The Official Top Ten albums of 2010. Officially.

So here we are. We are finally close enough to the year's end for me not to feel premature in ranking the year's best albums. 2010 has been a year of surprises-bands who made last year's list have returned with crushing disappointments, and bands whose names had never even piqued my interest before have dominated my listening habits. It's been tough whittling down my previously published list down to ten, with many missing through no demerit of their own: this is simply the ten I happened to pick but any of the 20 or so albums in my last post are worthy of your time. So, without further ado, and in no particular order (sort of), Dougie Diamond's top ten albums of 2010!

Torche - 'Songs For Singles'

Torche are, for lack of a better word, awesome. 'Meanderthal' made it onto my top albums of the decade list last year, and as you can imagine my anticipation for 'SFS' was pretty fevered. An online stream of 'UFO' about a month before the 'album's' release certainly lifted my spirits-a glorious, saccharine-sweet burst of musical sunshine, full of Steve Brooks' trademark vocal harmonies and heart-warming riffs, the song set the bar pretty high, so I was pretty deflated upon finally hearing the full record and realising this was by far the best song on it. However, after a few more spins, 'Songs For Singles' started to reveal it's secrets and what secrets they are. Torche are, for me, at their best when knocking out 2-minute pop-rock gems, and two of their finest ever are found within 'SFS'- 'Hideaway' and 'Cast Into Unknown', both songs full of their own brand of postitive Beach Boys-meets-Baroness vibes. 'Songs For Singles' isn't as complete-feeling or well-rounded an experience as 'Meanderthal', but judging by the record's title, it was never meant to be. What it is , is a ray of light in an in increasingly bleak scene, and should be cherished as such.

Key Track - 'UFO'

Envy - 'Recitation'

It's been 4 long years since Envy released their last full-length, 06's incredible 'Insomniac Doze', and though we've had the 'Abyssal' e.p. and splits with Thursday and Jesu to tide us over, there's nothing like an Envy album to warm us up in the harsh winter. So it was with open arms I welcomed 'Recitation' into my life and into my heart, and I couldn't have asked any more of Japan's finest sons. A majestic mash-up of all of the finest points from Envy's career, this album manages to sound as regal and glacial as 'Insomniac Doze' whilst mixing in the more upbeat, positive vibes and tempos from 'Abyssal'. The first big surprise 'Recitation' has to offer is the incredibly beautiful slow-build of it's opening two tracks, 'Guidance' and 'Last Hours Of Eternity'; where as once they would have kicked things off in their typically huge and bombastic fashion, here they caress and soothe you into submission long before any hint of a screamed vocal or distorted guitar. When things finally do kick off on 'Rain Clouds Running In A Holy Night', it is in the most sky-scraping, heart-warming way imaginable, with busy drums and massive major-key chords crashing around Tetsuya Fukagawa's huge vocals, creating the kind of epic cacophony dreams are made of. Probably the most versatile album in Envy's catalogue, 'Recitation' should not be missed by any fan of post-whatever music.

Key Track - 'Dreams Coming To An End'

The Secret - 'Solve Et Coagula'

For anyone who misses the about-to-fly-off-the-rails blackened hardcore of Cursed, take heed - The Secret are about to become your new favourite band. A misanthropic, hate-filled, bile-spilling assault of a record, 'Solve Et Coagula' will boil your blood and make you want to hit things in the face. I listened to and enjoyed the band's previous album 'Disintoxication', but felt that it somewhat lacked the focus to really push it to the forefront of my ipod playlist. Focus is no problem here, and the songwriting on display is so tight and precise that it could slice through lead. Mixing crusty, Darkthrone-esque blackened death'n'roll with the pace and attack of the aforementioned Loudest Band In Canada, The Secret have crafted the most vicious hardcore album of the year. Prepare to have your ears destroyed.

Key Track - 'Death Alive'

Deftones - 'Diamond Eyes'

What a pleasure it is to be able to put Deftones on this list. This band are almost single-handedly responsible for the way my taste in music developed, yet it has taken them a decade to release an album that comes anywhere close to the dizzying heights of genre-destroyer 'White Pony'. But wow, what a fucking return to form! From the opening crunch of the title track onwards, 'Diamond Eyes' is a revelation, even more so considering the tragic circumstances under which it came to fruition. It's hard to listen to the album without wondering what could have been had Chi Cheng not had his devastating accident-we would have instead ended up with 'Eros', the album Deftones had just about completed and had spent much time talking up in the press. Whether we ever get to hear 'Eros' is likely to depend on whether Chi ever recovers, but listening to the dark grooves of 'You've Seen The Butcher' or the swooning bliss of 'Sextape' it's hard to worry either way.

