Cut Out Bin Conscious ch.5

 ch.1

ch. 2

 ch.3

 

ch. 4

HELLCHILD – Circulating Contradiction

This is one of those used finds where you get a combined feeling of elation and rage. Elation because HOLY SHIT A HELLCHILD CD and rage because WHAT KIND OF SICK ASSHOLE GIVES UP A HELLCHILD CD. Circulating Contradiction indeed. Hellchild is pretty much the perfect Death/Grind band. Their split w/ Multiplex is fucking beastly. How come no one has reissued Multiplex’s stuff? Is because they’re bad-ass almost-murderers like Sakevi from GISM? I’m gonna pretend they are. This production kills everything now. I can’t stand the way most metal/hardcore records sound these days. Converge has made a whole generation bands equate volume with heaviness and it’s so weak. Stop getting Kurt Ballou to record/mix everything. I dig some of the bands he’s produced (that last Secret album was really cool), but that shapeless “mix everything as loud as possible until it sounds like a crate of seagulls in a paint mixer” production is tit-failure.  Where’s the weight? Where’s the non-manufactured causticness?  And that’s your “Old Man Yells at a Cloud” moment for today. Fuck, this band is brilliant.  Unique, venomous, violent, and HEAVY. Every underground metal band should strive for this.

Favorite Tracks: “Clockwork Toy”, “Walking Barefoot”, “For the Vanishing”, “To Find the Unknown”… plus everything before those tracks and everything after those tracks.

HENRY COW – Legend

I know fuck-all about Henry Cow, but a lot of people whose musical opinions I value mention them once and a while, so I figured why not? Seems up one of my alleys. I dig Beefheart, Fifty Foot Hose… but again I’m no where near as well versed in the art-rock genre as others. The most releases I have from prog rock artists from that era is King Crimson, but they’re pretty obvious. A lot more jazzy than I expected, but it’s that skronky nightmare jazz that never stops being cool. Now we got some blissful flying-toaster-screen-saver dream rock. I had a dream last night that I was walking past a biker bar, and there was a toddler somewhere saying “Michael McDonald!” over and over again. This was after I slow-danced with a friendly doberman. Who needs acid when you you can just drink Slim-Fast before bedtime? Yeah.. I drink Slim Fast? Wanna fight about it? You’ll probably win, because I’ve lost so much weight drinking Slim-fast. Actually it’s not Slim-Fast, it’s the Target Market Pantry Weight Loss Shake. “Slim-Fakes” I call them. I got really fat about 2 years ago. With Lee passing away, not being in a relationship for 2 years (going on 4), only getting a part-time position instead of a full-time position, writing going nowhere, and other nonsense, I attempted to eat the “fuck this” away. If you watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you remember when Mac got fat that one season (“I’m cultivating mass”). I wasn’t too far off from that. Hamburgers were consumed almost everyday… sometimes twice in one day. Pizza… donuts…  One time I had 2 double whoppers for lunch. Another time I ate an entire Little Ceaser’s pizza in one sitting. A light lunch would be 3 hot dogs instead of 4. then at night I would eat an entire box of Wheat Thins, half a sleeve of cookies, a skull top filled with Neapolitan ice cream.. you get the idea. Never had a drinking problem… I don’t smoke… never made a habit out of drugs… but if you put a triple baconator in front of me I’ll mouth-rape that shit, screaming “WHERE FRIES NOMNOMNOM” as I chew and bathe my bovine gullet in milkshakes. I’m fat.

Favorite Tracks: “Nirvana for Mice”, “Teenbeat”, “Nine Funerals of the Citizen King”, “Bellycan”

