Lists! - Heavy Blog Is Heavy

Category: Lists!


deadstation-five-important

Hey everybody, it’s Shjon Thomas and Ryan Mattheu from The Deadstation!  We’re a dystopian progressive metal band based out of Boston, MA.   The awesome guys at Heavy Blog have given us the opportunity to write another article on whatever we wanted…  so we put on our thinking caps and tried our hardest to narrow down the infinite possibilities to ONE idea.

We decided to list five bands that are, in our humble opinion, the FIVE MOST IMPORTANT bands in metal right now.  These bands are the ones who are shaping metal music of the future, by kicking major ass in the present.

We have to reiterate though that this is just our opinion, and that we are not stating it as fact in any way!  Everybody will have their own opinion on this subject, and they are all just as valid as ours.

In fact, why don’t you post YOUR list in the comment section below!  We love to hear about what bands people are digging these days.

If you’re interested in checking out The Deadstation, you can download our free EP “Episode 01” here.  It was mastered by the one and only Jens Bogren (Devin Townsend, Opeth, Katatonia)!

So anyways… here we go!

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deadite

O hay, it’s The King Of Procrastination! I’ve been letting the world of music pass me by the past couple of months as I’m creating my website and writing my horror novel and almost let the top of the year list slip by me. Luckily, Riddick the Cat called me up yesterday and told me to get the hell to work with this because I’m a “better interest to him than the human he lives with.” So there’s that. But, why shall we be bound to doing a list in a multiple of five? “Nay,” says Deadite, “Let’s beat the system and do eleven top albums of the year!” So dark, edgy, and kvlt.

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9660_10200214068494476_356460431_n

Who the hell is Famt Wang, you ask?! He’s a graphic artist who has done shirt designs for the likes of Reflections and Bound by Exile, he is the creator of a line of limited edition guitar picks for Carnifex, Dweller, and Ophidian I, and member of up-and-coming death metal band Blue Waffle (for the love of Christ, don’t Google them). He reached out to us concerning his very own Top 10 list and we were happy to oblige! Read his thoughts on the year below.

So, I wanted my top 10 list to not get lost in my 1,000,000 blog posts a day on Facebook; so I asked my friend over at Heavy Blog is Heavy to post it for me. Luckily they all think my music taste is great and that I’m funny as fuck, or I wouldn’t have been worked into the last day of publishing. 2012, has been a year full of jacking off, bad relationships, and somewhat decent music; at least for me. Communications was my focus for this year, and laying low. I think I got high more then anything in the last year and just blasted music. 2013 will be much more productive; my band will actually make real music and not fuck up splits with other bands, I’ll produce more guitar picks, and I’ll still smoke way too much weed. Here’s my top 10 releases of 2012.

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alkahest

So it’s Wednesday at 3:43 AM the week these year-end retrospective lists are being published and I’m scrambling to edit my fellow writers’ contributions when I’ve barely even started mine. To be honest it hasn’t even quite settled in that 2012 is just about over. As I’m writing this, there’s about a week and a half left of the year, and it puzzles me. It feels like just a couple of months ago that I was doing this exact same thing for 2011, only this time I seem to be much busier and everything looks different. The site, wordpress, and even my staff group have all changed.

We’ve picked up a number of fresh faces this year that you’ve already seen these past few days, but you may have also noticed that a couple of people from last year are no longer with us. A lot of people have come and gone over these past three and a half years that I’ve been doing this Heavy Blog thing, and most of them sort of float around and hang out when they can. The most important ones that come to mind right now are Dan (Dormition) and Chris (Disinformasiya), both of whom were very instrumental and valuable in the growth of this site, and it was sad to see them part ways with us. Without them (Chris in particular), I might have not kept this thing going this far. I love both of those guys dearly, and you can keep up with them at The Monolith, which you should bookmark if you haven’t already. Ya jerk.

Like I’ve said, this year has been busy. I don’t talk about my personal life much here despite the fact that it’s my blog, but what better time to get all personal than a year-end retrospective? As you may have noticed, I’ve been a bit more of a hands-off editor and the scheduling of posts have been a bit less rigid and frequent than they used to be. I’m at the tail end of my college career and I’m currently in and out of internships which have kept me busy and often away from Heavy Blog. Between classes, internships, my “actual” job, and this website, my hands are pretty full. You (and I, for sure) can thank Evan (Juular) for his help with editing since Chris’ departure as well as Damien, Noyan, Gunnar (DeusExMachina), Cody (Tentaclesworth), Spencer (Inhumed), Anthony (Alucard), Greg (Red Bruschetta), Atif (Dr. Killjoy), David (Riptide), Ridge (Deadite), Colin (Momento Mori), and Geoff (Denisovich) for sticking with me and making sure there’s enough content each week and that this site keeps going strong. Also a strong word up to Ben Robson who took over Heavy Blog recently and decided to stick around with us behind the scenes and Chris Collins, our resident photographer. These guys are awesome, and they manage to put a smile on my face every single day.

