Happily Saying Goodbye To A Miserable Year
Year end lists are tricky for me. I'm bad about paying attention to when albums get released. So when it came time to figure out my favorite albums of 2007, I had a lot of digging to do to figure out which albums I'd been listening to had even been released in the last year.
I had a pretty miserable year overall for some personal reasons I wont get into. It's certainly coloured my music listening for the year. If it's not depressing and/or angry, it just hasn't been on my radar. I just haven't really wanted to be in a good mood. It turns out that it's been a great year for depressing and angry music though, so that's something.
Here are my ten favorite albums that matched my shitty mood in 2007, in no particular order. I'd been meaning to post about these anyway but haven't been able to find much free time:
- Swallow The Sun - Hope
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If I had to pick a single favorite album of the year, I think this would be it. Beautiful, crushing, and not a weak moment on the whole thing.
- Rwake - Voices Of Omens
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Possibly the best live band I saw this year (their only real competition was Jesu). Amazingly thick, warm guitars and consistently interesting songs.
- Novembers Doom - The Novella Reservoir
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I read that the vocalist for Novembers Doom has some kind of terrible degenerative disease that leaves him in almost constant agony. I think I believe what I read. The music is also powerful enough that I'll overlook the grammatically incorrect name.
- Ulver - Shadows Of The Sun
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You never even know what genre a new Ulver album is going to be, but you know it will not disappoint. This one is melodic, atmospheric, melancholy, and subtle.
- Jesu - Conqueror / Sun Down / Sun Rise / Pale Sketches / Lifeline
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For the purposes of this list, I'm just going to lump together all the Jesu releases that came out this year. Conqueror was not his best work but Justin Broadrick can still do no wrong by me. The Sun Down / Sun Rise bonus EP more than made up for Conqueror. Bringing in Jarboe for this track on Lifeline pushes things all the way to the sublime. There's talk of a future, longer collaboration between Jarboe and Jesu which I expect to be the most awesomest thing ever.
- Shining - V: / Halmstad
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This last spring, I flew home to Maine to be with my family after getting some pretty terrible news. My sister was running late picking me up, it was about 40 degrees and drizzling. I found myself standing, shivering out in the rain with this album in my headphones waiting for her. The atmosphere, my mood and the music were a perfect match.
- Funeral - From These Wounds
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See my previous post on Funeral.
- Xasthur - Defective Epitaph
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I think I like Subliminal Genocide better than this album, but Xasthur is still recommended listening for anyone that enjoys cutting themselves or others with razor blades.
- Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!
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Somehow this hip hop album is both heavier than most of the metal albums I've listened to this year and also the best Nine Inch Nails album to come out in the last five years. I'm glad that Trent Reznor has finally realized his true calling as a hip hop producer. Even the cover of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is tolerable and I hate U2. Selling .flac's of the album online for $5 straight to fans or letting them download mp3s for free is a nice icing on the cake.
- Jody Lew
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OK, I'm extremely biased on this one, I admit it right up front. Jody is my ex from a while back, though we're still on good terms. Recently she started sending me CDRs of songs that she'd been writing and recording on her iPod. The production quality is obviously nonexistant, but I've still been listening to it a lot and I think she has some real talent. My New Year's resolution is to try to figure out how to get her into a proper studio. No CDs for sale yet, but you can hear her stuff on her MySpace page and buy tracks there.
Here's some other albums that I liked, but didn't quite make it into my top ten:
- Aeon - Rise To Dominate
- Akercocke - Antichrist
- Arch Enemy - Rise of the Tyrant
- Bloody Panda - Pheremone
- Chthonic - Relentless Recurrence
- Danzig - The Lost Tracks of Danzig
- Dark Tranquillity - Fiction
- DevilDriver - The Last Kind Words
- Dimmu Borgir - In Sorte Diaboli
- Down - Over The Under
- Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles Weider Offen
- Krohm - Haunting Presence
- Make a Change...Kill Yourself - II
- Ministry - The Last Sucker
- Minsk - The Ritual Fires of Abandonment
- Naglfar - Harvest
- Negură Bunget - Om
- Mourning Dawn - Mourning Dawn
- Neurosis - Giving To The Rising
- Obituary - Xecutioner's Return
- October Falls - The Streams Of The End
- Sophie Zelmani - Memory Loves You
- The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
- Vital Remains - Icons Of Evil
- Vreid - I Krig
- Walknut - Graveforests And Their Shadows
- Watain - Sworn To The Dark
- Wolves In The Throne Room - Two Hunters
- Worship - Dooom
- Yoko Ono - Yes I'm A Witch
- Zozobra - Harmonic Tremors
So, in closing, I'd say that 2007 can kiss my ass, but at least it had an excellent soundtrack.