The Roberson Record Roundup: Mike’s Top Five Albums of 2009

In the past ten months, 2009 has shown itself to be a pretty outstanding year for music. And while I know there’s still two months left to go in the year, if Pitchfork.com can do a list of the best albums of the decade in October, I can do a list of the best albums of the year in November.

I should take this moment to acknowledge that there are a few 2009 albums I haven’t yet heard that could’ve possibly made this list: Agorapocalypse by Agoraphobic Nosebleed, The Great Misdirect by Between the Buried and Me, Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City by Ghostface Killah, Desperate Living by HORSE the band, and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2 by Raekwon. I’ll also use this space to give out some honorable mentions to the records that didn’t quite crack the top five: Crack the Skye by Mastodon, Blackout 2 by Method Man & Redman, The Sound The Speed The Light by Mission of Burma, Coaster by NOFX, and Common Existence by Thursday.

5. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective’s unique blend of jangly acoustic guitars and thundering, bass-heavy electronic beats has made them a real standout act in the post-2000 indie music scene. On this album, though, they’ve really outdone themselves. Merriweather Post Pavilion is one of those wonderful few albums that manages to be the most accessible effort by the band to date without sacrificing any of their artistic integrity. The throat-shredding screams and howls of albums like Feels and Strawberry Jam have been replaced with elegant, Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies. There’s still some of the band’s past brand of psychadelia on the introductory drone “In the Flowers” and the bizarrely catchy “Lion in a Coma”, but on tracks like the bouncy lead single “My Girls” and the epic ready-made for the rave set finish “Brothersport,” you can hear the sound of a band that’s found a whole new sonic territory to play around in. Animal Collective has revitalized themselves with this one, and potentially opened themselves up to a whole new audience.

4. DOOM – Born Like This

On his landmark 2004 Madvillain project with DJ Madlib, MF Doom reminded us to “Just remember all caps when you spell the man name.” Apparently, he took his own advice, because the mysterious rapper has dropped the ‘MF’ from his name in favor of the simple DOOM (this being, by my count, the seventh name change he’s undergone in his career). From the beginning of Born Like This’ lead track, “Gazillion Ear”, though, fans can be sure that this is the same old Doom as before, dropping gravelly-voiced, stream-of-consciousness references to Ernest Goes to Camp and the Large Hadron Collider in the same breath. Breaking away from his past two albums which featured production by Madlib and Dangermouse, respectively, DOOM does most of the beats here himself (although there are a few by Madlib and the late great J Dilla), and shows that he’s just as much of a force to be reckoned with in the studio as he is on the mic. And, in keeping with past albums, DOOM gives some of his best beats to the guest artists. Raekwon in particular walks away with one of the best tracks on the album in “Yessir”, a breakneck two-minute solo spot featuring one of the most hypnotically intense beats DOOM’s ever written. And then there’s “Cellz”, the stark, heavy centerpiece of the album, featuring probably the last guest spot I ever expected to hear on a hip-hop album: a two-minute vocal sample of deceased California beat poet Charles Bukowski. After four long years of waiting, hip-hop’s modernist master is back, and he’s put out one of the standout albums of his career.

3. The Thermals – Now We Can See

“I only felt sane when I was afraid,” shouts singer Hutch Harris on Portland, Oregon punk rockers The Thermals' fourth album, Now We Can See. When he was afraid was probably on their last album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine, their biblically terrifying 2006 indictment of the Bush presidency (still my contender for punk rock album of the decade). Now We Can See may lack the sheer vitriol of that album, but it still features all the complex lyricism and catchy guitar hooks that Thermals fans have come to expect. They might be taken aback at first, though: this is probably the most laid back, radio-friendly album the band has yet recorded. Upon further listens though, new complexities open up both musically and thematically, such as the album’s ever-present lyrical themes of death and the afterlife (evidenced in the triptych of songs “When I Died,” “When We Were Alive,” and “When I Was Afraid”) and the new types of songwriting and production the band explores (“At The Bottom of the Sea” sounds unlike anything they’ve recorded prior). This is the definition of an album that rewards upon repeat listens, and with songs as catchy as the sing-a-long title track, repeat listens are absolutely guaranteed.

