexpected? Nah, expect the obtuse. The next track? Over 16 minutes long, called “Tetragrammaton”. Much like Frances the Mute, which was found on my 2005 list, no matter how many times you attempt to decipher the lyrics, you’ll interpret them a different way. But they speak of Hey-seiss, yes, they do.

  For this album, guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez took over full production duties, allowing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante to take over guitar-playing duties in the studio. Again he employs dub techniques, such as backward-playing samples, echoing guitar, and fading-out distortions. Jon Theodore’s Jon Bonham-inspired drumming is more concentrated to certain passages rather spread across such as the heavy approach on Deloused. If you’ve ever seen the band live, or even a bootleg, you’ll know they take their damn time to crescendo, and on Amputechture they allow themselves to use the same dynamic. See “Viscera Eyes”, where the first half has a hypnotic bassline and contradicting chorus where horns rise and drum fall. A little over five minutes in, sounds are stripped away to only bass, then it’s built up again through a groovy Latin jam with a soloing guitar and organ, ending with a scream and Wah-effected guitars falling into muted feedback.

  My main problem on this album are Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s vocals, as they are whiny enough to be just fucking grating. Doesn’t he realize that Rush’s main setback was Geddy Lee’s feminine weeping? It’s like he’s trying to imitate the high notes of a guitar solo and the after-effect is alienation and annoyance. Is he trying to sound like a chipmunk starting at the ten minute mark of “Day of the Baphomets”? Another issue is that drummer Jon Theodore left the band after this album’s recording, which is hugely upsetting since he’s the main reason I love this band. Their fifth release will at least be interesting from the standpoint that it’s likely they’re be a big shift in sound since I don’t know of any modern rock drummers that play with a similar style to Theodore.

• 
  22. Killing Joke – Hosanas From the Basement of Hell

  After seven years of inactivity, Killing Joke’s 2003 self-titled album was a welcome return and ended up being one of my favourites of the year. Foo Fighters’ David Grohl was behind the skins and he was properly front-and-centre in every song which were growing pulses of explosive anger; piss, vinegar, and all. Their newest albums keeps the crunchy guitar riffs and jackhammer drums, but adding even more layers to an already heavy sound. The strings in “Invocation” and “Walking With Gods” exemplify how this album finds Killing Joke at their most cinematic. The guitars are mixed a bit higher, similar to their 90s albums, with vocals having a loud reverb where it sounds like the album was recorded in a large cave. But no, the title actually refers to the deep Prague cellar this record was laid down in. Everything is more grandoise, with the opener being the only track under five minutes. I don’t know how someone couldn’t get the urge to fuck shit up while listening to the almost ten minute “Lightbringer”, with its 4/4 drumming, simple chugga-chugga guitars, sci-fi sound effects, dominating bassline, and shouted tribal vocals. Although the drumming isn’t as strong, the overall musical scope is more epic and immediate than anything Killing Joke has done before.

• 
  21. Envy – Insomniac Doze

  Starting from their hardcore roots, Envy has morphed slowly in the post-rock sound, embracing major chords and the low-high-low dynamic that are oh-so-popular in the genre. Keeping in mind, this album is still the 60 minutes of anguish and catharsis you’d expect, but it’s a little more palpable for the uncleansed masses. Singer Tetsuya Fukagawa provided spoken word for Mogwai’s “I Chose Horses” on Mr. Beast and they also appear here, in quiet excerpts with synth pads and plucked guitar. Of course, at any moment they will suddenly shift into throat-shredding intensity. They’ve turned really into a cross of City of Caterpillar and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. With Japanese not being my native language, I found the verses repetitive, with bursts of three syllables screamed over rising guitars, segueing into extended instrumental sections before again going quiet. However, the finale “A Warm Room” is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve heard in years, with tremolo guitars building upon one another with crashing drums creating an energy that I didn’t think it would be able to stop before the album’s end… so I put the track on repeat.

• 
  20. Hot Chip – The Warning

  Some pasty English guys employ synthesizers to make some fun electro-pop. The album is full of playful samples, for example, getting their Sesame Street on by spelling out each letter of “Kissing, Sexing, Casio, Poke You, Me, I” nearing the end of “Over and Over”. That song’s fuzzy bass and disco beat have been filling dance clubs around the world for months now. Diverse sounds are used throughout, up-and-downing the BPM to create a great experience from start-to-end, unlike some other 2006 releases with a hit single (‘sup, Gnarls Barkley?).

