October 31 (Halloween) - Blood Swamp

Today is Halloween, and I want to celebrate it with one of the scariest tracks in my collection. It is from the fantastic collaboration between Sunn O))) and Japanese band Boris, Altar from 2006. It was actually released on Halloween in 2006, so it is exactly 10 years old today. It is not music for the faint of heart, but it is a rewarding listen. One year, when sitting out waiting for trick or treaters, this is the music that blasted out of my speakers. A smoke machine would have made a perfect companion, but the soundtrack was at least right... This track, Blood Swamp, also includes Kim Thayil of Soundgarden fame on guitar. I dare you to enjoy...

February 13 - Aghartha

Today's song will be the last "difficult" piece of music, at least for this go around. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and while the song I have chosen for that also can be somewhat difficult to listen to, that is for a very different reason. Anyway - I digress...

Today's song is another exercise in slowly developing and played music. The band is Sunn O))), a duo consisting of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, both on electric guitars, with Greg Anderson also playing the bass. In 2009, they released the album Monoliths and Dimension, and they were joined by a host of guest artists, including Earth's Dylan Carlson, and Hungarian singer Atilla Csihar, a singer who is most known for his work with Norwegian black metal pioneers Mayhem.

It is very easy to dismiss Sunn O)))s music as noise. However, in keeping with my definition of music as wanted sound, this is very much music. Having watched interviews with Stephen O'Malley, it is even clearer to me what his musical project is, as he really is exploring slow changes over time. That also means that many of Sunn O)))s compositions are long and droning (a drone is one note that grounds the music and lies at the heart of a composition), and Aghartha is no exception. Attila Chihar's vocals ore otherworldly, with elements of the more tradidionally Mongolian throat singing, where overtones and undertones create an otherworldly sound.

So my challenge for today is for you to sit back and listen to this piece. Really listen. For every single minute. Listen for the subtle changes - and hopefully find yourself as blown away as I am.

January 11 - Nobody To Blame (Best Albums of 2015)

It's taken a while... Although 11 days into the new year isn't really that long, I could have started earlier in 2015, but my #2 selection wasn't released until December 18... As usual, it is really hard to rank them individually, but I tried ranking my top 10. In reality, I am dead set on my favorite album being Chris Stapleton - and I think that #2-5 are better than #6-10, but I could easily change order within those groupings.

1. Chris Stapleton - Traveller
2. Baroness - Purple
3. Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls
4. Gavin Harrison - Cheating The Polygraph
5. Steven Wilson - Hand Cannot Erase
6. Motorpsycho - En Konsert for Folk Flest
7. Faith No More - Sol Invictus
8. Torche - Restarter
9. Sunn O))) - Kannon
10. Kylesa - Exhausting Fire

After the first 10, there are 15 additional recordings that really deserve to be mentioned - they are all albums I really liked over the course of the year. I have listed them alphabetically - but there are no individual preferences here:

Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color

Chris Cornell - Higher Truth

Clutch - Psychic Warfare

Echolyn - I Heard You Listening

Steve Earle & The Dukes - Terraplane
Elder - Lore

Elephant9 - Silver Mountain

Enslaved - In Times

Ghost BC - Meliora

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress

Robert Earl Keen - Happy Prisoner The Bluegrass Sessions

Otis Taylor - Hey Joe Opus Red Meat

Richard Thompson - Still

Steve Von Till - A Life Unto Itself

Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss

Since Chris Stapleton's Traveller reached the first place on my list, I really feel like I need to let him be represented again - and this is a very country country song, which he plays with in the lyrics. Here is Nobody To Blame.

January 6 - Minions

In my search for new music, which is a constant driving factor in my life, one of the key places in the last 10 years or so has been Vertigo Music, an independent music store on Division in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Herm, the owner, is extremely friendly and never one to shy away from offering suggestions based on what music you have identified that you like - or suggesting a chat with one of his staff members who might be more in tune with your specific interests than he might be. It was through Vertigo Music I discovered Isis, which in turn led to discovering Hydra Head records.

Actually, one of the things I really started discovering at Vertigo Music was that some independent labels have very distinctive artistic visions. This starts with the music, but often bleeds over into the style of the artwork as well. Relapse records is one of them, and Southern Lord is another. As a result, I started exploring labels a little bit more - and that brings me back to Hydra Head records. Hydra Head is run by Aaron Turner, who was one of the main figures in Isis - and if you look at their Wikipedia entry, you will see that they specialize in heavy metal, which really is far too broad for what they are looking at. I would add the term experimental to it - and really even that wouldn't do Hydra Head justice. The label shut down in 2012, but their roster ended up including quite  a few bands that I really like, such as Isis, Cave In, Pelican, Botch, Neurosis, Sunn O))), and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Once again, I start with one stone dropped in the ocean (Isis), and end up taken in very different directions.

One of the bands I found through Hydra Head is Torche. They are really heavy, usually pretty slow, but with a great sense of melody. They are often labeled a stoner or sludge metal band, but they don't necessarily agree with that themselves. Their sense of humor is also visible in some of their album titles, where I still think Meanderthal is my favorite (although Harmonicraft is good as well). Their album Restarter from 2015 was released on Relapse records (one of the labels mentioned above), and it was one of my early highlights of the year's releases. To get a good sense of what they sound like, I decided to share the one track I probably have listened the most to out of any songs released in 2015: Minions.