2. Converge – Axe to Fall

The most impressive thing about local hardcore band Converge is their remarkable consistency. Since their debut Petitioning the Empty Sky in 1998, these guys have yet to release an album that was less than terrific, and even if that first record was also their last, they’d probably still be legends within their genre. It should go without saying then that their new album Axe to Fall is just as terrific as anything they’ve put out in the past ten years and well worth the four year wait from 2005’s No Heroes. The new twist here is that the album features a veritable who’s-who of notable metal and hardcore musicians as guest artists, including members of Hatebreed, 108, Cave In, Neurosis, and Genghis Tron, among others. There’s more collaboration within the band as well, with guitarist Kurt Ballou showing off his impressive vocals in “Worms Will Feed/Rats Will Feast,” maybe the best slow/heavy song the band has written to date. The overall effect is that this is probably the most metal-sounding album Converge has ever recorded. Almost every song features a lightspeed guitar solo, blindingly fast double-bass drums, or both. And, as always, Converge are masters of pacing within the album format, kicking it into high gear at the beginning with the headbanging trio of “Dark Horse,” “Reap What You Sow,” and “Axe to Fall” before bringing it back down at the end with the shockingly slow, soft collaborative jam pieces “Cruel Bloom” and “Wretched World.” Converge has definitely still got it, and they remain standouts in both the hardcore and metal scenes.

1. Doomriders – Darkness Come Alive

As a massive Converge fan, I was convinced from the beginning of the year that their new album would be the best of the year. What I couldn’t count on was being blindsided by a Converge side-project. Converge bassist Nate Newton takes on guitar and lead vocals for Doomriders’ second album, Darkness Come Alive. There’s no sophomore slump here. Instead, the leap in musicality from their first album, Black Thunder, is a musical evolution comparable to the jump Metallica made between Kill ‘Em All and Ride the Lightning. Tracks like “Heavy Lies the Crown” and “Come Alive” are the kind of songs that truly deserve being called “anthemic,” with utterly metal guitar harmonies and vocals delivered in Newton’s best Glenn Danzig howl. Plus, there are still tracks that call back to the band’s hardcore background, such as the punishing two-minute long “Knife Wound” or the fantastic closing track “Rotter.” If they can get out from under Converge’s shadow – and they deserve to – Doomriders are poised to become the Misfits or even the Iron Maiden of this generation.

Hardcore on the Dance Floor

Finally, for all to see, here's my long overdue review of hardcore fest:

The weekend of September 20th in Boston marked the first annual Great American Hardcore Fest, sponsored by Mass Live Events. The event, a three day festival featuring hardcore punk bands from Boston and across the nation, culminated on Sunday at Revere’s Club Lido, located just next to the Wonderland T-stop on the Blue line. After waiting in line for close to two hours, the young crowd of patrons was treated to a thorough search for weapons, as well as having wallet chains and water bottles confiscated. The Club Lido staff, it would seem, was on edge.

If Club Lido doesn’t exactly seem like a hardcore venue, I suspect that it isn’t. It’s more of a nightclub style venue (according to their website, they specialize in “international music concerts and mixed martial arts events”), but dance floors can easily be converted into mosh pits; and the dual stages served the event very well, cutting out the between-band setup time completely. Once one band was finished, the next would start right up, resulting in either an orderly migration or a full-speed mass exodus, depending on the band. The bar area was an elevated platform next to the main stage, and the under-21 crowd was strictly forbidden from even ascending the stairs. Some of them, the ‘straight-edge’ anti-drug and alcohol set, wore the Xs on their hands as a badge of honor, while to others they were a nuisance preventing them from enjoying the four dollar Pabst Blue Ribbons.

The dual headliners for the night were the influential Boston quartet Converge and Cleveland metal-infused hardcore pioneers Integrity. A nasty chest cold and a need to be up early in the morning prevented me from catching Integrity’s set (although, against my better judgement, it didn't prevent me from indulging in some of those 4 dollar PBRs), but I was determined not to miss Converge, whose furiously intense live shows have become the stuff of legend.

Converge opened up with ‘Concubine,’ the blindingly fast lead track off their seminal 2001 release Jane Doe. At the outset, this looked to be another standout live performance. The next song was ‘Dark Horse,’ the recently released debut track off their forthcoming album Axe to Fall, due out October 20th on Epitaph Records. It was about here that things started to go awry. Halfway through the song, the band appeared to lose power in one or more of their amplifiers, resulting in an awkward pause and leaving the song unfinished before its bombastically loud outro. Converge’s live performances rely heavily on audience participation and interaction, but after this snafu, the audience seemed to lose their enthusiasm. Apart from two or three animated audience members (one of whom was my friend Dan, who got a tooth broken in half during Guns Up!'s set - at least he snagged a pack of cigarettes off the floor), the mosh pit area was a ghost town. It didn’t help that security at Club Lido seemed unusually strict (I was pulled aside and reprimanded twice by security simply for holding my arms out to block people from charging into me - okay, I might've shoved back a few times, but come on).