• 
  19. Cursive – Happy Hollow

  Another concept album, this time exploring the drudgery of the American Dream (with allusions to The Wizard of Oz) and Christianity’s influence on America leading us into another Dark Age. But I’m Canadian! The first track has a section called “Babies”, with the lyrics, “Maybe you’ve been given to this world to make a difference/Such illusions we all struggle with but the beautiful truth of it is/This is all we are, we simply exist/You’re not the chosen one/I’m not the chosen one/But we don’t need anyone/Let’s not choose anyone”. That sums up the album’s point-of-view, with each song outlining the self-deception and intolerance caused by religious fervor.

  Musically, Cursive has dropped the cello found on previous albums, with “Into the Fold” being the only song that’s a close comparison to Ugly Organ. Instead, brass instrumentation is added to the post-hardcore/emo sound to make it a bit lighter. I found some of the songwriting dragged during the last half of the album with the start/stop dynamics, although the lyrics are really what hold the album together. Overall, it’s nice to see a band trying new compositional ideas even if they don’t reach desired heights.

• 
  18. Built to Spill – You in Reverse

  After a five year hiatus, Built to Spill returns with an album that’s more similar to their live shows. I think Perfect From Now On, Keep It Like a Secret, and Ancient Melodies of the Future are some of the best albums of the past decade, in all their studio-trickery glory. A shift in approach for this release led the band to use less guitar overdubs, now capturing the live moments of a band jamming. The first song, “Goin’ Against Your Mind”, kicks things right into gear and I’m declaring it the best song in their whole catalog, period. It’s unfortunate that the rest of the tracks don’t reach its height, although they are very quality. Songs such as “Conventional Wisdom” and “Mess With Time” display all those Built to Spill trademarks, a simple catchy riff with spoken vocals during the verses, transitioning into a plucked/tapped guitar bridge, then into an extended dualing guitar solo with call/answer and synchronized playing, fading into the next track. “Traces”, “Saturday”, “Wherever You Go”, and “Just a Habit” are slower ballad material, without the sappiness, that mix it up for more moody introspection. Personally, I’m a huge fan for their past large production that was impossible to duplicate live, but this album is fun nonetheless.

• 
  17. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife

  From initial listens, years ago, I was turned off by The Decemberists due to their Neutral Milk Hotel-ish folk wankerings that seemed a bit too precious and over-blown for my liking. Picaresque’s epic sea shanty “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” changed that opinion and now I have joined the art fag massive. For The Crane Wife, they have embraced 70s prog rock in the form of 10+ minute songs with dominating synthesizers and organs with plucked folk acoustic guitar. You’ll still find those short, upbeat pop songs in such tracks as “Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)”, “O Valencia!” and “Sons and Daughters”. Lyrically, they continue a storytelling format dominated by heroic, dramatic, and paradoxical characters. If you have a distaste for folk, I think this album is a decent gateway.

• 
  16. Barry Adamson – Stranger on the Sofa

  Starting with “Here in the Hole”, British actress Anna Chancellor’s spoken word sets the tone for another brilliantly cinemetic release from Barry Adamson. The opening song reminds me of ex-Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder’s project Recoil; specifically Liquid’s “Want”. See also: Coil’s The Angelic Conversation, with Judy Dench reciting Shakespeare sonnets over dark ambient atmospheres. Stranger on the Sofa manages to jump across different genres ranging from film soundtrack to jazz to electronica, back to dub and dark pop music. Mr. Adamson acts as jack-of-all-trades, designing the album’s packaging along with playing the majority of diverse instruments on the album, of which you’ll find harmonica, organ, vibraphone, piano, slide guitar, and sax to along with the strings and voice samples. It’s much like you expect from him: film noir soundscapes that don’t take themselves too seriously. Do you know of anyone else that writes a song infused with programmed beats, brass instruments, and soft jazzy drums with lyrics centred on injuring oneself when trying to murder an arch-nemesis insect? Well “My Friend the Fly” does just that and makes it quite enjoyable.

