Top Ten Albums of 2008

Sod the turkey, mince pies and unoriginal dramatic plotline on Eastenders - Christmas is all about top 10 lists, and this is the only one I bother doing. Enjoy.


10) FREEZEPOP - Future Future Future Perfect (Rykodisc)



When a band announce on their sleeve that "no real instruments were used in the making of this recording", you probably know what to expect. Synths clash with more synths clash with some very pleasant nonchalant vocals from Liz Enthusiasm(!). The likes of Erasure and Dubstar are obvious reference points as the more lively likes of Ninja of Love and Brainpower sit alongside the sublime likes of Swimming Pool. It's a bit too whimsical at times, but you won't ever get a headache.

Check out: Less Talk More Rokk

9) CULT OF LUNA - Eternal Kingdom (Earache)



Concept album warning! Still here? Well, as this album is based lyrically and sonically on a diary written by some murdering loon, then the tag applies. Although between you and me, this album is nothing new for CoL. Their enveloping and sprawling dischordant wall of noise is executed as finely as ever and is not for the faint of heart. Eternal Kingdom also seems them creeping back into ther darker territory they had moved away from on the last two albums, whilst retaining that sense of restraint they had began to take charge of. The result: something that may well create a loon out of the listener if caution is not ensued.

Check out: Eternal Kingdom

8) ALPHABEAT - This is Alphabeat (Copenhagen)



Proof positive that "Pop " is not a dirty word, Alphabeat offer up the kind of classic sunshine pop that seems to have been missing from our charts for some time. Quintessentially Scandinavian, the Danish sextet offer up one infectious harmony after another. If its not the disco-rock of Fantastic Six or Boyfriend, its the throbbing synths on Touch Me Touching You and Rubber Boots. Like all sugar-infected pop music, this is not to be overdone at any one time, but to be consumed regularly as part of a balanced music diet.

Check out: Boyfriend

7) HADOUKEN! - Music for an Accelerated Culture (Atlantic)



Whilst we should discourage any attempt to stick "nu" before an established genre tag in order to regard any new sound, "nu-rave" is pretty darn appropriate for these young Brits. Energy? Pah, these guys belch it out in their sleep. Rave beats clash with casio bleeps, grimy raps and buzzing guitars to concoct a record so utterly now that it should be first into any time capsule. What's most pleasing is not just the ability to throw everything and the kitchen sink in to good effect, it's that pretty much all tracks are classic pop songs with a defining hook and chorus. Which means we get the catchy likes of Declaration of War and Driving to Nowhere as well as the more pulsating likes of Liquid Lives. Ah yes, there's also THAT Atari siren that kicks off That Boy That Girl.

Check out: Game Over

6) BLEEDING THROUGH - Declaration (Trustkill)



Reigning in producer-supremo Devin Townsend was an inspired idea that the Orange County bruticians should have come to earlier. Previous album The Truth wasn't bad, but it was too raw most of the time. Declaration makes up some ground and serves to honour the wondrous marriage of gothic keyboards and straightforward hardcore metal.
It also proves that they're not one-trick ponies as the full-on likes of the title track and Seller's Market stand nicely alongside the romantic grandeur of There was a Flood and Sister Charlatan.

Check out: Seller's Market

5) METALLICA - Death Magentic (Vertigo)



Honestly, even if it had just one impressive solo, Death Magnetic would have been held in higher regard than the much-maligned St Anger. The more cynical may suggest that the abundance of "classic" 'tallica, solos and thrashy riffs on DM is both an attempt to regain lost fans and take advantage of metal's current resurgance. Whatever. The more devoted Metallifan knows classic 'tallica when they hear it, and this is it. They've done it before, so this won't make any "all-time" list, but this is the boys doing what they love because they can. You can bang that head again now.