Cut Out Bin Conscious ch. 4

 ch.1

ch. 2

 ch.3

THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves

LPD is one of those bands I’ve always been intimidated by, mostly due to the sheer volume of their work, and the absurd pretensions of anyone I’ve ever encountered who was more well versed in their discography than I. “ohh… you’ve only heard thaaaat album…. Pffff… it’s okaaaay I guess”. The band is pretty fucking boss, but seriously, they have like 85 albums. I’m supposed to know the ins and outs of all of them?  I’ll just snag what pops up in used bins. Hasn’t failed me yet. I only have Any Day Now and the Golden Age. And now I have this one. This is my favorite of the 3 I have. 3 out of 85 ain’t bad, right? I’m an experimental music poser… sorry. Trying to catch up as best I can (I’ll be reviewing a Henry Cow CD in a later chapter… a group I only know by NAME. *gasps and faints into a crate of Sun City Girls tapes* **gasps and faints into a boxfort of someone much more obscure than Sun City Girls reel-to-reels**). Also later will be Univers Zero’s Uzed. I started getting into proggy bands my junior/senior years of college, but lost track/interest because again, the volume of each artists work was so overwhelming, and it’s not like I got a whole lot of money and space to spare… and don’t tell me “well justh download it then”. I don’t like having entire libraries of music on my computer, detest I-Pods/MP3 players, and if I burn them to CDRs that’s just more stuff taking up space. I’m not much of a completist I guess… I’d rather just have the best of a few choice groups rather than every piece of music from every band in a given genre.     

Favorite tracks: “No Matter What You Do”, “Stigmata (part 4)”, “the Made Man’s Manifesto”, “a Silver Thread”

BRUTAL TRUTH – Goodbye, Cruel World!

…well almost. Missed out on this when it was first released because I have sort of a problem with live metal albums. I broke the rule for Rorschach, because I’m a fanboy for Rorschach and at the time all they had readily available was the Autopsy cd. But I’m also a fanboy for Brutal Truth, so I’m glad I found this. I love everything this band has ever done. I think the first thing I ever got was Kill Trend Suicide @ Utopia. Bought the t-shirt for that album on the same day. Also on that day I picked up Anal Cunt’s Morbid Florist and Soilent Green’s String of Lies. Relapse Records and Utopia in Hicksville in the late 90s was quite a pairing for my teenaged brain. While pre-juggalos in tent-pants were trying to convince me of the “extreme heaviness” of Lords of Acid and Coal Chamber, I was waist deep in Neurosis and Blood Duster. Probably the only time in my life I’ve truly felt better than anyone. They think they’re changed because they washed out the hair dye and found pants shaped for legs, but they were boring assholes then, and they’re boring assholes now…. Just swap out Marilyn Manson for Sean Hannity. Alright alright… enough of that. Again as a rule, I usually hate live albums from metal bands… but this one fucking destroys. Everything is loud and clear, but doesn’t sound like a studio album with crowd noise piped in as most live albums. I know a lot of people hate on Hoak’s drumming, but I always loved what he brought to the band; unpredictability. Yeah he doesn’t “hit hard”, but he has a great feel for the chaos of the music, and plays to that perfectly. When Need to Control hit, BT when from being a Napalm Death sound alike to the grindcore version of a Touch-and-Go Records fuck-you rock band, which is so much more interesting to me than yet another alliteration of Scum or Horrified. Great taste in cover songs too (Germs, SOB,YDI, Boredoms). Always loved Kevin Sharp’s vocals, too. One of those guys who really made me want to be a vocalist. People give them crap about their live abilities, too… but even when they aren’t “on” I still enjoy them because… well… it’s them.  so few bands have that kind of unpredictability anymore in the live or recorded setting, not just where it sounds like it’s gonna fall apart at any minute, but you know the possibility is there because you’ve experienced it falling apart before. That kind of stress makes for a deadlier experience all around ie perfect for grindcore. I’m very happy to have BT back. They continue to inspire. I’m gonna stop writing now, cause this is a double album and if I write for the entirety of the duration I’ll have a fucking term paper here.  

Favorite tracks: disc 1: “Choice of a New Generation”, “Jemenez Cricket”, “Kill Trend Suicide”, “Zodiac (Melvins)”

Disc 2:  “Fucktoy”, “Boredoms Cover #2”, “Zombie”, “Black Door Mine”

