The Conversation: 2021 In Review

CHRIS C: Every year, I muse about how absurd it truly is that we divide our lives into segments based on where on a never-ending circuit through the universe this rock happens to be. This year, however, I'm less inclined to that sort of philosophical meandering. If ever we needed to be able to draw a line and separate one year from another, it's right now. Last year was one we will never forget, and this year hasn't been quite the return from the brink we were hoping for. The world is getting back in the swing of things, but I don't know if we'll ever be 'normal' again. for whatever that's worth. What is normal anyway?

Music was supposed to be a saving grace this year. With all the artists who were in lockdown last year, we were supposed to be on the receiving end of a flood of new releases, perhaps even the most we have ever seen. I'll begin our discussion of the year in music by asking one simple question; did we get that flood?

We will debate the good and bad, the trends and the news, but I've been thinking about the totality of music I listened to this year, and I can't say I saw many differences in terms of the raw number of releases I was encountering. There was one label in particular that upped their output, but in general it felt like any other year to me. I was hoping for something more, maybe for some more unexpected bands to return with new albums, but in the end this year was just another year.

We've gotten into this before, but perhaps this is a result of our own rules for ourselves. I continue to feel, as I believe you do as well, that there are only so many albums any one person can listen to with the requisite amount of attention. If the number of albums being released increases 25%, I'm still likely to listen to the same number of new releases, so it might just be that I have set myself up to miss out on what is actually happening. There was a time I would have been bothered by that, but not anymore. I am more comfortable than ever missing out on a few things if it means I'm getting to focus on the things I am more interested in.

To that effect, I intentionally didn't listen to plenty of albums I often would have listened to just to say I listened to them. I don't feel like my year is any the worse for that decision. But before I get too far into the weeds, what were your foremost impressions of the year?

D.M: Can we be real here for a second?  I think my impression of the year, musical or not, is that we didn't have a year.  Oh, we tried to.  As the title of the popular sub-Reddit goes, "there was an attempt."  But we didn't really.  We just wandered aimlessly through a strange, nebulous, altogether uncomfortable and uncertain transitory period that never moved out of being a transitory period.  Sure, I went to some concerts, and it felt right and good to do so, but for anyone to suggest that it constituted what would normally be regarded as a 'year' is myopic and naive.

Now, how does my fervent cynicism reflect on the musical universe we find ourselves inexorably immersed in?  Well, I'm not sure we had a year there, either.  I can everyone now - 'of course we did, there were releases and albums and tours and all the things that make for a musical year."  Sure, that's all true.  But there didn't seem to be much progression from year's prior, and I think there's a fundamental disconnect between our logical expectation and what we actually received.

Allow me to explain that - There was general consensus that everyone who was holding on to a record in 2020 was going to release it in 2021, and it would be piled on top of the 2021 releases already in the hopper, but I think that only half materialized.  For starters, it's probably fair to argue that there are musicians, whose sole source of musical income comes from live performances, waiting and hoping that if they can hold out just a little longer, they'll be able to tour unencumbered and without restriction, never mind the renewed confidence of the fan to seek out such an event.  To that end, they might be holding on to releases so that they have new material to support.

I think we also assumed that the music business operated in some parallel bubble to the one we were all living in.  Labels great and small can only process and properly promote so much at a given time; same goes for promoters.  And since every industry on the planet seems to be short of workers, it's not such a stretch to suggest that the various cogs of music are short-staffed as well.  So in the end, the glut never came because we weren't collectively farm-to-table ready for it.  

Conversely to your experience, I actually think I did manage to listen to more stuff this year, though that had to do with some changes in my circumstances (for the better,) than it had anything to do with the flowing faucet of releases.  Most of all, I'm pleased to say that of the twenty finalists I currently have for my top eleven albums of the year, fourteen of them are artists new to me, which is a great feeling, though that does come with the caveat that I've yet to listen to new albums from Fear of Domination, Volbeat and Hypocrisy, which could all wedge their way into consideration.  I also haven't yet done my annual scour of the year in rap to see if there are any new gems to be unearthed there (and I remain bitterly disappointed that Kendrick Lamar did not release new music this year.)

I guess, to answer the question you actually asked in a more direct manner - my impression of the year is that even with some bright spots, the feeling of separation from whatever constituted a normal year in the past and whatever constitutes this new normal leaves me with the stark, unshakable conviction that this year, as with last year, is best labelled "incomplete."  Risks were averted, chances not taken.

