Top 5- Albums of 2011

Sorry for the delay in posting- I've actually been doing this weird "getting work done" thing lately. Anyway, I thought a good way to resume posting would be to follow up on both of my previous posts (music in 2011 and top 5) at once. Note that these are all going to be prog metal because that's the only genre I listen to that is still in its prime. You can still find good punk rock and hip hop, but it's relatively rare.

5. Cynic- Carbon-Based Anatomy
-This might have gotten the #1 spot if it was a full album. Unfortunately, it's only a 23-minute EP. It's six tracks, but they combine to make one very cohesive idea. In some ways, this is a pretty big departure from Cynic's usual sound, but in others, it's the next logical step from 2008's Traced in Air. Most of the elements of metal in their music (screamed vocals, heavy/technical riffs, etc.) are gone, in favor of a more atmospheric, spiritual sound. Cynic has transcended progressive metal, and created a truly universal piece of music.

Favorite song: Carbon-Based Anatomy. It's about the folly of being human, and why you shouldn't fault yourself just for your humanity.

4. Devin Townsend- Deconstruction
-I had never really listened to Devin Townsend before this year, and this album made me regret that greatly. He is a creative force truly unlike any other I've ever heard. He expertly combines humor, brutality, and deep emotion in ways you wouldn't think possible, and Deconstruction is an example of that. For example, from Wikipedia-

"According to a recent interview with Townsend, the album is a concept album focused around a man who is obsessed with finding the true nature of reality. In the process of this journey, he goes to Hell and meets the devil. The devil shows him the secrets of the universe, presenting a cheeseburger to him. However, being a vegetarian, the man cannot eat the cheeseburger, rendering his attempts at working out the true nature of reality pointless."


It's a fairly long album (70 minutes) and very dense, so it's hard to absorb all at once. Its length is not surprising though, seeing as Devin Townsend has released 19 albums in the past 16 years, not even counting the session work he did early on (he first became well-known for singing on Steve Vai's album "Passion and Warfare"). Lastly, I should mention the huge number of guest spots on this album. Nearly every track has a guest vocalist, and one of them has two. And these aren't just some random people- every single one of them is a legend in metal. It sort of shows you the kind of respect the metal community has for Devin Townsend.


Favorite song: Juular. In this song, Townsend and guest vocalist Ihsahn (of the band Emperor) argue about... something. It's some sort of indeterminate loss and punishment. Anyway, the two aren;t actually voicing two distinct people, but the emotional and rational sides of one person (possibly Townsend himself, who has been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder).


3. Scale the Summit- The Collective
- I had listened to Scale the Summit a little bit before this album came out, and I really enjoyed what I heard. Their previous album, Carving Desert Canyons, was very good, but the songs sounded very similar (and there were only eight of them). It was mostly in 6/8 and sort of fantasy-sounding ("adventure metal" was the most accurate description I'd heard). kind of like what power metal wants to be, without all the cheesy stuff. However, the band really stepped up their songwriting game on this one. It still has the same instrumental prog metal essence, but it's significantly more varied, and therefore much more interesting. They experimented much more with dynamics and different time signatures than in previous work, and they did so in a way that was not overwhelmingly technical. The true genius of this album is that it's so multi-purpose. There is plenty going on musically, so if you want to put in the focus and listen to it actively, it can be very rewarding, but it's also mellow enough that you can leave it on in the background while playing video games or even doing homework (which I have).


Favorite song: The Levitated. They use mostly (if not exclusively) clean guitars and do a lot of tapping. This makes for some very interesting melodies.


2. The Human Abstract- Digital Veil
-This is the album I had been anticipating the most when the year began. I've been a fan of the band for years, and Nocturne was one of my favorite albums for a while a few years ago. Needless to say, I was very excited to hear that A.J. Minette was back in the band, especially after having completed his bachelor's degree in music, studying classical guitar. There were classical overtones on Nocturne, and I was interested to see how he would use his training in new material, or even if he would (Synyster Gates has studied jazz and classical guitar, but you'd never know by listening to Avenged Sevenfold). 