Cut Out Bin Conscious ch. 3

 ch.1

ch. 2

THOUGHT INDUSTRY – Mods Carve the Pig: Assassins, Toads, and God’s Flesh

The term “ahead of its time” was conceived with this record in mind. Everyone from DEP to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum pretty much owes their existence to the first 2 Thought Industry records. This is the 2^nd one and holy shit is it all over the place in the most deliberate of ways. So fucking evil and demented… like a more metal Disco Volante, but this predates that by about 2 years. There’s a great book called Mean Deviation (Jeff Wagner, 2011) that covers the history of Progressive Metal. I mentioned this briefly in the God Machine write-up in ch. 1, but it’s a shame that Progressive Metal equates to Dream Theater/Fates Warning clones for so many people, and that they miss out on really cool, interesting bands like Thought Industry, Disharmonic Orchestra, Maudlin of the Well, Hellwitch, and so many others. Mind Over Four was kinda dopey, though… and Thought Industry did cock-out after this album. I guess I understand… they didn’t really take off, and “alternative” music became the rage (against the machine durhurhur). “Himmler cop sips raisin rum” – from “Smirk the Godlbender”. Love the lyrics on these first two TI albums. It’s like what would happen if Captain Beefheart deconstructed a pile of Bay Area Thrash albums. “Boil” has what those pre-Aenima Tool albums strived for. And no, I’m not gonna be one of those jerk-offs who pretends he’s not a Tool fan. I spent age 16-20 being one of those clithoods, and it was a miserable time indeed. A Perfect Circle and Puscifer can fuck off, if only because they distract from more Tool albums. I think what set TI back was not having the foresight to stay the course (so to speak) and keep getting weirder and heavier with each release. But I guess everyone can’t be Naked City…. Especially every band that tries to be Naked City.

Favorite Tracks: “Daterape Cookbook”, “Boil”, “Republicans in Love”, “To Build a Better Bulldozer”

BAUHAUS – Burning From the Inside

Yeah yeah point and laugh at the goth kid. Your party violence 7” is sooo much cooler than me. *mouthfart*. When you get past the heroin-chic emotionally stunted cat ladyisms of the fan base, you find that most of the early goth stuff (Bauhaus, Christian Death, Sex Gang Children, the Cure on their Pornography album) is some the most transgressively literary, aesthetically deranged music ever conceived. Before vampiric romance and self-conscious insouciance took over the genre, albums like In the Flat Field and Only Theatre of Pain wallowed in murderous surrealism, rib-caving self hatred, and a claustrophobic misanthropy that would put almost any modern “doom” band to shame. Bauhaus’ In the Flat Field is one of my favorite albums ever. It was a downhill slide after that; Mask and The Sky’s Gone Out are pretty weak in comparison, but Burning feels more like a direct follow-up to Flat Field. Bouncy, but weird and scary too. Great bass lines.  Peter Murphy’s solo stuff is mostly bunk. It’s a shame he decided to take the easy way out and ape Bowie for the rest of his career. Think I’ll take this time to say that I fucking hate Dead Can Dance. Sorry, but once you realize that the singer dude is just imitating Sinatra’s “Very Good Year” on every damn song, you sort of lose any sense of art or drama DCD is trying to convey. And when Lisa Gerad (sp?) dies, she’ll probably going to be found buried under a bunch of books about crystals, her toes sticking out of the paper mountain like the Wicked Witch of the East, only gnawed to viscera by hungry cats. Back to the album. I love how “Slice of Life” sounds like Barret-era Pink Floyd, only it’s about killing people…. I think.  Maybe I’m attributing it to Dexter’s boat. Why do I keep watching that show? why do I keep watching Showtime? Bauhaus really found a pretty good balance of the loathsome bizarreness of Flat Field with the infectious diversity of Sky’s Gone Out and Mask on Burning. Communion should cover the title track. Don’t think anyone but me would be on board for that.

Favorite Tracks – “Antonin Artaud” “Slice of Life”, “Kingdom’s Coming”, “Burning

                               From the Inside”       

Cut Out Bin Conscious ch.2

 previous

HOWARD SHORE, ORNETTE COLEMAN, THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA – Naked Lunch: Music from the Original Soundtrack

“I can think of at least 2 things wrong with that title” – Nelson Muntz.

