Ranking Meat Loaf's Albums

I know what the numbers say, but it doesn't feel like I've been listening to Meat Loaf for thirty years. Ok, it actually does, since my memory of music doesn't go much further back than when I discovered the immortal Mr Loaf. The point is that Meat Loaf's music is rather timeless to me, so counting the years makes me feel older than any effect it might have on the music. Meat has been the constant in my life, no matter what I've gone through.

Not all Meat Loaf is good Meat Loaf, though, so today I'm going to put the records in order. My thoughts have been changing, even in recent days, so for my own sake I want to see exactly how Meat's music sorts out.

1. Bat Out Of Hell

I've spent these thirty years waffling on the question of which album is at the top. It pains me to write the list this way, since the sequel means more to me, but I can't deny which one I replay more often. There's something about how compact the epicness is on this record (I know that doesn't make sense), and those few moments that echo through time in a way nothing else Meat or Steinman would ever achieve. The 'wolf with the red roses' speech, the motorcycle guitar solo, Meat pleading for the end of time to arrive; those are moments caught so deep in the folds of my brain, no amount of time will ever shake them loose.

2. Bat Out Of Hell II (Back Into Hell)

What kind of weirdo was I that this was the first album I ever owned? The same kind of weirdo who still loves nothing more than telling people how obvious the 'that' Meat wouldn't do for love actually is. I've said more times than I can count how I trace back large portions of my personality to Meat and Steinman's music, and this is where it all started for me. While I was more of a Laurel & Hardy guy, compared to Steinman's Three Stooges reference, no record has ever been overblown enough to fill my empty husk the way this one did. It still does, even if it's more for special occasions these days.

3. Dead Ringer

It's no surprise the three albums penned by Steinman are at the top of the list. This one wasn't for the longest time, but discovering how wrong I was has been a wonderful way to recapture the flame of being a fan. This album has one of the few times I can stomach Cher, Steinman at his most musical theater, and the coda to "I'll Kill You If You Don't Come Back" is one of my favorite bits from all of these records. The line about homecoming queens "looking for magic in gymnasium lights" is evocative, and reminds me how different the experience was for me when I found myself staring dead-eyed into the ceiling lights on a certain night.

4. Couldn't Have Said It Better

How good is this record? Well, it's certainly a little flawed at the end, but the core of the record is so strong it more than makes up for the fact Meat sings a love/sex ballad with his own daughter. He was never an intellectual powerhouse, but that decision always makes me wonder if Meat ever paid any attention to what the lyrics said, despite his claims of being an 'actor' performing them. Anyway, this has some truly wonderful faux-Steinman songs that are the most fun I have with Meat.

5. Welcome To The Neighborhood

The two Steinman songs here are classics I prefer to the other versions that have been recorded, and perhaps Steinman's best line is found here. "There are no lies on your body, so take off your dress. I just want to get at the truth" is one of those things I wish I had written. But it goes beyond that, as Dianne Warren was the next best thing, and provided the best non-Steinman song Meat ever sang in the form of "I'd Lie For You (And That's The Truth)". That one has killed me ever since the first time I heard it. Ah, nostalgia.

6. Bat Out Of Hell III (The Monster Is Loose)

This has always been a weird one, because the half of the record not written by Steinman is better than the half he did. I love the facsimile, and there were still enough Steinman songs left to round things out. This would have been a fitting way to end his career, but things rarely work out so well. Meat finally getting around to recording "Bad For Good" should have been all the symbolism we needed.

7. Bad Attitude

The 80s were a bad decade for Meat, which we'll get to in a bit. The one bright spot was this record, where somehow Meat was able to find the songs to make a legitimately good record. It doesn't sound like the Meat we've come to know, but it was a different sound for a different time. Roger Daultry is utterly useless as a duet partner on the title track, but songs like "Cheating In Your Dreams" are wonderful, and work with the two excellent Steinman songs to give us both a reason to have not given up on Meat, but also a reason to hate what else he was doing at the time even more.

8. Hang Cool Teddy Bear

"I can barely fit my dick in my pants" is the worst lyric Meat ever sang, and the idea of him doing a record with writing contributions from The Darkness and an American Idol judge sounds so, so bad. For a long time I thought it was, although I've come to realize this record is actually trying to recapture what "Bad Attitude" had. It never quite does that, but there is charm to the Bon Jovi penned "Elvis In Vegas", and I can't help but laugh every time I think of how pathetically sad the pun is if you slur the title "Let's Be In Love" enough. Thanks, Britney, for the idea! Still, the bonus track "Prize Fight Lover" gave us the last essential Meat Loaf song.

9. Hell In A Handbasket

Not much to say about this one, other than it has decent cover art, and the opening song is good. It's forgettable otherwise, which wasn't as bad as things would get.

10. Blind Before I Stop/Midnight At The Lost & Found

The other 80s records are truly awful. Meat could barely sing at this point, and he couldn't afford to hire good songwriters. These records are the reason people thought his career was dead when "Bat II" shocked the world. These records would kill anyone's career, and there's no way in hell I will ever be enough of a collector to want to own these things. I won't even re-listen to them to rank which one I hate more.

11. Braver Than We Are

But the absolute nadir of Meat's career was his last record, which still depresses me. He wanted to go out with one more album penned by Steinman, but there just weren't enough songs left to do it. Steinman wasn't that prolific, and he recycled parts so much, Meat was reaching for scraps from musicals he wrote in the 70s. The songs aren't very good, but the problem is that Meat's voice was shot at this point. He sounded like he was already dead, but at least a corpse can't sing, which would have been preferable. I try to push this record's existence out of my head, but every so often I remember it, and I feel angry all over again. It would have been far braver to admit he couldn't do it anymore, and just retire with grace. Thank heavens we never did have to hear him croak through "What Part Of My Boy Hurts The Most", even if it's sort of the white whale of being a Meat Loaf fan.

Desert Island Discs, Revisited

Who doesn't love a good thought experiment? In this case, we're dealing with the classic situation of being stuck on a desert island with only ten albums to listen to for the rest of time. What do we pick? How do we decide? Those are questions we can take in many directions, as this is much more than simply asking what our ten favorite albums are. Here, we are trying to assemble a list of music that can fit any time, any mood, any situation we will find ourselves in. Other than being rescued, it seems. Is Gilligan here with us?

I did this one before, several years ago, and I thought it was interesting to see how the results have changed in the time since then. While several of the names are familiar, I have largely turned over the entire roster of albums, which goes to illustrate how much we change as time moves along.

These are my picks:

Tonic - Head On Straight

Previously, I would have picked "Lemon Parade" without a second thought, but I'm more cognizant right now of how much I actually listen to the albums I proclaim to love the most. In this instance, "Head On Straight" is the one I find myself reaching for the majority of the time, and it's the one I can keep listening to without getting tired of it. Maybe there's irony in the more limited sonic palate being more appealing when you find yourself in that certain mood quite often. Logic tells me this isn't the right choice, but it's the one I'm making right now. I suppose I need more heaviness (for Tonic, let's be real) if I'm going to be stuck.

Jimmy Eat World - Futures

Having most recently taken the crown as my favorite album of all time, I can't not include this one. There is something to be said for the diversity that "Bleed American" or "Chase This Light" have to offer, but nothing else they have done can match the atmosphere and feeling I get from "Futures". I imagine it will not often be the happiest of times on this theoretical island, and the album I reach for often when my mood turns dark is a necessity. The optimistic twist at the end has long been critical for me.

The Wallflowers - Breach

Food for the soul, food for the brain. While this is also one of my favorite records, it happens to be the one over my entire life that has put more words into my head than any other. So much of my own time spent creating and expressing myself comes from these songs, I'm not sure I would be the same person without it. I probably wouldn't be the same person going forward if I didn't have the record to remind me. There's something interesting about reciting lyrics and putting the mental pictures together, and this is the best art I know.

Green Day - Warning

Replay potential is hugely important, and there are few records I can listen to more often without getting bored than is true of "Warning". I don't know what it is about this record that makes it so, but it is my ultimate binge album. When I pull it off the shelf, I'm likely to listen to it three or four times before I consciously decide to leave it be for another stretch of time. It's almost the perfect encapsulation of that entire era of alternative rock and pop-punk, mainly because it uses only trace elements of those to construct power-pop. I'm a simpleton, I know.

Dilana - Wonderfool

Any list of this sort has to have my favorite voice, but choosing this record is a new one for me. It doesn't have the same emotional devastation, and it doesn't have my favorite song, but it does simply give me more. It gives me more time with her voice, more facets and elements to her power, and more room for the record to still grow on me as I spend the time memorizing every nuance. The novelty is still finding new ways to love her is what I find most attractive. If Dilana is the air I breathe, this record still has more of that 'new love smell' left for me.

Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell

Another case where I have changed my mind, the original album now wins out over the sequel for this one specific purpose. The reason is rather simple. While both records are ingrained in the very core of who I am, being more concise means I find myself reaching for this one more often. As much as I love the sequel, and as much as it has meant to me, the full seventy-five minutes requires dedication to sit through. Whereas, I will never get tired of listening to Steinman's "wolf with the red roses narration", or rewinding things to listen to Meat pleading for the end of time. Huh, that's actually kind of appropriate, isn't it?

Dave Matthews Band - The Lillywhite Sessions

Things can become rather intolerable when I find the vessels in my head throbbing to the point I struggle to keep my eyes open. Music is often the last thing I want to engage with then, but there are certain sounds that soothe, with this record being one of them. It is very much a 'sad bastard' album, mired in oppressive gloom, but who doesn't have times when that is our reality? It can be nice to be reminded we are not the only ones to feel such a way, and that perhaps knowing the connection exists will allow some of that to escape and dissipate. Regardless, it is important to have something to listen to when sound can be painful.

Halestorm - Vicious

Like Dilana, I couldn't imagine being without access to Lzzy Hale's voice. Whether she is softly crooning the first lines of "The Silence", or screaming from the bottom of her soul, few sounds are more comforting to me than her voice. It's a rare thing to be able to get lost in the tone of someone's voice, but that is what happens for me with Lzzy, and why I sometimes call her the voice of my generation. Lzzy is almost as essential as water.

Graveyard - Hisingen Blues

My list is in need of more straight-ahead rock, and there is no better choice for that role than Graveyard. They are the most timeless band I know, which will serve me well if this is supposed to be a long-term situation. The only question is which record to pick, since they have several I could easily see myself listening to on a nearly endless loop. I settle here not just because I think it's their best record, but because I think it's the cleanest example of what makes Graveyard so great. I have to make no sacrifices by choosing this one, and the last thing I want to do is have regrets.

Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway

A dose of pure pop can go a long way, and I can't think of a pop record that pushes more of my buttons than this one. It rocks reasonably hard, the songs are stickier than tree sap on the bottom of my boot, and Kelly's voice made an entire genre of reality tv legitimate in people's eyes. I don't know how much room there will be for fun in this scenario, but whatever there is will need a soundtrack. That's what this record is for, and what it has always done. It is the citrus fruit staving off emotional scurvy.

And so, looking at the records I have picked, I feel like we have a satisfying little collection that reveals much of my musical personality. There are records and sounds I would have liked to include, particularly from the heavier end of the spectrum, but if I'm being honest with myself, this is a more accurate representation of who I am.

But the fun is that when I eventually do this again in a few years, the answers will once again be different. Not knowing exactly how is what makes this interesting to keep thinking about.

The Worst/Most Disappointing Albums Of 2023

If I am starting from the position that this was a bad year, then that means the bad music of a bad year must be even worse than usual, right? Actually, no. There was bad music, and some of it was truly terrible, but there was no more bad music than any other year. There might have been more truly disappointing ones, but that's a different case, and it's why I separate the two out when I make this list every year.

So let's start with the worst of the worst.

The Bad:

1. Avenged Sevenfold - Life Is But A Dream

I heard people praise this record, and it makes me think about that phrase, 'alternative facts'. I listened to this record, and I came away from it not even understanding if the band was trying to make an album. It sounded to me like a collection of ideas the band put in chronological order, with them thinking it was somehow clever to present riffs as they came up with them. This record is not clever, or well-written, or any good at all. In fact, I'm going to say there isn't much in the way of actual songwriting to be found here. The band glued pieces of trash together to form 'found art', and we're left wondering if putting a toilet in the middle of an empty room counts as an artistic statement. I say no, it's just fittingly called crap.

2. Primal Fear - "Cancel Culture"

I think this is a first, but I'm going to single out one song from Primal Fear. "Cancel Culture" pissed me off, and is some of the worst political analysis I've ever heard from musicians. Yes, that's really saying something. So why is it so bad? It isn't because I disagree with their take on whether people should be allowed to say anything they want with no repercussions, but rather because they declare that an audience deciding they don't want to support someone because of what they say is "the death of democracy". Believe what you want, but the people using their voice and wallet to support who they want is the very definition of democracy. Primal Fear sound like butt-hurt whiners who believe they are entitled to our money and attention, no matter what they say. Sorry, but no. That's not how any of this works.

3. Virgin Steele - The Passion Of Dionysus

I'm not going to waste much time on this one. Let's just boil it down to a couple of sentences and say this record is beyond amateurish. It's poorly written, and even more poorly recorded. The instruments sound like a 1980's synth played everything, the mix has no shine on it at all, and the vocals make me question if David Defeis still has a working larynx. It's just so cheap and pathetic.

4. Sermon - Of Golden Verse

Speaking of pathetic, this anonymous band is a good example of why some bands use that gimmick. I wouldn't want to put my name on this record either, as it spends forty minutes dirging its way through sound that contains nothing resembling a good song. It was pitched as being something grandiose and important, but that's a misspelling. It's actually impotent. Very much so.

5. Paramore - This Is Why

That sounds like the answer to a question no one asked. I certainly didn't, and I wish I could forget everything they're saying. Look, I don't mind that Paramore went in a more pop direction. I wasn't enough of a fan to be bothered by that, but they could at least do it well. This isn't well done, as Hayley writes some of the most monotonous, repetitive, and asinine lyrics and melodies. It's more annoying than catchy, and when she advises we tune out of current events, it feels incongruous with the fact that tuning out is how we go backwards and lose the progress the world has made.

The Disappointing:

1. Creeper - Sanguivore

This record made me even more angry than the actual worst one of the year. Why? Not only did I love the first two Creeper records, but this album being a vampire love story dedicated to Jim Steinman is exactly the sort of thing I should eat up. Unfortunately, after a fittingly wonderful opener, the band segues into bland and tuneless 80s goth rock. Not Gothic, but goth. They have shown me they are actors who take on a different role for every album, and this time they made their 'Waterworld' style dud. It not only offends me as a Steinman fan, and as a music fan, but it makes me reassess their earlier works, since now I don't know if they ever gave a damn about those either. Who the fuck even are Creeper?

2. Spanish Love Songs - No Joy

Critical consensus pushed me to "Brave Faces, Everyone", and for good reason. That record was a powerful emo statement, and delivered pain, catharsis, and damn good songs. So on this record... they go 80s? I don't get the shift in style at all, as the power of their music is replaced by wimpier guitars, twinkling synths, and songs written to sit in the weak and warbling part of the vocal range. I hoped the first single was just a joke about how hard it is to follow up a great record, but it wasn't. They fell into the trap, and it snapped right through the bone. And they called the record "No Joy", on top of it all. Could they at least make me work for the insult? This one was so easy it was actually sad.

3. Neal Morse - The Dreamer: Joseph Pt I

I haven't seen eye-to-eye with Neal's music in a while, but I thought maybe throwing himself into another religious project would re-ignite his fire. Nope. This is another long concept album filled with Neal's second-rate material that makes me pine for the days when he could make me sit through twenty-minute prog epics just to hear one killer melody. There isn't a single one on this record that matches anything from his best days, and at this point it's just sad to hear how far we have drifted from each other. Also; Who decides to make a two-part concept album (Yes, there is a second part of this coming soon that could wind up on next year's list) that tells the same story as the already wildly successful "Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"? This is never going to replace that, so it feels like a waste of time.

4. Motive Black - Autumn

I loved Motive Black's first single. But thanks to COVID, it took three years before their full record came out. When it did, it was mostly old songs from the singer's previous band re-done, and none of those songs were any good. This is why I don't often like when bands do nothing but release singles. One song here and there isn't enough to know whether or not we mesh. I wasted far too much time waiting for a record on the false hope of one song. If they had put it out sooner, I could have thrown them into my mental trash bin so much earlier and moved on to better things.

5. Foo Fighters - But Here We Are

I'm not going to say that they shouldn't have made an album so soon after the unpleasantness. I might be thinking it, but I won't actually say it. What I will say is that for this sounding more like a classic Foos record than anything in many years, it also sounds like a hollow version of that sound. The melodies aren't great, the one song drones on too long without doing anything, but mostly it just sounds like the band doesn't have it in them to rock right now. That leaves the record feeling rather tired and flimsy. I would have expected them to either go heavy on emotion, or heavy on anger, and this feels like it has neither. It's the most passionless record about personal tragedy I may have ever heard. What a shame.

The Top Ten Songs Of 2023

With this year being rather light on albums that hit the mark, you might think I was more inclined to pick out highlights here and there to establish a playlist of the brief moments when the spotlight burned brightest. You would be wrong, as the list of great songs came in rather light as well. Thankfully, there were a few one-off singles that helped flesh things out, but even in the midst of a mass of disappointment, fewer mirages waited off in the distance to tempt me deeper into the desert.