CHRIS C: We shouldn't be surprised by the lack of a year, as you put it. At the end of the decade, we did come to the conclusion the entirety of the last twenty years is pretty much one decade. For whatever reason, and I don't want to blame the stupid line Matthew McConaughey used in that tv show, but time is indeed becoming 'a flat circle'. That's the biggest thing I'm noticing. Time, whether in life or in music, doesn't feel like it's divisible anymore. It's all blending together, and that's not just the ongoing pandemic talking. It was like that even before we entered these weird times.

Your point about the music business is well taken, but also interesting to consider. I hadn't given much thought to the physical limitations of the labels to get music out to the masses, but you are right about the limitations of the production line to get CDs and vinyl records pressed and ready to be sold. Now that I think about it, I have heard about several albums that had to be delayed briefly while they waited for the plants to be able to finish the run of vinyl. I'm not sure how much of that was a supply chain issue, and how much was Adele reportedly having half a million copies of her album at the front of the line, but it was very much a real thing.

That does have another angle to it; are there enough people still buying physical product for these issues to be getting in the way? Streaming is now the unquestioned dominant form of music listening, and we see releases coming along that never get a physical release at all, so is that the future we're looking at? I still like to have physical copies of my favorite albums, but that is a dying attitude. This year, for instance, I only acquired five new albums from everything I heard, and there aren't really any more I would really want to get. If that is at all representative, the supply chain issues don't strike me as something worth holding up too many albums over, unless the profit margins on these things are far larger than I'm thinking they are.

I also find myself wondering why albums and tours are still so interconnected. I feel like we have proven through the years there isn't much tying the two together anymore. At least for bands of note, that is. We see Iron Maiden, Tool, and the like head out on the road and do the same business whether they have new music to promote or not. So I do understand why bands would be frustrated about not being able to hit the road this year like they wanted to, I'm not sure what holding off on their albums until the tours can be booked would achieve. You're the concert-goer of us, so perhaps you can explain better if new music does anything for a tour these days. All I seem to hear is that "here's a new song" is the signal for people to head to the bathroom.

My list of favorites this year is not as flush with new bands. There are a couple in the mix, but this year's weirdness sent me in the opposite direction, preferring to wrap myself in sounds I already love. That applies both to the list of new albums, with some returning favorite voices powering many of the albums, but also in the tilt of my listening, where I was getting more nostalgic than usual. I can't blame that on a round number birthday, or even an unprovoked burst of an existential crisis. With time standing still, and normalcy still far out of arm's reach, I suppose I just wanted to hear music that brought back better feelings.

So let's continue on with this question; what was the biggest surprise of the year for you? Good or bad, or maybe both.

D.M: Pursuant to your point about streaming, I don't know if the lack of a sudden explosion of music has to do with a material shortage for pressing so much as it does the human element of promotion.  You and I work closely with a somewhat wide menagerie of characters in the promotional sphere, and hey, they can only successfully work on so many albums.  It's a human capacity that may have had a hand in holding back the flood.  I daresay that one of the things we learned as a work force during the pandemic is that our lives are more than our work, and that there's a rate of diminishing return on how many extra days/hours/projects you can take on at one time.

Half a million Adele records?  Really?  I'm actually somewhat surprised that it's only half a million pieces of vinyl.  Also, I'm out of the loop - Adele had an album?  Was it any good?

Sidebar - Greta Van Fleet had a new record?  Did anyone notice?  Their hype machine was so overwhelmingly intrusive the first go-round, I just assumed I would naturally osmose information concerning any new releases from them.  Either I was more withdrawn that I thought I was, or the moment has passed, so to speak.

The key phrase you used in the connection between tour and new material is "for bands of note."  If you're Iron Maiden, sure, you probably don't need to release another album for the rest of your natural lives (but you will, anyway, because there's always a chance you can attract some new blood that's come of age,) but if you're Within The Ruins or Blues Pills or whomever, you can't rest on your catalogue.  And the musical attention span of fans is short (I'll never forget a friend I had in college radio who swore that any album that had been out more than four months was old,) so the tour always coincides because you have to strike when it's hot.  Fans are more selective than ever with their concert dollar, so your band needs to be front of mind with a fresh look when you hit the road.  Even Graveyard, whom we both love, has to do this - they came of age after the era of widespread radio distribution for rock, so they don't have the benefit of the bands of similar style who came before.  Perfect example - Shortly after Beartooth released their album this year, they were going to be in my town.  I intended to go because I'd never been a huge fan of theirs but liked their new album quite a lot (is that a spoiler? Maybe!) and if they hadn't been coming through right on the heels of a record I liked, I don't know that my admittedly fair-weather fandom would have extended more than six months.