As much as I adore both William Burroughs and David Cronenberg, I am beyond exhausted with seeing anything remotely strange being compared to their work. All that does is reduce someone unique to being a clone, or put half-ass try-nots in the same league as masters. Editorial over. Naked Lunch is one of the first weird movies I remember seeing. That and Barton Fink might be the only films that get away with the whole “Writers Writing about Writing” thing. I foolishly attempted that in creative workshops and was frequently chewed out about it, so in response I wrote about necrophilia and savage beatings. That’s where I found “my voicthe” I suppose. Scuse me… sthupose. The book is still my favorite work from Burroughs, even if it’s the most obvious choice. Cities of the Red Night is up there, as is Exterminator. Hell pretty much all of it is crucial. Videodrome is still my favorite Cronenberg. Also love Rabid, Dead Ringers, Crash, the Brood. As for recently; I enjoyed Cosmopolis and A Dangerous Method. But the Naked Lunch film is up there, too. Gotta love a movie where Robocop and the dude from Jaws talk about shooting up insect grindings. Also typewriters that turn into roaches with talking assholes for abdomens. Also “Sexual Ambulance”. Anyways, the soundtrack is pretty cool. I love the blend of generic film score with whispery jazz. Does need to be a touch weirder, but It works. Hate to be “that guy”, but someone like John Zorn or JG Thirlwell probably should’ve done the music for this. Like do Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, Christopher Young, Elliot Goldenthal, Hans Zimmer etc. have to do EVERY soundtrack out there? those guys are great and all, but what was the last memorable soundtrack Danny Elfman did… Batman Returns 21 years ago? So Peter Weller turned down Robocop 3 to do Naked Lunch. Think Criterion will ever do a release of Robocop 3? They did a release of Robocop at one point. The 20^th anniversary edition from MGM is actually better, though. Naked Lunch was the first Criterion DVD I ever owned. This is starting to sound like the Chris Farley Show. YOU REMEMBER.. WHEN UH… THAT GUYY… TAUGHT HIS ASSHOLE TO TALK…. YOU… YOU REMEMBER THAT?

Favorite Tracks: “Bugpowder”, “the Black Meat”, “Interzone Suite”, “Writeman”

BURNT BY THE SUN / LUDDITE CLONE – Split Release

Really psyched to have found this. BBTS only had 2 good releases; this and the EP whose name I can’t remember. And Luddite Clone is one of my favorite short-lived bands ever. that EP on Relapse fucking rules. I remember when they came out and they were unfairly chastised for being a DEP copy (which they weren’t). they sound more like Human Remains than DEP, even BBTS, which has people who were actually in Human Remains, doesn’t sound like Human Remains. Bummer. Isn’t the singer from BBTS a right wing blogger now or something? Whatevs. He was always the poorman’s Sean Ingram anyway, from vocal delivery to lyrics. Really wish Luddite Clone stuck around. Some people just have all the luck. They formed some bands after that… I know Kiss the Cynic was immediately after LC disbanded. Don’t know if they ever released anything. Wasn’t too into them.

Favorite Tracks: BBTS side: “Blowjob City” , “There Are Pictures of Me on the Internet”,

                           Luddite Clone side: “Bohemiath”, “Acid Cop

Cut Out Bin Conscious ch. 1

Recently I had one of those used CD shop lucky streaks, and to fend off cabin fever crazies I thought I’d write down whatever popped in my head while listening to them. these aren’t “reviews” really… only in part… nor are they attempts at creative writing… just a smattering of whatever. Figured I’d do them 2 at time (hi-oooo).

BLOODLET – Three HumidNights in the Cypress Trees

Other than the Core-era STP vocal lines, this is pretty mighty. Not as mighty as Eclectic or Entheogen, but still dark and caustic enough to not make me feel embarrassed for them. “Learn to Fly: Descent” is pretty awful all around, though. I can deal with the 1990s crooning, but please don’t try to be Clutch. Middle of the track is more like it, then the jerk-ass southern rock crap pops back up.  “now I’m smellin’ like bourbon flavored pork rinds in the government cheese line”.  I don’t even know.  Still, think this is the last decent thing Victory Records ever put out. This was released in 2002… I guess that one Darkest Hour record was okay and the Ringworm stuff wasn’t total garbage. Don’t even try to talk to me about Between the Buried and Me. one time some dude came up to me at a bar who called himself a “musical encyclopedia” (is that like an encyclopedia that sings?) started talking about BTBAM like they were some obscure jazz collective that no one had ever heard of before. That sums them up perfectly, the dumb person’s intellectuals. Even the parts when the Bloodlet guy sounds like Michael McDonald are more intense than Between the Buried and Me at their heaviest. Victory had some cool stuff in the 90s; Integrity, Deadguy, Iceburn, Bloodlet, Madball, Killing Time… I guess that’s it. Oh shit they had Fury of Five on their roster. They were silly. I remember they had beef with Coal Chamber or something. That’s like hunting for pinioned quails in a pen. 