I don't know if there's deeper meaning to any of that, but regardless, these are the songs that stand out to me as being the very best that 2023 had to offer.

10. Royal Thunder - Pull

On an album that was all about maturing and becoming better people, no song stood out as a mission statement better than "Pull", which features all of the power Royal Thunder is known for, but finds the answers in their strongest melody. Mlny's voice doesn't scrape the bottom of her soul the way she does in some other songs, but this time she uses it to carve the kind of path that lets the message of growth pass through. As much a victory statement as a song, this sounds so much sweeter than songs celebrating excesses can anymore.

 

9. Ad Infinitum - From The Ashes

Melissa Bonny is a hell of a vocalist, and this song is one of the best showcases she has ever had. It has the dynamics to let her softly croon before exploding into the massive chorus, which just so happens to be the best Ad Infinitum has managed in three albums. She has always been the band's highlight, and songs like this show they have managed to adjust the laser so it now cuts with precision. The reality of metal means they may never become household names, but they have all the tools to do so.

 

 

8. April Art - Not Sorry

I have a fairly well-established penchant for a certain sound these days, and that is what April Art delivered with this single. The key is that vocal, where Lisa-Marie's voice rips through the mix with a level of grit that borders on being obnoxious, but remains absolutely perfect. She sounds amazing, and the band gives her a platform to deliver a massive hook to scream her defiance. This is super heavy melodic rock, but it just shows that melody makes everything sound damn good. 

 

7. Soen - Fortress

I could have picked several songs from this record, but it's "Fortress" where Soen's formula resulted in the sweetest elixir. This is one of their songs, like "Covenant" before, that starts out heavy, and then builds to one hook after the next. Just when you think the song hit an ok chorus, you realize that was only the prelude, and the towering moment is just unfolding. Have we heard this trick before? Yes, but when things are executed so well, you don't need novelty to be great.

 

6. Katatonia - Austerity

Katatonia albums are often an experience of mood over song, and even on this year's outstanding record, the mood wins out over the individual songs in my memory. That means choosing just one song to represent the whole work is difficult, but ultimately I'm settling on the opening number, which gets right to the point. Katatonia hits their mood, nails their sound, and shows us they have put more attention into crafting hooks than ever before. It's a propulsive way to open a record, and tempts us over to the dark side. No doubt about it.

5. Sophie Lloyd & Lzzy Hale - Imposter Syndrome

No, one of my favorite singers does not guarantee a spot on this list. Lzzy also appeared on a song with Avatar this year, and I would say I hate that song, if I cared enough to have that much energy. This song, however, is everything I love about Lzzy. Sophie provides some lovely guitar playing, which sets the stage for Lzzy to bellow that chorus as only she can. Her perfect blend of clarity and grit still tickles my fancy, and she can drive a hook home like the golden spike uniting the two sides of the railroad.

4. Sarah & The Safe Word - Old Lace

Ok, so maybe I liked this at first because it reminds me of the movie "Arsenic and Old Lace". Once that lost its novelty, what was left is a song that is relentlessly catchy, and loads of fun. When I think of a cabaret, it should be a rollicking good time, and that is the feeling this song gives off. If you imagine a movie shot panning in on a busy nightclub, and the patrons are dancing up a storm while the bootleg booze flows freely, you'd have a perfect soundtrack with this song.

3. Rexoria - Fading Rose

Every year, power metal delivers one winning statement, and this year it comes in the form of this song. With amazing vocals and an anthemic feeling that can't be denied, Rexoria shamed all the rest of the power metal world by producing the biggest sing-along of the year. Nothing about this rose faded, as every listen put a new coat of gloss on to protect the color.

2. A Light Divided - Rain

I had the same thought listening to this song that I did when they released "Radio Silence"; Why can't we get more? Maybe the band wants to make sure they don't overload our senses with fist-pumping anthems as our rotator cuffs get old and frayed, but a song like this one begs for a full album experience. There is something entirely unique about Jaycee's voice, and when she starts belting the chorus, the way she mixes with the band's sudden rush of power is intoxicating. As much as I loved the "Choose Your Own Adventure" album, this song is even tighter and stickier than that set, and is the best thing A Light Divided has ever done. It was almost the best song of this entire year, and I sure as heck played it enough times to know.

1. Miley Cyrus - Flowers

I was surprised to see that when this song became a monster hit, there was a sizeable portion of the pop discourse that thought it was boring and bland. I heard it differently, as easily the most interesting Miley Cyrus had ever been. The slick disco beat is subtle enough to do its job in the background, while everything is focused on Miley's voice sounding better than ever. She is falling into that category of singers whose voices might be 'diminished' from a technical standpoint, but her tone has become utterly mesmerizing. I hear in her now echoes of voices that have cut to my soul, and to pair that with a very nice pop song is more than enough to win me over. No matter how many times this got played, or overplayed this year, I never stopped enjoying it. Miley now has one certified, bloody good classic.

The Top Ten Albums Of 2023

There's no way of getting around it; 2023 was a bad year. It was a tough year for me, due to certain circumstances I suppose I created for myself. They put me in a bad mood for much of the year, which perhaps pushed me in musical directions that didn't gel with what the scene had to offer. But it was also a bad year for music, as I had trouble finding records I was interested in listening to, and that would then resonate with me in some fashion or another. I wouldn't call it disinterest, because I felt like I spent as much time as ever looking for new things to hear, but my luck wasn't pulling through as often as it has in the past.

That leaves me with the unfortunate position of saying that my list of the best music of the year is pretty much all of the new music this year I will go to bat for, and that I think I will still be listening to into the new year. I listened to fewer records this year than I have in recent memory, and the depth at the top of the quality pyramid is a feather-light capstone no one will have trouble prying off and stealing for their own archeological collections.

Still, we are here to talk about the best music of the year, so these are the albums that managed to do more for me than all the others.

-ish. Miley Cyrus - Endless Summer Vacation

Yin and yang, good and bad, light and dark; we can't have one without the other. In a sense, that's what this album has to offer. There is half of the record that is the best pop music I've heard since "1989" came out. Those songs are wonderful, featuring truly stunning vocals that paint a different picture of Miley than anything I had ever thought of before. If they were a six song EP, they would be embarrassingly high up this list. There's another half of the record, though, and it's bland synth-pop that doesn't feel at all like it belongs with the first half. I realize that was intentional, but sabotage is sabotage, regardless of who the gremlin in the machine was. I'm choosing to ignore half of this record, and focus on the good stuff, because Miley sounds that bloody good.

10. Lacey Sturm - Kenotic Metanoia

I love when you can listen to a record and feel the artist's passion coming through. That is very much the case on this record, as Lacey's vocal performance is a testament to these songs being an honest and open discussion of where she is in life. This is her story, and her voice plays the parts, belting with fire when necessary, screaming when appropriate, and always ringing out with remarkable clarity. She elevates this dark mainstream rock into something more than we expect, with powerful melodies her voice fills with so much air they float and linger in the air long after the songs are done. This record means something to Lacey, and so it can mean something to us as well.

9. Ray Alder - II

It isn't often that a solo career outshines the main band, but Ray Alder's two solo efforts have already eclipsed all of Fates Warning's career for me. This record keeps the same melancholy and emotional tone that Ray has wielded for years, but modernizes this semi-prog metal with even thicker and chunkier riffs. There's a soothing nature to Ray's voice, and it's a case where we remember that cloudy skies can sometimes keep the warmth from floating off into the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Ray leaving Redemption was a massive blow to my interest in prog metal, but him being able to make records like this are a damn good salve. No one does what Ray does, and this is close enough to being as good as it's ever sounded.

8. Royal Thunder - Rebuilding The Mountain

It's rare to hear a band say they needed to mature, but that's what Royal Thunder did. They took time off to work on themselves, and they only came back when they felt ready to make music for the right reasons. That is an honorable approach, and I think it's what makes this record work so well. They are being honest about who they are, and what they want to achieve. This record only exists because the members want to be in this band, they want to be making music, they need to get this off their chests. You can hear that in the passion of Mlny's screams . She pours everything into her performances, and it seeps through in the sheer weight of this record. I don't think it's a coincidence this is their best effort yet.

7. The Iron Roses - The Iron Roses

When was the last time I had a pure punk album on one of my lists? I think it might have been Bad Religion's "The Dissent Of Man", which The Iron Roses do bear a bit of a resemblance to. Their brand of protest punk is steeped in classic rock and power-pop hooks. The dual vocals add lovely layers, but it's those melodies that get me. At less than thirty minutes, this record is a shot of adrenaline we can take again and again. The band, like the rest of us, wants the world to become a better place. It is a better place for having put this record out.