Converge went on to play another new song, the hyperspeed title track ‘Axe to Fall.’ This one got the crowd going a bit more, but it was still a bit lackluster compared to previous shows. A trio of songs from their 2006 effort No Heroes followed (the three short blasts of noise ‘Vengeance,’ ‘Heartache,’ and ‘Hellbound’), as well as another new song that I didn’t catch the title of, a slow, crunchy number similar to past songs such as ‘You Fail Me’ and ‘Hell To Pay.’ After this, frontman Jacob Bannon began to inquire as to how much time was left in their set, and finding that it wasn’t a lot, they closed out with ‘Eagles Become Vultures’ off their 2004 Epitaph Records debut You Fail Me. This last song was the most energetic of the night, inspiring audience members to jump at the mic screaming the chorus of "Cashed in, crashed and burned," but it was too little, too late. Live favorites such as ‘The Saddest Day,’ ‘Conduit,’ and ‘Locust Reign’ were all conspicuously absent, and the set was hamstrung by the lackadaisical crowd, technical difficulties, and lack of any of the band’s pre-2000 material. It wasn’t a terrible set, but from previous shows I’ve attended, I know that Converge is capable of so much more.

The good news in all of this is that the sets leading up to Converge were, by and large, fantastic. Texas natives Powertrip were an early highlight, playing a high energy blend of 1980s-style thrash and punk rock that would’ve felt at home on a Suicidal Tendencies record. The Mongoloids from New Jersey took the stage at four p.m. with a wonderfully sloppy set that inspired the biggest mosh pit of the day thus far, and their singer was the first in the lineup to jump off the stage and take to the audience, and the California collective Trash Talk reinforced their reputation for out of control audience melees with their seven p.m. set of spastic hardcore.

The two biggest highlights of the night, however, were a couple of Massachusetts locals. Colin of Arabia from Brockton put on a vastly entertaining show, wherein burly, bearded singer Colin Campbell climbed atop amplifiers and P.A. monitors, dragged audience members to the stage, and declared the show “by far the best festival we’ve played this year.” Colin really knows how to get a crowd going, asking between songs if anyone in the audience had anything they wanted to say, and, during the song ‘Science of Violence,’ screaming the wonderful non-sequitur, “Ted Kennedy is fucking dead!”

Shortly thereafter, The Carrier took the stage with their brutally loud, emotionally intense, and entirely unique brand of hardcore. The crowd surged back and forth as if possessed, a windmilling fury of arms and legs, but vocalist Anthony Traniello appeared entirely in control throughout the set. When they launched into the fan favorite ‘Alcatraz,’ it was the most exhilarating moment in a day filled with exhilarating moments.

Overall then, despite whatever mild issues I opened with, I’d consider the Great American Hardcore Fest a resounding success. I’m still not sure Club Lido is the ideal venue for such an event, but venues of its size willing to host hardcore festivals are few and far between. I for one hope that this event becomes an annual tradition from here on out.

Coming Soon in Music: Reviews of new albums by DOOM, Doomriders, and Mission of Burma - a whole lot of Doomin' goin' on.

(Colin of Arabia image obtained via http://www.returntothepit.com)

First Impressions on Hardcore Fest...

MuYesterday, I attended the third and final day of the Great American Hardcore Festival in Revere, Massachusetts. While I've been suffering from a particularly nasty chest cold for the past three days, I'll do my best to remain lucid and make a few quick observations:

-Converge's set was surprisingly disappointing. There wasn't a lot of crowd movement or interaction, a power outage cut short at least one of their songs, and the set list was geared heavily towards new material.

-The Carrier was great as always, and other great sets included Guns Up!, Trash Talk, Colin of Arabia, and Powertrip, the last of which I had never heard of.

-Club Lido was... an interesting venue, to say the least. I'm not sure its the best for hardcore shows, but it is a great general festival space.

I'll have a full review with much more detail posted this Wednesday.

-Michael James Roberson