Best of 2011, part II: All genres, director's cut

Having annotated and expanded upon my year-end jazz list yesterday, I'd like to do the same for the all-genres-in-play top 10 I contributed to Time Out New York. The original list, with a brief blurb for each record I chose, is here. (I plan to discuss runners-up, singles, etc. in a separate post.)

A quick note re: streaming audio: I refuse to embed any player that's going to insert an ad before the track (or one that's going to provide substandard sound), so you're on your own for some of this stuff. I encourage you to search, sample and buy!

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1. Frank Ocean, Nostalgia, Ultra (self-released)

I might have slept on this record had it not been for my friend and former colleague Corban Goble, who spied it early on and made sure I gave it a fair shake. Like many, I was first seduced by "Novacane," a seductive jam if there ever was one; I loved its murk and throb, its combination of wit ("I took a seat on the ice-cold lawn / She handed me an ice-blue bong") and vulgarity ("stripper booty and a rack like, 'Wow'"), just the way it built and built and sucked you into its heavy-lidded vortex. (The entrance of that bloblike bass squelch at 1:12 still kills me.) At first, the rest of the record didn't click with me; as is often the case when I grow super-attached to a perfect single, I tend to hold the full album up to that standard, not just of quality, but of mood. I guess I was looking for 40 minutes of "Novacane."

I soon woke up, though, and realized that there was room for more than sordid, hazy, late-night/early-morning rumination in the Frank Ocean aesthetic. The whole album bloomed for me, and I know that this would be The One for This Year (there always is one, it seems). "Songs for Women," with its funky lope and aw-shucks appeal; "Swim Good," that steely, heartsick march to sea; "There Will Be Tears," a portrait of childhood grief intruding on young-adult consciousness; "American Wedding," an offhandedly brilliant riff on "Hotel California"; "Strawberry Swing," which, as solid as the Coldplay source material is, reaches a higher emotional pitch; the yearning neosoul slow jam "We All Try." I wouldn't hesitate to call this record a masterpiece. Listening back to it now, I know that it's etched itself on my heart. I believe this guy. He surprises and challenges me. Moreover, he's an extraordinary singer, reaching deep down for those wrenching peaks (the high note at 2:17 in "We All Try," the little flourish on the word "smile" at 2:08 in "Novacane").

I wasn't too big a fan of Watch the Throne, but Ocean's hook on "No Church in the Wild" slew me; this album is like that cameo writ large. So much feeling, atmosphere, poetry. I just couldn't bring myself to care much about the back story (Ocean's squabble with Def Jam), and truthfully, I didn't love Ocean's live show the way I would've liked (though damn, that new material sounds deep). In the end, the record stood alone: For me, Nostalgia, Ultra was without question the album of year.

2. Anthrax, Worship Music (Megaforce)

I had no particular expectations for this one, only mild curiosity. Anthrax was an MTV staple during my Headbanger's Ball–crazed youth, but I never cared much for them. "Got the Time," say, exuded a goofiness that turned me off; at the time, I wanted my metal stone-faced and scary. But what a joy to experience this band with fresh ears, and to hear them sounding so fired up on this comeback effort. I've since gone back and checked out their earlier material, and to me, Worship Music is stronger. What I love about it is the way the band transcends thrash; yes, that element is there, but the songs are guiding the way. When the band needs to dip into a power-metal bag, it does; same goes for grunge, or blast-beat-driven technicality. I'm just thrilled by how thoroughly this record rocks, how catchy the choruses are, how you can envision an entire arena pumping their fists in unison when you listen. (That didn't quite play out at September's Big 4 show, since the band went on at the ungodly hour of 4pm, but it was still pretty cool to see Anthrax at Yankee Stadium.)

For the most part, I'm on board with the recent art-school-ification of metal; plenty of good has come out of it. But Worship Music helps you remember that at heart, metal is a sweaty, for-the-people music—like turbocharged pop. Clarity and memorability and ROCKING-ness are not passé; those aspects of ’80s metal are still as powerful now as they were, when they're delivered with this much conviction and exuberance. There is so much youth in this record; it's exactly what a comeback album should be. And kudos to Joey Belladonna for an absolutely stellar vocal performance. He sells the hell out of this material. I think that in my youth, before I had caught the Dio bug, I wasn't prepared to appreciate his wailing, dramatic gifts. Now they make perfect sense. Can't wait for the next one from this rejuvenated powerhouse.



3. Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo, Songs of Mirth and Melancholy (Marsalis Music)

See yesterday's jazz round-up.

4. Drake, Take Care (Cash Money/Universal)

I wasn't really ready for a new Drake album. I loved his last one, Thank Me Later, which placed at No. 2 on my 2010 best-of list. But after having been bombarded by his singles for so long, I was ready for a break; 2012 would've been okay with me. But then I heard that album 2 was coming right up, and I knew I'd have to give it a chance. The singles ("Headlines," "Marvin's Room") didn't move me when I heard them in isolation; it seemed to me like he was just going back to feed at the same trough, trying to duplicate the success of Thank Me Later. Then the record came out, and the early reactions were ecstatic. I didn't really get curious till I heard from Corban, who, awesomely, interviewed the man himself and reported that Take Care was his shoo-in album of the year. Time to listen.

All I can say is, "Whoa." It became clear after a first listen that whatever I didn't like about the album (a few corny lines here and there, an inflated sense of self-importance, that annoying faux–voice crack on the "…getting back to my ways" line on "Underground Kings," which I still can't stand), this thing was a real beast. Or, really, feast. So much to savor, so many shrewd guest appearances. Re: the latter, the Weeknd intro on "Crew Love" feels like a laser-beam of tortured (torturous?) emotion (and this from someone who isn't yet a Weekend true believer); and when I heard the Andre 3000 verse in "The Real Her" for the first time, I was straight-up shocked by its charm and effectiveness. A typically badass Rick Ross on "Lord Knows," whoever that is free-associating in a weird robot voice at the beginning of "Buried Alive Interlude" (I'm not sure it's Kendrick Lamar, who guest-raps on the track). And what to say about the fact that that's Stevie effing Wonder playing harmonica on "Doing It Wrong," elevating an already masterful song to an all-time-great level? Drake is helping me to understand something that I'm sure hip-hop devotees have known for years, even decades: that a great album in the genre is like an expertly curated revue, with multiple voices cycling in and out and everyone playing their own niche role.

As I listened repeatedly, the singles fell perfectly into place among the other tracks. Heard in context, "Headlines" and "Marvin's Room," even "Make Me Proud," which not only sounded unimpressive but downright bad to me when I heard it prior to the full record, all became new favorites. (Same goes for the Rihanna-abetted title track, wooden on a first listen but seductive and magical now.) The record is long, but only one song ("Cameras") really seems cuttable to me. I love that Drake is as committed as he is to the LP format, to making full-length sonic movies. The individual highlights of Thank Me Later might top those on Take Care, but in terms of an epic experience, there's no competition: Take Care is a world unto itself, a true journey, well worth taking in full—and repeatedly.

5. Deceased, Surreal Overdose (Patac)

Speaking of epic. Like Anthrax, another band I'd been dimly aware of since teenhood. I'd always taken Deceased for a stalwart but ultimately second-rate death-metal outfit. This album set me right in a major way. In its own way, it's as joyous and triumphant, as diverse and anthemic and rousing as Worship Music.

What drew me into Surreal Overdose is the man at the heart of Deceased: One King Fowley, who handles both drums and vocals in the studio (just vocals live). I strongly urge you to check out Fowley's first-person history of the band at the Deceased site. You'll get a sense there of the sheer delight this man takes in metal; as I discussed in a recent Time Out NY preview, he comes off as a truly kind, friendly guy (an impression I confirmed when I met him in person at the Brooklyn Deceased show back in October), and for all the darkness of the music, you can hear that good-natured-ness in Deceased.

Fowley treats his songs like mini pageants of horror. They're constructed around these gorgeous, theatrical riffs that make you feel like you're in the middle of some kind of thrilling gothic play. And Fowley plays the ghastly ringmaster so well, somehow conveying wonderful narrative flourishes even while growling vomitously. I know very little about the Grand Guignol, but the impression I have of it is similar to the feeling I get from Deceased: It's pure, gory, agonizing horror treated as stylized entertainment. You suspend your disbelief to get into songs like "Cloned (Day of the Robot)" and you actually feel moved by Fowley's borderline-cartoonish narratives.

