First off, let me stage a minor protest in that I do not think 2019 represents the end of the decade. That should be 2020, and for two reasons – first, because in counting sets of ten, you do not start with zero and end at nine (unless you’re a software engineer,) and second, because when the calendar was unified and the division between BC and AD established, there was no year zero (Nine Inch Nails album aside.)
Okay, now that I’ve logged my protest, allow me to actually get to the point. When Chris C and I first started discussing listing our best albums of the decade, he wanted to confine it to three. I immediately loved the exclusivity of his idea, that it was lazy to list the top fifty or twenty or even ten. Let’s really see who cut muster and made an impact over the past ten years.
There was only one problem. I couldn’t keep it at three. I pleaded, nay begged to have Chris go to five. He saw my plight and relented. Here we are.
A brief primer – the usual rules apply – original studio albums only. No covers albums, no live albums, no compilations.
The cut down process was excruciating. It took me two full months to decide on the top 5. I fully admit, it’s the top 5 of the decade...for now. Ask me next month, it could be almost entirely different. As such, I would like to pause for a moment to recognize the albums that didn’t quite make the cut. Consider these the honorable mentions in alphabetical order:
Blood Ceremony – Lord of Misrule
Cancer Bats – Dead Set on Living
Children of Bodom – Relentless, Reckless Forever
Destrage – Are You Kidding Me? No.
Graveyard – Hisingen Blues
Midnight Ghost Train – Cypress Ave
Red Eleven – Round II
Shawn James and the Shapeshifters – The Gospel According to Shawn James and the Shapeshifters
And now, without further reservation, the top 5 albums of the (sort of) decade:
5 Cancer Bats – The Spark That Moves
Possible that there’s some recency bias here, but this is an excellent, easily digested and highly listenable album. It’s just so damn catchy, and that’s something you don’t often say about a hardcore album. Liam Cormier’s vocals are like when you go see a band and they invite their local friend up on stage – the guy can’t really sing, but he’s giving it his all and his authentic performance is eminently enjoyable. That’s not to say that Cormier can’t sing. His throaty rumble during “Bed of Nails” might just be his best performance ever.
4 The Sword – Warp Riders
This is bittersweet. Remember when we thought The Sword was going to take over the world? I’m gonna move on before I start remembering what happened after Apocryphon.
We’ve talked about it a lot over the years; the quest for something different. To find a sound that is new and unique and yet appealing is incredibly difficult in the modern era. Destrage has captured something. There’s a frenetic violence to their music, but woven through it all are huge, hook-laden choruses and spots of fragile beauty. To be able to command this many raw elements and have them make sense is a level of songwriting most aren’t capable of. Destrage did it three times this decade, and this is the best of them.
1 Turisas – Turisas2013
There are only two bad things you can say about this album. One, the title is dumb. Two, we haven’t heard from Turisas since. Nevertheless, this album remains the gold standard for the kind of transcendent genre-blending that metal is and should be capable of. It’s a magical ride, the kind of experience that can only be described in absurd terms. For example, when people ask me to define what this album sounds like, I say “imagine if Andrew Lloyd Webber had an angsty son who wrote metal.” Turisas also released the outstanding Stand Up and Fight in 2011, and this album completely buried it. No one did it better this decade.
This is all pretty straightforward. Nothing makes us happier as a society than an arbitrary list of a subjective medium, so here’s mine!
The rules, such as they are, remain the same as ever – must be an original stadium album. No re-releases, no greatest hits, no live albums, no covers albums. Got it? Second rule – it goes to 11.
Moving on.
The list you see below, simply for informational purposes, was whittled down from approximately thirty semifinalists that ranged in genre, composition, production and release date. Thirty candidates is probably fewer than I’m accustomed to compiling, but this may not be a reflection of the year in music, at least not anymore than it is a reflection in my personal and professional life and the diminished time I had to spend with new albums on the whole. It is entirely possible that I missed something this year I would have really enjoyed, but I remain confident in the caliber and conviction of this list.
The one casualty of having less time, however, was my Little Album That Could award. I just didn’t get exposed to much local or truly independent music this year, so I have decided not to award that honor, rather than award it in a lackluster, half-assed fashion.
