F O U R T H E Y E

I might not be Santa, but it's about this time of year that I start making a list. Not of naughty boys and girls, as fun as that sounds, but of the best albums of the year. My list isn't finalized yet, but here are some of the albums I'm considering:

New Bermuda - Deafheaven
Abyss - Chelsea Wolfe
Press Enter - Romain Collin
Infinite Dissolution - Locrian
The Dancers At the Edge of Time - The Greg Foat Group
The Direction of Last Things - Intronaut
To Pimp A Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar
Dormant Heart - Sylosis
Forgive Yourself - Publicist UK
M - Myrkur
Creeps - Indian Handcrafts
The Story of Sonny Boy Slim - Gary Clark Jr.
Cloak of Ash - Hope Drone

I know I picked up and listened to a lot of new music this year, but it looks like I only bought 10 albums actually released in 2015:

Other Lives – Rituals
Chelsea Wolfe – Abyss
Built to Spill – Untethered Moon
Low – Ones and Sixes
Puscifer – Money Shot
Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell
Failure – The Heart Is A Monster
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
Sunn O))) - Kannon
Bjork – Vulnicura

Two albums released in 2014 that I didn’t discover until 2015, which I think are great:
Into Orbit – Caverns
Juna – On Courage

I'm guess all forms of music apply..in no particular order

Ghostface Killah And Adrian Younge - Twelve Reasons To Die II
Gangrene (Oh-No & The Alchemist) - You Disgust Me
A-F-R-O - Tales From The Basement
Moss - Marching To The Sound Of My Own Drum
Vision Of Disorder - Razed To The Ground
Intronaut - The Direction Of Last Things
Ray West & Kool Keith - A Couple of Slices
Run the Jewels - Meow the Jewels
Scale the Summit - V
Chris Cornell - Higher Truth
Dom Pachino & Bronze Nazareth - War Poetry
Lamb of God - VII
Madchild - Silver Tongue Devil
Jedi Mind Tricks - The Thief and the Fallen
Faith No More - Sol Invictus

#1 Dodge and Burn - Dead Weather

Lyric writing (Loose the Right)
Guitar technique (Let Me Through)
Bass technique (Mile Markers)
Drum technique [/b]

Will be opening up the poll for the Fourtheye Readers Best of 2015 list soon. No Slipknot releases this year, so I have no idea who might be the favorite this time around! I'll go with Faith No More or Failure as the popular pick.

Here's an quite incomplete list of what I'll be shortlisting:

Cloud Rat - Qliphoth
Coliseum - Anxiety's Kiss
Cosmic Psychos - Cum the Raw Prawn
Cult Leader - Lightless Walk
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Destruction Unit - Negative Feedback Resistor
Drenge - Undertow
Elder - Lore
Failure - The Heart is a Monster
Faith No More - Sol Invictus
Fuck The Facts - Desire Will Rot
Fulgora - Strategem
Fuzz - II
Grenadiers - Summer
High On Fire - Luminiferous
High Tension - Bully
KEN Mode - Success
Kylesa - Exhausting Fire
Lightning Bolt - Fantasy Empire
Metz - II
Muse - Drones
Napalm Death - Apex Predator - Easy Meat
Slaves - Are You Satisfied?
Sylosis - Dormant Heart
Wand - Golem

I've still got plenty on my listening queue before I start finalising it though...

My 'guaranteed to make the list' list:

Failure
Chelsea Wolfe
Windhand
Drowning Horse
Cult Leader

The other 5 are yet to be determined

Muse brought out a new one? Well I'll be. Cant say Ive enjoyed an album of there's since Absolution.. worth my time or yeh nah?

And sadly, i am way too old man , get off my lawn these days to listen and enjoy enough new music to list a top 10. Saying that:

FNM - Sol Invictus had some good moments and they certainly didn't shame themselves with it but failed to live up to its predecessor's in my mind & i sure did enjoy the shit out of Puscifier - Money shot, but y'all are tripping if ya dont think The Machine - Offblast , didnt own 2015.



# Don't know how to embed and am on my phone. Bite me.

Busty McCracken wrote:Muse brought out a new one? Well I'll be. Cant say Ive enjoyed an album of there's since Absolution.. worth my time or yeh nah?

It's an interesting one - I don't think it's an album that will win over all that many who gave up on them since Black Holes, but I find it strangely catchy in ways I can't quite explain. I'm pretty sure it won't make my top 10, but it is an interesting album and probably worth a listen. The lyrics are mostly garbage though, so if you can't get past that then don't listen.