6. Rexoria - Imperial Dawn

Hello, power metal, you still seem to pop up once a year with a gem. Rexoria puts all the bigger names to shame this year, with this record that cuts out any hint of fat for an absolutely killer ride of melodic gems. "Fading Rose" is a highlight of the entire year, and the rest of the album isn't far behind, showcasing powerfully smoky vocals that sell the hell out of these hooks. I always say the formula for making great music is easy, but executing it is hard. Rexoria nails it here, so much so that this jaded power metal listener can still remember how the genre got me into much of this mess. Kudos.

5. Sarah & The Safe Word - The Book Of Broken Glass

I never thought I would need the term 'cabaret rock', but here we are. That's the only way I know to describe Sarah & The Safe Word, who I discovered by chance, and who made the most fascinating record of the year. This concept record has a bit of rock, a bit of emo, and the violins to sound like we belong in a speakeasy, reveling as if the cops could never bust through the front door. "Old Lace" is one of the catchiest damn songs of the year, and the band delivers one memorable song after another. Sorry, everyone else, but this kind of tight songwriting is how you're actually supposed to make a concept album that hits hard. The surprise of the year, for sure, is the lightning bolt I needed.

4. Ad Infinitum - Chapter III: Downfall

There's a difference between talent and execution, and Ad Infinitum is a good example of that. Their first two albums were expertly played, and showed Melissa Bonny to be a phenomenal singer, but the songs didn't have the killer instinct to push them to the top of the metal heap. Record number three does that, as they have honed their melodies until the hooks are razor sharp. This is a pristine collection of modern metal played and sung to near perfection. Ad Infinitum is now executing as well as the best bands of their ilk, and they have room yet to grow. I loved hearing them come into their own, and I'm quite excited by the prospect of them carrying on this momentum.

3. Graveyard - 6

It's nice to have Graveyard back to sounding like themselves. In these last five years, I have found myself rather cold on "Peace", so hearing Graveyard's more organic sound come back is just what I was hoping for. This record is certainly softer, and more somber, but I don't think that's anything to be concerned about. They have never been a heavy band, per se, so focusing on their more emotional side makes sense to me. It also happens to fit in with what I was needing from music this year, so I might be a bit more predisposed to liking this approach than some fans are. By no means is this their best album, but it fills a role in their discography, and it's a comforting swath of music for those moods.

2. Soen - Memorial

After three straight Album Of The Year winners, coming in second might feel like a disappointment. It isn't, though, as "Memorial" is by no means a step back from the highs of "Lykaia", "Lotus", and "Imperial". Soen continues to streamline their sound, reaching new heights in their ability to meld their progressive beginnings with the massive hooks of radio rock. As I have said many times, this is what I envisioned the sound of metal evolving into over the last ten to fifteen years, but only Soen seems to be taking that ride with me. I don't know how long it will last, but I'll be happy as long as it does.

1. Katatonia - Sky Void Of Stars

The second record I listened to in 2023 spent the entire year in the pole position, and it never got passed. I have long been frustrated by Katatonia, because they have a flawlessly melancholic sound, but their records have never managed to haunt me after they were done. They finally mastered that art with this record, as it is the most energetic and optimistic their gloom has ever been. That might sound like a misnomer, but it's that hint of a silver lining in the clouds that makes this record so great. Jonas Renske's voice is a marvel, and he finally has a set of songs with the memorable hooks to break through my hard exterior. Having spent much of the year feeling less than ideal, Katatonia was a fitting soundtrack for the low point, and also for the climb back to normalcy. This record was almost a reminder that it's ok to not be ok, that there can be something beautiful about admitting things aren't always as we want them to be, and that being realistic is courageous. For all of that, it stands as my Album Of The Year.

The Recap: 2023 Was... A Year

Another year has reached its conclusion, and as we prepare to throw the calendar away, it helps to write our thoughts about 2023 on it, so they can be discarded for a fresh start. Of course it's silly to think of time in such absolute chunks, but flushing our minds of the toxins every so often is necessary, lest we never be able to forget about the things that aren't worth keeping hold of.

With that being said...

The Takeaway:

Chris C: I was saying pretty consistently throughout the year that this was on pace to be the worst one since we started doing this, and I think I was right. Now that we're through all of the important records, I was struggling as much as ever to come up with enough I felt strongly about to put on a list, and still care to tell people about. I'm not sure whether to write it off as bad luck, whether music has been moving in a direction I don't happen to care for, or whether it's my fault for changing what I want out of music. This year especially, I was looking for music I could connect with in a way to change or improve my mood, and that was exceedingly hard to find. With all of the metal out there dealing with history and war, I feel completely disconnected from it, because I don't know how to connect that sort of thing to my life and my situation anymore. So my main takeaway is that this was a melancholy year, and I think that explains a lot of the music I did and didn't like.

D.M: I was very nearly with you.  Hell, for eleven months of this year, you and I were in lockstep on the status of the year and how awful it seemed to be.  And I'm right there with you - I think because it had been such a challenging year for me personally for much of it, I was having trouble finding the patience to connect with music on any level than the most basic.  I just plain wasn't in the mood to imbibe music with my usual fervor for much of the year.  And then, right here at the end, the last three or so weeks of dedicated music listening showed me a lot of things I hadn't heard before, literally and figuratively.  Much like how people of our age tend to look down at the younger generations and shake our first and say 'those damn kids don't know anything,' before ultimately being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and softening our stance, I came around on these records!  These kids are alright (even if a few of them are older than me.)  Of the eleven albums I ranked, there are nine that I feel I could strongly defend in casual conversation.

The Good:

Chris C: The best news this year actually had nothing to do with the records we heard. That would be the personal musical development I had, and shared. Ironically, it also led to the feelings of depression getting worse when the progress stalled out, but I'll move on. The good this year was having a couple of my big name bands coming through and rescue us from an even worse year. Soen and Graveyard put out great records, and Katatonia's gloom finally was the perfect color for me. I get flack from some people for seeming to not like metal at all anymore, but there were several metal records that are going to end up in my Top Ten list. I'm not sure I would call this a 'back to basics' year, but it did feel like one where familiar sounds won out, and I'm looking toward the future with questions about what and when something new and exciting is going to come along.

D.M: the best thing that happened to me musically this year was that now more than ever, the lines between genres are blurring into something both insubstantial and intangible.  The modern digital distribution system, and the de-emphasis on major labels and stringest editorial gatekeeping, means that fitting into a proper mold no longer matters as it once did.  Not to be repetitive, but of the eleven albums I ranked, there are probably eight that would fit equally well in two or three different musical idioms.  The freeing of artisitc liberties to explore beyond the simple bounds of a specific sound have led to an explosion of creativity to which we all benefit.

The Bad:

Chris C: Can I chalk all of the bad up under the category of ego? It was ego that led Avenged Sevenfold to put out a record that felt like a Mad Libs, without seeming to put in any effort to make the songs sound like they gave a damn. It was ego that led a band I like in Temperance to write a concept album with such awful narrative lyrics I struggled to get through the entirety of it even once. It was also ego that led Primal Fear to write a song that showed the don't even understand what democracy is, since all they care about is their own ability to say anything they want without repercussions. I'm not saying artists shouldn't make music for themselves, because of course real art starts that way, but there could be a bit more introspection and asking, "Is this a good idea?" Oh, and can we give concept albums a break for a few years? Please? I'm so sick of stories I don't give a damn about ever learning.

D.M: This is where I'm with you completely.  The big names, with only minor exceptions, dropped the ball this year.  You mentioned Avenged Sevenfold already, but let me add Beartooth to that list, who produced an album that mistakenly leaned the wrong way into all the band's lesser tendencies.  It is also worth noting something I briefly mentioned above, that I didn't have a firm grip on what the great albums this year, or even what my number one album was, until very late in the year.  Ultimately, I feel great about my list, but the lack of conviction for so long a time says something about this year, even if I can't put my finger on what that is.

The Surprises:

Chris C: Topping the list is that Graveyard returned this year, after what seems like two or three years of wondering where the rumored record was. I suppose it was also a surprise they went in their mellowest direction after their heaviest album, but that does make a bit of sense, so that one is debatable. Also a surprise was that aforementioned Katatonia album, because it has to be rare for a band I've been paying some degree of attention to for as long as Katatonia to finally make an album that fully wins me over. I didn't find a lot of previously unknown stuff this year, but chief among them was Sarah & The Safe Word. They fall under the category of 'cabaret rock', and I'm not sure I had more fun with a record all year. And going back to the personal side, I would say it was also a huge surprise that my efforts finally paid off (albeit for only one song). I can't say I was actually expecting to have my self-belief proven right. I was, though, expecting how hard it has been to follow up.

D.M: Blood Ceremony's sudden revival took my by surprise, though what was more surprising was that it had been five years since their previous effort.  Lord of the Lost is a band who had danced around my taste several times, and finally put together the album that I always wanted them to make, at least insofar as they made an album that was consistently great.  Other than that, I think I was pleasantly surprised by the number of at least decent records released under the banner of fledgling or independent record labels.  All this means is that good music can truly come from every corner.