First out of the gate, EP Of The Year – There can be no other choice, it has to be Red Eleven’s “Fueled By Fire.” These guys are among the best bands working today, and their production is spotless for a group working with less than a full budget. Their guitars are sharp, the harmonies soar, and the songs click with a combination of ‘90s rock sensibility and new age pomp and circumstance.
HONORABLE MENTION– Fair number of bands just on the outside looking in this year, but honorable mentions still abound – The Browning followed up the excellent “Isolation” with “Geist,” and while this new record isn’t as groundbreaking or bombastic at its predecessor, it’s still an album of high merit. I enjoyed the grunge throwback overtones of Kobra and the Lotus’ “Prevail II,” actually significantly more than I enjoyed the original “Prevail” last year. Orange Goblin put out another Orange Goblin record, and I also found it was the year for ‘Black’ bands – Black Elephant, Black Royal and Black Wizard all held my attention for a moment. I had my requisite hour of fun with Parasite, INC, and they flirted with the list for a moment before ultimately falling short. The last album to be cut was Black Mirrors and their record “Look Into the Black Mirror.” It was the 12th man on an 11 player roster. So kudos to them in particular.
Without further ado –
#11 – KING WITCH – “Under the Mountain”
I spent a lot of time with this album when it first came out, and then as the year wore on, I found myself less and less attracted to it. Some of that was an influx of new material, and I think some of it is that the album doesn’t have a lot of secrets to unravel – the first listen and the twentieth are much the same experience. That said, this is as great a straight-ahead metal bulldozer as was released this year, and it should be treated as such. There’s got to be something to be said for being in my personal rotation for five months.
#10 – WITCHSKULL – “Coven’s Will”
It was a great year for doomy, drone-y artists, and Witchskull was no exception. Relative to the fine wines of high-end production and popular tastes, Witchskull goes down like grain alcohol, but that actually works in its favor. It’s too easy to draw parallels between this and the grand Black Sabbath albums of old, but sometimes the easy way out is the best way out. There’s a lot of bluesy dust covering every inch of this album, which makes it infectious. It’s entirely too easy to just start nodding your head and bob along with the strangled rhythms. Good stuff.
#9 – GHOST – “Prequelle”
Suck it, haters! This is a fun record. I know, I know, there’s a million papercuts of betrayal to all we thought Ghost or wasn’t, blah, blah, blah. I don’t care about any of that crap. Ghost has the right to do whatever they want. Is this a pop album? Yeah, maybe. Is the single a sugar-coated affair that leans way over the line? Sure is. But the recognition of that fact doesn’t make it any less fun. You do you, Ghost.
#8 – LORD OF THE LOST – “Thornstar”
I’ll admit it, this got by me on the first pass. On my running list of music I take in over the course of the year, I marked it down, but didn’t make any special notations next to it. On some whim in the late fall, I went combing through and tried it again, and that’s when it stuck. Part industrial, part dark rock, part melodic singalong, “Thornstar” does a lot right, and deserves its place on this list for “Loreley” alone. I say this through gritted teeth because I have such respect for the artist I’m about to impugn, but Lord of the Lost released the album that Emigrate should have released.
#7 – BLACK MOTH – “Anatomical Venus”
This album hit early and I just kept coming back to it. The cover art is….well, blech. But the album is freakin’ great. I’m starting to think that any band with “Black” at the front of their title is using the word as a family name – it’s their honorific tie to Black Sabbath, a band they all hope to emulate in some form or fashion. Black Moth takes that formula, injects some rock into it, and then combines the entire proceeding with a siren, hypnotic overlay. There’s something about this music that’s difficult to describe, something with the tone that’s new and original and haunting. Every couple months, this would work its way back into my ear.
#6 – SUNDRIFTER – “Visitations”
The desert rock is strong with this one. Yet, it’s companion is doom, and so the combination of those elements makes for an unique experience. “Visitations” isn’t solely colored by the red and yellow hues of a sunset among the sand, nor it is entirely given to a black, forested midnight, but lives at the twilight of both those images. If Witchskull released an album that was easy to fall into the groove of, Sundrifter gave us all an opportunity to zone out entirely, a chance to separate from time itself and just be swept by the undulating wave of music. This entire paragraph has been too dramatic in general, but it should illustrate the point.