• 
  15. Alexisonfire – Crisis

  With each album, this St. Catherine’s, Ontario band moves further away from their hardcore roots, with Crisis being no exception from this path. On Watch Out!, they explored the dynamics of George Pettit (The Screamer) and Dallas Green (The Singer), blending the core with the emo. It sounds all very clichéd, but they were able to pull it off seamlessly. The new songs are still in the same vein, but exploring it in a more accessible context. That doesn’t mean they’re selling out or watering the music down. Everything is full of raw emotion; it is not contrived, and your post-hardcore world isn’t falling around you. They also bring in a new drummer and lead guitarist Wade MacNeil provides lead vocals on “Keep It On the Wax”, cutting into former drummer for his selfishness. At the midpoint point of the album, “You Burn First” moves the vibe into a slower, dark direction with brooding vocals from Gared O’Donnell of Planes Mistaken for Stars. The closer, “Rough Hands”, goes the way of The Cure, with reverbed guitar and piano over melodic vocals that speak of failing relationships. The songs provide the right changes in tempo and vocal-styles to create their best album yet, from both a technical and songwriting hooks standpoint. Your world is not falling around you.

• 
  14. Clint Mansell, Kronos Quartet, and Mogwai – The Fountain

  In 2000, former Pop Will Eat Itself front-man Clint Mansell teamed up with the Kronos Quartet to composed music for Darren Aronofsky’s film, Requiem For a Dream. It was one of the most beautiful soundtracks ever created, with pull-your-heartstrings violins and cello combined with simple piano melodies, hip-hop beats, and dark ambience. Juxtaposed with saddening images of grown-adults battling addiction is enough to make any member of the audience retract into the fetal position. Of course, Hollywood has managed to lessen the impact of the pieces by reusing the song “Lux Aeterna”, starting with the full orchestra rendition in one of the Lord of the Rings trailers and followed by a handful more, including preview clips following episodes of Lost. Thanks a lot, assholes. Clint did an interview with Ain’t It Cool News that touches upon the “Lux Aeterna” issue. If you can tolerate the web site’s complete disregard for design standards, it’s a very good read.

  With Mansell also having organized the soundtrack to his first film, Pi, Aronofsky brought him back for their third collaboration, to create new music for his new romantic science-fiction epic. Again with the Kronos Quartet, Scottish post-rock band Mogwai was brought into the fold to create a dramatic score for three eras of time represented in the film. Much like Aronofsky’s visual style, the songs are variations on a theme, with multiple movements reappearing, but with different instruments to reflect progression. Strings along with quiet electric guitar, choirs, subtle synths, vibraphone, and percussion are amongst the sounds use to create the tension, all leading up to the massive climax of “Death is the Road to Awe”, where these musicians manage to outdo themselves. Really, the whole soundtrack is worth that eight minute, twenty five second spectacle.

• 
  13. Melvins – A Senile Animal

  Sludge. Grunge. Stoner metal. Let’s get those catchphrases out of the way. (The) Melvins return with a fucking juggernaut of sound. Being left without a bassist after their previous tour, the band decided to record an album with the bassist and drummer from Big Business. That’s right, a full album with two drummers. If you’re a fan, you’ll remember their collaboration with Tool from The Crybaby, called “Divorced”. In that song, each drummer was separated in the left and right stereo channel, including an extended drum solo with each musician taking their turn. Dual drumming was also found on “The Horn Bearer” off The Maggot. With this release, The Melvins matches and exceeds the Ipecac trilogy from 1999 (The Maggot, The Bootlicker, The Crybaby), making it their best output yet. The heavy percussive sound is completely seamless with the rest of the band, making their sound even larger than life than before. Fans of Tool, Kyuss, and early Queens of the Stone Age should definitely check it out.

• 
  12. The Knife – Silent Shout

  I can positively say I don’t know of another single act that has a sound similar to The Knife’s latest album. They provide an atmosphere akin to Boards of Canada, but much more deranged and jarring. Whereas the Hilary Duff’s of the world use pitchshifting to perfect their tuneless vocals, The Knife instead take the effect in the opposite direction. Male and/or female overdubbed voices are warped beyond recognition, their uneasiness complimented by synth arpeggios, cold ambience, and crackling beats. While the brother-sister duo are Swedish, at some points their vocals and high-pitched samples sound Asian, highlighted by tracks such as “We Share Our Mother’s Health” and “One Hit”. I fucking love the musique concrète-ish clicking beats opening “Like a Pen” with a catchy synth jumping in and around. They kind of mix the pop of Kraftwerk with the darker European electro-industrial vibe of the late 80s and early 90s, finding a way to it all accessible. The surreal lyrics beneath those voices add another flavour to the group’s unorthodox aesthetic. Why can’t North American pop radio throw this down?

