Mick's Töp 15 Albums of 2019

If the lack of our posts wasn't any indication, it's been one hell of a busy year. My shortcomings have mainly been due to never-ending travel, most of which was for weddings. I did manage to pump out a super fun interview about video game music, but that sapped most of the little energy I had to give. Belly-aching aside, just because we didn't put a ton of content this year didn't mean there wasn't a ton of great music to consume. It was a good sign to me that it was difficult to narrow down a list of the albums I enjoyed the most. Per usual, when it comes to promises for the new year ahead, we will do our damndest to write up what we can. But know that just because we're not writing doesn't mean we're not listening. You at least know you can be 100% guaranteed you'll get Best of 2020 lists.

So without further ado, my Top 15 Albums of 2019:

Durf's Töp 15 Albums of 2019

Another year screams toward its conclusion, forcing me to once again realize my New Year's Resolution of "write more for that blog you love doing!" has again fallen by the wayside.  My lack of activity here at the Töp is certainly disappointing to me, but given all the satisfaction and happiness 2019 has given me by way of fatherhood, marriage, finding a great job, and fully embracing the Durfette and I's new home in Idaho, it's hard for me to be too angry about it.

That said, it was an absolutely stacked, fantastic year for music (again).  Obviously, given the title of this post, I'm only getting in to fifteen albums, which is a nearly insignificant amount given the sheer volume of great shit that came out this year.  I'm not doing an EP or Splits list (again), which means I just have this tiny space to tell you about Elder's absolutely stunning The Gold and Silver Sessions, or the wonderful doom that both Un and Coltsblood brought to their split very early in the year.  I'm similarly not doing a Non-Metal list, which means you don't have to read what I'm sure would be a lot of words on Lana Del Ray's sublime Norman Fucking Rockwell!, which is probably my favorite album of the year, metal or otherwise.  Maybe next year.  What I do have are fifteen metal albums that have stuck with me through the year, albums that have managed to stand out above the noise and din of (again) another packed year.  Without further pretense:

Pelican - Nighttime Stories

Pelican was one of the first metal bands that I really got into.  Their instrumental post-metal was a pretty easy addition/transition from the post-hardcore bands like Thrice that I was listening to in high school, and their huge riffs and intense sonic landscapes were, ahem, instrumental in getting me into other types of metal as well.  2005's The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw is in my All-Time Top Ten, and each of their albums has had some kind of effect on me upon its release.  That said, 2007's City of Echoes is the last Pelican album I unequivocally love; 2009's What We All Come to Need and 2013's Forever Becoming certainly have incredible moments ("Ephemeral" and "The Creeper" from the former are easily two of the best songs the band has written).  So when word reached that the newest Pelican album, Nighttime Stories, would be released on June 7th, I was excited, but perhaps not as excited as I would have been a decade ago.  Was I just growing apart from one of my favorite bands, one of the bands who shaped my tastes in metal, performers of some of the best concerts I've ever attended?  Or has Pelican lost a step, losing whatever alchemy the band had in the first decade of the century and replacing it with something lesser?

The Great Old Ones - EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy

I've been hearing about EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy, the latest release from French black metal outfit The Great Old Ones, from other metal bloggers and fans for what seems like forever.  The hype around this album is real, and while I'd never heard of the band before catching an advance track for this album, I'm a sucker for hype when I know nothing about the band.  So I decided to check it out and see if the hype was justified, or just a bunch of noise.

Trevor Shelley de Brauw - Uptown

One of my favorite random categories of music is albums that take their name from and subsequently shape their sound and message around a place.  Panopticon's stellar Kentucky is a sterling example, blending black metal with the local flavor of bluegrass in addition to the strife encountered by the state's coal workers.  Though I've driven through, I haven't spent much time in Kentucky, and so my experiences and feelings around Kentucky are filtered through things I've read, seen, and heard about the state, including Kentucky.  I'm using the experiences of others to create my own idea of a place, to form my own associations with it; for all I know, it's all a lie, and my idea of Kentucky is completely false.  Trevor Shelley de Brauw's debut solo album Uptown is named after a Chicago neighborhood in which I've spent a fair bit of time, has no such issues.

We'll Do It Live Fridays: Pelican - "March to the Sea"

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Cold Blue Mountain - Old Blood

The metal blogosphere is much like the American political media, in the sense that buzz words are used to carry much of the weight and attract the most attention.  Where a Senatorial Candidate may tell the people that he's for "lower taxes" or "anti-gun control" to try and quickly give you a sense of his beliefs, metal bands rely on the increasingly hyper-specific sub-genres like "doom" or "sleepcore" (something I really read the other day).  While these words usually mean nothing when applied vapidly, when chosen carefully they can indeed give the voter/listener a pretty good idea of whether or not they want to proceed in checking out this politician/band.  For me, those words typically include "sludge," "post-rock," "doom," or "blackened," so when I saw three of the four attached to California's Cold Blue Mountain and their second album Old Blood, I decided that yes, this would potentially be someone I'd like to learn more about before voting.  Er... a band I would like to listen to.

Durf's Top 15 Albums of 2013

 

Hard to believe it's already December and time to look back on the past year, reflecting on the changes we've made, the adventures we've had, and most importantly, the albums we've listened to and really, really enjoyed.  Below are my Top 15 Albums of 2013; if you correctly guess which album is Number One before looking, I will mail you a cookie.  And don't forget to agree/disagree/tell me how full of shit I am in the comment section!

Pelican - Forever Becoming

It’s been four years since Pelican’s most recent full-length, 2009’s What We All Come to Need, and the band has made some changes since then. The most obvious change is new guitarist Dallas Thomas, who joined the band last year after founding guitarist Laurent Shroeder-Lebec stepped down. The more nuanced change occurred in the band’s music; 2012’s Attaraxia/Taraxis EP had a much more rock-oriented feel than the doomy atmospherics and crushing riffs of previous efforts by the band. With the emergence of other instrumental bands such as Animals as Leaders, Scale the Summit, and Russian Circles in recent years, many feared Pelican was in danger of becoming an also-ran instead of a leader in the music community.

Exclusive Interview - Trevor de Brauw (Pelican)

This past Friday, personal favorites and hometown band Pelican dropped by Lincoln Hall in Chicago to put their instrumental post-metal/sludge/post-apocalyptic tangocore on display for an enthusiastic crowd.  The band certainly didn't disappoint, ripping energetically through favorites like "Ephemeral," "The Creeper," "Embedded in the Moss," along with tracks from their newest EP Ataraxia/Taraxis, in front of a roaring crowd.  Before this hour of awesome, however, Mick and I were lucky enough to sit down with Trevor de Brauw, guitarist of Pelican, and talk about the band's plans, their recent tour experiences, and some of the joys of being an audiophile.  He was a really cool dude, and really great to chat with, so check out our interview, embedded below.

- Durf