The Hopes For 2024:

Chris C: Now that Graveyard finally released their album, that takes away one of the usual suspects I mention here. The big one for me is knowing that Halestorm has been writing a new record. They work pretty quickly, so I would expect that to come out sometime in the Summer/Fall, and given how much I love Lzzy, not much will be able to compete from an anticipation standpoint. There is also going to be the first Bruce Dickinson solo album in almost twenty years, which is exciting, since I like his last three probably even more than any Iron Maiden stuff. Although, to be honest, the way this one has been teased so far isn't exactly giving me a ton of confidence. A certain dear friend of mine was in the studio working on some things this year, so I'm hoping at least one of them gets released in the new year. It's been too long since hearing her voice on record. And then I'm hoping Yours Truly is ready to record their second full-length, and that A Light Divided may be the same. I know the former is writing, and the latter put out a killer single this year, but I'm greedy and want full album experiences. If all that happens, it will make for a much better 2024 than 2023 ever was.

D.M: I don't know that I have any specific musical wants or hopes for 2024.  There's a lot of bands who I think I say this about perennially, but I would love to see on tour in the United States.  This would be led by a second American leg for Powerwolf, who was one of the great concerts I've ever seen back in February.  But Destrage, Red Eleven, Blood Ceremony, Rxptrs, Graveyard (again,) and a dozen others that I would salivate and call in sick to work to go see.  I also want the Mets to be better.  And if the Spurs could win a game, which they haven't in a month at time of writing, that'd be great, too.

The Top 11 Albums of 2023 - D.M's List

Here we are again - we're at the end of another year, which means it is time for the most arbitrary thing of all, which is to recap the musical arts of the year in the manner of a concise, ten-item list!  Naturally, diligent readers will note that my list goes to 11, because Spinal Tap.  

I usually allow my editorial blurbs to speak for themselves as far as an individual album on this list goes, but I did want to pause to the make the following assertion - as recently as the fall, I was not confident in this list, and I was notably alarmed that I hadn't managed to determine what I wanted the number one album of the year to be.

This last four weeks of dedicated music listening and review to things that caught my interest over the course of 2023 has turned around my opinion of the year entirely.  There were a lot of strong efforts to be had in this calendar year, they just didn't happen to come from the usual sources.  That's probably my own hubris and lack of time that accounts for what felt like personal disappointment.  Luckily, hedging against my own laziness, I kept copious notes of what I thought was interesting this year, so it wasn't too terribly difficult to go back there and unearth what I feel now are the most valuable gems.

More than ever, in what was a difficult year in many ways personally, I found myself gravitating more towards albums that I simply enjoyed listening to, and away from ones that I found academically interesting or musically intricate.  Bear that in mind as you read on.

First order of business, the rules:
-All albums must be original studio content
-No live albums
-No covers albums
-No re-releases
-No anthologies of any kind

-No EPs (this is a little fungible, as if say, NIN's "Broken" came out this year, it is so good that it would merit inclusion.  But it would take an extraordinary effort.  Which is why I give away a separate EP of the Year Award.)

I first began reviewing music in a forum such as this in 2008, which is making me feel slightly nostalgic, so to catch up for new readers, here are all the albums I have ranked #1 over the years, beginning in 2011, when I did my first official year-end list:
2011 - Turisas - Stand Up and Fight
2012 - The Admiral Sir Cloudesly Shovell - Don't Hear It...Fear It! (<--the only one on this list I regret.)
2013 - Turisas - Turisas2013
2014 - Red Eleven - Round II
2015 - Shawn James & The Shapeshifters - The Gospel According to Shawn James & The Shapeshifters
2016 - Destrage - A Means to No End
2017 - The Midnight Ghost Train - Cypress Ave.
2018 - Cancer Bats - The Spark That Moves
2019 - Destrage - The Chosen One
2020 - The Heavy Eyes - Love Like Machines
2021 - Cave of Swimmers - Aurora
2022 - Rxptrs - Living Without Death's Permission

A brief mention to some artists who put out albums that merited consideration, but didn't make the cut: Phantom Elite, DieHumane, Metallica, Asinhell, Kontrust, Jason Blake, Degrave, Smokey Mirror, Children of the Reptile, Glacier Eater and FLO (though this last was released this year, it was recorded in 2004.)

Alright, I've wasted enough of your time. Let's get to it:

HONORABLE MENTION: Blood Ceremony – The Old Ways Remain

Blood Ceremony’s stylistic shift toward the retro folk-pop they experimented with on “Lord of Misrule,” is a decision that I don’t know if I would have made, but after a long absence, the band proves that their unique mix of the occult, fuzzy guitar, haunting vocals and, well, flute continues to make them a force to be reckoned with.  Those who walk into this hoping for old Blood Ceremony may be disappointed, but if you keep an open mind, there’s a lot of well-constructed old-school rock to be had here.

EP OF THE YEAR: Hellevate – The Purpose is Cruelty

It’s been a long while since I enjoyed a sampling of thrash that reminded me so much of the golden days of thrash and the revival that Power Trip promised but was sadly never able to totally deliver on.  Everything about this EP works, and the very fact that it is an EP works in its favor,  As they say, leave ‘em wanting more, and Hellevate does exactly that.  The guitars are crunchy, the vocals are edgy but restrained, the beats are good but not obsessive – it all meshes into some of the best pure thrash that’s been produced in the new millennium.  This is also the best band from Kansas City since The Browning.

11 – Necropanther – Betrayal 

I published the review of this album a week after its release just because I felt I needed more time with the album to really digest it and try to make something of it.  It’s maybe the only review I’ve ever penned (typed? Word processed?) where I ended up scoring the album incomplete.  Some six or whatever months later, with a dozen more listens, I still don’t know if I really have a grip on everything good and bad that’s happening here.  But that sense of intrigue alone makes it a unique listen worthy of consideration for this list just because of its staying power.  Throw in the fact that the juxtaposition of rock guitar solos with modern death metal presents as novel a sound as exists in any quantity in metal right now, and this record is worth the time.

10 – Overkill – Scorched

Another couple years, another Overkill album.  Overkill may well be the thrash version of AC/DC – if you have some concept that you like Overkill, you may well like the overwhelming majority of their catalogue, and if you don’t, you probably won’t like this either.  But that’s overly dismissive and doesn’t address the fact that Overkill, some twenty albums into their career, still sounds dedicated and vital.  It’s hard to find that amount of professionalism within any band that’s been around so long, let alone among Overkill’s thrash contemporaries.  “Scorched” stands out because Dave Linsk, long undervalued in the metal community as a guitar player, finds new avenues to control the pace of the band without losing any of their famed teeth.

9 – Lord of the Lost – Blood and Glitter

I’m so glad that Chris and I had the conversation at the end of last year about how we define a ‘year’ for the purposes of these lists.  We came to the joined conclusion that any album released after the publication of the previous list should count toward the next year’s list.  Lord of the Lost released this record on December 30th of 2022, and I would have been loathe to leave it without any further consideration.  I’ve long been a tangential follower of the band (who’s popularity seems to only be growing after cruelly finishing last in the Eurovision song contest 2023,) but they’ve never put together a full album that made me say ‘wow’ until this one.  (That said, I still don’t know if they’ve ever written a better single than 2018’s “Loreley,” but this record’s “Dead End” comes close.) Every song on this record pops in some way, finds a way to be interesting or catchy or both, and culminates in the best LotL album to date.

8 – Hellfreaks – Pitch Black Sunset

What a strange record, and I mean that in the best possible way.  It’s one part pop-punk album, one part rock sing along and one part screaming hardcore anthem.  While those idioms are all related, none of that sounds like it should work on paper, but listen to “Old Tomorrows,” which throws in a quasi-metal breakdown, and pureblood metal solo, and you’ll see how this genre-bending, swirling mass of an album becomes so much more than the sum of its parts.  This is like if Cripper and New Year’s Day tried to write an album together, but, you know…good.

7 – Royal Thunder – Rebuilding the Mountain

I am not a typical musical listener in that I have very little emotional attachment to any of the music that I enjoy.  I don’t associate songs or albums with any particular feeling one way or the other (with the exception of the Destrage song “Rage, My Alibi,” for reasons I’ll keep to myself.)  I say that though, to say that the emotions of an artist that they press into their music is not lost on me.  And “Rebuilding the Mountain” is a deeply painful and cathartic album for Royal Thunder, and while the circumstances of the record are serious and dire, the record is so much better for the raw infusion of genuine frustration and pain and hurt and ultimately forgiveness that permeates every moment.  “Now Here – No Where” will live in my head for a long time. 

6 – Powerwolf – Interludium

Power just writes fun records.  There may not be a metal band that does that with greater skill or sense of adventure than Powerwolf.  That’s really all there is to it.  The fact that they live on the outer orbits of power metal without succumbing to the cookie cutter that’s disfigured that genre forever is even better.