Favorite tracks:  “Vision Quest”, “Holy Rollin’ Homicide”, “Worms”, “Motel Surgery”

THE GOD MACHINE – Scenesfrom the Second Storey

Think I saw these guys mentioned on the old Starkweather myspace page. Sort of in the vein of Paw, Swervedriver, Catherine Wheel, Afghan Whigs, Jawbox… all those beefier, more sophisticated “grunge” bands… but with creepy Current 93 esque vocals and a bit of Fields of the Nephilim’s flare for cinematic morbidity. There’s even an almost progressive metal vibe to it (before the genre became dominated by Dream Theater clones), Very cool stuff. The halfway point between Subpop and 4AD. Don’t like how hard the lyric sheet is too look at, but other than that I feel like I’m too much of a dirt-ass loser to listen to something this good. I don’t think there are bands that sound like this anymore, and if there are they’re certainly not a major label release. That was one of the cool things about the 90s; it was the last time major labels actually took risks. Melvins got signed, Boredoms got signed, Mr. Bungle, Foetus… Sure, most of these groups made it to the cut-out bin and were dropped on the second record, but the only recent example I can think of is maybe that Death Grips record that came out last year. You think a major label will ever release something like Pop Tatari or Disco Volante ever again? Why bother with something alien and challenging when there’s no shortage of pouty 19 year old girls singing about how bad they want cock, and then in interviews they say that their songs about genital-based codependency are really about empowering individualism…. Wait what am I complaining about?

Favorite Tracks: “She Said”, “the Blind Man”, “It’s All Over”, “Out”,

Willowtip Willowmix 1999-2006

01/23/13 UPDATE:

re-upped with 10 additional tracks from FATE OF ICARUS, CREATION IS CRUCIFIXION, CROTCHDUSTER, ROTTEN SOUND, SADIS EUPHORIA, THE DYING LIGHT, LENG TCH'E, ELECTRO QUARTERSTAFF, and DIM MAK.

About ten years ago, upstart underground metal label Willowtip ruled my musical universe. From 2002 up to about 2005, they released a slew of records from bands that were as challenging and intricate as they were raw and emotionally devastating. If you wanted brutal music without the stupidity, or complex music without the pretensions, Willowtip had what you were looking for. From the dirt-clump Molotov cocktail that was KALIBAS, to the dizzying tech-death of COMMIT SUICIDE. From the artfully morose monolith that was RUNE, to the caustic rape-war that was WATCHMAKER. There was HARAKIRI, who played like early Deicide as re-imagined by Jim Goad. There was GOATSBLOOD, the label’s awesome answer to EHG/Iron Monkey/etc. Deathgrind’s intellectual heavyweights CIRCLE OF DEAD CHILDREN released several monsters for the label, most notable among them being the Exotic Sense Decay EP, hands down the band’s darkest, most frightening record. Current US grindcore titans KILL THE CLIENT released their first (and I still say best) full length for the label, as did Rochester’s brilliant spit-metal unit SULACO. I still throw these records on all the time, and they continue to be a source of inspiration for the Communion's sound and attitude, which I hope shows in our music, if only in a fraction.

So anyway, here’s a little Willowtip sampler concentrating on the years 1999 – 2006. not that they still aren’t a top-notch label, it’s just that this is the stuff I still revisit.

WILLOWTIP WILLOWMIX 1999-2006

1. FATE OF ICARUS – “the Broken Wings of an Infidel” (from Suffocate the Angels, 1999)
2. CIRCLE OF DEAD CHILDREN – “Scarecrow Trailer Park” (from Exotic Sense Decay, 1999)
3. CREATION IS CRUCIFIXION – “Emergence (Through the Cables)” (from Automata, 1999)
4. FATE OF ICARUS – “Annihilate The Assimilationist” (from Cut Your Throat Before They Do, 2000)