• 
  11. Mewithoutyou – Brother, Sister

  If a year ago someone told me one of my favourite albums in the coming months would be by a Christian rock band, I likely would have crucified them. Fortunately I’m not Jewish and nobody told me this, so it’s all good. I mean, the lyrics in these songs aren’t even covertly religious – there are mentions of Peter, cups of wine, Daniel, groups of animals (hello Noah!), and the inevitable mention of a monothiest’s diety. J.C. even gets a shout-out.

  As with A->B: Life and Catch For Us the Foxes, the lyrics take on a strictly poetic bent, with some noteworthy excerpts: “No boat out in the blue, no place to rest your head/The trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead”, “Oh, you pious and profane, put away your praise and blame/A glass can only spill what it contains”, and “I’m still technically a virgin after 27 years/Which never bothered me before/What’s maybe fifty more?”. Other moments feel as an English-lit exercise with utterances of syncopation, sharicidal, chamomile, and pumpernickel bread, amongst other terms.

  The production is a marked improvement from previous releases in every aspect, allowing you to play this to your friends and not have them call it out as being another shite amateur indie band. The singing goes from spoken word to screaming, as is popular in emocore, or scream-o; whatever those kids are calling it these days. The tracklist is broken up by three intimate “Spider” (Yellow, Orange, and Brownish) segues (not segways), stripping down to guitar and voice to offset the large, lush compositions preceding and following. “O, Porcupine” starts like The Knack’s My Sharona with bombast snare/bass drums, later finishing with Sunny Day Real Estate’s Jeremy Enigk wailing adolescent scream. The finale track, “In a Sweater Poorly Knit”, has a descending harp and choir that made me think for a moment it was a sample from Danny Elfman’s Edward Scissorhands theme.

  So just treat the singing as just another instrument in the mix and you can ignore the moral quandaries that led you to Satan worship. Get a haircut!

• 
  10. Isis – In the Absence of Truth/Isis + Aereogramme – In the Fishtank 14

  I found this album the most difficult to review, in the sense that after listening from start to end multiple times, I do not have the vocabulary to describe my experience. The best way I can express it is that Isis have mastered “clean” post-rock with a sound that’s very Tool-like, which is not too surprising knowing they opened for Tool in mid-2006, before the album was released. Tool’s bassist, Justin Chancellor, also appeared as a guest on Isis’ 2004 album, Panopticon. The moments with more distorted, drowning guitar and bass synchronized and the album’s focus on complex drumming with heavy use of tom toms are what remind me of Tool. The vocals are low in the mix, between mumbled spoken text and rumbling growls, whose lyrics I really can’t discern. Even under the post-rock tag, this album doesn’t follow too many of the crescendo clichés found in the genre. I think all these factors make In the Absence of Truth the band’s best release yet.

  Their other release in the same year, Isis’ collaboration with British indie band Aereogramme is the fourteenth release from the In the Fishtank EP series, which pits groups of artists to work together in a very short span of time to quickly write and record. What follows is a softer side of Isis that still has a dark edge, with an aural space that’s full of melodic textures. It only has three short songs, well, in Isis-terms since they’re usually such fans of the epic seven-plus minute instrumental breakdown. It’s an interesting work in their catalogue and a nice change of tone from their usual dirge.

• 
  09. Portion Control – Filthy White Guy

  After an almost twenty year hiatus, Porcon’s 2004 double CD Wellcome reintroduced one of electronic music’s forefathers. With over 100 minutes of music, the duration of the release was somewhat spotty, with too much of a focus on not-so-soothing soft-synth ambient pieces. With Filthy White Guy, the songwriting is more focused, though still containing experimental instrumental-only tracks. They find a mix of house, ambient, dub, and industrial while transcending each genre. Parts seem to mimic who they’ve influenced, with the fifth track, “Slur”, reminding me of Orbital’s “Sad But True” and “Swerve” recalling the groovy retro-house of Fluke’s Puppy album. The vocals are very British, a mix between spoken word and aggressive yelling. Unfortunately some tracks lose marks for using a repeated lyric throughout their duration, such as “Slur’s” “Out of mind and in due cause/I suggested you digest it, but the message was false/Now the slur lives on” or “Blame them, it had to happen/Is nothing sacred anymore?” from “Seven Shades of Shit”. Overall, Porcon’s dense synth-driven sound makes this the best electronic-only album of the year.