#5 – FEAR OF DOMINATION – “Metanoia”
Many years ago, I reviewed an album by a duo called Alien Vampires, and I think at one point I think I said something like “grab your many-buckled leather pants, colored dreadlock extenders and gas masks, we’re going dancin’!” I feel the same about this album. I remain eminently fascinated by the revival of industrial metal that seems to be hand in hand with the rise of EDM, and the fact that those train tracks are colliding with increasing frequency has led to the creation of something entirely new – Alien Vampires, The Browning, Kontrust and 6:33 have all toyed with varying aspects of the idea, but Fear of Domination seems to have found the most complete synthesis of the metal and the electronic. “Metanoia” also feels the most like a recording of a live experience of any album on this list. “Sick and Beautiful” might be my favorite song of 2018, and also might be the most fun metal song of the year.
#4 – ALIEN WEAPONRY – “Tu”
We’re getting into the big hitters now. This is the separation point, where the albums before now were one caliber and this one and on are the gems of the season. When I first heard this band described as a bunch of teenagers making metal, I shuddered involuntarily as horrible, uninvited memories of the hype machine surrounding Black Tide came swarming back into my brain. So it was with considerable caution that I hit play on “Tu”…and was instantly taken by it. Make no mistake, these kids have a lot of work to do, because the music rough around the edges at the best of times, but the core is a diamond. There’s one album every year that cracks my list just because it’s so impossibly heavy, and this is it this year. “Tu” is a straight-ahead banger, a wrecking ball of noise and chanting. The incorporation of the Maori verses and heritage works to give the band a novel feeling in much the same way as culture works in favor of Tengger Cavalry. Musically, there’s not a lot new here, but the accents make it feel different and unique.
#3 – GRAVEYARD – “Peace”
I feel a little bad about this, only because as late as October, I was really convinced this was finally going to be the Graveyard album that made it to #1 for me. This is one of the three or four best bands active in modern music, regardless of genre, and I really felt good giving them the top spot….but then as time went by, two albums edged ahead. Graveyard, if you’re reading this, I am sorry. I am out of superlatives to describe this band – they’ve never disappointed me, and every song on this album, and the three albums before it, gives us another piece of an amazing puzzle yet to be completed. Graveyard does everything right, and reaches across a hundred aisles to attract fans from all walks of music. “Peace” is a masterpiece, but then, four of the band’s five albums are (and the first one is still good, but not as iconic as the others.) If you’re not a Graveyard fan yet, I don’t know what to tell you at this point. Get on the bandwagon, damn it!
#2 – CLUTCH – “Book of Bad Decisions”
Clutch is still teaching masters classes on how to write music. For a few years there, I was leaving them for dead (my full apology can be found in my formal review of this album,) but now here they are, having hit a double with “Earth Rocker,” and two home runs with “Psychic Warfare” and “Book of Bad Decisions.” While different in craft and sound, this is some of the band’s best work since “Blast Tyrant,” and Clutch’s impact and command of the genre can’t be undersold. These boys from Maryland are still a force to be reckoned with and they’re not done yet.
#1 – CANCER BATS – “The Spark That Moves”
What strikes me the most about this album is that Cancer Bats appear to have dropped all pretense of anything else and have gotten back to having fun. “Searching for Zero” was a fine album, but it lacked a certain human quality that made “Dead Set on Living” such an instant classic. “The Spark That Moves” is just that, full as ever of piss and vinegar, but also grinning from ear to ear, punching out a combination of styles that still remain harmonious and catchy. It’s a difficult niche to live in – the speed and simple hooks of punk, the abrasiveness of hardcore and the edgy gravitas of metal must exist in their proper balance, and more bands that we care to recount have tried and failed, or at their best only managed to carry two of the three. Cancer Bats, by contrast, have found the secret formula. Much like “Sick and Beautiful” mentioned above (though for wildly different reasons,) if you can’t get up and feel your pulse quicken for “We Run Free,” then you’re abusing the privilege of music. Every song on this album feels much the same, leaving us with a glorious album that rolls and rumbles with power and conviction. Find it. Buy it. Then buy it for a friend.