5 – Lucifer Star Machine – Satanic Age

A new-age Misfits?  Well, no, because the songs are more than forty seconds.  But that’s the vibe, and I’m here for it.  To go one level deeper, there’s also a healthy dose of the Dropkick Murphys mixed in here, and I mean Dropkick Murphys from back in the “Do or Die” era, not in the last fifteen or so years.  It’s the rasp in the vocals that sells that latter aspect, but this whole record bops along with gross lyrics set against the kind of accessible rock that gave birth to the entire punk movement in the first place.

4 – Robots of the Ancient World – 3737

As good a slow burn as there’s been since the first Mothership album, or Sundrifter’s “Visitations.”  Less direct than the best works of The Heavy Eyes, RotAW succeeds in that this is a full-on stoner doom record that never retreats into minimalism or gets lost in jam-like wandering.  That’s not an easy feat when all your songs are 6-plus minutes.  “3737” is aided by the fact that it’s limited to 6 songs, one of which is a throw away interlude, so all the band’s good ideas were mashed into a few packets, rather than spread out unnecessarily.  (Subtracting the throwaway, this has the same number of tracks as Hellevate’s EP, but because it still runs more than thirty minutes, qualified as an album.  For those scoring at home.)

3 – Zardonic – Superstars

This is two years in a row now that a DJ has put out a metal album that cracks my year-end list (Dampf’s “The Arrival” last year.)  Maybe it’s time that I just admit that I was born in the 80s and a certain degree of automatic love for electronic programming is burned into my genetic code.  Still, you know why this album is here?  Not to go too deep into the reeds, but this has been a tough year for me.  Lot of adversity, lot of trial and tribulations that required patience to navigate.  And this album makes me smile.  The fun factor is even greater than the baseline for Powerwolf, since this album exists solely for the purpose of being a fun album.  There’s no story here.  No grand mysticism or mountain in the distance that holds the secret to the keys, or whatever the hell.  “Rock and Roll Tonight” is more or less a KISS song for the 21st century, but it's just so damn awesome.  In the end, if your music isn’t making you smile, or making you enjoy it on whatever level it needs to meet you at, what the hell is the point anyway?  Plus, a really banging cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” a song that was in desperate need of a kick in the ass anyway.

2 – Kiberspassk – Smorodina

When I first heard this album at the end of December last year (it was released in January of 2023,) I was convinced I had already heard the best album of 2023.  It’s been a long time since I had heard an album that was so different than anything I’d heard before.  The rarest of all gems in music journalism is an album that sounds like literally nothing else in the best possible way, and Kiberspassk (who, by the way, are the same folks as in the more traditional folk band Nytt Land,) have crafted an album that combines metal, industrial, dance, folk, mythology and throat singing into a stew that it totally without peer.  The single “Daleko” is as haunting and beautiful and strange and energizing as any song I’ve ever heard.

1 – Graveyard – 6

This feels a little bittersweet.  This is the fifth consecutive Graveyard record to appear in my top albums of the year.  And it’s the first to be ranked number one.  Which, to come around, is bittersweet because I don’t think this is the best Graveyard album.  “Hisingen Blues” is almost certainly better, and I think I enjoyed “Peace,” this album’s forerunner, more than I did this one.  That doesn’t mean, however, that this can’t be the best album of 2023, though I do think I’m going to mentally jockey between this and “Smorodina” for years to come, and there will be days that I’m sure I will regret my decision.  Still, as Chris and I talked about when we wrote the double review for this record, this is Graveyard’s most soulful, most cinematic album to date (I will cede the point that every song Truls Mörck sings, even the ones I love like “Sad Song” on this record, all have the same tone.)  Really, what this comes down to is that there are no songs on this record I have any inclination to skip – they are all not only enjoyable, but unique in their own right within the context of the album.  That kind of fluidity and consistency of songcraft has to count for something.

Singles Roundup: Illumishade, Green Day, Any Given Day, & Magnum

Finishing out the year, let's look ahead to what a few songs are telling us about 2024:

Illumishade - Here We Are

While I don't get too far into symphonic metal, this is a group who do it extremely well. I loved their first album, other than thinking it was more of a stretched-out EP. Their second album is coming out in February, and the singles released so far are all continuing in the right direction. While none of them are quite as exceptional as "Rise", Fabienne's voice and melodies are a perfect foil for the modern, djent-ish guitars. It's almost a way of playing 'beauty and the beast' metal without needing the awful growling vocalist. I love the melody, I love the sound, and the sense of drama is just about right. This one should be a winner.

Green Day - Dilemma

The latest single from Green Day's 'triumphant' return is the best one so far. That's damning with faint praise, of course, but at least this keeps me optimistic it won't be a complete clusterfuck of an album. This song is basic Green Day, but actually sounds more like Billie Joe's side-project The Longshot. It's trying to be power pop, but it moves too slow, and the hook doesn't sell. It might have a bit more mental power than "Look Ma No Brains" had, but it still doesn't sound like there's much heart in it. I'm not sure Green Day even knows who they're trying to be at this stage. This one should be a solid loser.

Any Given Day & Annisokay - H.A.T.E.

For being metalcore-adjacent, Any Given Day's last album was great. I loved that one, and thought they were probably the best as doing the style since the glory days of Killswitch Engage. The first couple of songs they released, before I knew an album was coming, were also good. Not as good, but still enjoyable. This song... leaves me questioning some things. First of all, it's not nearly as hooky as their best material, which is strike one. The bigger issue is the guest spot, since I find his voice lesser than Any Given Day's singer, and also rather annoying. When you bring in a guest, they should be doing something you can't, or something better than you can do. In this case, he makes this song worse than if he wasn't there. I'm not writing the band off, by any means, but I'm at least giving them a bit of side-eye. This one should still be solid.

Magnum - Blue Tango

Like clockwork, it's time for another Magnum album to start the new year off. The last one was one of their better efforts, and that just makes this song even more torturous to sit through. Magnum is not great at rocking out, and this effort to do so is one of the weaker songs I've ever heard from them. The aren't heavy, or energetic, so focusing on those aspects is pulling attention from what they're actually good at. Couple that with having a rather weak and anemic chorus, and we're left either with me questioning their ears for picking this song to be the first impression. This one might be a huge letdown.

KISS: Go Away So We Can Miss You

KISS finally reached the end of the road, and as we all should have expected, they strapped all-terrain tires on so they don't have to slow down for even a second. If anyone actually thought KISS was going to fade from the scene after promising they were done playing live, I hate to think how naive that would make us.

We all know that music is both an art and a business, but we don't like having it rubbed in our faces that the people we sometimes admire, the people we spend so much of our energy caring about, look at us as nothing but wallets to be sucked dry. Luckily, I don't give a rat's ass about KISS, so this particular situation doesn't stir anything in me other than the usual disappointment with how society as a whole is transforming.

It was bad enough that we could wear KISS Kondoms to prevent groupie-related accidents, and that we could be buried in our KISS Kasket so we look as stupid in the afterlife as we do in this one, but those were relatively harmless endeavors. Every band these days has merch, often of questionable varieties, which is actually going to be KISS' biggest legacy as a band. Man, that's a depressing thought, isn't it?

As soon as the band was done playing their last concert on their last tour, it was announced that the band was not going anywhere, and they would soon be back out playing 'live' in avatar form. We saw this already with the Ronnie James Dio hologram, but KISS is already a living cartoon, so it almost makes you wonder if there's any difference between seeing the band themselves, as opposed to an animation of them. At least you won't be able to see the avatar straining to keep up with the absurdity of wearing those costumes and make-up well into their Social Security ages.

Where this leads my thoughts are to what this all means for music as a whole. We have already seen new music and new bands decimated by almost all forms of rock radio refusing to give up on the past. Whether you turn on the actual classic rock stations, or you go to one geared more toward modern rock, there is shockingly little new music being played. On the rock station I happen to hear from time to time, about half of the music they play is from the period between 1990 and 2005. Classic rock, obviously, is exclusively the even older stuff.

Where does that leave new bands?

They can't get their songs on the radio, and MTV doesn't play music anymore, so the conduits directly into our ears are no longer there. If anything, we are being fed a diet of exclusively old music, which only feeds into the idea that the old days were better than whatever is going on today. The one place where newer bands could compete was on the concert stage. Those bands could tour harder and longer than the old guys, so they could find the cracks in between the mega tours to try to make a name for themselves.

Now, even that opening is being nailed shut. As bands like KISS make clear they aren't going to leave the stage even as they die off, the old guard bands will continue to monopolize the venues, and the attention of the audiences. Few people are going to take a chance on going to see a new artist when the nicer venue across the street has a brand name they've already heard of. Yes, that includes when the brand name is nothing but an avatar. Actor's performances in movies are often enhanced to disgusting degrees by CGI without audiences rebelling and demanding more authenticity, so what are the odds that music fans will follow suit?