Long story short, the album came out, and it worked out pretty much as well as I could have hoped. There's lots of classical influence in the composition, but not in a way that excludes people that don't understand it. There isn't a set "classical track" like on Nocturne; Minette's new tricks are spread throughout the album pretty evenly. Holographic Sight uses the whole tone scale, Digital Veil uses the Octatonic scale, Antebellum is in sonata form, Faust starts using the Hirojashi scale (a Japanese pentatonic scale that I would not have known about if not for a youtube commenter), and Patterns has contrapuntal vocal harmonies, but you don't actually NEED to know any of that to enjoy the album. The music is so expertly composed that the album came out nine months ago and I'm still finding things I hadn't heard before.


Favorite song: Patterns. This is probably the most emotive song on the album. Despite what people tend to say about Travis Richter's clean vocals, I like them, especially here. The vocal harmonies in the clean parts are fantastic, and the screams are far beyond anything their previous vocalist was capable of.


1. Animals As Leaders- Weightless
-Two years ago, the metal community exploded with news of a talented new guitarist coming seemingly out of nowhere. That guitarist was Tosin Abasi. He had just released a solo album under the name "Animals As Leaders," featuring his work on the eight-string guitar and production by Misha Mansoor of Periphery. This album was seen as a groundbreaking, refreshing take on metal's newest subgenre, "djent." While on tour, Abasi recruited a guitarist and drummer, and the three wrote Weightless, the first true collaborative Animals As Leaders project.


This album is an ambitious blend of genres, and that's why I love it so damn much. It's clearly metal, but there are generous helpings of jazz fusion and electronica. And it completely works. Everything blends seamlessly, which is more than can be said for most bands that make similar attempts. There is noticeably less emphasis on "shredding" than on the first album, which I consider to be a huge plus. There's also less djent-y riffs going on, which I consider to be a good thing for AAL, even though I have nothing against djent in principle. What results from these changes is a much more cohesive sound, rather than the heavy song/mellow song pattern of the first album.


Favorite song: Cylindrical Sea. From the short electronic intro, to the jazzy drumming in the "verse", to the sweeping guitar in the "chorus", to the diminished section in the bridge, this song just exemplifies everything I love about this album.


Honorable Mentions


Blotted Science- The Animation of Entomology
-My absolute favorite guitarist in the world, Ron Jarzombek, uses a 12-tone system he developed to score scenes in movies about insects. It sounds crazy, but it works. This is basically what you get if you cross Schoenberg with John Williams and make them play metal.


3- The Ghost You Gave Me
-I've only really known of this band for a little over a month, but when I saw them live, they completely blew me away. I decided to listen to their latest album, and I'm very glad I did. It is seriously incredible. It sounds a lot like Coheed and Cambria, but a little bit more prog-y.


Christian Muenzner- Timewarp
-Obscura is one of the few death metal bands I actually like, so when I heard that their guitarist released a solo album, I got it ASAP. The whole album is instrumental, so it's really a great album if you like metal but can't get into the vocals. Needless to say, there's some great guitar work going on here.


Protest the Hero- Scurrilous
-Another great album from Protest the Hero. Not quite as good as their earlier work, but there are a lot of spectacular moments on this album.


Devin Townsend- Ghost
-For this album, released simultaneously with Deconstruction, Devin Townsend decided to branch out farther than he ever has before. This album is not metal. It's very relaxing, new-age stuff. The flute is heavily featured. It's very peaceful and melodic.


Sorry I still haven't listened to:
Between the Buried and Me- The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues
Mastodon- The Hunter
Opeth- Heritage
Arch/Matheos- Sympathetic Resonance

Top 5- TV shows

I compulsively put things I like or dislike into rankings. It can be both positive and negative. It's bad when I rank people by how much I like them (Soobin is my #1 least favorite person!), but it can be useful when talking about TV shows and music and stuff. It helps people to get a feel for what kind of things I like, so they know what to suggest I watch/listen to/etc. Well, since I decided to start blogging again, I decided to make my lists a regular feature on here. So here it is in its first installment- my top 5 favorite TV shows, and what I love about them!

1. Futurama*
- Many of you already know that this is my favorite show. To me, this is the complete package- one part clever comedy, one part ambitious sci-fi, and one part relatable, emotional drama. This is a cartoon set a thousand years in the future, starring aliens and robots. Based on that sentence alone, this should not be relatable to anyone currently living. Yet the show can make you cry just as easily as it can make you laugh (see: Jurassic Bark, Luck of the Fryrish, The Sting, The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings). They connect to the viewer on an emotional level despite the outlandish scenarios, and that is the true genius of good science fiction.