Which I think dovetails into my biggest surprise of the year, which actually is about myself.  I found my famously fragile patience for music even shorter this year, for reasons unknown.  I've lamented before that I don't necessarily love that I have become the stereotype of the crusty, bespoke-suited record exec in the wood-paneled office who hears ten seconds of a band and knows if he should cast them out or not.  This year, it was worse!  This is journalistically irresponsible of me to admit, but there were albums, especially here at the end of the year, that I deleted based solely on album cover and the design of the band's logo.  IS THIS WHAT I'VE BECOME?

And I mention all that, because I'm curious in an introspective, possibly rhetorical way now - would I have had the patience at this stage to uncover Graveyard and hear their resonance and subtleties?  Or would I have dismissed them now as "heard this before, move on"?  It's a chilling thing to think about that I might have bypassed one of the great bands of their generation based solely on a personal bent toward efficiency.

Two other surprises, not really good or bad, which isn't fun, but there it is.  First, was it me, or was there a lot of Satan-invoking music this year?  Okay, fine, lots of parents and grandparents and are bristling at my naivety and yelling "it was always all invoking Satan, you fool!"  Brushing that aside, you know what I mean - Lucifer led the charge in this category, but I can't escape the feeling that there was a greater preponderance of music openly offering messages (real or theatrical, either way,) of the praise of dark forces.  And I wonder if this is not a coincidence - if the pandemic plays some hand in this, and individuals feel they've lost control of the surroundings and are more willing to accept alternative messaging that might inspire them - Satan is, after all, the O.G. outlaw, who rebelled against no less an authority than God.  There's always been a certain appeal to the idea of taking charge of the reins of your own life, consequences be damned (no pun intended,) and I think musicians may have felt they needed to write that message, and fans are more apt to hear it.  A while back, a gentleman named Eric Nuzum wrote an excellent (and hilarious) analysis of the history of our attraction to vampires called "The Dead Travel Fast."  One of his conclusions was that in times of distress (in his cases, economic, but there's no reason a pandemic wouldn't qualify,) the popularity of vampires goes up and there's a proliferation of vampire-themed material.  He goes on to reason that people find the idea of the vampire attractive - immortal, almost universally depicted with wealth and power, existing outside the constructs of regular society - at times when they may be personally struggling.  Anyway, I'm above my paygrade at this point.

Second minor surprise - while it was clear that a lot of artists spent the pandemic plumbing the depths of their own psyche for new material to write, I think I expected there to be more wacky side projects and collaborations.  Almost everyone released albums or singles in their usual idiom, which is fine, but I figured there might be a tendency to dip into the pool of the weird, and now was as good a time as any to release that pent-up stream-of-consciousness-progressive-death-Ozark-chamber-quartet EP that you've always had in your back pocket and been too afraid to waste time on, right?  Aside from Bjorn Strid, who's like a high school drummer who gets recruited by every band in school, nobody really went notably outside their comfort zone, which is fine, but a minor letdown.

...it does suggest a truth that I've consciously tried to ignore over the years, which is that maybe many songwriters are what they are, and that's it.

CHRIS C: That is very true. As we discussed privately, it's a weird and annoying phenomenon that we (as a society) define ourselves by the work we do. When we meet someone new, the first thing we're usually asked about is a job. Not what we enjoy, not how we see ourselves, not what kind of personality we have. I just wanted to fit that in here so there's a record of me calling it silly. Every bit as silly as athletes defining themselves by a number. We seem to go out of our way to make ourselves less human at every turn.

*Editor's Note* Adele's album was released during this conversation.

Yes, half a million is a lot of vinyl. For all the talk about how big it's become yet again, the fact of the matter is if you can sell a couple thousand units, you're having a lot of success. When bands do their 'limited runs' of a couple hundred, they're making it sound like a rare opportunity, but it's often because they know they're not going to sell more than that. Vinyl is bigger than it used to be, but the raw numbers are still pretty small. Adele will move a lot of them, but as was the case in the days when we started buying cassettes (ugh, I feel old now), it will be mostly for her previous achievements. I am definitely in the minority, but I am not swooning over her new one. I'm not a vinyl collector, but even if I was, it would not be an album I have to pick up. I have a CD of "25", but this one won't be joining it.

I did notice Greta Van Fleet's album, but I also didn't care enough to say much. The hype machine never got the same kind of traction this time. I think it was a combination of everyone being tired of saying, "they sound like Zeppelin", and the singles they released being more prog and less interesting. People's irrational hatred was the only thing making them rise to the top, and without that, their music wasn't good enough to sustain the attention. I said nice things about their first album, but they got dull in a hurry. Not that I'm complaining about that.