It very well might happen, but not until the fans of these old bands from the same generation are gone. As long as the older fans are the ones with the most money to spend on concerts, and they haven't listened to a new record since KISS put their make-up back on, we're stuck in a doom loop where the natural life cycle of music isn't allowed to exist.

When a band can't cut it live anymore, they're supposed to retire and find something else to do. Paul and Gene clearly don't need the money, but they can't help themselves. Rather than retire comfortably, and perhaps feel proud of all the bands who looked up to KISS for reasons I've never understood, they are taking steps to ensure the following generations never get their foot in the door.

It's all part of the mentality that there's only a certain amount of success to go around, and no matter how much of it you have had, seeing anyone else get some feels like it's being taken away from you. I actually feel sorry for people who think that way, because it means they likely can never be happy. Nothing will ever be enough.

The KISS avatars are akin to musical Viagra, and perhaps a metaphor about erections is the only thing they can understand. This isn't what anyone means when they say a corpse has gone stiff. KISS is embalming themselves to be wheeled out like a circus sideshow, and while there are plenty of suckers out there who will spend money because they can't stand staying home for a night, I hope the rest of us realize how much this resembles the fruitless search for the fountain of youth. There are so many things KISS could be doing, and they choose to try to keep living in the past.

What a terrible day to be a fan. Good thing I'm not.

My Favorite Bands/Artists

As I have said many times, one of the inevitabilities of life is that virtually everyone you put your faith in will eventually let you down. That might just be my cynicism showing through, but I have practical evidence of this. Assembling a list of my favorites bands/artists proves to be both easier and more difficult than I would expect, as there are few bands who consistently deliver music that resonates with me over the course of time. Even for those I love dearly, there are almost always albums (if not entire eras) I would rather push out of my mind and pretend never happened.

There are also those bands who only have a certain period of their career I love, which is not always enough for me to call myself a big enough fan to include them on this sort of list.

With that being said, I can narrow the list down to these ten who stand apart from all the rest, because they are the ones who have been there time and time again for me. In a rough, but not strict order:

Tonic

After more than twenty years as the reflexive answer to the question of my favorite band, Tonic remains the one group to only disappoint me by not getting around to disappointing me. They made me want to be a musician, I learned a lot about how songs are written listening to them, but more than anything Tonic is the soundtrack to the person I used to be. All four of their albums can live on repeat in my head, and perhaps it's that they stopped making records that keeps the edges of the impression they left so sharp.

Dilana

What is left to say? I have written so many words over the years to explain what Dilana means to me, and how I can feel my blood warming when I hear her voice. It's a connection I can't explain properly, other than to say that when she sings in my favorite song of all time, "I'm so bloody fucked up", it's as if my own voice is the breath she pushes to exorcise her pain. As great as so many of her songs are, no composition can compare to the power her voice has to hypnotize me. Hers is the voice of love, pain, and God, brewed in a honey-soaked ink I am honored to write her name on my heart with.

Meat Loaf

This is where it all started. I don't know who I would be if I hadn't seen "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" on VH-1. The combination of Meat's voice and Steinman's writing has defined so much of who I am and how I think. I never get tired of the melodrama when it's done right, regardless of who the songs come from. The "Bat Out Of Hell" albums taught me to be a smart-ass, so much so that I can laugh at the fact Meat sang a love/sex song with his own daughter. If that's not loving an artist, I don't know what is.

The Wallflowers

I can't count how many pages are covered in my scrawled poetry, and that all traces back to The Wallflowers. Jakob Dylan's poetry in music was a novelty I hadn't heard before, and it unlocked something in my personality I didn't think existed. "Breach" changed me, and there is still a part of me that hears "One Headlight" as what must have been going through my head when I stared off into the darkness on a sleepless teenage night. The Wallflowers are, in my twisted perspective, a sophisticated Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers for my generation.

Jimmy Eat World

There are certain bands who simply sound emotional, no matter what they're doing. Jimmy Eat World is one of those bands for me, where it doesn't matter if they're playing a mournful ballad or a punk-tinged rocker, there is a sense of pain and melancholy that comes through. I am one of those type of people, and I have found in recent years this music speaking to me in ways it never did. "Futures" is now without doubt my favorite album of all time, "Bleed American" is forty-five minutes of what youth sounded like, and I can't think of many songs better than "Dizzy". Jimmy Eat World feels like my transition to whatever comes next.

Elvis Costello

I own more Elvis Costello albums than by anyone else. He is a volume scorer, for sure, but has shown me what it means to be an artist. From the pub rock of "My Aim Is True" (I still say 'rhythmically admired' might be the best masturbation euphemism in a song), to the new wave of "This Year's Model", to his Americana on "King Of America", I learned from Elvis that everything beyond the song is window-dressing. He takes on different personas, and different sounds, but the great song is the great song. All you need is a lyric and a melody, and he's had so, so many of them.

Halestorm

Outside of Dilana, no one's voice has had as much impact on me as Lzzy Hale. I call her the voice of my generation for a reason, and I find myself playing Halestorm songs just to hear her when I need to feel the human connection that comes through her instrument. Whether she is cooing the opening lines of "The Silence", or screaming from the bottom of her soul like that one note in "Innocence", Lzzy is honesty on record. I find myself appreciating that more and more as I get older, as I want to hear music I can relate to and have resonate. Lzzy can move your chest simply with power, but she writes songs that let her wrap around your heart and squeeze them in time to the beat.

Ronnie James Dio

I'm cheating a bit with this one. From "Rising" in 1975 through "Holy Diver" in 1983, no one has ever had a better run of rock/metal than Ronnie James Dio. Across three different bands, with three very different sounds, Dio's voice became the sound of heavy metal. He is the bellowing of drama itself, telling stories through volume and grit. "Heaven & Hell" might be the best metal album ever made, "Stargazer" might be the most epic rock song ever, but there's no doubt Dio is the greatest metal singer of all time. I would like to think the multiverse is real, just so I can imagine how much more greatness Rainbow or Black Sabbath could have given us if Dio hadn't moved on to his next triumph.

Edguy/Avantasia

I'm considering these as one entry, since Tobias Sammet wrote 99% of the music across both projects. I have two sides to my personality, where I used to love pop music, but I also love huge guitars. Tobi manages to blend those two things better than almost anyone else. It was "The Headless Game" that set me off down the metal path, and Tobi has routinely shown me that my musical tastes aren't crazy, and they do sort of make sense. I love everything from "The Pharaoh" to "Lavatory Love Machine" to "The Story Ain't Over" and "The Scarecrow". Tobi is what I've always wanted more metal to be.

Graveyard

I don't listen to much classic rock, because while other people talk about it as being a timeless sound and style, I find it rather out-of-time. Graveyard, though, sounds utterly timeless to me. There is a resonance to their sound that echoes through time, and Joakim's rumbling voice is the tone of age creeping up on me. I may not understand the blues, but I understand Graveyard. I might not understand classic rock, but I understand rock that is classic. I'm drawing distinctions without meaning to anyone besides myself, but listen to the thump of the guitar tone on "Don't Take Us For Fools". That sounds to me like a rock and roll heartbeat, which gives us the strength to be as moved as we are by "Slow Motion Countdown". Simplicity is genius, and that is Graveyard.

Who just missed the cut?

Blues Traveler

"Four" was the first CD I ever owned. While today I do feel sheepish that I proved John Popper's point on "Hook", I made up for that by being one of the people who stuck around after their brief flirtation with fame fizzled out. It's actually that under-appreciated era I find myself liking the most these days, when they went in search of another pop hit that would never come. "Bridge" is the record most people sleep on, but even later, "Suzie Cracks The Whip" perhaps shows that "Hook" was too cynical even for them to learn the lesson. Perhaps I did.

Dave Matthews Band

My favorite guitarist is probably Dave, and I find myself getting drawn more into his 'sad bastard' phases more and more with time. The chords in "#41" are haunting, I have often found my brain as twisted as his fingers trying to understand how he can play "Tripping Billies" while singing it, and I have borrowed the chords from "Grey Street" for my own use on more than one occasion. There is a core of DMB music I would be lost without, especially the unreleased "Lillywhite Sessions", but it comes amid Dave's weirdness putting me off from time to time. With a bit of editing, like a whole lot less "Alligator Pie", they would surely be on my list.

Soen

When I think of where evolution should have taken metal, it is best embodied by Soen. Their stretch of albums from "Lykaia" to "Memorial" is flawless, and in some ways has kept me afloat as a music fan in recent years. They are records I can always put on and feel coursing through me. If their first two records were better, maybe they wouldn't have been cut. They might be the most painful exclusion.

And with that, perhaps you will come to understand the contradictions that define me. As was said by Walt Whitman, "I contain multitudes."