2. House
- With such an abundance of medical dramas, it would seem like picking a favorite would be difficult, but to me, there was never any real competition. Most medical dramas are basically dramas that happen to occur in hospitals, but House makes both the medicine and the dynamic of working in a hospital central to the plot. If you watch too many in a row, the show can seem formulaic, but there are certain specific episodes where the writers really show what they can do, particularly the season openers and finales.

3. Arrested Development*
- This is quite simply the best-written comedy of all time, in my opinion. The sheer amount of foreshadowing and reference hidden within is mind-boggling. I've watched the series all the way through twice (along with watching a random episode here and there) and I'm sure I haven't caught everything hidden in the background. And aside from being clever and subtle, it is a genuinely funny show, even on the surface.

4. The Boondocks
- Never before has a comedy (let alone a cartoon) tackled social issues so directly and so cleverly. Aaron McGruder offers a perspective that most simply aren't familiar with- a black one. In much of television (and most other media), the cast consists of a variety of very culturally different, nuanced white characters, and a minority or two that are largely stereotypical of their race. McGruder flips this around, offering a series of nuanced black characters, and making the whites on the show largely similar. To some, this may seem equally racist, but the truth is that neither is intentionally offensive. It's simply a matter of perspective- if you grow up around mostly whites and few minorities, the cultural stereotypes that do apply tend to stand out more, and vice versa. McGruder tries to portray the depth of black culture beyond this simple parody so many are familiar with. Social implications aside, it's also a damn funny show.

5. Firefly*
- This show would have been a serious contender for the #1 spot if it had more than fourteen episodes (and a movie). In Firefly, Joss Whedon created an interesting and incredibly plausible future, and crafted nine amazingly compelling and unique main characters to inhabit it. Firefly is known as a "space western", a crossover genre I happen to love (see: Starcraft) despite never delving deep into the western genre. The show was ambitious, each episode was unique, and the character interactions were always organic. It was a show that could fascinate you, touch you emotionally, and make you laugh as hard as any comedy (see: Jaynestown), sometimes all in one episode. Firefly is also responsible for the title of this blog.

Honorable mentions:

Doctor Who
- I've only watched the episodes with the eleventh doctor, so I didn't want to put it in my top 5. However, what I have seen, I like just as much as any of these shows.

Game of Thrones
- I think everyone knows how much I like this show (I wear a damn Baratheon necklace every day). However, it's too soon to tell if this deserves a top 5 spot, since there have only been ten episodes so far.

How I Met Your Mother
- Very cleverly written, and one of the few shows that actually gets better in later seasons. This is probably the best sitcom that still uses a laugh track.

*cancelled by Fox. I really hate those guys.

2011: A surprisingly good year for music

I don't know why it took me until today to realize, but this year was fantastic for my personal favorite genre of music, progressive/technical metal. Here's a list (in no particular order) of great releases that have come out this year (or that soon will)-

The Human Abstract- Digital Veil
Devin Townsend- Ghost and Deconstruction
Scale the Summit- The Collective
Protest the Hero- Scurrilous
Blotted Science- The Animation of Entomology
Between the Buried and Me- The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues
Cynic- Carbon-Based Anatomy
Animals As Leaders- Weightless

And to top it all off, Dysrhythmia released a new track, which means they'll be releasing a new album soon. Probably not by the end of the year, but honestly, it'd be a damn good way to end the year.

I've listened to Digital Veil more than any of the other albums, but I can vouch for all of them. They're damn good. And I say this with complete confidence, even though the last two haven't even come out yet, because based on what little I've heard so far, Cynic and AAL are going to BLOW your MIND. That's just what they do.

After a few more listens all around, I might even do a detailed review or two. Keep an eye out for that if you're interested.

New blog (again!)

Yeah, I started another one. I wanted a clean slate, because I'm not in quite the same miserable state I was in when I made the first one. I'm currently in a slightly different miserable state. But I'm not gonna bitch about it in blog-form. This isn't going to be an act of depressed self-indulgence. It's going to be an act of regular self-indulgence. I'll talk about music, TV, movies, webcomics, and whatever else may be on my mind. And I might even try to keep the updates somewhat regular this time.

The design is preliminary. I haven't quite worked out how I want this to look yet.

sooooorryyyyyy