It may be time to eat a little crow. In fact, it’s probably well past time.
Following the release of “Robot Hive/Exodus,” things started to angle down for Clutch. Their jam dalliances were coming more and more into the fore of their music, and it was causing division among the fanbase – those who wanted the band to perpetually be the group that released “Pure Rock Fury,” and those who wanted to hear more from “Jam Room.” (Just as an editorial note for context, I was in the former group.)
The next two albums, if you were a fan of the band’s particular brand of blistering, riff-driving metal, were disappointing to say the least. They had strayed too far from their root source and there was a sense that the bell curve which had peaked with “Blast Tyrant” was riding the inevitable crash back to the bottom.
Now though, retribution and redemption. “Earth Rocker” showed some promise, and then “Psychic Warfare” was a modern masterpiece; while not the same style per se as some of its lofty predecessors, the album popped with spirit and vigor and showed that the band was still possessed of plenty of fight and desire.
And now we come to “Book of Bad Decisions.”
What we are really presented here is two records in one – an album proper of eight songs, attached to a back-half EP that experiments in a new direction. Imagine if the band’s self-titled album and the “Impetus” EP had been packaged as one record, and you’re in the right direction.
Addressing the first half first (natch,) we kick the album off with “Gimme the Keys,” and the logical extension of “Psychic Warfare” kicks into high gear from jump. Off we go.
There’s a different flavor here, though. “Book of Bad Decisions” is something we haven’t heard from Clutch before – there’s a level of accessibility here we’re not accustomed to while they’re composing music with this much body. Not to say that Clutch has ever been as dense as a technical death metal experiment or anything, but they have always had enough edge to elude radio and popular visibility. This album changes all of that by taking the rock hooks of (ugh) “From Beale Street to Oblivion” and mixing them with a throatier sensibility and deeper groove.
In the final cut, what we hear is a big, loud album that sounds like the soundtrack to a “Mirror, Mirror” version of “American Hustle,” or some similarly themed throwback to 1970’s intrigue. The bombast of “How to Shake Hands” alone is fuzzy as hell but stylized and measured in a way that only Clutch has mastered.
To pair this song with “In Walks Barbarella” is the album’s best back-to-back punch, though it comes with the caveat that we’ve never heard Clutch put down a lick like the latter song. The principal melody is put down by horns, which gives an affect like Elvis in the later Las Vegas days, but still threaded through with Clutch’s usual down-tuned aplomb. Roll this all together with the jangly piano of “Vision Quest” and the insistent cowbell (insert joke here,) of “Weird Times,” and we have a Clutch experience that’s exceptionally high octane, but remarkably different from what we’re used to the from the band.
The second half of the record begins with “Sonic Counselor,” and from this point forward, we return to the bluesy, gin-soaked basement that Clutch has felt singularly at home in for more than twenty-five years. “A Good Fire” thumps along with the carousing, beer-swinging style that’s become so idiomatic in the band’s music, and it’s a pleasant enough return to the expected.
In a twist, the more traditional second half of “Book of Bad Decisions,” is actually the less interesting one, as Clutch runs out of experimental material and simply goes back to stripped-down basics. That’s not to say that it’s not enjoyable, far from it – it simply feels like we’ve heard it before, right down to the slow, plodding burn of the album’s closer, “Lorelei.” Clutch has written variations of this song multiple times, whether it be “Spacegrass,” “Drink to the Dead,” “The Dragonfly,” “Son of Virginia,” or whatever other version.
All credit to Clutch here. To write an album of fifteen songs that contains no filler whatsoever, and moreover makes all those songs compelling and enjoyable on some level, is no small feat. And no matter what we said above, make no mistake that there are no duds here – the second half of the album is only diminished in quality relative to the first half, not to good music as a whole. “Book of Bad Decisions” does require a little more patience to get into than “Psychic Warfare” did, but it’s one of the best albums of the year to date. Period.
And here’s where the crow eating comes in. There is no way that “Book of Bad Decisions” can happen without the band having worked through and ultimately absorbed the lessons of “From Beale Street to Oblivion” and “Strange Cousins From the West.” We have lamented on these very pages that Clutch may never again be ‘The American Psycho Band’ as was boasted on the back cover of their eponymous record, and they may never be, but to grow and evolve is the lifeblood of any group of creative professionals, and so to expect the same thing over a quarter-century was the height of folly on our part in the first place. Mea culpa.