Don't be ashamed of yourself. I have been that kind of journalist for a long time. If a band's name is dumber than dumb, the email gets deleted. If the genre description includes the word 'black', the email gets deleted. If I simply get the sense I'm not going to like it, it may get deleted. For any band I haven't heard before, they either have to write promo copy that catches my eye with something that makes me believe I could like their music, or they have one song to impress me. I don't keep track of how many albums I'll listen to one single from, only to ignore the rest. I know I shouldn't, because singles aren't always representative, but when I think about how much music I don't care for I might have to listen to in order to be more charitable, I can't do it.

So I don't know what to tell you about your Graveyard question. Sometimes bands need a second chance to impress, and we don't always give it to them. That happened to me with Graveyard. When you raved about "Hisingen Blues", I gave it a listen and came away a bit cold from it. When you gave me the assignment to write about "Lights Out", they clicked. I would like to think they would have gotten the second chance anyway, but I have no idea. It's uncomfortable to say, but so much of what we end up hearing is based on luck and chance. That's not very artistic of us, but it's reality.

Hmm... our orbits are different enough, I'm not sure I encountered that much Satan this year. Lucifer for sure (a good band and another good album - how much does their name and lyrical content hold them back?), and if you want to include Powerwolf and their imitator Apostolica, that's about the extent of evil I came across. But I did spend more time this year looking for some lighter musical fare, and I've been drawn to that psyche-plumbing, so it's easy to explain why our experiences differ. I'll just make a quick point here that the reason for the lack of side-projects could be as simple as noting how many musicians are already in multiple bands. It's hard to find time for yet more projects when you're already dealing with two or three bands. Bjorn's the odd case where he has put his main band on the back-burner. I get the sense he's far more interested in being a yacht-rocker these days anyway.

I can speak from a bit of experience here; songwriters absolutely are who they are. Rare are the examples who can jump into a completely different sound or genre, and succeed both on the merits of the new music and in comparison to what they're known for. Writing songs is, in a way, muscle memory. We have certain patterns and traits we utilize over and over, making variations on them. Let's use a basketball analogy. If you come into the league as a mid-range specialist, you're always going to be good at that (until your skills completely erode), but that doesn't mean you're going to be a great three-point shooter, or a great distributor, and so on. It takes a lot of work to develop a new skill, and while it can be done, how many musicians do you think put in time to dissect their songwriting and the songwriting of people in the new genre they want to move into? A pitcher usually can't throw an overhand fastball, and then drop down into a side-arm slider. Likewise, a songwriter can't often upend the fundamental ways they build melodies or riffs. If we're lucky, our voice as a writer will be able to fit more than one genre. As we see a lot of the time, however, experimenting with new sounds simply doesn't work. I've learned to stay in my lane, even if I have other things I would be interested in trying.

I've gone on long enough, so I will quickly answer my own question. What surprised me this year were two things. One was that, after joking about it for who knows how long in these conversations, I finally got new Tonic music. It was only one song, sure, but I had given up thinking it was ever going to happen. I was genuinely shocked when I saw the announcement, even as a cynic. The other thing that surprised me was that, for the first time, a musician's death made a real impact on me. Maybe I've just been lucky with who I have been most a fan of, but Jim Steinman's death hit me. His music is what really made me a serious music fan, and I trace some aspects of myself to his melodramatic sarcasm, so it did feel like a star had disappeared from the sky. Oddly, I find that whole situation to be reassuring. I would have been far more concerned if his death hadn't meant what it did to me, even if it would have been more in character.

D.M: Yacht-rocker!  Holy shit, I'm stealing that.  Especially because I can picture Bjorn so easily in that exact mold.  Well done by you.

And I'm not too ashamed of my lack of journalistic integrity in some regards - my policy against listening to bands with a bodily function in the title is well-publicized (apologies to Witch Vomit and Urine Junkies and Vomit Fist and all the others, but no, I'm never taking the time to listen to your records.)  You know, we've talked about this before, but why on earth would you pick a name that automatically prevents commercial success?  Okay, I get it, in a lot of these splinter genres, commercial success is never attainable anyway, so why not go for the gusto, because fans won't care.  Understood.  But as part of my education, even though I didn't want to, I did have to take some marketing classes, and the latent marketing student in me bristles at the idea of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Alright, you've opened the door by mentioning our different orbits - since I apparently spent most of my year steeped in the dark tea of evil music (including a couple very good, catchy death metal albums, which is a difficult concept to consider - that death metal would be catchy,) where did you spent a lot of your year?  And addendum for myself - I have found that in the past three years or so, I've tended to be less apt for the more extreme dimensions of metal.  I am vainly hoping that this is because it is a fallow period for those genres, and not because I am hurtling inexorably toward forty and my clean-burning, adolescent rage is diminishing as the calendar advances.  Hmm.  Enough about me - what about you?

