Thursday, December 10, 2009

2001: A Musical Aught-yssey

2001. The first year everyone agreed was in the new millennium. It was a crazy little year, what with G-W suddenly in the hot seat and also some planes and buildings.

Oh also I was 16. This played into my taste in music.


I was a teenager, and I was into metal, and I liked my metal TRUE. This song to me is everything early-00s power metal could possibly be. The vocals wailed, the bass punished, the guitars were soaring. Don't forget you are metal, NOT some ass-kissing whore.


Avantasia - The Metal Opera. Holy crap I spent some time listening to this album. I was more than a little in love with Tobias Sammet back in the day, not to mention the fun I had making teenage analyses of the deep meaning of the story of the album. It bears mentioning that metal bass hero Markus Großkopf played here.


Holy gosh, Savatage brought Jon Oliva back as their primary singer in 2001 and released this epic heaviness. I used to set my CD-clock radio to these guys, and I was all sorts of pumped when they put out this record. The riff where this song picks up rates high on the list of all-time great prog metal turnarounds.


Oh yeah, I "got into" "black metal" this year. This song actually shook me to my very core in a really essential way, so despite the fact that my opinion of these guys has declined palpably, I still have a soft-spot for the hilariously named "Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia." Oh yeah, and the connection between this song and my later metal pseudonym is not unworthy of note.


Despite my hardline take on true metal back in these days, there was a place in my heart for System of a Down, especially this song. It's got that heavy, minor 6/8 part toward the end, which kicks a lot of ass.


I was never a big industrial sort of person, but Rammstein's album Mutter was pretty excellent. This was one of my favorite heavy hit singles of the year, though this was slightly influenced by my late-year close involvement with a huge Rammstein fan. I've always been a fan of huge, crowd-vocal choruses such as this.


The Yeah Yeah Yeahs first EP is unfortunately overlooked for the most part. My god, they were so crazy. This is another song that just rocked me to my core in a way that I'm no longer sure I'm capable of experiencing. And what the hell, Karen O's voice is almost unrecognizable compared to later albums.


Discovery by Daft Punk. The album that taught me that electronic pop was something that could really be appreciated. Granted it didn't hit me initially, but this album is truly one of the greats.

Let's see, am I forgetting anything? Anything important? Oh, hey, maybe it's this:


I didn't fully appreciate Opeth at the time, and may not have even gotten turned onto them until the next year, but man. This album. This fucking album. One of the best things ever. It just does everything an album ought to. And this track, the counterpoint between the guitar lead and bass at the beginning and end, the various heavy and soft sections, Mikael Åkerfelt's voice. Jesus. Just wow.

Honorable mentions that must be mentioned: Wages of Sin by Arch Enemy, White Blood Cells by The White Stripes (I'll admit I really didn't like them at the time, like, strongly), Lateralus by Tool, In Search of Truth by Evergrey, The Photo Album by Death Cab for Cutie, No World Order by Gamma Ray, Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise by Emperor, and Horror Show by Iced Earth


It also bears mentioning that this was the year that the great Chuck Schuldiner of Death died. Of course I knew little of it but metal kind of got a little bit ruined forever by that.

Next time: The palindromic 2002, and some freaking amazing shit

2 Comments:

Blogger John Duffell said...

Marcus Garvey was a metal bass hero?

7:03 AM  
Blogger John Duffell said...

p.s. I am HILARITY.

7:04 AM  

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