• 
  08. IAMX – The Alternative

  You remember Sneaker Pimps, the post-trip-hop band that copped Portishead and Massive Attack to their heart’s content? Off Becoming X, “Six Underground” was their only semi-hit and the follow-up electro-pop albums allowed the group to fall into obscurity. IAMX is the solo project of its main songwriter, Chris Corner. The opener “President” is a sort of synthpop cabaret bordering on circus music, with martial drum samples and a saloon-piano lead. “Nightlife” introduces guitar as the driving force for a funky disco song. “Lulled By Numbers” contains vulnerable vocals that reach notes Martin Gore only wishes he could. “Song of Imaginery Beings” contains an echoing beat that I could swear is from Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing”, which Nine Inch Nails had sampled for that distinctive beat in “Closer”. Sneaker Pimps’ used that drum sample on “Small Town Witch” off 2002′s Bloodsport. It’s likely just the same sample kit, but it does make the song a bit indistinguishable.

  Sonically, there isn’t much of a jump between IAMX and the latter work of the Pimps, with the dark groove of 90s Depeche Mode mixed with pop sensibilities from New Order. To me, the simple piano melody and soaring sing-along on “Spit It Out” simply scream “Halo” and “Enjoy the Silence”. Also, as opposed to the more innocent lyrics of the Sneaker Pimps’ pop-kind, this electronic act is a more sex-charged alter-ego. The closing ballad “This Will Make You Love Again”, a re-recorded version originally from the 2004 debut Kiss + Swallow, has the lyric “early thursday mornings/wipe away the flies/the crossfire fight for action/in between your thighs”. There are moments of subtlety, but this is not one of them. Overall, The Alternative was by far the best pop album that came out in 2006, but it still managed to stay completely under the RADAR. It is our duty to remedy that.

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  07. boysetsfire – The Misery Index: Notes from the Plague Years

  Three years after their semi-mainstream record, Tomorrow Comes Today, Boysetsfire have gone in a more experimental direction for their new album. Taking a similiar approach as hardcore genre-bendists Refused did on The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombnation in 12 Bursts, the band uses creative transitions and instrumentation to diversify their melodic post-hardcore.

  The album opener, “Walk Astray”, begins with a distant acoustic guitar, rhythmic vinyl hiss, and voice singing, “Well I don’t wanna sing about freedom anymore/I wanna see it, I wanna feel it/I wanna know that it still sits beyond the lies that we’ve been told/Beyond the wars that keep our families from home/I know that there’s a way/Dear God, let there be a way/To change the path we’re on (path we’re on)/And believe in a better day”. Bass and rolling tom-toms start, warping into guitar riffs and a shouted hardcore piece, reminding you that boysetsfire are back with as much political vigor as ever.

  I found Tomorrow Comes Today contained too many moments that seemed canned; the band was repeating the same climatic formulas found in the post-hardcore genre. Their lyrics have always been their strongest suit, but on Misery Index, they’ve again found their musical note. “So Long… And Thanks For the Crutches” starts with a jazz-fusion section shifting into a punk song with a horn-led shouted chorus, later ending with a thirty second electronic hip-hop interlude. “Deja Coup” too contains horns, giving it a bouncy swagger pointing out the hypocrisy of religion and apathetic consumerist culture with an anthemic chorus, “It’s the way it’s always been and the way it will remain/It doesn’t matter when you’ve got nothing to believe/And why be born again if it’s so hard to get in/It doesn’t matter when you’ve got nothing to believe”. “Nostalgic For Guillotines” is a slower pre-closer song, with a bridge containing piano, strings, and a Jacob’s Ladder sample about devils and angels, pinpointing this album’s themes of faith tied to the political process and juxtapositioning of frustration and hope as a result. The album’s outro, “A Far Cry”, ends with a mellow(er) reprise of After the Eulogy’s “Still Waiting For the Punchline”, with the final appropriate lyrics, “And if another angel says just grin and bear it/I might be forced to smash his head against the wall/And never sin again against myself or trust in anyone/Write me off for suffering, it’s a joke/I give up”.