Key Track - 'Diamond Eyes'

High On Fire - 'Snakes For The Divine'

High On Fire carry on the grand tradition of bands I completely missed the boat with. To think I let them go by me without so much as a shrug is testament to what a narrow-visioned douche I can be. 'Snakes For The Divine' is the glorious grey area that exists between the beer and whiskey-soaked fury of Motorhead and the progressive-minded poundings of Mastodon; a rip-roaring ride through a heavy metal wind-tunnel where furious riffs and caveman-esque bellows smash you about the head something silly. Though hardly a poster-boy for the modern man, Matt Pike is probably one of the most underrated guitar players on the planet, his riffs knocking seven shades of shit out of 99% of his contemporaries, not to mention the primal Slayer-esque fury of his screeching leads. As a pure balls-out heavy metal experience, 'Snakes...' was unbeatable in 2010, and I'm thankful I finally took the plunge on this incredible band.

Key Track - 'Frost Hammer'

Black Breath - 'Heavy Breathing'

I'm not even going to beat around the bush: Black Breath are awesome because they sound like Entombed. And that is the highest praise I could ever hope to offer any death'n'roll band. 'Heavy Breathing' sounds like the missing link between 'Clandestine' and 'Wolverine Blues', all buzz-saw guitars, rampaging thrash beats and glass-gargled vocals. It is a beast of a record, and I don't need to say any more than that. Buy it you damn fools.

Key Track - 'Black Sin (Spit On The Cross)'

Astrohenge - 'Astrohenge'

It always pleases me to discover new bands, and one of the nicer aspects of living in London is that every now and again I get to do this by actually witnessing said bands live. I first caught Astrohenge at an all-day metal show earlier this year, and sandwiched in-between half-baked grind bands and dirgey pseudo-post-metal rubbish they managed to absolutely knock my socks off. Instrumental metal (or, 'instrumetal' if you will) often tends to consist solely of Isis wannabes or Meshuggah-apeing 'djent' wankery, but Astrohenge fit neither bill, or any other casual pigeon-hole you'd care to fling them at, melding Mastodon-esque prog-sludge to high voltage thrash, piano-tinkled jazz and crushing doom. The closest possible comparison i could throw at them is Between The Buried And Me (whom 'Henge opened for earlier in the year), but purely in both bands' abilities to throw so many disparate styles into their collective melting pots and come out with something greater than the sum of it's parts. Did I mention that Astrohenge have a keyboard player instead of a bass? No? Thart's because it's probably the least remarkable thing about them. Probably one of the finest bands the UK has seen in some time, avoid them at your eternal peril.

Key Track - 'Toil In Hell'

The Dillinger Escape Plan - 'Option Paralysis'

I managed to completely leave this album off so many of my preliminary attempts at this list, and I can only put this down to the fact it came out so many months ago that it's not really been at the forefront of my memory. So I re-listened to it a few days ago and, much like back in February when it was released, it tore my mind into shreds and pissed on the remains. No self-respecting fan of heavy music needs to be told what an incredible, genre-smashing band TDEP are, so I won't waste my precious time dossing around at work to go into that. I will however make the shocking admission that I never really got into Dillinger until 07's 'Ire Works', an amazing record that should have been hard to better, but gosh darn it if 'Option Paralysis' didn't just go and blow it out of the water. It's an album that cranks every aspect of TDEP's sound to it's illogical extreme: the heavy parts are devastating, the choruses are towering, the WTF parts are WTFingF. It's an album so accesable and yet so dense and layered listeners will still be peeling it apart years from now. It's the mightiest accomplishment of The Dillinger Escape Plan's career without question. Expect the next album to be better.

Key track - 'Farewell, Mona Lisa'

Intronaut - 'Valley Of Smoke'

Intronaut's last album, 'Prehistoricisms', is one of my favourite albums ever. EVER. This fact obviously meant that I approached 'Valley Of Smoke' with very high expectations, and it's hard for me to say if they were met. Is 'Valley...' a fucking fantastic album? Yes. Yes it is. Is it 'Prehistoricisms' good? Well...that's where things get a little more complex. Certainly Intronaut have evolved into something grander on 'Valley Of Smoke'-the songs are a little more considered, their approach more mature and graceful. Sacha Dunable's new-found vocal clarity is also a welcome new addition, with much of the album coated in a John Baizley-esque melodic roar, compared to the throaty growls of old. And yes, the production is much better this time around. So, where then, does my hesitation stem from? It's the lack of grit. Sure, 'Valley...' is still a very heavy record, but it just lacks the dragged-from-the-primordial-sludge heft of their earlier work. My favourite aspect of 'Prehistoricisms' was that it managed to graft incredibly dexterous song-writing onto weighty, tar-pit-thick dirge. It's a minor gripe, for sure, and 'Valley Of Smoke' wipes the floor with 99% of other bands and albums. Just not their own.

Key Track - 'Elegy'

Kvelertak - 'Kvelertak'

I try not to play favourites in my top tens. The idea is that if an album made it this far, it doesn't need any further arbitrary ranking and is simply awesome. However, every year one album gets listened to just that little bit more than the others, and this year that album just happens to be the début of a rock and fuckin' roll band from Norway whose name I'd never even heard before this year. The word Kvelertak translates into English as 'stranglehold', and that is exactly what this band have had on my affections all year. I heard the album and liked it plenty straight away, but it wasn't until I actually saw them play live that it really clicked: this is the greatest rock band around right now. Everything about this album is perfect, from the ever reliable Kurt Ballou production, to the wetsuit-tight song-writing. Most bands with 3 guitar players end up wasting the potential that affords them, but not Kvelertak-3 way harmonies, huge walls of blistering noise, ripping leads; you name it, it's got it. They are practically a Scandinavia's greatest hits act, throwing together the best of frosty Nordic black metal, Turbonegro's rollicking rock'n'roll, and dare I say it, an almost ABBA-like ability to write catchy guitar hooks. Seriously. It appears that this band are on the tip of many tongues at the moment, and rightly so; if they can continue on the road they are on, Kvelertak could, and should, be the biggest band in the world.

Key Track - 'Offernatt'


So there we have it. Before I depart I'd like to throw a mention out to a couple of albums that came out in 2009 but avoided my attention until this year: 'The Clearing' by Disappearer and 'Serpents' by Struck By Lightning. Disappearer came to my attention as being the 'other band' of the less well known members of Doomriders, but stayed in my sights by being arguably the better band of the two. 'The Clearing' is sort-of post metal, but shares little of the shoe-gaze meandering of bands like Isis or Cult Of Luna; instead it evokes the compressed crushing power of Zozobra, songs never overstaying their welcome or becoming monotonous. Struck By Lightning, on the other hand, come across like the bastard offspring of Disfear and 'Remission'-era Mastodon, all blitzkrieg d-beats and paint-stripping riffs. Get 'em both.

See you next time folks!

A premature look at 2010

This isn't my final 'Best Of The Year' list, so no need to get your knickers in a twist. I know it's only November, and there are still albums that came out this year I haven't got round to hearing yet, so this is really more of a primer for that list, a little preview of what has been rocking my ears this year. Also, I've had this shit swimming around in my head for weeks now and need to get it down on 'paper', or I'm going to forget something important and end up making Avenged Sevenfold or some shit like that my album of the year. Haha, yeah right.

Anyway, in no particular order, albums that I have dug the heck out of this year. (I'll go into detail about just why each of these is awesome in my full post)

Black Breath - 'Heavy Breathing'
Torche - 'Songs For Singles'
Kvelertak - 'Kvelertak'
Envy - 'Recitation'
Oceansize - 'Self Preserved While the Bodies Float Up'
Intronaut - 'Valley Of Smoke'
The Ocean - 'Heliocentric/Anthropocentric'
Martin O'Donnell - 'Halo Reach OST'
Fact - 'In The Blink Of An Eye'
Arsis - 'Starve For The Devil'
The Dillinger Escape Plan - 'Option Paralysis'
The Secret - 'Solve Et Coagula'
Coliseum - 'House With A Curse'
High On Fire - 'Snakes For The Divine'
Astrohenge - 'Astrohenge'
Deftones - 'Diamond Eyes'
Jonsi - 'Go'
Sweet Cobra - 'Mercy'
Titan - 'Sweet Dreams'
Daft Punk - 'Tron Legacy OST'

I don't normally go out of my way to rag on albums that failed to live up to expectation, but man, 'Spiral Shadow' by Kylesa was a big step down from last year's incredible 'Static Tensions'. OK, I've only listened to it once, but I found it to be overwhelmingly, soul-crushingly dull, and that is one thing metal should NEVER be. Sorry guys (and gal), better luck next time!

Expect me to have whittled down (and possibly completely changed) this list sometime before we wave goodbye to 2010!

Old is the new...new?

I was about 14 when I first caught the metal bug. Sure, it was the nerve-paralysing 'Nu' strain that infected me first, but hey, that's just an unavoidable side-effect of being a post-millenial teenager. My tastes soon evolved and passed through many stages-metalcore, death, thrash, prog, etc, but there was a pretty consistant thread running through them all-no matter the sub-genre, I was only listening to new bands. Though it's hard to be into extreme metal and be completely unaware of the genre's history, I had no time for classic bands and bought only the hottest new releases, in a pointless game of 'I heard that band before you' one-upmanship. Yes, I was naive, and it was only in my early twenties that I finally bit the bullet and dived into the heady back-catalogue of metal's past, never to return.

I'd say it was Slayer, and more specifically 'Reign In Blood', that showed me that the best bands of yesteryear were by no means hackneyed or irrelevent by today's standards. That album is as vicious and cut-throat as anything you can find lurking about today, and it started a fire in me to seek out as much 'classic' metal as I could find. Within 6 months, new music seemed pointless. Why bother trudging through more turgid deathcore tripe when I could be thrashing out to 'Left Hand Path' or 'Heartwork'? Why waste my time trying to decipher differences between identikit Killswitch-clones when I could slam on 'Master Of Puppets'? Obviously, within time I realised that there was still plenty of great new music around, and that no-one likes a retro-snob. But these discoveries taught me to appreciate that the forefathers of the scenes we inhabit now are not just owed respect for laying foundations, but for being kick-ass bands that wrote neck-snappingly awesome albums.

Since then I've tried to couple the old and new and as a result have discovered some amazing music on both ends of the musical timeline. I also love tracing specific bands' sounds back to their very roots. Love Baroness? Check out some classic Sabbath. Mastodon? Try Thin Lizzy. Like party metal? Stick some Van Halen down your tailpipe. Basically, I think the point I'm trying to get to is that awesome music is awesome music, and it being 'old' or 'new' is largely irrellevent. Sure, the oldies deserve the props for laying the all important groundwork, but what has been built upon them is entirely the newbies' doing. And remember, there is also really shitty music from all eras!

Peace out.

Top Ten Music DVDs...yeah, that's right.

So, seeing as how I just love making lists so much I decided I'd come up with another for your reading pleasure. Music DVDs seem to be something a lot of people treat as a 'one watch' kind of deal, and that spins me out a little. Sure, an average one may only be worth one viewing, but a really great music DVD can have as much re-play value as a favourite movie, or dare I say, even album. So, without further ado, the best ten music DVDs (in my humble opinion, at least)...

Slayer - 'Still Reigning'

I don't think I need to explain too much why this is awesome-it's Slayer, playing 'Reign In Blood' live. Sure, Slayer have awesome songs on all their albums, and some of those albums are entirely great in their own right, but you'd have to be a pretty finicky douch to not agree that 'RIB' is the definitive document of the band, and thrash metal as a whole. So what isn't to like about seeing them playing the whole thing live? Filmed only a year after reuniting with original drum-god Dave Lombardo, 'Still Reigning' is a perfect example of why this band still garners so much respect after so many years. The extras on the disc stand up to multiple viewings too, with bonus tracks from the main concert and a 'Slayer on Slayer' documentary that, while nowhere near as funny as the Slayer Fans doc on their 'War At The Warfield' DVD, is still a thoroughly entertaining watch. If you don't have it, fucking get it.


Killswitch Engage - 'Set This World Ablaze'

A proper value-for-money package, 'Set This World Ablaze' is a DVD of two halves. In the red corner, we have a full live set from Worcester, Massachusetts filmed at the peak of the 'End Of Heartache' tour cycle. For anyone (aka EVERYONE) who felt that KSE went off the boil following '...Heartache', this setlist is a metalcore wet-dream, with all the best songs (read: pretty much all of them) from 'Alive Or Just Breathing' and '..Heartache'. Debate all you want about who was the best KSE frontman, but Howard Jones fucking owns the crowd here, tackling both his own and Jesse Leach's songs with vim and vigour. Over in the blue corner, meanwhile, is towering, full length documentary 'From The Bedroom To The Basement', a no-holds barred journey through KSE's career, covering their initial inception through to '...Heartache's mainstream success and subsequent Grammy nomination. It's a funny, well put together doc that is endlessly charming and rewatchable, which isn't something that can be said about many of it's kind.

Sigur Ros - 'Heima'

A music documentary like no other, 'Heima' is as much a cinematic tribute to the vast and unique natural landscapes of Iceland as it is to the blissful music of Sigur Ros. The film follows the band on a homeland tour around tiny and unusual venues following the gigantic success of the band's 3rd full length record 'Takk...', and is a spectacle in all senses of the word. Featuring some of the most lush cinematography ever of Sigur Ros playing versions of their songs in locations ranging from open mountainside plains to disused chemical plants, it is an intimate portrait of a band who are renound for keeping the press at arms length, and as such it feels like an incredible privelege just to see it. The DVD extras feature scenes cut from the final movie, and an option to watch just the band's performances alone, which make almost as captivating viewing as the main feature, especially an explosive rendition of 'The Pop Song (Untitled #8)'. Fans of the band, or just keen film dorks wishing to see something beautiful need 'Heima' like they need lungs.

Botch - '061502'

Released approximately 6 years after the band's untimely demise, '061502' is the visual documentation of Botch's final ever live performance, and boy did these guys go out on a high. As manic and energized as you would expect from one of 'mathcore's pioneering acts, the show is a masterclass in putting all the sterile and safe metalcore bands that followed in their place. Acting as an overview of Botch's entire career, the setlist was clearly engineered by the band to be the ultimate fanboy wet dream, swaying from early cuts like 'Thank God For Worker Bees' and 'Oma' through tracks from 'We Are The Romans' and the swansong 'An Anthology Of Dead Ends', and even squeezing in their much loved mangling of The B52's 'Rock Lobster'. The extras are fairly light on the ground, but are worth anyone's time, especially the band's commentary on the show itself-hearing them rip into the bands that followed in their wake is a shameful but guilty pleasure for sure. Plus you get a bonus disc of the whole show's audio, so you can take the lunacy with you wherever you go! Until The Dillinger Escape Plan and Converge put out proper live DVDs that accurately capture their amazing shows, this remains the best noisecore DVD available.

Pelican - 'After The Ceiling Cracked'

It was a toss-up between this and Isis' 'Clearing The Eye' as to which post-metal stalwart got their dues in my list, but I went with Pelican because, though you could understandably argue that Isis are the more important band, for me Pelican write much more captivating songs and connect a little more on a human level. 'After The Ceiling Cracked' catches the band delivering a legendary performance at the Scala, London, taped in '05 but not released until a good 2 years later. I particularly love the show on this DVD as it captures Pelican at the hight of touring 'The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw', my favourite of their releases by a country mile, and as such they play tracks here that had been retired from their setlist by the time I caught them myself in '07, such as the mesmerizing 'Autumn Into Summer'. The atmosphere is thick and hazy throughout, and the crystalline sound-mix courtesy of Godflesh/Jesu's Justin Broadrick is a treat for the ears. Extras include footage from various shows across the band's career at that point, including an early performance of 'City Of Echoes'. The double disc set also includes a 3" CD of the 'Pink Mammoth' EP, which was previously only available on vinyl, making this an awesome and value-for-money package.

Beastie Boys - 'Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!'

Talk about an original concept for a concert film-In 04' the Beastie Boys handed out 50 camcorders to randomly selected members of the sell-out crowd at a Madison Square Garden homecoming show, with only one simple instruction-'Once the show begins, you do NOT turn the camera off. You can leave the arena, film whatever you like, but that camera must stay on until the very end'. What emerged from this is an entirely unique and completely awesome viewing experience. Intercut with lots (LOTS) of different angles of the Beastie's ripping it up you will see everything from people desperately trying to find the bathrooms to, I kid you not, Ben Stiller rapping along in the crowd. Just a bog-standard Beastie Boys show would have been awesome, but this is an ingenious way to experience the spectacle. I can't talk about this DVD without mentioning the accompanying short film, 'A Day In The Life Of Nathaniel Hornblower', a mock-doc following my comedy hero David Cross as the tiular character, going about his lederhosen-clad business around new york. It is amazingly funny and captures both Cross' and the Beasties' brands of left-field humour. It is almost worth buying the DVD for this alone, but it never overshadows it's parent feature.

Between The Buried And Me - 'Colors_Live'



















'Colors' was one of the most adventurous, mind-bending albums to come out of the metal scene in the last few years, and to imagine that said album could be accurately re-created in a live setting without the aid of about a zillion additional musicians and/or a heavy reliance on backing tracks seemed almost laughably absurd. And yet here it is, Between The Buried And Me delivering 'Colors' live in it's entirety, flowing from song to song exactly as on the record, not taking a moment out of it's 60+ minute running time for breath, other than Tommy Rogers' brief interruption in the intro to 'Foam Born' to declare "We are Between The Buried And Me..and this is 'Colors''. To witness such an astounding feat of musical dexterity and, hell, endurance, is to stare into a deep vortex of awesome. That the band finish up, take only a couple of minutes to regroup, then return to play a second set of fan-picked classics is almost unthinkable, and does bring one to question the likelyhood that sometime in the near future BTBAM will be outed as cybernetic beings from the future. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that Between The Buried And Me aren't the most visually enthralling band around, unless you like watching guys standing around shredding their instruments to pieces, of course. However, the display of sheer mind-bending musicianship here is so astonishing that you become enthralled regardless.

Slipknot - 'Disasterpieces'

Slipknot are a band that sit only just on the happy side of 'guilty pleasure' for me-a leftover from my youth that remains musically daring enough to stay in favour with my more 'educated' musical tastes. That said, there is nothing guilty about my inclusion of 'Disasterpieces' on this list, as simply put this is one of the best heavy metal shows ever recorded and pressed onto a shiny plastic disc. Filmed in London on the 'Iowa' tour, 'Disasterpieces' captures the 'Knot at the pinnacle of their career (at least in terms of popularity-04's 'Volume 3:The Subliminal Verses' being the unquestionable highlight of the band's discography) infront of a few thousand rabid fans, tearing shit right-the-fuck-up. At this point Slipknot's stage show was pure spectacle-from the hydraulic drum platforms to Joey Jordison's rotating/elevating drum riser, everything was designed to dazzle. The highlight of course isn't watching the stage production, but the band itself, and Slipknot are nothing short of savage. Playing everything you could want to hear from 'Slipknot' and 'Iowa', including big hitters like 'Spit It Out', 'My Plague', and relatively rare cuts like 'Scissors' and 'Eeyore'. A band and a DVD unlike any other, and not to be ignored by any metal fan, however 'above-it' you may think you are.

Mastodon - 'The Workshorse Chronicles'

Mastodon are pretty much my favourite band, so I'd have to be a big ol' douche to leave this off the list. Not that it doesn't completely deserve it's place here, as 'The Workshorse Chronicles' is an incredibly in depth look at Mastodon, both on and off-stage. The DVD features what may be one of the most comprehensive collections of live footage ever amassed, showcasing a live performance of every song (bar the 'elephant man' instrumentals) from every Mastodon release up to the time the DVD was compiled. Quality of footage and sound varies from track to track, but even so it is nice to see the progression from their early 5-piece days to the world tours for 'Leviathan'. Particular attention must be drawn to a singularly astonishing festival performance of 'Mother Puncher', my personal favourite live performance of, well, anything ever. The DVD also features a 45-minute 'history of Mastodon' documentary which, whilst being a little looser in tone and less comprehensive than the Killswitch Engage doc, is still well worth multiple viewings. Rounding out the package is a collection of all of the 'Don's videos up to that point, along with making of's for each. 'The Workshorse Chronicles' is a well-packaged, jam-packed DVD and worth anyone's time and money, go fucking get it, yeah?

Now, I try to remain easy as far as ordering goes with these lists, it's hard enough even picking ten of anything, let alone putting those ten into any kind of order. However, as wonderful as the 9 DVDs above are, there is one music DVD so awesome, so re-watchable, so abso-fucking-lutely sweet that it has to be singled out from the pack. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Every Time I Die - 'Shit Happens'

Let's face it, it couldn't have been anything else, could it? I will go on record as declaring that I have probably watched this DVD more times than I have listened to any one of ETID's albums, and I listen to Every Time I Die a fucking lot. What we have here one of the most awesome filmic tributes to partying, rock and roll, and being unflinchingly awesome ever created. There is no real structure, simply a shit-ton of tiny escapades compressed into 2 hours of fun. Though the band are the stars of the show here, it's worth giving music DVD auteur Doug Spagnenburg his due-this guy knows how to coax the funniest shit from this band, and his editing is masterful in wringing every last ounce of comedy from each scenario. 'Shit Happens' is the filmic equivalent of hanging out with your buddies, shotgunning lots of beers, and getting arrested for playing your Metallica records way too fuckin' loud. It also comes with some of the best DVD easter eggs ever, in the shape of 'At Home With Every Time I Die', a short film shot in '03 and originally a bonus DVD in it's own right, given away with limited copies of 'Hot Damn', and a so-sketchy-it's-hilarious Keith Buckley stand-up routine, where all borders between decency and taste become horribly blurred. It's kind of cheating, but I feel it's worth mentioning ETID's two other DVDs, 'The Dudes And Don'ts Of Making An Album' and 'Party Pooper', both of which are generous freebies with the band's last two albums, 'The Big Dirty' and 'New Junk Aesthetic'. Rather than just churning out run-of-the-mill makin-an-album documentaries, Every Time I Die and their trusty compatriot Doug Spagnenberg created what feel like follow on chapters to 'Shit Happens', both full of the same party-dudes attitude and carefree, effortless humour that ETID seem to exude as easily as they do bad-ass rock and roll. 'The Dudes...' is worth viewing just to see Andy Williams' herculean taco-eating feats. In short (which I know this hasn't been), Every Time I Die are the ultimate DVD band, pumping out entertaining viewing as consistantly as awesome albums, and in a perfect world their DVDs would be eligable for Oscars.


So, another list down. As with my 'albums of the decade' I feel like there should be some honourable mentions to DVDs that didn't quite make the cut, through no fault of their own other than beign not as fucking awesome as the ten above:

Unearth - 'Alive From The Apocalypse'
This sucker follows basically the same format as the Killswitch one-disc 1 has a fun and comprehensive documentary charting Unearth's rise to metalcore power, disc 2 has a live show from '08 and all the band's videos. Notable for featuiring ETID's Keith Buckley spluttering in confusion upon being told he was being interviewed about Unearth, not Underoath.

Converge - 'The Long Road Home'
An incredibly comprehensive archive of Converge's live shows from way back in '94, right up to '02 and the 'Jane Doe' tour cycle, and even includes 3 full live shows! Only missed the cut from the main list beciase almost all of the footage is terrible in both audio and visual quality (or as the band themselves warn at the beginning, 'very punk rock')

Cave In - 'Planets Of Old'
Technically just a bonus DVD with their new EP, this gets a nod because, hey, it's a fucking Cave In live DVD! A weird setlist that leans heavily on new, untested material, it still rocks to see tracks like 'Luminance', 'Moral Eclipse' and 'Big Riff' being played in the flesh. On a DVD. *cough*

As I Lay Dying - 'This Is Who We Are'
Again, another that follows the same format as the Killswitch disc, this sprawling effort covers 3 discs and has as much As I Lay Dying as you could ever need. Though they're hardly one of my favorite bands, they are a kick-ass live band and seem like cool guys, God-fixation nonwithstanding.

The Black Dahlia Murder - 'Nocturnal'
OK, so these guys are waaaaaay less funny than they think they are, but the tour documentary on this double disc set is still mostly enjoyable, and the live footage shreds all over the place.

Various - 'Sounds Of The Underground-Live At The Starland Ballroom'
The only reason this didn't make the main list is that I wanted to concentrate on individual bands' DVD output. However, being from the ever trustworthy Doug Spagnenberg, this is almost up there with 'Shit Happens' in the 'mixing awesome music with backstage hilarity' stakes, obviously due in no small part by ETID's ever-looming presence. Almost all of the bands are fucking awesome, and pretty much everyone comes across in a really awesome light, with the exception of From Autumn To Ashes, who are conspicuous in their apparent unwillingness to appear in any behind-the-scenes japery. Worth it for Jordan Buckley's Lamb Of God crowd-surf antics alone!


See you all next time I feel like listing some shit
DD x

Searching for a metal-themed Easter pun, failing.

This is going to be a short one, I'm at work and it's retardedly empty because every smart business in London is FUCKING CLOSED for the bank holiday. So with no customers to serve, I figured I'd take it upon myself to talk about a band I only discovered yesterday called Black Breath...














I mean, just fucking LOOK at these guys!? I wish I was in this goddamn band so hard my legs might fall off. They sound a whole helluva lot like Entombed, which is always a good way for a band to get my blood pumping, y'know, 'down there', they have a Kurt 'Master Of The Universe' Ballou-recorded album about to hit our shores in a week or two, and rip super hard. Make no mistake, THIS is the band you should be chonging beers to for the next six months

...With A Thousand Words To Say But One

It would be something of an exaggeration to suggest Darkest Hour are by any means an obscure band-they have been around for a decade-and-a-half in some form, released 6 albums, and done countless high-profile tours worldwide. However, I would argue that while not an unknown band, Darkest Hour are a largely underappreciated part of the modern melodic death/thrash scene. As one of the first American bands to fully embrace the Gothenburg melodic-death sound, DH were a good few years ahead of the rest of the pack, yet seemed to get caught-up-to and overtaken before they managed a solid foothold on the scene. Now there are many reasons you could attribute this to-Victory Records being balls at marketing non-emo bands, John Henry not being a particularly 'pretty' frontman, etc. My particular take, however, is simply this: Darkest Hour are way too fuckin' punk rock for most metal kids.

Example numero 1: Darkest Hour do not look much like a metal band. Sure, some (these days most) of them have long hair and tattoos, but fashionable these guys are not. They mostly resemble a bunch of scruffy dudes with varying degrees of beard-coverage, and that tends not to sit well with many of today's fashionista metalheads.

Example number 2: No singing. Ok, if you want to get picky, songs like 'Convalescence' and 'Demon(s)' have something approaching melodic singing in them, but we're not talking Howard Jones-style metal-opera here. Darkest hour keep it gritty and raw, whilst never falling back on cliched pig-squeals or death grunts.

Example number 3: Darkest Hour are Fucking Fast. Now, there are plenty of bands around these days with hyperspeed gravity blasting and magic-fingered swept arpeggios, but that doesn't count because I say so. Most of these tech-deathcore acts still can't resist grinding everything to a cock-blocking halt for a breakdown, and Darkest Hour country is chugga-slam free. More than anyone else I can think of, DH pick up momentum and stay at it, building thrash upon thrash into a thrashy thrash-house filled with thrash. Sure, they might pull back into a not-quite-thrash gallop, but only to give you a chance to pull your head from out of your ass, just so they can ram it back up there with more thrashy goodness.

I could continue, but I'm losing steam in trying to justify why Darkest Hour deserve more than they have recieved - they just fucking should, OK? At The Gates took 'em on tour, what more encouragement do you want?

p.s. Yes I am aware that this all seems a bit much considering I didn't even put them in my Top Ten Albums Of The Decade list, I swear 'Undoing Ruin' missed the cut by a fly's willy.

Sigur Ros Frontman in 'surprisingly worthwhile solo album' scandal!!!

Ok, if I'm being completely honest it's not all that surprising really. Sigur Ros' output throughout their decade+ career has been at least 'good', and mostly 'mind-alteringly wonderful', so that Jon Por Birgisson has crafted an engaging and very listenable record away from his bandmates isn't really groundbreaking news. I suppose my surprise comes more in the direction he's taken with the record, especially following 'Riceboy Sleeps', last year's drone/ambience heavy collaboration with partner Alex Somers. 'Go' is the kind of record a parallel-universe Postal Service might have made had they been brought up on an Icelandic farm-for every bowed guitar and reverb-soaked string swell there is a counterbalancing vocal glitch or skittering broken drumbeat. And rather than just being a showcase for Jonsi to prove he can do something other than 'haunting and etherial', the actual songs within 'Go' are of a very high standard indeed, leaving me with a much better taste in my mouth(ears?) than the last Sigur Ros album proper (not to discredit that record of course, wonderful as it is). I also understand that he is taking his show on the road, a prospect I was initially pretty sceptical about-what is he going to do to fill a headline show? It'd be something close to sacrelige to play Sigur Ros songs with other musicians, and the 'Riceboy Sleeps' material hardly seems fitting for a live setting. Plus, the tickets for the two London dates are going for the not-so-lovely price of £26 a pop, all factors leading me to believe that Jonsi is simply an incredibly self-important egotist that feels he can charge a fortune to longtime fans to see him play songs they don't know for 45 mins then bugger off. Then, I managed to catch a video on his website previewing what can be expected from the live show, and bloody hell, it looks like Jonsi is bringing something very special to the table. With the involvement of a British multimedia/art company, it looks like it's going to be an incredibly lavish theatre/gig hybrid involving big mechanical sets, lots of purpose-made animations and, if the video for first single 'Go Do' is an indicator, lots of flipping weird costumes. So, I now very much want to go and pay £26 pounds, thankyou very much. Maybe I shall see you there.