Guess That Band I

Wow, I can't believe I haven't blogged in almost eight months.  This used to be the only place where I could keep everyone up to date with the goings-on in my life.  But now with Facebook and Twitter I can do that much easier than on here.  I'll try to blog a bit more before the end of the year.  But now, a new contest.

The premise is simple: I give you five songs by five different bands.  Then I give you a picture of each band.  Your job: match the song with the picture of the artist who performed it.  We'll see if you're all good at guessing what a band looks like based solely on their sound.

The songs:

Baroness


Between the Buried and Me




Coheed and Cambria


Kamelot


Revocation


The Pictures:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The Best Albums of the Decade...Sort of

As promised, here are my top ten albums of the decade. I say sort of in the title of the post because, in order to have more variety, I chose to only have one album per artist on this list. Two of my artists would have had multiple albums, and I wanted to showcase other bands as well. Two of the albums on this list are on my top albums of 2009, and therefore do not have videos with them. Go to my original post to see them.

10. Epica - Consign to Oblivion (2005)

9. Buckcherry - Time Bomb (2001)

Ridin' @ Yahoo! Video

8. Serenity - Fallen Sanctuary (2008)

7. Otep - The Ascension (2007)

6. Kamelot - Epica (2003)

5. Green Day - American Idiot (2004)

4. Protest the Hero - Fortress (2008)

3. Dream Theater -Black Clouds and Silver Linings (2009)


2. Living Colour - The Chair in the Doorway (2009)

1. Nightwish - Century Child (2001)

The Best Albums of 2009: 5-1

5. Cobalt - Gin

Easily the most unique album on this list, Cobalt is an extremely technically proficient band.  The band only consists of two people, so I don't know how their live shows work, but in the studio they are amazing.  When you're listening to an album for the first time, and you describe it to yourself as "kinda brilliant," you know you're listening to something good.


4. Queensryche - American Soldier

Seattle-based metal band Queensryche returns to form with their best album in almost twenty years.  A concept album describing the thoughts and feelings of combat soldiers, American Soldier is at times intense, thoughtful, and poignant, often in the same song.  Read my original review of the album here

Queensryche - New Music - More Music Videos

3. Mastodon - Crack the Skye

As with every other Mastodon album, you have to listen to it a few times to really understand their brilliance. This is their best album. It's amazing to listen to songs about wormholes, time travel, and Rasputin combined into one cohesive album. This CD is getting a lot of recognition among critics as one of the finest albums released this year. This praise is well deserved.


2. Dream Theater - Black Clouds and Silver Linings

In my original review of this album, I said "As mentioned, the last Dream Theater album topped my list of best albums for that year. I can't imagine an album knocking this one off the number one spot."  Well, I was wrong.  This is still one of my favorite albums of all time, and the best album from my favorite band, but one release this year managed to pull off a major upset...


1. Living Colour - The Chair in the Doorway

With their fifth studio album, and first in six years, Living Colour has crafted their masterpiece.  A blend of rock, blues, soul, etc., the band has never sounded better.  In my reviews of the Queensryche and Dream Theater albums, I noted that neither singer sounds as good as they used to.  I think Corey Glover may be a freak of nature, because he sounds just as good now as he did twenty years ago.  And Vernon Reid continues to prove he's one of the greatest guitar players in music history.  I've included two songs from this album (I apologize that the audio in the first one is slightly out of sync with the video).  Check them out.

The Best Albums of 2009: 10-6

10. Epica - Design Your Universe

With their fourth studio album, the Dutch symphonic metal band Epica has released their heaviest album to date.  This may have something to do with their new guitarist Isaac Delahaye and his background in death metal.  But whatever the reason, the album is very good.  And Simone Simons still has one of the best voices in symphonic metal (and, in my opinion, the best body.  A word of warning about the music video: the song is good, but the video is terrible.



9. Sonata Arctica - The Days of Grays

Aside from having probably my favorite album cover of the year, Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica continue to make quality music.  I can't quite tell if this is a concept album or not (I can't find any information to suggest it is, but it feels like one), but in any case this album contains some of the most infectious songs of any album this year.  Plus, any band with a keytar has to be cool!