2013 promises to be even busier with my next internship, impending graduation, and career, but hopefully that doesn’t stop this site from growing and providing daily content that helps to promote and further our favorite genre of music. Thank all of you for sticking with us!

So with all these feels out of the way, here’s what most of you care about, my albums of the year:

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alexfallujah

Earlier this year, we attempted to get burgeoning progressive death metal group Fallujah onto the Summer Slaughter Tour and urged all of you to vote for them. Unfortunately they didn’t make it and were edged out by Cerebral Bore, but they did wind up on Slaughter Survivors tour alongside Pathology. Close enough, and them being on the poll and getting such high numbers in the first place earned the band a legion of new fans! Their debut album The Harvest Wombs became a surprise hit with us when it dropped late last year and still gets the odd spin or two. We decided to reach out to the band’s frontman Alex Hofmann to get his take on this year’s new music. His selections may surprise you!

I’m Alex, the Vocalist for Fallujah from San Francisco. 2012 was an awesome year for new records; in my own personal sense it was a great year for non-metal records. Nearly everything that really stuck with me was from alterior genres.

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juular

I’m not going to go on about how great 2012 was for music, because everyone of my co-writers has already done that and then some. There’s no denying it was great, so let’s just move on. I’m writing this list pretty last minute, as I’ve had my choices locked in for some time, and I thought, “Hey, I’m not confused about anything, so I can push it back as far as possible”, and that was a terrible idea, as I’m now scrambling to get this thing finished, and having a hard time really talking about why I like these albums. However, I was the one who reviewed a lot of these, so if you find what I have to say on each individual one lacking, just go read  my review or the reviews of the other albums written by my fellow contributors.

Honestly though, I did not love 2012 as much as everyone else. Maybe it was the events in my personal life that caused me to have such a poor outlook on a lot of the earlier releases of the year, but it’s hard to deny the fact that I just did not connect with nearly as many metal releases this year as I did last year. It’s a shame, but not something I’ve overly thought about, because I’ve found other music to enjoy throughout the year. That being said, I did happen to find a good handful of great albums that I anticipate listening to for many years. Like I said, I’ve had my choices for my list picked out for some time, and that’s because I knew which albums I loved, and which albums I wanted to continually listen to for many years to come. I wasn’t wowed by a lot of the big name bands; I found Meshuggah and Gojira lacking a bit, which were two of my my anticipated albums of this year, but that’s okay. Sometimes you just can’t connect with certain albums. And even  though metal wasn’t all that great for me this year, I still love the genre, and it’s still my favorite type of music to listen to. Anyways, that’s why I listen to metal, and that’s really all I have to say on the matter, so here’s my top ten albums of the year.

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kylenumbers

Hello! This is Kyle Bishop, singer, songwriter, and piano player of the shitty band, Numbers. For some reason, HBIH thinks my opinion matters, and asked what I’ve been listening to this crazy year of 2012. So, without wasting anymore of your time, here are a few!

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damientheomen

T’is that beautiful time of year again. A season of good will, understanding and compassion towards your fellow man — a time for giving, loving and appreciating. The cold may have rolled in and the trees may have shed their once vibrant foliage, but the world finds solace in the love and company of others.  It’s a time to reflect on the memories of the year and plan ahead for the next.

But most of all it’s a time to listen brutal fucking metal and drink a fuck tonne of Advocaat, because 2012 was full of great releases and now’s your chance to catch on releases you may have missed or may have never even heard of. My first draft of this list was composed of 30 albums, which then shot up to 37 when I realised that I had forgotten to include EPs. Everything from new bands that came out of nowhere to blow my mind (We Are Knuckle DraggerBloodshot DawnOddlandExotic Animal Petting Zoo etc) to the old guard continuing their brilliant legacy (GojiraAbortedNapalm DeathDeftones etc) all unfortunately fell by the wayside in the ruthless culling exercise that produced this list. And I regret cutting every single one of them, but alas, if I was talk about every album this year that was great, I’d probably lose your attention pretty quickly. Who am I kidding? You’ve most likely already skipped on to the list and you’re not even reading this bit. I could write anything I want here and no one would notice. Anything at all.

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riddick

The humans think that they own me, but I own them. How many hours do they spend in the house? An hour in the morning, and a few hours in the evening. I am here all day long. Yet they deem it appropriate to force their inferior music on me. Fear not, for I have identified which of those musics are worth listening to over the course of the year. I shall now bring you the preferences of a superior feline being. My preferences lie with the composer the humans call Beethoven, but he hasn’t made any new albums the past few years so I will have to deal with albums made by other artists.

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nayon

Let’s celebrate with champagne

Because it’s that time of the year again

When everyone gives each other gifts

And makes end of the year lists

2012 was a great year

Many albums I did revere

But only a few I must choose

Now before more rhymes I abuse

Let’s get to the favorite albums

So take this list into your cerebellums

(Yes, I know that the cerebellum doesn’t do that, shut up!)

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