Singles Roundup: Bruce Dickinson, The Grandmaster, Judas Priest, & Kobra Paige

In the ol' grab-bag this week:

Bruce Dickinson - Afterglow Of Ragnarok

It will have been nineteen years by the time Bruce's album gets released in 2024. That is an eternity, and it had me rather worried he and Roy Z would have lost the momentum behind three of my favorite metal albums ever. We now have the first taste of "The Mandrake Project", and I'm feeling better about things. The mix is a little light on guitars, and I'm not sure the pieces quite fit together seamlessly, but it's a good song that is far more effective than "If Eternity Should Fail", which was pilfered from this album years ago. This has echoes of "The Chemical Wedding" to it, and while I know nothing will ever reach those heights again, being able to open a chalet halfway up that mountain will ensure the record will be a tent-pole release for the year. I'm optimistic now.

The Grandmaster - Watching The End

I've come around on this project's first album, which has grown on me once the stink of being another album off the conveyor belt wore off. It was great to hear Edguy's Jens Ludwig playing guitar again, and the songs were melodic gems that did a good enough job of filling that hole. The problem is that like so often, I feel like an idiot for getting my hopes up about anything. These 'bands' are just thrown together with whomever happens to be around at the time, and that means a new singer for album number two. I really liked Nando, and the new guy grates on me after just this one song. A promising group is now reduced to being filler if I don't have much else to talk about that week. I'm not looking forward to an entire album of this voice, and having the label pull the rug out from under me again. Is it any wonder why none of these things ever really takes off? How can they?

Judas Priest - Panic Attack/Trial By Fire

I will say this; at least in the studio, Rob Halford is aging like no one else. His vocals sound stellar on these two songs, and I'm sure all the metal fans are going to love another dose of Priest with blueprint metal production. As I've never really been a Priest fan, I look at these songs with a curiosity. "Panic Attack" is actually quite good, and does the job better than most of the bands that make a living copying Priest (*cough*Primal Fear*cough*). Unfortunately, "Trial By Fire" is cliche 80s metal where not much care was given to having a sturdy and memorable melody. It's one step forward, one step back for me, which means Priest is still one of those bands I'm more interested in hearing other people's take on than actually hearing.

Kobra Page - Love What I Hate/Under One Sun

It seems Kobra is releasing a solo album next year, which I find rather interesting. I thought the band was doing well, and these songs aren't exactly treading much new ground. Oh well. This is another case of one good and one band. "Love What I Hate" finds Kobra being a bit more mainstream than usual, but delivering a great vocal on a solid melodic rock song. I like that one. "Under One Sun" has more emphasis on rhythm, and it's hard for me to find the chorus melody, so it feels like an experiment that should have been left on the cutting room floor. I don't like that one. These don't really tell me what to expect from an album, so I'm going to temper my expectations.

Album Review: Lacey Sturm - Kenotic Metanoia

I pretty much checked out on 2023 early this year. By the middle of November, I was ready to call 'cut' on this one, and I didn't see anything listed on my calendar of upcoming releases to keep me invested in continuing the search until next year's albums started to roll in. This sort of thing happens every year, but it set in a bit earlier than usual, which only reinforces everything I've been thinking all along. Still, I'm never truly closed off from something new catching my attention at the last minute, and that's a quality I'm always a bit proud of.

This year's late entry comes in the form of Lacey Sturm, the Flyleaf singer who is now releasing her second solo album. Funnily enough, my only real experience with Flyleaf is from the first album she was not with the band for. There's one song from that one I've always remembered fondly, so when I saw Lacey's name pop up on my radar, I was a bit curious what she was doing on her own that didn't make sense to do as a Flyleaf record. I think I understand.

The songs on this record are a chronicle of Lacey's spiritual journey, telling us about the moments of clarity that define the way we see the world. It doesn't make as much sense to put these out under any other name, because they are the focus of her life, they are the ethos that drives everything she does.

It also so happens that Lacey is the sort of voice who towers above a band, and she is going to find up the focal point no matter what she does. Her voice has as much power as a full stack of Marshall amps, but more than that, she is a performer in the purest sense. She belts the songs out when needed, but on a song like "(I Died)" she throws so many colors and inflections into her singing that she is acting out the moment when you stare up from the bottom and see the edges of the hole finally grow closer. Listening to her is captivating, and she lays down some of the best vocal performances I've heard all year.

Mainstream rock is hard to talk about, both because it doesn't seem to mean much of anything anymore, but also because so much of it fits into a box so narrow we can't turn around to see if we've passed by the point. Lacey's songs are mainstream rock, but done with such care and attention to detail that they elevate to the highest tier. Her melodies are superb, grounding all of these tracks in choruses that pop out from the background like a pastel-colored children's book. These are dark sounding songs, but given such heart they're hard to keep away from.

The highlight is "Breathe With Me", a dramatic song featuring Lacey's voice intertwined with Lindsey Stirling's violin. It is gorgeous, moving, and makes me think some rock band needs to have a full-time violin player. The tone is undeniable, and it gives the record a crescendo that makes it feel like a true journey that has taken us to somewhere new and unexpected.

I don't know what kind of year it was for the mainstream rock charts, since I don't pay attention to that sort of thing, but I have a hard time thinking there was much (if anything) from that world better than this record. It's late in the year, but that just makes it even more satisfying to find a record that makes this kind of impact. After everything 2023 has had in store for us, and our minds are overloaded and ready to be purged, Lacey Sturm found room to wedge in another great memory.

How 'bout that?

Twenty Years With Opeth's "Damnation"

Opeth's entire career has been a case of "What if?" At first, I found myself wondering how great they could become if they weren't committed to being a death metal band. When they no longer were, I found myself wondering how great they could have been if they didn't abandon everything heavy they once were. I could always hear something in Opeth I loved, and I could see the path to the promised land, but Opeth was never willing to point their compass in that direction. So while I do enjoy what is right now the middle period of their catalog, every listen comes with my mind wandering to a future that never came.

The one exception to those trends is "Damnation", the album that might have been made simply to prove that the band was prog all along. The companion to their heaviest record, "Damnation" was Opeth's first attempt to strip away all of the extremity and metal from their sound. This record is all atmosphere, bathing us in a melancholy that may even exceed anything Katatonia has ever managed.

From the very first notes of "Windowpane", this record makes clear what we are dealing with. Clean guitars, jazzy drumming, and ample keyboards soften Opeth's sound without diluting their identity at all. The chord progressions are pure Opeth, merely without the distortion hiding that side of Mikael Akerfeldt's influences. His vocals are just as soothing, and he is one of the rare singers who is better when he isn't putting as much into his performances. These are intimate recordings, sung softly, like a cooing lullaby as the shadows creep up the bed.

In fact, the song "Death Whispered A Lullaby" is a fitting description of the record as a whole. The atmosphere hangs heavy in the air, and the melody wraps around us like a pall, warming us for the journey to the next destination. These are amazing songs that show something that was always present in Opeth's music, as we saw in "Face Of Melinda" or "Harvest", but was more of a sideshow attraction to the endless ten-minute forays.

So why do I say Opeth's entire career is a case of "What if?"

Like every other entry, "Damnation" suffers a fatal, self-inflicted wound. After six tracks that redefine everything we thought we knew about Opeth, the record ends with two throw-away songs that tail off like a skid mark pointing over the cliff. Opeth pulls the rug out from under us, and everything the feeling of this record was stirring up in us gets consumed by the bitter aftertaste we are left with. It sounds as if the band only realized after recording the album that they didn't have enough songs to pull this off, so they threw together whatever they could to pad it out.

That is a shame, because "Damnation" should be Opeth's true masterpiece. I love "Still Life" and "Blackwater Park" like everyone else does, but a full record of Damnation hitting on all cylinders would be untouchable, even by Opeth. Unfortunately, there is a second problem that is even harder to ignore, and that can't be remedied by treating "Damnation" as an EP you turn off two songs early.

"Damnation" ruined modern Opeth, because it shows us exactly why their recent records fall short. Their outright prog direction is similar in tone, but not in execution. When Mikael ditched growling to focus on clean singing, he not only started to sing beyond the means of his voice, but also lost his ability to write his unforgettable melodies. The new records might be longer, and more involved, but they do so much less with so much more. An entire decade has now passed with every Opeth release sounding like the echo of their real voice.

Twenty years after "Damnation" came out, it is as frustrating as it has ever been. The greatness is still apparent, but now it is also the proof that some of us don't hate Opeth for making their change, but for not doing it well. "Damnation" proves that prog Opeth has been a decade of disappointment, and maybe the way the record immolates itself was a sign even Opeth knew they weren't going to be able to reach those heights ever again. They warned us not to get too attached, but we didn't listen.

What if "Damnation" fulfilled its promise? What if "Damnation" was the masterpiece it should be? Well, I probably would be able to put my frustrations with Opeth aside more easily.