There's something staunchly adolescent about his viewpoint (killer robot clones), but also something deadly serious: In "Kindred Assembly," "In the Laboratory of Joyous Gloom" and "Dying in Analog," Fowley is discussing topics like senility, depression and death in a very real and disturbing way. On Surreal Overdose, he's talking about emotional horror, not just the kind that involves scary monsters. The music perfectly mirrors these psychodramas; it has a real scope and sweep to it. Surreal Overdose isn't a death metal album at all; there's none of that stone-facedness to it. It's vivid, alive, varied, truly gripping. Even listening back to it now, I'm shocked by its conviction, its intensity and its sheer fun. Surreal Overdose is one of the most honest and ambitious (not to mention entertaining) works of art, musically or otherwise, that I encountered in 2011. Deceased sounds nothing like Anthrax but both take their jobs seriously: They're here to provide (and achieve) escape, pure and simple, not to wallow in inscrutable experimentalism. Long live crowd-pleasing, unabashedly theatrical metal, whatever the scale.



6. Gerald Cleaver’s Uncle June, Be It as I See It (Fresh Sound New Talent)

See yesterday's jazz round-up.

7. The Strokes, Angles (RCA)

Ripping on the Strokes has became a sport, and for those who feel like playing, the band makes it pretty easy. They're still given to whining and in-fighting in interviews, in that way that always invites those age-old "Oh, great, the famous rock & rollers are complaining again" sentiments. And there these finger-wagging notions floating around about how the Strokes should have been the ones playing a farewell show this year, not LCD Soundsystem (a band I simply cannot get into). To a degree, I can understand all this: There's something about the Strokes that can feel wimpy, spoiled, tedious.

But the thing is, they are still unbelievably good at what they do, which is creating these three-minute wonders—full of hidden surprises and endlessly scrutinizable, yet completely streamlined. It's like prog ambition mixed with garage-rock cool. In this vein, "Under Cover of Darkness" is one of the most emblematic, and best, songs the band has ever written. Yes, there are bad songs on Angles, a fact I perhaps glossed over in my Time Out review of the record. At this point, I find the languid "You're So Right" nearly unlistenable, and while I respect the curveball nature of it, the drum-less interlude track "Call Me Back" is a real buzzkill, given where it falls in the album.

Just about every other song on Angles, though, I either like very much ("Macchu Picchu," "Metabolism") or straight-up love ("Under Cover of Darkness," "Two Kinds of Happiness," the breakdown of which is like a fireball of rock, "Taken for a Fool," another song that belongs on the Strokes short list, the ridiculously fun and groovy "Gratisfaction" and "Life Is Simple in the Moonlight," one of the best chilled-out songs the band has ever issued, not to mention the source of my favorite guitar solo of 2011). In this material, the band isn't telling us much (anything?) we don't already know about them, but they are reaffirming that they're still around, and however much they claim to not enjoy being a band, their output is still the gold standard for stripped-down, attitude-heavy, pop-friendly NYC rock. I love these guys, and while Angles isn't their best, it's not even remotely a disappointment.

8. Disma, Towards the Megalith (Profound Lore)

Ah, Disma. This isn't the Anthrax/Deceased crowd-pleasing/entertaining sort of metal at all. Nor is it the introspective, inscrutable art-metal thing either. What this is, is the brutal thing, the kind of metal that satisfies your desire to be flattened by a cold, unfeeling sonic steamroller. Towards the Megalith is hands-down the heaviest album I heard all year, the sickest, the grossest. The whole thing just drips with slime and rotting vegetation. The music is pure attack, pure lumbering menace, even when the tempos are fast. And dear God, those vocals. Craig Pillard is perhaps the best low death-metal growler I've ever heard. He very literally sounds like a monster, and not a comical one. (A great side effect of Megalith has been that it's sent me back to Pillard's old band, Incantation, which has since become a serious obsession in its own right.) As conventional as it is, this music is actually scary.

The secret weapon here might actually be the production. Towards the Megalith sounds full and loud and clear. The drums actually sound real. For all the putrid-ness of the music, there's a big, round pleansantness to the way it's rendered on tape. You really sink into this album. There have been weeks this year where I've wanted to listen to nothing else. It invites you even as it repulses you, freaks you out. Re-spinning it now, I'm again totally sucked in by its unholy girth and crunch. You feel the weight of the ages in this; it's primordial and massive and it swings like a motherfucker. In terms of death metal at large, Megalith is not really anything new, but it does feel like something perfected, a revisitation of an old sound, with all fat stripped away and with all intensity heightened. It's like a new model of an old car: The basic design is the same, but all the little quibbles you might've had with the old model don't apply here. In terms of what it's trying to achieve—a sensation of suffocating heaviness and unrelenting brutality—Towards the Megalith is essentially a perfect album.