Yikes, I think part of our correspondence is going to end on a down, and probably nihilistic note.  Let's dive in head first, shall we?

The concept of the death of celebrities, generally people we only think we know, is a finicky one.  For you, Jim Steinman was a formative character in your own musical identity, which is a huge portion of your overall identity as an individual.  That's a tough blow to suffer, no doubt, and I empathize with the abstract but poignant pain that causes.  For me, Layne Staley's death (or more appropriately, the discovery of his death,) even though it was tinged with a certain degree of inevitability, was the first time I came to terms with the mortality of these characters.  In that way, celebrities that we identify with have a certain fictional characteristic to them - they are, in our eyes, who they want us to see them as.  And their passing (timely or untimely,) robs of us of our connection with them, and the possibilities of more stories or art from them in the future.  The most recent of these for me was DMX (as we discussed earlier this year,) and to some degree, I felt the same sense of loss in that as I did when Iron Man died on screen (spoiler.)  And I understand that those are two very different circumstances, since DMX was, after all, a tangible, complicated person of flesh and blood and Iron Man is a two-dimensional construct.  Yet, I had been fans of both since my younger years, and the characters they either were or presented occupied a similar space in my heart.  I don't know that I have a conclusion here except to say that it is a curious parallel.

Okay, before we get too close to a Polanski-style plot, what did you enjoy this year?

CHRIS C: I can't claim credit. The Night Flight Orchestra is a yacht rock band, and that's what Bjorn seems most into these days. I'm only stating the obvious.

I don't know either why you would intentionally limit your audience with a bad name. I understand there are times when the bands are too young to know any better, so they wind up thinking something is funny only to find out they're stuck with it, but there are plenty of bands with people who should have more of a brain. Lucifer, for example. They've been around, so they have to know there are venues and outlets that won't want to promote them or their music. Ghost gets away with it because it's cartoony, but also because their name is entirely inoffensive. It's sort of like when there was that sitcom, "Cougar Town". No matter how good it was or wasn't, it was never going to be a lasting hit, simply because a lot of people were going to refuse to engage with a show such titled. Even if these bands aren't intended to be full-time careers, getting more attention and more sales means they can do more with this hobby they seem to love, which is a good enough reason on its own not to shoot yourself in the foot. Let's be honest here; a part of metal's enduring attitude is not wanting people who aren't cool enough to be in the club to enjoy the music. Success is actually failure to a lot of them, because metal is really a fairly conservative and regressive culture. It makes me wonder how much self-loathing is involved.

I don't think catchy death metal is difficult to consider at all. That's how it should be. The fact that so much of it isn't is why I don't investigate the genre more than the pittance I do. This year, like the last couple, I have been mostly interested in finding music that, even though this sounds hokey, lifts my spirits. I want to hear things that make me feel better when I'm listening to them, or they remind me of revelations that are supposed to be important. For me, that has also meant listening to less metal, and a few more things in the lighter directions, because that's where I feel I'm most likely to be successful. Whether they intend such things or not, I'm drawn right now to music that sounds like a catharsis. It's easy enough to look out at the world and feel anger or depression, but not resolute or hopeful. That's what I want music to do. I'm not saying everything I liked did, or that I was altogether successful in my search, but that's the direction I was trying to go. If writing my own music is a form of therapy, I want the music I'm hearing to be another tool in that effort.

What you're saying about dead celebrities is true. We don't really know them, nor do we have relationships with them. Ok, we do, but they're figments of our own minds we build to fill needs in our psychology. It's almost as if losing an idea is as painful as losing an actual person, and perhaps it is. I know plenty of people who mean far less to me than some ideas do. I've always felt curious about the deep emotional reactions I see every time a celebrity passes, but I'm starting to understand it a bit. I'm realizing my own identity is constructed from only a few parts, whereas other people with more dazzling personalities might be kaleidoscopes built from people as if they were flakes of glitter. They are the entire rainbow, so they feel every loss, whereas I am a laser, and only resonate on the narrow band of wavelengths. Loss is only what we make of it.