  The sad news is that the band also broke up last year. After investigating the usual rounds on the interweb for indie music reviews (Pitchfork, Stylus, Pop Matters, etc.), I found nary a mention of the band’s latest albums, despite their large fan base that aren’t exactly accessing the music through mainstream channels. My only guesses are that maybe they’re too melodic for indie sensibilites and the members of the band are from Deleware. Hi, we’re in Deleware.

• 
  06. Jesu – Silver EP

  Stewie Griffin’s canine pun humour would likely declare this extended player as one for melon collies or che-wah-wahs. A solo act started by Englishman Justin Broadrick, whose debut Heartbreak EP was an inspired piece of post-metal with glimpses of melody shining through. Unfortunately, the follow-up self-titled album focused too much on minor chord dissonance, feedback, and sparse echoing off-tune vocals, making it a dull, slowed-down version of his industrial metal act Godflesh. With Silver, Jesu gets back on track, focusing more on harmony and melody for pleasant listening through loud noises. Overdubbed effects pedal-laden guitars are used liberally, with the number of layers not being related to a plan to reproduce the music live. In many respects, this release is heavily influenced by the shoegaze scene led by My Blood Valentine in the early 90s.

  The opening track “Silver” begins with a clean guitar playing two notes with a wall of noise fading in while another note supplements the progression, leading into an immediate post-metal riff with dense distortion over a slowly prodding beat where you can’t even count the layers of noise. The song is quite reminiscent of the latter half of “Ruined” off Heartbreak with the music speaking mostly for itself, only minimal lyrics including the repeated mantra, “silver’s just another gold”. The second song “Star” increases the BPM with a drum machine with almost happy singing, far removed from Broadrick’s Napalm Death/Godflesh past. “Wolves” slows things back down with a two note processed guitar playing over the metal riffs, programmed beat, and background ambience. The last song “Dead Eyes” uses washes of distortion played backward with an overdriven low-end. Clocking in just under 30 minutes, the 4 tracks cover the overwhelming monolith of sound in shoegaze and the prettiness in ugly of post-metal, with a dash of hope thrown in. Here’s a webcast-quality video interview with Justin Broadrick where he admits his musical disabilities and desire not to focus on nihilistic tendencies. The glumness is still here though, to a certain degree…

• 
  05. Cult of Luna – Somewhere Along the Highway

  Post-metal is one of those genres that can get tiresome after multiple listens to dozens of bands whose songwriting just mix and match a small collection of ideas. Cult of Luna’s past albums have been at fault for this, with their harsh soundscapes being almost indistinguishable from Isis and Neurosis. On Somewhere Along the Highway, they’ve changed that label. The singing is still for the most part the growling, throat-shredding coarseness those death metal and hardcore kids love to hear. The lyrical content covers the loneliness and despair caused by a break-up. This isn’t emo, but I guess the cookie monster doesn’t keep the ladies swooning.

  The group’s themes have the most part covered pagan traditions, as demonstrated in the “Back to Chapel Town” video clip. This concept album uses metaphors involving nature to express the (dis)connectedness between two people, such as, “Along and forgotten/I bow my head in shame/Before you all answers reveal/So I sink my sorrows in the sea”. The drink! As is the expected path of a metal band maturing, they’ve added a fair amount of melody and more varied instruments such as banjos and clearly plucked guitar, best demonstrated on the fourth song, a quiet interlude titled, “And With Her Came the Birds”. The songs have more of a slow heartfelt build rather than a constant unemotional sludge. Musicianship is markedly more impressive, especially on the percussion work. Aside from the interlude, there is a constant feeling of an epic happening, with layers-upon-layers building and flowing through to blow your face off. It’s a very masculine album with the amount of aggression and the singular point-of-view of the main character, so I really don’t see many women digging on these tunes. Of course, any female that listens to metal is inherently fucked up.