9. New Zion Trio, Fight Against Babylon (Veal)

See yesterday's jazz round-up.

10. Ben Allison, Action-Refraction (Palmetto)

And once again, see yesterday's jazz round-up.

2011 death-metal top 5 (so far)

A confession: I've spent more time defending Illud Divinum Insanus, the new Morbid Angel album that came out last month and was immediately met with a storm of contempt, than actually listening to it. I was so busy elucidating why I felt it wasn't the piece of crap so many others pegged it to be that I glossed over the fact that it might not be such a durable statement. Is it crap? Absolutely not. Is it a great Morbid Angel album? Let's just say that I'm not sure it will stand the test of time the way Covenant or even Heretic has.

I've read a lot of reviews that take an "ignore Illud and try THIS instead" stance, pointing to some "truer" recent representative of the death-metal ideal (Nader Sadek's In the Flesh, e.g., which features ex-Morbid frontman Steve Tucker). That seems dubious to me. I kind of feel like it's important to deal with the record at hand and not judge it against some broad, nebulous convention.

All the same, it's hard to ignore the fact that 2011 has been an outstanding year for meat-and-potatoes death metal, and as much as I hate to admit it, Illud Divinum Insanus is not one of the main reasons why. With all due respect to Morbid Angel, here are five of my 2011 death-metal favorites, all of which will be in the running come year-end-list time.

Deceased
Surreal Overdose (Patac)

This Virgina band has a long and illustrious history in the metal underground, a history I knew pretty much nothing about. I've heard their name for years, and I've always been sort of tickled by the name of drummer/bandleader KING FOWLEY when I've come across it in metal mags, but before this record, I'd never really investigated Deceased. I think I had an impression of them as one of the countless sub–Cannibal Corpse bands who purvey pummeling yet faceless grunt-and-grind over lengthy careers. I could not have been more wrong in this (essentially baseless) preconception, though: Make no mistake, Deceased is a seriously progressive band, and this record is a bona fide epic.

There's definitely some straight-up blasting death metal on Surreal Overdose—their sixth full-length—but there's just as much rollicking hardcore and, crucially, triumphant thrash. I've been getting down to a lot of …And Justice for All and Rust in Peace lately, and this album thrives on a brand of riff obsession that reminds me of that late-’80s/early-’90s tech-thrash flowering. Combine that sensibility with anthemic, punklike choruses and a serious dystopian sci-fi jones and you've got a very vintage-style album, almost Voivod-ish in its obsessive devotion to epic narrative scope, where the music feels like a constantly deepening STORYLINE.

As raw as the band sounds—Fowley's vocals remind me a bit of Sepultura's Max Cavalera—there's a real progginess to this album that I just love. Sound effects, dialogue samples, constant tempo changes, just tons and tons of INTRIGUE and MEMORABILITY. I actually think of this album as not terribly distant from something like David Comes to Life by Fucked Up (which I also really dig)—taking an "extreme" musical style and polishing it with a sort of epic sheen. The result in each case is a best-of-both-worlds scenario—a fascinating marriage of the primitive and the grand. I seriously doubt I will hear a better metal album (let alone death metal) than this in 2011. Hear/buy it via Bandcamp. Here's a track:



Exhumed
All Guts, No Glory (Relapse)

Like Deceased, Exhumed is another band I'd heard of for years that I'd basically written off as generic. (In both cases, maybe the band names had something to do with it?) But thanks to some very intriguing recent coverage over at Invisible Oranges, including this wildly entertaining essay on Metallica's "Trapped Under Ice" by Exhumed guitarist Matt Harvey," I decided to give their new one a look. And man, this album just smokes.