4) OPETH - Watershed (Roadrunner)



Let's face it, it's highly unlikely that Opeth could ever put a foot wrong. They've made a steady career of melding prog and folk with the most extreme of metal, and it would be foolhardy to suggest that anyone else comes close to touching them. The Swedes pick up where last album Ghost Reveries finishes but decide to ramp up the heavyness when applicable. This is the heaviest they have sounded for a few albums, but in contrast, their acoustic and prog moments are moreso too. It's hard work, but like anything that requires effort, it reaps its required rewards.

Check out: Heir Apparent

3) CANCER BATS - Hail Destroyer (Hassle)



If debut effort Birthing The Giant was the unpredicted bomb dropped square in the middle of rock's conciousness, then Hail Destroyer is surely the delayed explosion. The Canadians' vicious blend of Black Flag-inspired harcore and the kind of southern sludge metal that Down are renowned for doesn't just slay on Hail..., it tears apart, mutilates and then fucks the corpse for good measure. If the title track and Harem of Scorpions are perfect examples of savage melody mixed with rock violence, then Sorceress and Pray for Darkness are examples of what the pit was made for. The bonus here is that The Bats know how to balance things out. Bastard's Waltz and Lucifer's Rocking Chair buck and groove in a tight spot and just reinforce the rage that surrounds it. Epic Hail.

Check out: Regret

2) LADYHAWKE - Ladyhawke (Modular)



Is great music a result of experiencing life to the full or can it be a result of being a complete fanboy/girl? Whilst we can't accuse her of forfeiting the former, Ladyhawke's Myspace page proves that she could well knock those numpties on "Eggheads" into touch in any pop music round and still have five minutes to write two great songs. The reference points from the last 30 years are frequently obvious but when the songs are this great, who cares? New Zealander Hawke, real name Pip, has conjured up forty-odd minutes of the best kind of Pop music - saccharine-free tracks that stick in your head that you have no desire to get rid of. No instrument sounds over-used or over-produced at any time and Pip's dreamy vocals are utterly heartmelting. This is proof that only great pop music, and not the lure of fame and fortune, can inspire more great pop music. Best debut of the year, no question.

Check out: Magic

1) LADYTRON - Velocifero (Nettwerk)



For those Mods who know that a Velocifero is a type of scooter and are wondering if Ladytron have ditched the Moogs and Korgs and gone all Quadraphenia on us, it should also be noted that it can mean "bringer of speed". Not a reference to the local dealer, but appropriate nonetheless as Velocifero is one enormous high. Ladytron have somehow created an album so astounding that you may think they've plugged in their synths to the astral plane itself. Velocifero sounds more massive than any synth-based album has any right to. Black Cat and Burning Up throb and thrust, Ghosts and The Lovers completely reanimate the corpse of Glam Rock, Kletva and Versus remind you that there are no limits to using any music from around the world while Deep Blue is, quite simply, perfection.

With Velocifero, Ladytron haven't so much raised the bar for themselves and their peers, they've shot it into the stratosphere and out of sight to pick up some offworld elements on the way. They may as welll invest in some scooters and naff off to Brighton for a while because it's unlikely to see them surpassing this any time soon.

Check out: Deep Blue

He's not a work of art or anything...

I'm once again indulging in a bit of nostalgic Britpop and came across this little bugger on last.fm. What's hugely worrying is that whilst I liked it, it was never a favourite song or band....

but I still remembered and mouthed pretty much every word as it was playing...



I want another shot at being 16 dammit. I'll do better this time, I swear.

Blame Davey

If you think about, or debate, a certain event too much, you will eventually arrive at several origin points, with the earliest being The Big Bang/Genesis etc as they were the first things ever and the debated subject eventually came from that, along with everything else. Of course, this is ludicrous, but it's always fascinating to take a major aspect of any part of Pop Culture and find its birth. The death of one scene, the emergence of a wide-eyed new talent. The possibilities are endless. Sometimes, though, its something thats not obvious and you would never think about.

So, the Myspace generation. How did it happen and why did it happen the way it did? Was its success based on the emergence of this "emo" scene, or was it something that was destined. And why, oh why do I always come back to this particular album as a turning point?