• 
  04. Muse – Black Holes and Revelations

  The worldwide popularity of Muse’s over-the-top antics have unfortunately spawned a marketplace for disposible pseudo-indie-fags My Chemical Romance and Panic! At the Disco. Can they be forgiven? When I read pre-album interviews where Muse claimed they were influenced by the dance sound of new indie rock bands such as Scotland’s Franz Ferninand, all I could only comment, “oh, fuck no”. So I had two issues to keep in mind because you can’t listen to the music for its own sake. That’s fucking silly. Luckily much of the dance sound is curtailed to the Supermassive Black Hole single, specifically in the B-side “Crying Shame”, with its excessively 4/4 drum beat. When I think of it, the band has before demonstrated a dance vibe, for example in Absolution’s “Hysteria” or “Fillip” off their debut Showbiz.

  They’ve always had a love for theatrics in space rock, straight-forward drum fills, orchestral arrangements, and distorted guitar solos while keeping the timeframe of each song within a tight pop nugget. Much of the familiar themes are still found such as the arpeggio piano sequences and enough guitar effects pedals used that each song has a different tone. Pretty much everyone makes the same claim and I can still hear it – they love Queen. The band’s photo in the CD insert art is straight out of Bohemian Rhapsody. Matthew Bellamy loves to hit those high notes and like Queen, there is a constant usage of vocal overdubs to make every song sound even more rich. The two minute “Soldier’s Poem” sounds like a Bellamy-clone barbershop quartet to the point I was waiting for Harry Shearer to drop in. The last quarter of the disc even deviates into fusing genres (not that their other songs aren’t part of genres…) with Latin and spaghetti western acoustic guitars and horns. Of course, “Knights of Cydonia” has the best video clip ever.

• 
  03. Bitcrush – In Distance

  Mike Cadoo was one-half of the Bay Area duo Gridlock which started out as an electro-industrial act reminiscent of Skinny Puppy, but over each album shaped into instrumental early Autechre-glitch that was pleasant to both ear and brain. When they split, he refocused his solo act Dryft into Bitcrush, taking on a more ambient slant rather than drum’n'bass found in Dryft releases. The debut Enarc was an obvious continuation of Gridlock, with lush pads and cut-up edits filling every song. However, the album had an untitled bonus rack that incorporated acoustic bass and samples, albeit at a fairly basic level, hinting at a new direction. The follow-up, Shimmer and Fade, used live guitar and bass as the focal point with slowed distance voices, synth strings, drum programming, and top-notch production that reminded me of a blend of Boards of Canada, New Order, and The Cure’s Disintegration-era (minus whiny vocals). While it was a interesting path to take, the songwriting really wasn’t up to par with tracks sounding like two songs clashing, a symptom of learning to blend synth samples and acoustic tracks.

  Fortunately on In Distance, Cadoo gets it completely right. The melancholic vibe is much of the same, but the instruments blend seamlessly. There are additions of anguished shoegaze guitars and minimal vocals pushed further to the front, but for the most part, the songs are instrumental. Think Angelo Badalamenti’s love themes, My Bloody Valentine indirect guitar/vocal harmonies, and the warm guitar tones of post-rock. Slow-tempo acoustic drum samples aren’t as cut up as before, with stutter edits appearing only optimally during bridges. The BPM are increased in the start of the second song, “Falling Inward” before falling into the beatless Eno-esque piano and pad segue. The tempo doesn’t increase to that level until the seventh track in the finale of eleven-plus minute “And Triage” as it heads into the quiet guitar strum of “Every Ghost Has Its Spectre”. Both cuts are excellent examples how Bitcrush has learned the power of dynamics. Gridlock displayed a similar flair and after some growing pains, this project also exemplifies beauty through the balance of diversity and consistency. It’s fairly criminal that this album went so far under the RADAR. I’m not screaming RADAR. It is an acronym.

• 02. 

  There is no spoon.

• 
  01. Agalloch – Ashes Against the Grain

  When I purchased this CD from HMV on Spring Garden Rd. in Halifax, the nuclear force of awesomeness contained within the jewel case caused the clerk’s hand to shake as he placed it in the plastic receptacle (see: bag) or he had cerebral palsy. Oregan-based Agalloch makes music similar to Scandinavian black metal, but with a post-rock edge. Their first two albums, Pale Folklore and The Mantle, were explorations in combining metal and folk with Pagan themes. For their latest release, the tunes are more rockin’ and less sitting in a doomed field with an acoustic guitar. The death growl does appear in spots, but used appropriately. There are obvious Opeth comparisons due to the mix of clear and rasping vocals juxtaposing acoustic and electric sections, but Agalloch’s music is further reaching when it comes to traversing genres.