I keep hearing a Muse song on the radio and the lyrics are pretty ridiculous. Like Christian sci-fi novel ridiculous.

UndKeineZwEier wrote:Like Christian sci-fi novel ridiculous.

It's a pretty common theme in their lyrics, but I like the alien consipracy stuff - sure beats singing about unrequited love and dead parents. My problem with the lyrics on the last album was not so much what they were about, but how they were said.

UndKeineZwEier wrote:I keep hearing a Muse song on the radio and the lyrics are pretty ridiculous. Like Christian sci-fi novel ridiculous.

Muse is Radiohead after adding water.

Muse and Radiohead couldn't be more different to be honest. I've always found that an odd comparison, since they don't sound alike at all (except for the odd falsetto vocals) nor are Muse trying to emulate Radiohead in any meaningful way.

Best

Wolf Eyes - I Am A Problem Mind In Pieces
Bjork - Vulnicura
Gnaw Their Tongues / Dragged Into Sunlight - NV
Phillip Thomas - Circles And Landscapes
Ramleh - Circular Time
Consumer Electronics - Dollhouse Songs
Prurient - Frozen Niagra Falls
Carter Tutti Void - f(x)
Damien Dubrovnik - Vegas Fountain
Kreng - The Summoner
Blur - The Magic Whip
Panda Bear - Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper
Ethereal Shroud - They Became The Falling Ash
Loop - Array 1
Russell Haswell - As Sure As Night Follows Day
Jacek Sienkiewicz - Drifting
Zeikratzer - Saturation
Grunt - The Myth Of Blood
John Zorn - Simulacrum



Worst

Sunn O))) - Kannon

hellboy wrote:
Kylesa - Exhausting Fire
Lightning Bolt - Fantasy Empire
Napalm Death - Apex Predator - Easy Meat
Sylosis - Dormant Heart

..

Kylesa, Sylosis, Napalm Death...file under "most disappointing"

Lightning Bolt was ok...but production was awful

hellboy wrote:Muse and Radiohead couldn't be more different to be honest. I've always found that an odd comparison, since they don't sound alike at all (except for the odd falsetto vocals) nor are Muse trying to emulate Radiohead in any meaningful way.

Thom Yorke:

On Muse: “I draw the line at Muse, because they openly slag us off, as well as openly rip us off. And that’s like, ‘How fucking dare you?’ You know, there’s one thing to imitate and then to slag off the person you are imitating. That’s just not cool, that’s incredibly bad karma.”

Have you ever listened to either band lately? They sound nothing alike. That they both sounded like run of the mill British rock bands back in the late 90s is no longer really relevant.

On a related note:

[BBvideo 560,340][/BBvideo]

Calfium Jay wrote: Kylesa, Sylosis, Napalm Death...file under "most disappointing"

Lightning Bolt was ok...but production was awful

I wasn't really disappointed by any of those, but nor would I say any of those are locks for the top 10 either.

I can see the comparisons between Muse & Radiohead definitely on absolution but saying that i dug that album back in the day where as I always despised radiohead so in my mind they stand alone.. everyones gonna be influenced by someone else after all.

These discussions about other music we enjoy are really a treat, primarily because it's so varied.

We're all here because of Tool's music (I assume), yet the other music listed here reveals how different our tastes really are.

Fascinating, illuminating, and always educational. Thanks for sharing.

Battles - La Di Da Di
Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase.
Kamasi Washington - The Epic
L'Orange - Time? Astonishing!
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Lupe Fiasco - Tetsuo & Youth
Intronaut - The Direction of Last Things
Failure - The Heart is a Monster
Bjork - Vulnicura

Overall, good year. Here's a few of my favorite ones.

The Weeknd - Beauty Behind the Madness
Ghost - Meliora
Riverside - Love, Fear and the Time Machine
Jamie Woon - Making Time
Mjut - 9
Puscifer - Money Shot
Dawid Podsiadlo - Annoyance and Disappointment

1. New Bermuda – Deafheaven
2. Abyss – Chelsea Wolfe
3. Press Enter – Romain Collin
4. To Pimp A Butterfly – Kendrick Lamar
5. Infinite Dissolution – Locrian
6. The Direction of Last Things – Intronaut
7. Bottom of the Morning – Pinkish Black
8. Purple - Baroness
9. Creeps – Indian Handcrafts
10. The Story Of Sonny Boy Slim – Gary Clark Jr.

Ack! I forgot about Adeeeellllleeee!!!