A Fire Inside (AFI) were another scraggy young punk rock band from 90s California, all ripped clothes and dodgy haircuts. Fair play to them, but nowt overly special barring a bit of energy and the odd cool track title (I Wanna Get a Mohawk (But Mom Won't Let Me Get One)). It was pretty much law that US punk bands had to like old goth punks The Misfits to some positive degree, even if it only meant to play the odd cover at Halloween. AFI, however, had some sort of moonlight-induced epiphany and decided to fully embrace their inner Danzig in 1999, which resulted in Black Sails in the Sunset complete with even weirder track names (Malleus Maleficarum, Clove Smoke Catharsis). It also got them noticed a bit more and they enjoyed it so much they never washed off the make-up again. They followed Black Sails... up in 2000 with The Art of Drowning

Not surprisingly, with any local band made good, the local rockers took notice. Orange County started to sell more black nail varnish and rock bands of other genres started dabbling in the dark (music) arts. It was around the turn of the millenium that the likes of Avenged Sevenfold, Bleeding Through and Eighteen Visions also started to make a name for themselves. Suddenly, local kids who had nothing but sunshine and ska had something a bit new and fresh to enjoy, even if the rest of the world had seen it before. The OC was black, black, BLACK, like the rivers of hell through an eternal cordial blend of evil and sin, etc. By the time AFI released the next album in early 2003, Sing the Sorrow, California had a quite a large dark-hearted community. This whole thing was no doubt exacerbated by the rest of the world spunking over Linkin Park et al. Those scensters have got to be ahead of the pack, haven't they?

Then in October 2003, somthing else happened. Some bloke called Tom decided to take the best bits of Friendster and Yahoo and came up with a new way for men to stalk hot girls. Unsurprisingly, this California-based "Myspace" malarkey seemed a great thing to grab ahold of first by these local be-gothed whippersnappers, seeing as they retained a bit of good old-fashioned hardcore elitism - "We were there first!"... Granted, everyone was going to jump in, and did, but by that time, the dark horde had made their mark with their skinny black clothing, sideswept haricuts and mirrored photography. They did get there first, kids, don't forget it!

This, of course, was dynamite for any other bands who were starting to get somwhere in 2004 as they could take full advantage. The first to this cake was My Chemical Romance, and funnily enough, they became huge. I'm not sure who decided that "emo" was the right term though. That's a discussion I never want to enter.

The rest really is history. Of course, I could be talking out my backside as I've never been to California. But I did read the rock mags on a regular basis, and I picked things up, and all of this just seems to fit:

AFI Go goth,
the local kids then go goth,
the local metal and hardcore bands go a bit goth,
they all create their own communtiy and look,
they showcase their community on some cool new platform,
the everyone else joins in....

Not that I'm saying that the biggest pop cultural phenonemnon in modern history owes AFI a few royalties, but for me, this is quite an obvious path. What I'd be keen to see is if folk have a different timeline figured.

Breath Deeper, Daydreamer...

If I take 24 years of listening to music, I would find it difficult to pinpoint many artists or songs that I liked at one point but now cannot stand. Coal Chamber is the only one that springs to mind, and maybe Limp Bizkit. Granted, that's always going to be the way with albums released. I'll either quickly go off a particular album or never like it in the first place while the rest of their catalogue remains prized. Korn is an example - I needed more cash for the Reading Festival grub fund - so their later albums were flogged. I didn't eat very much...

But overall, I've always dipped into that catalogue occasionally and got some pleasure from artists who have long passed me by in sound and scene. That casette copy of the London Boys' "Twelve Commandments of Dance" got some spins a while back, and in the midst of Stock, Aitken and Waterman's jizzlobbing on the late 80s charts, their dance pop sounds pretty good nearly 20 years on.