5. COMMIT SUICIDE – “With Not Distaste” (from split CD w/ MISERY INDEX, 2002)
6. HARAKIRI – “Blest Be the Retarded” ( from Twilight of the Idols, 2002)
7. KALIBAS – “She Wipes from Back to Front” (from Product of a Hard Living, 2002)
8. COMMIT SUICIDE – “Cyclic Vomiting” ( from Human Larvae/Earthly Cleansing, 2002)
9. GOATSBLOOD – “Ashtray Cunt Eyes” (from Drull, 2003)
10. RUNE – “This Sorrow” (from the End of Nothing, 2003)
11. LENG TCH’E – “Sleazebag” (from Man Made Predator, 2003)
12. SADIS EUPHORIA – “Suicide Buckets” (from Instinct|Obsession, 2003)
13. KALIBAS – “Murder of High Ranking Extropians” (from Enthusiastic Corruption of the Common Good, 2003)
14. WATCHMAKER – “Wallet Sized Dental Records” (from Kill. Fucking. Everyone. , 2003)
15. CROTCHDUSTER – “Mammal Sauce” (from Big Fat Box of Shit, 2004)
16. COMMIT SUCIDE – “Spore” (from Synthetics, 2004)
17. ROTTEN SOUND – “Western Cancer” (from Exit, 2005)
18. CIRCLE OF DEAD CHILDREN – “Strip Naked for the Killer” (from Zero Comfort Margin, 2005)
19. KILL THE CLIENT – “Riot Perfume” (from Escalation of Hostility, 2005)
20. WATCHMAKER – “Visiting Plague/Blood Freezing Violence” (from Erased from the Memory of Man, 2005)
21. THE DYING LIGHT – “This World is Sinking” (from the Killing Plan, 2005)
22. DIM MAK – “Seeing Crows in Silver” (from Knives of Ice, 2006)
23. ELECTRO QUARTERSTAFF – “Neckwrecker” (from Gretzky, 2006)
24. SULACO – “Full of Holes” (from Tearing Through the Roots, 2006)

All released on Willowtip records.

Thanks to Metal Archives for confirming release dates.

And of course to Jason Tipton of Willowtip records and all the bands that made my early twenties bearable. You continue to inspire.

 

Exeunt Albumnes 2012

1:

SCOTT WALKER – Bish Bosch: 
 if you’re a fan of music… any music… and it’s the year that Scott Walker has released an album… and it’s NOT on your year end list… well you’re not doing it right. To say that this man is ahead of all that’s going on in music would imply that someday someone will catch up to him. Well it’s been something like 50 years and we’re still trying. There’s Scott Walker, and then there is everything else. 

2:

LORD MANTIS – Pervertor : 
subterranean pus-waves crashing on the syringe shores of your wrecked and retarded ID. All the promise the first Lair of the Minotaur releases inspired, with none of the weak posturing of their disappointingly cartoonish follow-ups to Carnage. Just sludge and sadism. 

3:

 

THE KILL – Make ‘Em Suffer:   

Exploding Machete Thrash from Australia’s definitive grindcore act. Schooling all would-be-blast-beaters on the Western Hemisphere for over a decade. 

4:

DRAGGEDINTO SUNLIGHT – Widowmaker:  

the doomy death metal equivalent of a grisly nightmare ride through the flash-card thought patterns of a husband/father as he watches his entire family get slowly eaten by a herd of zombies. 

5:

 

THEOLOGIAN – the Chasms of My Heart:  

a sobering meditation on the purity of unwavering hopelessness. Monolithic industrial clanging with ether-drowned vocals howling from a dark matter void. 

6:

 

BLOOD RED SHOES – In Time To Voices:  

should I ever become a millionaire of Scrooge McDuck proportions, I want to pay this young lady to sing me to sleep every night. Power pop-rock with an emphasis on the power and on the rock. See also the Joy Formidable. 

7:

 

THEDOWNGOING – A Thousand Years of Darkness:  

another slice of landmine-pitching barb wire grind from Australia. High tension riffs with vocal so high you’d swear they were inspired by a shredded testicle. 

8:

 

SKIN AREA – Rothko Field:  

an artfully schizophrenic aural collage of cruelty, perversion, mutilation, sexual psychosis, and suicidal terror from the incomparable Martin Bladh.  

9:

 

HELL MILITIA – Jacob’s Ladder: 

fanatically depraved black metal from the fantastically depraved French Underground. Enough experimental dissonance to appease the more prog minded Deathspell Omega sects of bizarre metal enthusiasts, but with enough violent desperation to satisfy the blood-hungry Marduk hounds (both Deathspell and Marduk had some pretty bad-ass releases this year BTW). 

10: 

 

BAT FOR LASHES – the Haunted Man:  

scrubbing around somewhere between the hypnagogic 80s pop revivalists (Austra, Zola Jesus) and nods to the very best of 90s alterna-torch singers ala PJ Harvey, the achingly lovely Natasha Khan has really found her stride with this release. Heartbreaking without asking to be pitied (see: Taylor Swift, Pink), soulful without being forcibly melodramatic (see: Alicia Keys, Adele)… unlike almost every other female in contemporary pop-music. Bat for Lashes is a fine example of intention actually yielding its desired result.