What I liked this year was how many familiar faces came through for me. My top ten is mostly comprised of albums from people who have previously made albums I love, and have done so again. Newer artists were harder to come by this year, which may be simply an idiosynchracy, but I think it may also be that the lockdowns last year shifted the label's attention to established artists who were making music. There were fewer slots available for new things, that's my impression. So I was happy to see Iron Maiden rebound with a solid album (even if it is too long), Light The Torch keep their fire burning (even if the first album was a hair better), and Rise Against prove their last album wasn't a fluke. But what I liked the most was having The Wallflowers come back with their first good album in sixteen years, to remind me of something I had been missing, and Soen come through once again as the epitome of what modern metal should be.

What I didn't like was the amount of half-assed, boring music veteran names put out this year. Foo Fighters, Daughtry, Weezer, Steven Wilson, and The Offspring all released albums that didn't feel at all like they wanted to make music, but had to in order to keep the wheels of their business churning. I started to quantify it as insult I was feeling with Green Day last year, and it carried over. I seriously felt like some of these bands are taking advantage of fans who they know won't complain, and that pisses me off. I don't think bands owe fans anything except two things; the truth, and their best effort. That last part is sometimes missing, I have to say, although I hate to say it.

So what did you like and dislike most?

D.M: That squares it - some day, I don't know when, but someday, I'm going to take a sabbatical from work and delve into a complete anthropological analysis of metal fandom.  Because I'm in it.  Like, way in it.  And even from the inside, "Gorillas in the Mist"-style, I don't get it.  I have been at parties where it turns out there is another metal fan, and when I try to engage in conversation, the other person gets all cold and uncommunicative, and you can tell they don't want to get into it, because they don't value any other person's experience or opinion in the genre.  What are we doing?

We talked off-line about this, but it's worth it to bring up now - that Iron Maiden's album was too long. Finally, I think you and I came to some understanding on the difference of the two eras of Iron Maiden and what makes some fans reject this newer era.  It's too damn long.  All of the most recent Iron Maiden albums (even the good ones, like "Book of Souls,") suffer from the same curse as "...And Injustice for All," where it's like the band forgot to edit themselves.  And as weird as this sounds, if Iron Maiden had always been a band that routinely composed all their songs to be seven minute prog epics, that would be more palatable, or at least understandable.  A large part of the consternation on my part with the Bruce 2.0 era is that it seems to take half again as long to accomplish the same feat.  I don't know if this comes about because with the permanent adoption of another guitar player, the band is trying to make sure everyone has their moment or what, but "Senjutsu," like so many before it, feels needlessly bloated.  Listen, maybe it's anathema to say this, but I think if Iron Maiden had always been the Iron Maiden they are now, they would certainly have found their niche, but I don't think they ever rise to the level of all-caps IRON MAIDEN.  Same as if they'd stayed with Paul Di'Anno - right when they hit their apex was the perfect moment for the perfect band, and they used it catapult themselves to permanent super stardom.  Iron Maiden as presently constituted couldn't have done that.

I think what I liked most this year is the genuine indecision I have regarding the shape my ultimate top eleven albums of the year will take, and the number of albums I encountered that make me dig deeper into them, even if I wasn't in love with their sound in the end.  Death From Above 1979, as cumbersome a band name as ever you'll find, put out an album that I had to listen to a handful of times before I felt like I had digested it and was ready to move on.  I probably listened to Omnium Gatherum's album a dozen times before I had a once-and-for-all moment and determined it would not make the cut.  Same with Orden Ogan (someday I'm really going to love something that band does....or at least, I keep telling myself that.  Hope springs eternal.)  Sumo Cyco put out a record that was innovative and unique, even if it didn't quite work most of the time.  Wode and Helstar and Bowser all made me take notice before I crossed them off.  And if it sounds weird to give faint praise to a bunch of records that won't make the cut, understand that for me to have this internal battle over whether I like a record or not is a pleasing dilemma to be faced with - it means I'm being challenged and hearing things I haven't heard before, which at this point, it always my goal.  

And that doesn't even touch on the albums that are actually in consideration for the final rankings.  I have a solid handle on five titles who have already crossed the finish line (and the top two are fairly locked and have been in such a state for some time,) but I have sixteen candidates for the remaining six spots, and I can't tell you how happy that makes me.  I will admit this without naming names, there have been some years in recent memory where I have had four albums to fill six slots, and that's a bad place to be.  In 2021 though, there's a lot of new music that I'm willing to put on my shield and defend.  