  The opener “Limbs” begins with prolonged guitar feedback that turns into dueling harmonies with recognizable tones, building tension until drums set off post-metal guitar riffs with feedback still in focus until finally fading away two minutes in. Riffs build until falling away into an acoustic guitar segue with a distant electric guitar creating anticipiation for the inevitable return to \m/ (those are devil horns, y’know). Vocals don’t even begin until five minutes into the track, with rasping male voice uttering, “The texture of the soul is a liquid that casts a vermilion flood”. Unless you’re a black metal veteran, you’ll have to look up the lyrics to discern what is going on. I think of these vocals as a compliment to minor chord waves of noise rather than an alienating unhuman element that someone new to the genre may intuitively decide. Let the cookie monster ride its course. The song ends with another section falling into a progressively more cave-echoed guitar, immediately switching into a snare and solo guitar assault introducing “Falling Snow”.

  The second song sets in stone the idea of using a soloing guitar as a substitute of the vocal lead in extended instrumental sections. Now that doesn’t mean it’s shred-wanks ala Dream Theater or the axe-becoming-one-with-hands cool jazz where the guitarist holds notes for too long and makes an unlimited amount of awkward grinning faces. Many songs have multiple sections with a lead guitar over the wall-of-nosie where you don’t even notice the singing is absent. The third track “This White Mountain on Which You Will Die” is a short, cold ambient track that sounds like a slowly-chugging engine leading into “Fire Above, Ice Below”. This song is more pagan-folk influenced due to the acoustic guitar and clear vocals singing, “The woeful silence/and wind’s reflection/of your body’s pale ode/an icy fortress/of blood and ages”. Like Cult of Luna, Agalloch uses nature to draw out the feelings of each song. Minutes in, the song starts building into a more post-rock song, reminiscent of Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

  A real world recording of rolling waves moves the album into the next song, cleverly titled, “Not Unlike the Waves”. A simple riff with synchronized guitar, bass, and drums drive forth complimented by a distant clear electric guitar. The fade into the plucked acoustic guitars and rise of crashing drums and electric guitars that lead into the double-bass black metal section perfectly demonstrate Agalloch’s ability to exercise (like Bitcrush!) dynamics. They manage to expertly interweave instruments, but there’s an element of chaos throughout where I never quite know the destination. You can watch the Not Unlike the Waves video, which unfortunately is an edit that excludes the instrumental transitions and outro that make the song interesting. Way to not know what the fuck, record company jackasses.

  The last third of the album is composed of the “Our Fortress is Burning…” trilogy. Part I is instrumental with a dark rolling and echoing piano notes taken over by an Isis-ish post-rock segment that becomes more heavy with distortion and martial snare drums as the song progresses. Part II: “Bloodbirds” contains lyrics which are really the central theme of the album: “The god of man is a failure/Our fortress is burning against the grain of the shattered sky/Charred birds escape from the ruins and return as cascading blood/Dying bloodbirds pooling, feeding the flood/The god of man is a failure/And all of our shadows are ashes against the grain”, which all ends in screams of anguish. After this section of Earth gone wrong, the album ends with Part III: “The Grain”, seven minutes of ominous industrial noise and drones. After the power of this album, I don’t see how the post-metal movement can continue as this release cannot be topped. Just give up. Fancypants.

So, favourite songs of the year, in no particular order are:

• Hot Chip – Over and Over
• Junior Boys – In the Morning
• Agalloch – Falling Snow
• Front Line Assembly – Dopamine
• Mewithoutyou – A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains
• TV on the Radio – Wolf Like Me
• Mastodon – Capillarian Crest
• Isis – Garden of Light
• Boysetsfire – The Misery Index
• Envy – A Warm Room
• The Knife – Like a Pen
• Built to Spill – Goin’ Against Your Mind
• The Decemberists – The Crane Wife Pts. 1 and 2
• Clint Mansell, Kronos Quartet, and Mogwai – Death is the Road to Awe
• Bitcrush – Falling Inward
• Mogwai – Travel is Dangerous