8. Baroness -Blue Record

Wikipedia lists Baroness as a "sludge metal" band, which I think is a fitting term for their music.  Obviously influenced by Mastodon, Baroness is one of the many new-to-me bands that I found this year.  Even though I can't understand any of the lyrics (which for me is not a problem), their music is very easy on the ears.  The below video also gets my award for WTF? Music Video of the Year.


7. Between the Buried and Me - The Great Misdirect

With their blending of death metal, progressive metal, jazz, funk, blues, etc., Between the Buried and Me prove themselves to be one of the most original bands out there.  They are extremely talented, and continue to change the face of heavy metal for the better.


6. Sons of Seasons -Gods of Vermin

My choice for best new band of the year is the German symphonic/power metal band Sons of Seasons.  The band features one of my favorite new singers in Henning Basse, and was founded by Kamelot keyboardist Oliver Palotai (aka the lucky bastard who's dating Simone Simons, who also sings on a couple songs on this album).  I love albums with an epic feel to them, and this one definitely has that.  I look forward to hearing what they come out with next.

The Best Albums of 2009: Honorable Mentions

As I was compiling my annual list of what I consider to be the ten best albums of the year, I realized just how good a year this was for my music (for example, my top three albums of 2009 are by bands that I have liked for a number of years. Each band released their as-to-date best album this year). There were about twenty albums that could have easily ended up on my top ten list, and many more that I could see just barely not making it. So, I am going to do something a little different this year. Instead of giving you one honorable mention album, then the top ten list as a whole, I'm going to feature a number of honorable mentions, then split my top ten into two posts over the next two days. So, here are the albums that just barely missed my top ten, in alphabetical order.

Delain - April Rain


Futures End - Memoirs of a Broken Man


HolyHell - HolyHell


Job for a Cowboy - Ruination


Lamb of God - Wrath


Leaves' Eyes - Njord


Revocation - Existence is Futile


Skeletonwitch - Breathing the Fire


Warbringer - Waking into Nightmares


Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

Album Review: Lacuna Coil's Shallow Life

Note: I wanted to get this post in before going to see Lacuna Coil and Cristina Scabbia's fine ass tonight. Hence the shortness of the review.

With their latest album, Italian band Lacuna Coil strays even farther from their gothic metal roots. The resulting album is influenced by a wide range of music, including Middle Eastern and techno. The album is quality, yet I was yearning for their old sound. So overall, while this is a good album, I hope that the band returns to their old form soon.

Rating: 7.5/10

Click here to watch the video for their first single, "Spellbound"

Album Review: Dream Theater's Black Clouds and Silver Linings

First and foremost, I must tell you that Dream Theater is my all-time favorite band. I've been a fan of theirs for about fifteen years now. They have released ten studio albums, only one of which I did not like (and neither did the band. They recorded it because their label wanted them to make a hit record, and the band almost broke up because of it. But they told the label that from then on they wanted complete control over their music, and the label agreed). Four of their albums I would give a rating of ten: 1992's Images and Words, 1999's Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory, and 2007's Systematic Chaos, which topped my list of the best albums of 2007. Those of you who can count are probably confused by now. Hang on, I'm getting to it...

This year sees the release of DT's tenth studio album, Black Clouds and Silver Linings. The band has been good long before this album, but there's something different this time around. There's a richness and complexity to the music that make this album Dream Theater's best.

The song list is short: only six songs. But they make the most of it. The album is 75 minutes long, with the shortest song ("Whither") being 5:25, and the longest ("The Count of Tuscany") being 19:16. The only other song less than ten minutes long ("A Rite of Passage") clocks in at just under nine minutes. Not to say these songs are boring. Not at all. Dream Theater is adept at writing epics (the song "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence," from the album of the same name, is 42 minutes, but broken up into eight parts), and the four on this album constitute some of their best songs.

DT has always been one of the most talented bands ever. The individual musicianship is amazing. But on this album they step up their game, with one exception. Jordan Rudess, the band's third keyboard player, kind of stays in the shadows. Instead of the keyboard solos you would find on other albums, he sets the mood for the songs. It works well. John Myung and his awesome bass playing are also in top form. Mike Portnoy, possibly the greatest drummer to ever play, sounds better than he ever has. In my opinion, John Petrucci is the greatest living guitar player. So when I say he sounds better in the song "The Best of Times" than he ever has, you know where I'm coming from. The one exception is singer James LaBrie. He seems to have lost the upper range to his vocals. This isn't unexpected, as most singers do as they get older. He's still one of the best singers in heavy metal, but he's not as good as he once was.

