Welcome back to another pulse-pounding installment of my Best Albums Of The Decade list! You pay for the whole blog, BUT YOU’LL ONLY NEED THE EDGE!!! This week’s entries mark a unique point in the list: an album most of you will have heard of! In an attempt to lessen the shock, I’ve also included two albums you almost assuredly haven’t heard of, and another two you may be peripherally aware of. Let’s ease into the accessible material, shall we?
#15. Daft Punk – Discovery
Daft Punk are one of those rare bands that everybody likes. Seriously, do you know anyone who abjectly hates Daft Punk? Even the most fringe metalhead or the most shallow pop fan hold some special place in their heart for the French duo. Discovery marked the band’s first major steps into the mainstream, and also comprised many of the band’s most iconic songs. The album is remembered most for its initial four songs (One More Time, Aerodynamic, Digital Love, Harder Better Faster Stronger), and for good reason; they constitute one of the greatest four-song arcs of any album ever released. “One More Time” contains perhaps the best use of Auto-Tune ever recorded, shaming modern pioneers like T-Pain. “Aerodynamic” contains the now-famous Van Halen-esque guitar solo that strikes the perfect mix between incredibly complex and incredibly danceable. “Digital Love” is one of the sexiest love songs ever written, with its smooth-as-hell digitally enhanced vocals and infectious melody. And the impact of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” needs no further words to explain. However, Discovery is far more than these four songs, as the album still contains addictive songs like “Face to Face” and “Crescendolls” to propel it in to the rare category of albums that, well, everybody needs to have.
“One More Time”
01 One More Time
“Digital Love”
03 Digital Love
#14. Battles – Mirrored
The first time you here “Atlas”, the first single from Battles’ debut album Mirrored, it’s kind of a freaky experience. The combination of the octave-shifted vocals and the rhythm-heavy music create the sensation of a chorus of Oompa Loompas driving an ice cream truck while robots have sex in the back seat (this is the best sentence I’ve ever written). By the second time you here it, you’re already furiously dancing along to its bizarre but catchy form. That’s kind of a metaphor for the entire album. It’s a strange album, created by a four-piece group that use loop pedals and electronic effects in the same way most people would use, i don’t know, water? It’s an album that has as much in common with indie as it does math-rock, post-rock and electronic music. Four of the album’s tracks stretch past the seven-minute mark, while another four come in under three minutes. And yet, above all other things, it’s a dance album, and it lives up to this title brilliantly. Musically, it’s no less impressive. The band’s two guitarists have the uncanny (ungodly, really) ability to play guitar and keyboards simultaneously, as on “Tij”, where occasionally you have six individual melody fragments all playing simultaneously. The band’s raw technicality is more subtle than with bands like Dream Theater, but no less impressive (watching Battles play live is like watching robots magically keep twenty-seven plates spinning at once, a sea of arms and legs all miraculously sprouting from four men). Oh, and did I mention how catchy it is?
“Atlas”
02 Atlas
“Rainbow”
06 Rainbow
#13. The Pax Cecilia - Blessed Are The Bonds
The Pax Cecilia are really my kind of band. Combining elements of progressive rock, metal, post-hardcore, post-rock, avant-garde, and folk into something terrifying and grand, the band’s album Blessed are the Bonds is available for FREE on the band’s website. Seriously, download it. DOWNLOAD IT RIGHT NOW. One of the most talented and unique bands currently together are offering you free music, so GET IT. While the whole “FREE” thing should be enough of a selling point for most, some of you may require extra convincing. Fine then. Blessed are the Bonds is essentially broken into two main movements, the first being stretching from the opener “The Tragedy” across four tracks, ending with “The Machine”. The whole movement functions as one massive song, with “The Tragedy” building up the atmosphere with pianos and violins, providing a sense of dread that builds up over the course of “The Tomb Song”, which hints at the heavier aspects of the album yet to come. Finally, the album explodes, with “The Progress” serving as a sort of crescendo for the movement, as distortion and screaming turn the song into something resembling progressive metal. “The Machine” concludes the madness admirably, providing a short final burst of energy before slowly receding into the ambience of “The Wasteland”, the figurative bridge between the two movements. And that’s just the first half of the album…
Seriously, DOWNLOAD THIS. IT’S FREE. There’s nothing to regret, and I guarantee, the album is absolutely worth every penny. Oh wait, that’s right, you don’t need any pennies because THIS ALBUM IS FREE. SERIOUSLY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT’S BETTER? I KNOW I’M RAMBLING ON AND ON ABOUT THIS, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY ARE YOU NOT DOWNLOADING THIS RIGHT NOW? JESUS MAN, IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO PAY FOR ONE ALBUM THIS YEAR, MAKE IT THIS ONE. Wait, that didn’t come out right…
“The Tomb Song”
02 The Tomb Song
“The Progress”03 The Progress
#12. The Mars Volta – De-loused In The Comatorium
The Mars Volta is one of those bands that can take a while to get into. I’ll talk more about this later in the list (spoilers!), but if you’re looking for a way to get into one of the finest progressive rock bands to ever grace this earth, De-loused in the Comatorium is probably the best way. It’s the band’s most user-friendly album to date (the fact that Rick Rubin produced this album is somewhat apparent), and also probably their most consistent, with none of the tremendous lows that spotted some of their later records. We also get two singles that actually qualify as singles (“Inertiatic ESP” and “Televators”), and some of the band’s most iconic songs/lyrics. To outsiders, lyrics like “Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed” might sound like gibberish, but in context with the story and the music, it’s both really clever wordplay and surprisingly catchy all in one instance. Also, it’s notable that, for better or worse, where De-loused primarily featured only about six musicians, their followup would have nearly thirty. Where in later albums the band’s trademark use of extraneous elements and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s often dissonant guitar style would threaten to overwhelm key melodic sequences, here the resulting songs are more cohesive and palatable, resulting in an album with more immediacy than anything else the band has produced.
“Inertiatic ESP”
02-the_mars_volta-Inertiatic ESP
“Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt”
10-the_mars_volta-take_the_veil_cerpin_taxt-esc
#11. maudlin of the Well - Bath
Really, not enough can be said about the genius of Toby Driver. Perhaps the defining avant-garde composer of this decade, Driver has been the key element in two critically acclaimed projects, maudlin of the Well and Kayo Dot. Where Kayo Dot dwelled more in the realm of the ethereal, maudlin of the Well could be considered an extension or subversion of progressive metal. Bath, the band’s 2001 release, is more or less half of a double album arc that included Leaving Your Body Map, released at the same time. Whereas Leaving Your Body Map was the more traditionally metal of the two, Bath took a more experimental approach, deconstrucing the individual components of progressive metal and arranging them in unbelievably precise ways to create unique, unconventionally structured songs. On paper, there are most of the moments you’d expect from a metal album: there’s some impressive soloing, occasionally some blast beats, and often screaming. Yet these elements are never put together in traditional fashions, and they only form about a third of the content of Bath. It’s an album that manages to be just as impressive during the moments of true heaviness (“They Aren’t All Beautiful”) as it is during moments of minimalism (“Geography” and “The Blue Ghost-Shedding Qliphoth”).
“Geography”
10 Geography
“They Aren’t All Beautiful”
02 They Aren’t All Beautiful
Other Stuff
Got the full 1000 points in Assassin’s Creed II, which is something I’ve never done for any game before. It’s pretty good is what I’m saying. I finally got back into Dragon Age after forsaking it for ACII, and man, that game is awesome. I finally got really invested and hooked into the story and inter-character relationships and discussions, and basically had to pry myself away from it to focus on things like food and personal hygiene.