The same goes for those Britpop artists of the mid 90s. Though I never brought a great deal before Iron Maiden grabbed me, I've still kept most of it - although I'll come back to that later. But recently, I've been listening to a lot, Mainly through last.fm and anything I've downloaded on a whim. And I have to say, I'm getting a real kick out of it and I do think that some artists were as good as the music mags of the time suggested they were, even though they wouldn't admit to it now. And what has bought this nostalgia on? This:



Phonogram is not a comic book I ever expected ro read in my lifetime. Yes, there's plenty of subjects available, but Britpop was never on that list. Never would I have thought I would read about a central character who frequently extols his perceived virtues of Sunderland mob Kenickie.

The central idea of this book is that music is linked to a kind of magical plane, where scenes are as a result of Magical and God-like activity. The Goddess Britannia conjured up the 60s stuff before returning 30 years later. And now, she is being forcibly resurrected to help create another great British scene now with a load of crap artists. Kinda.

This is one of the most original things I've ever read...and also one of the most pretentious. But it needs to be, because you cannot think of that scene, or many others, without recalling that particular characteristic of music journalism. It needs to be told in an "up its arse" method to honour the subject matter. Which means like any great album, you'll need to read it several times. The Glossary itself is nearly worth the money alone. Thanks to all the references within the book, a back-pages reference guide is needed for those who struggle to remember some of the era's lesser players. And because of the story's present day settings, it ain't just Britpop that gets all the attention. Check the Glassary for Gillen and McKelvie's fantastically brutal entry for Razorlight.

Now, about those old records. I did chuck my Oasis CDs during a More-Metal-than-Thou point in my life. D'oh. But I have no problems with chucking out that Northern Uproar single...

Modern Times

It's not uncommon that I joke about my age and the fact I seem to be getting old quickly. Yeah, I know, it's everyone.

But seriously, I really cannot keep up with things these days. It seems that there's some new fancy gadget or software every day that everyone else knows about except me. And while I can keep up with various PC basics, with everthing else, I just feel like this poor bloke more often than not...

You won't see that on the Tellybox! - Mooo!

So, it's a quiet autumn evening. You're off to the Lamb and Flag for a couple of mild ales with Bob from down the road. It's a pleasantly mild evening so you detour across the field to enjoy the peace of it all.

You're discussing Leeds United not getting promoted this season when you walk over a hill and see a Zombie giving one to a cow.



What do you do?

Answers on a postcard.


Alternatively, you can check out Frank Cho's "Zombie King" here. He couldn't be bothered to continue the project but we'll let him off as he's Frank Cho.

Woo hoo!

Fair to say overall, it's been a shit week. Not the worst, but rubbish is the general over-riding frame of mind by the end.

Monday saw a fairly inocuous trip to watch the new Indy flick hampered by bad weather and awful train delays everywhere. This ended up in me appearing to be on the only train moving anywhere at one point and having to arrive at a terminal destination a good mile walk from the cinema in order to guarantee getting there. And I did. After getting drenched and missing the planned viewing. Still, I saw it and got to be social even if the day felt a bit wasted.

Work? poo off. Nothing went right. Amd while I ended up doing everything that NEEDED to be done, I certainly didn't get everything done that I wanted to get done thanks to various programs buggering up and other factors getting in the way. Mail merge, anyone? Fuck off!

Electricity died on wednesday night. OK, this provided us with an excuse to spend the evening down the pub to watch a shit England match and play pool, as well as meet some new folk. But generally, offically rubbish.

Thursday - rubbish.

Today, well, I'm glad the months over, but I left the bar feeling rubbish. Mainly because of mates offering advice and opinions to me on things that they believe they know about (and maybe they do, from THEIR perspective), but that help not a jot because I'm not actually them, and I, as me, cannot legitemately apply their advice. Different strokes and all that.

I'm learning what works for me and it is getting me somewhere. Couple that with the British way of getting on with it and I'm making more progress than people think I am, but because of an established perception of character...Funnily enough, it's not me that brings this subject up as it's not a problem, but I end up having to get defensive and sound like I'm making excuses. Gee, thanks.

I'm more confident in certain regards than I've ever been. So don't bloody well shoot me down because you believe I'm going the wrong way about it. Have some faith.

Roll on June.