As mentioned, the last Dream Theater album topped my list of best albums for that year. I can't imagine an album knocking this one off the number one spot.

Ranking: 10/10

Watch the video for the first single, "A Rite of Passage"

Album Review: Queensryche's American Soldier

Note: The past two years I have made a list of my favorite albums from the previous year (click here for 2008's list). I still plan to do that this year, but in a change I will occasionally review some albums. Here is the first.

Queensryche has been one of my favorite bands for about fifteen years now. They have produced two of my favorite albums, Operation: Mindcrime (1988) and Empire (1990). Since the release of Empire, however, their quality of music has steadily gone down. Their follow up to Empire, 1994's Promised Land, was described by many critics as "self-indulgent," but I still thought it was good. Hear in the Now Frontier, released in 1997, was mediocre. After its release, guitarist Chris DeGarmo left the band. His replacement, Kelly Gray, was not very good, and the quality of the music for the next album, 2000's Q2K, was poor, resulting in what I consider the band's weakest album. In 2003, DeGarmo rejoined the band in the studio only, and Tribe was released that same year. The album is OK, but not great. Guitarist Mike Stone joined the band, and the quality of music increased dramatically. 2006 saw the band release Operation: Mindcrime II, a sequel to their seminal concept album. The album, again, is OK, and left me wondering if Queensryche would ever regain their old form.

They have.

Their latest album, American Soldier, represents their best album in almost 20 years. Like Operation: Mindcrime, it too is a concept album, but in a different way. For this album, the band interviewed American soldiers who participated in various conflicts from World War II to the present-day Iraq war. Their goal was to tell stories that were common to all the soldiers they interviewed. The themes represented include boot camp ("Sliver"), the experience of pilots ("At 30,000 Ft.), returning to the home front ("Man Down!"), and the experience of the soldier's families ("Home Again"). The best song on the album, "The Voice," is their strongest song in a long time.

What makes the album more than just a piece of music is that the band included audio clips from the interviews they conducted in the songs. This makes the album a piece of oral history as well. And we all know how much I love oral history!

Musically, the album is very strong. Vocalist Geoff Tate, once considered one of the greatest singers to come out of the Seattle area (the band was formed in Bellevue in 1981), isn't as good as he once was. But he sounds better than he has in a long time. Guitarist Mike Stone left the band shortly before recording began, and Michael Wilton is the only guitar player on the album. Believe me, if Michael Wilton is the only guitarist you have, you're in good hands. He's an amazing guitarist, and it really shows here. And the band also features possibly the most solid and reliable rhythm section in heavy metal, bassist Eddie Jackson and drummer Scott Rockenfield. They do an amazing job. Lyrically, the album features some of the best lyrics they've had in a long time. Geoff Tate isn't the greatest lyricist, and the writing has gone down since DeGarmo, who was very strong at lyrics as well as guitar, left. But this album is lyrically very sound (with a few exceptions).

Overall, this is an early contender for album of the year, and a good return for a once great band. Welcome back.

Rating: 9.5/10

Click here to watch the video for the first single, "If I Were King."

Top Ten Albums of 2008 Redux

So in mid-December I posted my top ten favorite albums from last year. Well, I may have jumped the gun a bit. Since that posting I have listened to a couple more albums from 2008, and realized that they should definitely be included on the list. So, here is my revised list of the best albums of last year. An asterisk by the name indicates that it is a new entry.

Honorable Mention: Lordi - Deadache (song: "Bite It Like a Bulldog," performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I think half the audience was confused, and the other half was scared!)


10. Into Eternity - The Incurable Tragedy (song: "Time Immemorial")


9. Sister Sin - Switchblade Serenades (song: "On Parole." The singer would have been featured in my Hottest Women of Heavy Metal: Part Deux post had I known about this band at the time)


8. Warbringer - War Without End (song: "Combat Shock")


7. Moonspell - Night Eternal* (song: "Scorpion Flower")


6. Circle II Circle - Delusions of Grandeur* (song: "So Many Reasons")


5. Extreme - Saudades de Rock (song: "Star")


4. Protest the Hero - Fortress* (song: "Bloodmeat") Something interesting about this band. From their Wikipedia page: "The Protest line-up has stayed the same since the band formed in 1999, when they were just 12 years old." That these kids, who are about 21 or 22 now, can make such great music is amazing.


