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.