To call out some specifics without giving away too much - We Butter The Bread With Butter (man, another mouthful,) attracted my attention, 6:33 once again sounds as their best when they evoke shadows of backward, demented show tunes, The Browning rebounded with a tight, solid effort, and Bokassa orchestrated a masterful fusion of big-chorus punk and sludgy metal sensibilities.  The Hawkins put out a magnificent EP called "Aftermath" that I listened to quite a bit (by the way, can we please stop calling these 'mini-albums?' It's a needless appellation.  It's an EP, let's use the term we already have.)

And then the Fear Factory album.  Which I really wanted to hate, for a hundred different reasons.  But it's so damn good.

I think I'm largely with you in what I didn't like - notable bands who couldn't follow up great efforts with something compelling.  Red Fang is the headliner of this group for me.  I remain a defender of theirs against any and all comers, but they are starting to settle into a cycle of every-other-album-is-a-dud.  A Pale Horse Named Death's new record was sadly blah - not even bad, just not all that interesting, which is almost worse.  The Offspring, as you mentioned, farted loudly and hoped everyone would be okay with it.  Lord of the Lost couldn't follow up "Thornstar" with an album of equal promise (though the tenth anniversary re-release of their second album is rather good.)  Evile didn't impress.  While I'm thinking of it, Alien Weaponry's sophomore album was smoothed down from the raw power of their debut full-length, and for the worse.  Their debut was incredibly rough around the edges, but was so novel in its correct moments that it overcame any shortcomings.  This new effort, in trying to make a less scattershot and ambitious aggressive record, put out a boilerplate modern metal album.

And I would say I was disappointed by Rob Zombie putting more stamps on his music career, but that would require me having had expectations in the first place.  Just remember, kids - there was a time when Rob was the unquestioned king of the heap.

What do you want to see in 2022?

CHRIS C: Metal culture is a weird thing, eh? I don't think we've ever agreed on exactly what being 'metal' actually is, so trying to form any sort of generalized conclusion about it is rather difficult. You have the people who think it's long hair and not bathing, the ones who think it's leather and motorcycles, and the ones who think it means no rules at all. It's almost enough to make me think being 'metal' is a catch-phrase people use to justify whatever aesthetic they already have. Or, perhaps listening to a certain kind of music doesn't actually say anything about us as people, and we're seeking answers to a question that doesn't exist.

I defend the reunion era of Iron Maiden as much as anyone (Have you heard of anyone else who prefers it to the classic era? I might be the only one I know of who does.), but absolutely, all of the albums have been too long. Steve Harris is probably the only person who doesn't feel that way, but I'm not sure he listens to anything other than the music he makes (Hearing Michael Schenker say that is the weirdest admission I've ever heard from a musician), so maybe eighty minutes of music over five or six years doesn't seem so bad to him. Every album has either a song or two that could go, or too many intros/outros/solos that could be pared down. They are an indulgent band, for sure. I sort of get it, though. Guitar players seem to be judged mostly on their solos, so they might find it insulting if they don't all get their chance to play. It hurts the songs, but it's better for the egos.

You know what I'm going to say here. It's totally possible Maiden wouldn't have gotten to the level they're at if they were making these records in the 80s, but I think the inverse is true, and they also wouldn't be setting the world on fire if they were making the 80s records today. That's not unique to them, at all. Every so often I'll investigate some of the 'classic' records of the past, and I'm almost always struck by how few of them hold up as being anywhere close to as good as they are made out to be. Case in point; I was just listening to Springsteen's "Born To Run" for the first time in a few years. Is it good? Sure. Is it one of the best albums ever? Good god, no. Because of the time they were made, and the incubation of reverence, we forgive a lot more flaws from the past than we do the present. So what I'm trying to say is that yes, Maiden's records recently are flawed, but so too are the classics. Whether we want to admit it or not.

It's funny you mentioned Orden Ogan. I've been listening to them since before their first 'label' album, and I think I can tell you with some certainty you're not going to have that 'a-ha' moment. They're very good at what they do, but over time they've stripped away anything that deviates from their formula. They've become the Motorhead of their particular niche. That's fine, but when the only difference from one album to the next is what setting the artwork's character is placed in, you're preaching to the choir, and they're not always paying attention. There's a lot of bands like that, who keep showing promise, who keep tempting us to believe in them, but you never quite feel like they put everything together. Ad Infinitum comes to mind as a band that is well on their way to doing that. Eclipse as well, which is frustrating since their songwriter has put out great albums with his other projects. And we mentioned them earlier, but I would put Lucifer on that list as well. I really like their sound, and I've enjoyed II, III, and IV, but they haven't had that one song or album to really make themselves essential.

Has anyone fallen quite as hard as Rob Zombie? I'll be honest and say I don't think I actually listened to his record in full. A couple albums ago I wrote something about how he had segued from being a musician dabbling in film to a filmmaker dabbling in music, and that thought has never left my mind. The impression I get from him is he doesn't really have interest in making new music, which is why he comes up with these random strings of words for titles. He could just head back on the road and play the hits without any bother, so it might be better off for all of us if he did that. Then again, he's remade "Halloween" and now "The Munsters", so maybe he doesn't have any ideas for anything anymore. For a supposed 'creative' person, he's not doing much to prove it.

What do I want to see in 2022? There's four things I can point to. 1)More new Tonic music. Whether that's another one-off song, or a full record, now that they've 'broken the seal', so to speak, I will be less gracious about future inactivity. I'll also say I'm more than ready for the new Halestorm album, as well as the Avantasia album being worked on, and hopefully new Graveyard as well. 2)A better mood. There were times during this year when my mood slipped, and there wasn't always a new piece of music there to pick me up. While it would be nice to have more records that can do that, I'll settle for not needing it at all. 3)New connections. This sort of goes along with the previous point. My looking backwards this year reminded me how far the music I check out these days is from when I was younger. It might be good for me to find ways to reconnect with the sounds of my youth. Surely, there must be bands out there doing that sort of thing I simply haven't found yet. 4)Something to move me. I don't know what it would be, and I don't know what form it would take, but I desperately want to find a new record that reverberates in my soul. It's been too long since I've felt that kind of connection to a record.

So as we wind things down, what are you looking for in 2022? It doesn't have to be as esoteric as my answer.

D.M: To try and best define metal to my professional colleagues, who too often fall into the predictable trap of using the catch-all term "death metal" to refer to any aggressive music that they are instinctively afraid of, I have admittedly taken to paraphrasing the science fiction author and critic Damon Knight, who said of his own medium: "That the term 'science fiction' is a misnomer, that trying to get two enthusiasts to agree on a definition of it leads only to bloody knuckles; that better labels have been devised...but that we're stuck with this one; and that it will do us no particular harm if we remember that, like 'The Saturday Evening Post', it means what we point to when we say it."  So what is metal culture?  Cheekily, it's something I can point to and say "that's metal."  Which is not an intellectually satisfying answer, but it seems the best one.

Boy, that's a whole different clamshell we probably don't have time for this go around - the idea of a band and timing.  Because nothing can be easy in popular culture, can it?  So not only do you have to be the best band on the planet, but you have to be the best band on the planet at a specific time when people are ready to hear you.  Iron Maiden, in the middle '80s, was that band.  Nirvana was that band in 1991.  Guns 'n' Roses was that band in 1987.  Of course, it doesn't always work in the positive - Limp Bizkit was that band in 1998, and Staind was that band circa 2002.  But damn, that makes it so much harder to capture lighting in the bottle, doesn't it? (And would seem to lend credence to an explanation of David Geffen's success as involving some manner of prescience.)  Any of those bands, slid by as little as five years, might have been at best beaten to the punch, and at worst flown over entirely.  Damn, maybe there's a parallel reality where Firehouse (holy shit, they're on tour right now!  I would have had them pegged as selling used cars in the upper midwest,) won the American Music Award in 1991 and deserved it!

I appreciate that you've taken up the torch of helping me rag on Springsteen as these conversations continue.  All I can add is this - within the last week of this writing, I was making idle chatter with a guy at the gym, and he brought up Tom Petty being the most overrated musician of his era.  To which I answered "Bruce Springsteen."  To which he shook his head and said "yeah, you're right."

Stuff I want to see in 2022?  I suppose the nature of this is that it's speculative, so my list may well be composed of stuff that has no chance of happening, but here goes: I want to see a new Kendrick Lamar album.  I want Denzel Curry to tour outside the state of Florida.  I want Combichrist to release a full album, not just a single.  I WANT POWERWOLF TO TOUR THE UNITED STATES.  I want aggressive metal to show me something I haven't heard in a while, and I want someone besides Destrage to raise their hand and volunteer to do it.  I want John 5's relationship with Big Machine Records to go better than Taylor Swift's.  I want the Mets to make the playoffs, and not lose their soul in the process.  I want to actually use the Rage Against the Machine tickets that I bought two years ago and am still holding on to.  I want people to get vaccinated.  I want to feel confident about leaving the continental United States for vacation.  I want more free time to play guitar, so I can be better than miserably bad at it.  I want Turisas to show proof of life.  I want to see continued evolution of the raging comeback of industrial music, in all its forms.  I want to see some new blood in the College Football Playoff.

I think that's it.  That feels like an ambitious list.

Good luck, all.  Godspeed.