Thursday, December 20, 2012

2012 Album of the Year

Okay, so I'm gonna come right out and say it: I totally failed in this category this year.  I only reviewed one, ONE (!!!) 2012 album, High on Fire's De Vermis Mysteriis.  An album I gave a whopping C minus grade...so not exactly Album of the Year material.

There were plenty of other great looking 2012 metal albums that I should have listened to, but never got around to checking out.  My focus  definitely wasn't on checking out new music this year.  In fact, when I did find myself listening to music, I found myself gravitating towards music that I've loved for years, and steering clear of the new stuff.  When pondering this very post, that fact dawned on me and I instantly started worrying that I was turning into an old fogey who only listens to old music.

A scary thought.

I've been combating my old fogey-ness, and trying to remind myself that my glory days are ahead of me, the past few days by gearing my Pandora stations towards new music that I've been wanting to check out.  That's not enough though. I need to bite the bullet and listen to full albums.  Here's a few I'm looking to listen to a lot more in the coming months:


Baroness: Yellow and Green- I've heard bits and pieces of this double album, and everything I've heard so far has been fantastic.  I love their two previous albums, so I'm looking forward to getting to know this double disc release much better.

Yellow and Green ranks as possibly the most glaring oversight in my metal listening this year.


Huntress: Spell Eater- The dudes in Huntress were once in a barely known hard rockin' band called Trigger Renegade.  They were awesome, yet never achieved the success they deserved.  They recently got a major facelift by adding a new vocalist, the scarily talented banshee screamer Jill Janus.

With a name change, and change in approach from hard rock to metal they created Huntress and have been hell bent on metal stardom ever since. I'm long overdue for giving their debut album a few solid listens.


The Sword: Apocryphon- Well, I got to see these guys live, which is something, but I haven't yet had the chance to give their latest album a full listen.  If their new material is as good as it sounded at their show, I have a feeling that Apocryphon will be The Sword's best album yet.

Definitely an album I'm looking forward to hearing more of.

So, yeah, a bit of a shitty start to my year-end awards, but I'll be sure to bring the thunder with the remaining categories.  I know I dropped the ball on the metal music front this year, and even though I singled out a few albums I want to check out more, I'm sure I missed mentioning a few good ones.

What music did you folks listen to that was amazing? What metal music, or non-metal music am I missing out on?

3 comments:

Justin said...

Yeah, this album is starting to grow on me. "Madness of an Architect" is definitely one of their best tracks. There's a lot of albums on this list I've been meaning to check out,
http://pitchfork.com/features/show-no-mercy/9021-the-top-40-metal-albums-of-2012/

Ryan said...

Thanks for that sweet list of 2012 metal albums. I've already been checking some of them out, but it'll take me a while to work my way through the list.

Anonymous said...

Have you any thoughts on Storm Corrosion? It sort of was a highlight of the year, but I must say I didn't listen much and long to it, and almost exclusively to the last song... It's more cerebral than Steven Wilson and Akerfeldt alone, without much pay-off... It's like playing around on a very high level, but the depth is a bit lacking (although it is clearly hinted, but maybe too hinted).