A further serving of crow – since “Strange Cousins,” (and no, I am not changing my opinion of that record or “Beale Street,”) Clutch has released three albums ranging from good to exceptional, all of which belong in the pantheon of the band’s most laudable works. Speaking for anyone who may have left the band for dead, our bad, Clutch.
Clutch remains the pace car for American rock, and all of its derivatives. They continue to show us how it should be done.
Let’s skip the preamble – Clutch, at this point in their career, needs little introduction. So getting down to brass tacks – what do you need to know about “Psychic Warfare”?
The good news here is that we see Clutch return to the halcyon days of their lyric writing – catchy songs about rigged-up sports cars, unexplained phenomena of a paranoid mind and crazy alien nonsense. It doesn’t take long to get there, either, as you need only get to “Firebirds” to hear Fallon in full throat demanding a complement of energy weapons, no matter what it takes to get them. Now, to give this some greater context than just a man yelling at the sky, the band backs up Fallon’s urgency with a rollicking and persistently driven beat that stomps along to a properly energetic riff.
This is hardly the only song that fits the bill. Album opener “X-Ray Visions,” which essentially serves as the title track, boils down to one man’s bizarre statement to the authorities, not so different in tone from the excellent and timeless “Escape From the Prison Planet.” Continuing the theme, this is long where Fallon has been at his best, when the presentation allows him to inject some of his own styling into the storytelling. “Sucker for the Witch” is in the same blueprint, a catchy ride with big choruses that stay inhabited in the ear for as long as one is willing to listen.
What helps the overall momentum of “Psychic Warfare” is that the album keeps just about all of its material under the four minute mark, which makes for appreciably quicker pacing and keeps Clutch away from the fervent temptation to jam something out, thus leading to extended measures of tangential musical rambling. The whole album is tight in this manner, as even the second half gems like “Behold the Colossus” stick to the working formula and leave the new-age hippie Clutch fans behind in the dust.
Now, Clutch has always danced on both sides of the thin line delineating the separation between ‘rock’ and ‘metal’ and always been at their best when they’ve blurred the line to the point of being inconsequential. As far as that’s concerned, “Psychic Warfare” is very much a ‘rock’ album, but while it may not have the bite of “Pure Rock Fury,” it does have teeth. “Noble Savage,” nestled in the record’s back half, works like so many pieces on the record because it finds a relentless home groove and never deviates in tempo or insistence. These songs, like many of the great Clutch tunes of old, demand to be heard, which is a nice return to form for a band who hasn’t quite sounded like that in a while. Couple this with the throaty guitar tones and pounding thump of the kick drum, and it’s a quasi-revival of “Elephant Riders.”
Old fans of Clutch will note that there’s still something ever so slightly amiss here, a hunger that permeated every pore of the band’s work from 1995-2005 and hasn’t quite been on the radar since. “Psychic Warfare” recovers from that epidemic somewhat, as there is some of the anticipated power of those great, lost days. Even with that though, this still feels a little bit like the following of a blueprint, akin to one of those high-end paint-by-number paintings that Robin Williams references in “Good Will Hunting.” That doesn’t make “Psychic Warfare” a bad listen, but it does ding the authenticity ever so slightly. As with any album, there are also a couple real duds. “Decapitation Blues” has a nice riff, but something is just off about this song; the hook chorus fails to sell, and the song’s pacing can’t really decide what it wants to be.
Now, is this the best Clutch record since “Robot Hive: Exodus”? Yeah, okay, I’ll buy that. There’s an awful lot of things that “Psychic Warfare” does right, including the return to Clutch’s proper thematic material, if it can be called such. This new effort is a genuinely enjoyable ride, even if it does seem that the out-and-out wanton chaos of the band’s past efforts has been replaced by a sort of gritty professionalism. So if you’re fan of Clutch in the past ten years, pick this up without hesitation. If you go back a little father, rent before you buy, but so do optimistically. There’s a lot of good here, and it grows on you with time and repeated listens.