Like on Surreal Overdose, there's a major thrash/hardcore thing going on here, an almost hysterical riff obsession. Exhumed shares with Deceased a certain over-the-top-ness, but if in Deceased that quality plays out in pulpy, nerdy narrative grandiosity, in Exhumed it comes across as more of a heathen-ish zaniness. There's sinister-minded camp all over this record, from the gruesomely funny cover art (depicting the band members as flesh-eating zombies) to the cornball song titles ("Your Funeral, My Feast") and the "one guy shrieking, the other one barfing" dual-vocal approach. But I assure you, this music is absolutely dead serious. The riffage (not to mention the soloing) simply could not be more righteous. I hear this stuff, and I just want to headbang at warp speed. Guitar nerds, you will be in heaven. This one is also on Bandcamp. Here's the aforementioned "Your Funeral…":



P.S. I was super-intrigued when Invisible Oranges labeled the previous Exhumed effort, Anatomy Is Destiny, "the …And Justice for All of goregrind" (in the intro to this Matt Harvey Q&A). Having sampled Anatomy a bit on Spotify over the last few days, I'm glad to report that this assessment isn't far off.

Disma
Towards the Megalith (Profound Lore)\

Incantation—yet another veteran death-metal band that I'd long assumed was kind of marginal. All the same, I knew that they were revered in the underground, so when I heard that a new Profound Lore band, Disma, featured former Incantation member Craig Pillard on the mic, I was intrigued.

Towards the Megalith does not disappoint in the least. If Surreal Overdose and All Guts are all about being pelted with rapid-fire streams of ideas (riffs, words, what have you), Towards the Megalith lumbers along at a much slower pace. Whether moving at molasses-y doom speed or a bottom-heavy midtempo, this band has enormous girth to it. You think of elephants and tanks and other sluggish yet unstoppable forces. Pillard's got a classic death-metal growl-and-gurgle style. Like a lot about Towards the Megalith, his delivery is familiar yet extremely satisfying. This band just wants to create a sense of slo-mo menace, without getting too ponderous or emo about it. The record's title is apt: You really do start to think of ancient societies and their terrifying moonlight rites when you hear this one. You can check out one track over at Stereogum, and one at Profound Lore, where you can also (of course) buy the record.

Autopsy
Macabre Eternal (Peaceville)

Out of all these bands, Autopsy is the one I'd had the most prior experience with. I wasn't hip to their early classics, such as 1991's Mental Funeral, at the time they came out, but I caught up to them over the past few years and was seriously impressed. The band seemed truly committed to taking Sabbathy evil-ness and riff worship and pushing these concepts into the realm of ugly, gross-out death metal. As on the old records, I'm not in love with the delivery of vocalist of Chris Reifert (who, like King Fowley, doubles in drums), who can sound overly cartoonish to me, like a parody of death-metal vocals. But there's a certain camp to what he does that fits in well with Autopsy's relentless garagey vibe. The playing is proficient as hell, but the band plays with a real rock & roll rawness. Unlike some death metal, which seems utterly disconnected from the blues, Autopsy is all about the sludgy churn, the badass midtempo groove. As with their old stuff, it's quite a treat on Macabre Eternal (their picking-up-right-where-they-left-off "comeback") to hear those core hard-rock values married to pulpy, gore-obsessed lyrical themes. Hear some samples and pick up Macabre Eternal at Peaceville.


Cannabis Corpse
Beneath Grow Lights Thou Shalt Rise (Tankcrimes)

What a fantastically fun record this is. As you might guess from the name, Cannabis Corpse started as something of a joke: I'm not quite clear on whether they were actually covering Cannibal Corpse songs (replacing all the blood-and-guts lyrics with lyrics about weed) or simply riffing on Cannibal's song titles and imagery. To be clear, though: Despite the titles punning on classic death-metal tracks by Decide, Morbid Angel and the like, all the current Cannabis material is original, and with this new record, these guys have taken a major step up in the seriousness-of-craft department.

These guys may just have Cannibal Corpse themselves beat when it comes to playing death metal that ROCKS. The orchestration on this album is absolutely incredible: Every instrument has its place, and all the components groove together so hard. (The beautifully clear production doesn't hurt.) The approach reminds me more of something like Thin Lizzy than it does death metal, a genre in which clarity and instrument separation and naturalness-of-sound don't tend to be high priorities. Despite the growly vocals, these guys actually sound like a more thrash-metal-informed version of the Fucking Champs to me than death metal proper. As with the Champs, these guys play extremely CRAFT-FORWARD metal, metal which has no interest in default rawness. They've written some extremely accomplished and detailed songs here, and they obviously want you be able to hear exactly what's going on.

As with every Cannabis Corpse listener, you've probably got preconceptions that they're a joke band, but this is probably the most pro presentation I've heard on a metal record this year: playing, songwriting, orchestration, production—it all just sounds beautiful and you need to hear it. Get thee to Bandcamp! Here's a track: