Chronicles of a Metalhead: Year End Recap (Part 1 of 3)

Paydon Miller

Undergraduate/Political Science and Print Journalism

Well, it’s that time of year again, Flip Side readers. For those of you who remember my metal column last year (and the even fewer of you who read it), you will also remember I retired it in favor of writing about my second love: politics.

Well, I’ve decided to revive the “Chronicles of a Metalhead” name for three articles, so I can take a look back on the past year of metal and try to recap it in a total of 4,500 words.

This year’s metal releases served as the antithesis to 2008. 2008 saw a slew of new bands crop up and release albums with no expectations surrounding them and blow everyone away. This year marked the return of a handful of classic bands releasing new albums with varying results.

I don’t want to waste any more of my precious words on a labored introduction, so I’m going to jump right into it.

Debut Album of the Year: Fleshgod Apocalypse – Oracles

What do you get when members of Italian techdeath behemoths Hour of Penance decide to start a band that is influenced by classical composers like Bach, yet play music somehow heavier that HoP and toss in classical interludes? You get Fleshgod Apocalypse’s debut album Oracles.

This album borders on overwhelming at times. The flurries of guitar-wanking riffs and blasting drums create a near dumbfounding effect. However, the beauty of this album lies in the classical interludes, tossed in just when you begin to feel desensitized to the chaos, thus making the rest of the album feel heavier than concrete.

What separates Oracles apart from the rest of the faceless death metal albums released this year is their ability to craft genuinely compelling songs while maintaining a head-spinning level of technical proficiency. They have control of their atmosphere the entire time, and each note is there for a reason. That cannot be said of most bands playing this genre today.

Admittedly, this album will not be for everyone. As is the common problem with techdeath, the songs can bleed together a lot, though the aforementioned interludes help that considerably. However, if you’re into bands like Necrophagist, Severed Savior or their parent band Hour of Penance, give Fleshgod Apocalypse’s Oracles a listen.

Best songs: Infection of the White Throne, As Tyrants Fall

Song(s) of the Year: Kreator – “Warcurse”& “Destroy What Destroys You”

Kreator has been around for fucking ever. Yet somehow they keep consistently pumping out great German thrash year after year. Personally, Kreator has always appealed to me for three reasons: 1) Their ability to play incredibly fast while infusing melodic elements without losing the balls behind it. 2) Their dystopian, often bordering on anarchistic, lyrics are some of the angriest yet poetic lyrics anywhere in the genre. 3) Vocalist Mille Petrozza’s voice is savage, but discernible enough to understand every disenchanted syllable.

“Warcurse” and “Destroy What Destroys You” are the perfect examples of everything I mentioned. While I haven’t heard any interviews confirming this, I am fairly certain “Destroy” was written as an anarchist’s anthem. While I find anarchism to be an inherently flawed idea, there’s something invigorating about hearing a man scream about toppling a government violently.

“Warcurse” is even better, providing some of those poetic lyrics. Documenting a dystopian world crumbling into a military state, the song reaches its peak at the bridge with the shouted line “Violence is conquering the Earth!”

There are very few bands that could make 100 albums that sound identical and I would gladly listen to every one of them. Kreator is one of them. These songs are why.

Disappointment of the Year: Slayer – World Painted Blood

Those of you who know me also know that I have a borderline hero-worship of Tom Araya and Slayer in general. For nearly a year now I have been celebrating a personal weekly holiday: Slayer Friday. Slayer Friday consists of me spending all day on every Friday jamming Slayer in my headphones while I walk around campus or through my speakers at home. I think Seasons in the Abyss may be the perfect thrash album. Suffice to say, I fucking love Slayer.

They almost lost me with Christ Illusion, their album from two years ago that had their original drummer, Dave Lombardo, returning behind the set. Fortunately, a few gems like “Jihad” and “Skeleton Christ,” kept me coming back to the album and left me dubbing it a mild success.

But with World Painted Blood (what an absolutely god awful name, by the way), we see Slayer seemingly walk through the same paces as old albums, but this time there is a heavy-handed dumbness that inevitably comes from a Slayer album largely written by guitarist and all-around douchebag Kerry King. The production is paper thin and tends to needle your brain after a few songs. Actually, this may be an average album had it not been for the atrocious production.

The worst part for me, as a longtime death metal vocalist in a wide array of bands, is that vocalist Tom Araya officially sounds old. It’s not surprising, as Tom’s either in or near his fifties now. But if you listen to classic Slayer tracks like “Angel of Death” or “Blood Red” and hear the venom in Araya’s voice and compare it to World Painted Blood, you can’t help but wish Slayer had hung up their guitar after Christ Illusion.

In an extremely close second, comes Velvet Cacoon’s Atropine. After their album Genevieve got me into atmospheric black metal, this “metal” album is nothing but single note riffs dressed up in scary clothing. Also, they got caught stealing other people’s music and passing it off as their own so they could buy drugs a few years ago. Fuck those guys.

Best Non-metal Album of the Year: Frank Turner – Poetry of the Deed

I’ve gone a major folk-punk this year. For those unfamiliar, folk-punk is essentially acoustic folk music played as 1,000 miles per hour, usually with a harsher singer than one would expect with, say, a singer-songwriter. It’s a captivating genre than has some of my favorite new artists: Andrew Jackson Jihad, Ghost Mice, Captain Chaos, Paul Baribeau, Johnny Hobo & the Freight Trains, etc..

I first came across Frank Turner when my girlfriend and I went to see the Gaslight Anthem and Murder by Death play in the Twin Cities. This clever, well-spoken Englishman opened the show with one of the most powerful solo sets I’ve ever seen. Half an hour later, I told my girlfriend I had to check out his albums. I did the next day, and I was blown away.

Frank Turner, former singer of the post-punk band, Million Dead, plays a style of folk-punk that’s slightly heavier on the punk side. He has a jagged tinge to his voice, which gives him enough personality to set him apart from a lot of other singers in this genre.

Lyrically, he focuses a lot on the human condition and little nuances of daily life, like sitting in the park with your friend drinking beer and enjoying the weather. His lyrics are deceptively simply, often singing something so simple, it seems profound. For instance, in the standout track of the album “Try This At Home,” Frank sings “Because there’s no such thing as rock stars, there’s just people who play music / And some of them are just like us and some of them are dicks.”

If folk-punk seems like something that would be up your alley, this would be a great jumping off point. But believe me when I say, Frank Turner needs to be seen live to truly be appreciated.

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In the next issue, I’ll start with the top 10 metal albums of last year. To those of you who actually give a shit about what I’m writing, may whatever deity you call your own bless you. If you don’t, I understand.

And to my Editor in Chief, Sara Adams, let me apologize. She hated editing my “Chronicles of a Metalhead” last year and I can’t imagine she’s changed her mind this time. But as the old adage goes, you have to write about what you know, and this was a great year for metal.

See you all next issue!