3. Buckcherry - Black Butterfly (song: "Too Drunk..." Too drunk to what, you ask? Well, you'll just have to hear the song to find out)


2. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog soundtrack (song: "On the Rise." Haven't seen Dr. Horrible yet? Click here.)


1. Serenity - Fallen Sanctuary (song: "Velatum")

Top Ten Albums of 2008

Like last year, I have decided to give a list of what I consider to be the best albums of the past year. No, I don't expect any of you to like them (except my #2, which I KNOW most of you like), or watch any of the videos, but maybe you will. Stranger things have happened, right?

Honorable Mention: In Flames - A Sense of Purpose (song: "The Mirror's Truth")


10. Metallica - Death Magnetic (song: "That Was Just Your Life")


9. Opeth - Watershed (song: "Porcelain Heart")


8. Lordi - Deadache (song: "Bite It Like a Bulldog," performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I think half the audience was confused, and the other half was scared!)


7. Into Eternity - The Incurable Tragedy (song: "Time Immemorial")


6. Sister Sin - Switchblade Serenades (song: "On Parole." The singer would have been featured in my Hottest Women of Heavy Metal: Part Deux post had I known about this band at the time)


5. Warbringer - War Without End (song: "Combat Shock")


4. Extreme - Saudades de Rock (song: "Star")


3. Buckcherry - Black Butterfly (song: "Too Drunk..." Too drunk to what, you ask? Well, you'll just have to hear the song to find out)


2. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog soundtrack (song: "On the Rise." Haven't seen Dr. Horrible yet? Click here.)


1. Serenity - Fallen Sanctuary (song: "Velatum")

The Greatest Band You've Never Heard Of?

The 1960s and 1970s were a great time to be a fan of rock music. Bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and countless others were in their prime, and would influence a whole new generation of musicians. While many of these great bands are very well known, and deserving of their iconic status, there is one band that frequently gets overlooked.

In 1969, the band King Crimson released their debut album, the seminal In the Court of the Crimson King. The album, which was hailed as a masterpiece at the time, has largely been forgotten. From the album's Wikipedia entry:

The album is generally viewed as one of the strongest of the progressive rock genre, where blues-oriented rock was mixed together with jazz and European symphonic elements. In his 1997 book Rocking the Classics, critic/musicologist Edward Macan notes that In the Court of the Crimson King "may be the most influential progressive rock album ever released." The Who's Pete Townshend was quoted as calling the album "an uncanny masterpiece".

Despite the almost unanimous praise for the album, it and the band have largely been forgotten. On VH1's list of the top 100 artists of hard rock, King Crimson came in at 87. Among the "better" bands on this list: Hole, Ratt, and Korn. Even friggin Spinal Tap, a fake band, was ranked higher than King Crimson (nothing against Spinal Tap, but come on!).

I first heard the album the way that all rock albums from this period should be heard: on vinyl. My dad was, and still is, a huge King Crimson fan, and he purchased the album when he was a teenager. I was amazed at the complexity of the music and the talent of the musicians. Their influence on the progressive rock genre cannot be overstated.

Now, for your enjoyment, listen to "21st Century Schizoid Man," the opening track to In the Court of the Crimson King. The picture that the music plays over is the cover art of the album, one of my favorite album covers of all time.

Hottest Women of Heavy Metal: Part Deux

Since my last post (link unavailable on account of web site being taken down) was so popular, at least with Thomas, I decided to find more attractive women in the heavy metal genre for you to oogle. I'm presenting them in alphabetical order and, with only one exception, the link on their name is to a music video (the first woman is in a band with no music video as of yet). If I had to pick my favorite from this bunch, it would have to be Maria Brink. But none of them hold a candle to Simone Simons, my favorite from the original post. Yum.

Wait, what was I...oh right. To the hot chicks!

Amanda - Edens Kiss


Maria Brink - In This Moment


Sabine Edelsbacher - Edenbridge


Tanja Lainio - Lullacry


Lisa Middelhauve - ex-Xandria


Marta Peterson - Bleeding Through


Raiana - KHZ


Vibeke Stene - ex-Tristania


Charlotte Wessels - Delain