Jay S.

If you had a hard time finding any rock or metal you didn’t like in 2014 you must have been lost at sea without a lifeboat.  Truth be told it was a great year with some stalwart bands making huge comebacks, new contenders standing up to be contended and hell, there were some letdowns as well!  But when I weigh the wheat and chaff from the larger harvest, there was a fruitful crop of good eatin’.  While my analogy probably needs some work, you can at the very least trust that I’m telling you the truth.  This is my breakdown of how the best of the best stacked up in a few areas of my choosing.  In my opinion, these 10 are in no particular order because I love each record immensely.

2014’s TEN BEST

1. Blood Farmers – Headless Eyes (PATAC Records) I’m a long-time fan of this often forgotten and criminally overlooked doom band. They take it back to the primal basics of Sabbath and Cheer adding a heavier modern element and horror from beyond the grave.  Every element seems to unfold a greater grand design on the album.
2. The Skull – For Those Which Are Asleep (Tee Pee Records) As much as I dug Trouble’s last release The Distortion Field, the re-alliance of Trouble stalwarts Eric Wagner, Ron Holzner and Jeff Olson out Troubles Trouble’s last proper album by a light year. This just isn’t a “doom” album, but rather a no-bullshit classic metal album that happens to have plenty of bonged out grooves on it.  My only complaint is that I had to sit out catching the tour.  Still, for old school songwriting and the meat n’ potatoes of a band that was a huge factor in my underground metal worship, this is the real deal.
3. Horseskull – Self-Titled (HeadSpin Records) Killer North Carolinian doom with massive tones, rabid vocals, riffs that won’t quit and a rhythm section that stomps everything in their path. It borderlines on EP length, but there’s enough to chew on that I think it stands on its own as an LP.  This is the crustier side of the genre for sure yet the songwriting is top-notch.  It’s crusty, it plunges downward to hell like Celtic Frost in certain instances yet it’s psychedelic and groovy too.  ¾ of one of my all-time favorite bands Soulpreacher.  I’ve listened to it more than recent albums from Vitus, Electric Wizard and Eyehategod
4. Incantation – Dirges of Elysium (Listenable Records) I’ll spare you the long analysis on this one, because you as a metal fan probably either love or hate this band by now. I’m sure you’ve crossed paths with them at some point in their career.  Right up at the top of the death metal food chain for me with Deceased and Autopsy, these guys can’t be touched.  This is a career highpoint for me.  It’s filthy.  They haven’t lost a step.
5. Midnight – No Mercy for Mayhem (Hell’s Headbangers) I’ve been a Midnight fan from day one. Jamie does no wrong.  I’m also a Boulder nut as well.  His bands have been a huge part of my life and I listen to these sickos relentlessly.  For my money, nothing gets closer to that classic Venom sound, though this shit has its own identity.  I couldn’t have been more pleased with this album.  It’d be a keeper if “Woman of Flame” was the only good tune on it.  Thankfully, the whole thing rips like hell.
6. Ichabod – Merrimack (Self-Release) Ichabod has never played by the rules. They are still among the best live bands I’ve seen to this day.  I’m talking some of the most powerful, blow your head off power I’ve seen go off in a shitty, dilapidated punk venue.  This record is bluesy, it’s sludgy and metallic, way more psyched out than the new Pink Floyd could have ever dreamed to be.  It’s just an all-around pleasure from the first song to the last that’s sequenced in a way meant to be played from front to back cover.  In my opinion the record is heavier enough for metal fans with a wider appeal to folks that prefer their “heavy” from the molten blueprint of the 70s greats.
7. Arctic Sleep – Passage of Gaia (Dripfeed Records) Whereas the new Agalloch passed me over without leaving an impression, Arctic Sleep were the champions of cold, frosty psychedelic metal this year. They take a dreamy psychedelic ambience shake it up with thrash n’ black riffs, a little doom, some 90s space heavy like Hum and songwriting that punishes as much as it heals.  This is without question their finest hour.  The melding of European influence and American gravitas is something that many bands perform but have a hard time getting right.
8. Serpent Venom – Of Things Seen and Unseen (The Church Within) This is about the closest the modern brigade of nascent, dirt minded doom bands have come to matching St. Vitus’ Hallows Victim in quite some time. These UK veterans are heavier than anybody that plows out Sabbath chords with gripping, melodic vocals, killer textures n’ tones, artwork straight out of an old horror movie and hearty songwriting.
9. Volume IV – Long in the Tooth (Ripple Music) This is simply badass album…no frills, no nonsense. Somewhere between that biker doom sound and an old fashioned classic metal record.  They can riff with the best of them but the leads and solos owe a great debt to 80s thrash albeit slowed down and played with control.
10. Crawl – Old Wood and Broken Dreams (Stone Groove Records) Eric Crowe should be a familiar name to the metal masses yet his name hides stuck in the hidden tomes of underground metal. He played in Social Infestation which was a pre-Mastodon crust/grind band that was about as mean as they come.  Maybe paths branched for the specific purpose of Eric making this record.  This trio makes plenty of noise and extends their jams into lucid freakouts.  Leaving the mindless meandering at the door, they riff like the Sabs, scald like Burning Witch, impact like Neurosis before the ambient era and twist like a psychedelic snake bent for your throat.  Don’t miss ‘em.

MORE THAT SHOULDN’T BE MISSED

1. Purple Hill Witch – Self-Titled
2. Decapitated – Blood Mantra
3. Fistula – Vermin Prolificus
4. Rhin – Bastard
5. Rawhide – Murder One
6. At the Gates – At War with Reality
7. Eyehategod – Self-Titled
8. Witchsnake – Self-Titled
9. Judas Priest – Redeemer of Souls
10. House of Lightning – Lightworker
11. Crowbar – Symmetry in Black

BEST Eps

1. Cavern – Tales of Ruin
2. Lord – Alive in Golgotha
3. Black Wasteland – Dehydration
4. Dead Register – TRNS BLVK
5. Gale – Volume I
6. Snake Oil – Triptych: A Passage in Time
7. Wormwood – Self-Titled

TOP “HEY, IS THAT HEAVY METAL OR HARD ROCK” RELEASES

1. John Wilkes Booth – Useless Lucy
2. Birch Hill Dam – Reservoir
3. All them Witches – Lightning at the Door
4. Black Lung – Self-Titled
5. Lark’s Tongue – Narrow

THE BEST ALBUM I’VE HEARD THAT’S NOT OUT UNTIL 2014

1. Corsair – One Eyed Horse

BEST ALBUM COVERS

1. Blood Farmers – Headless Eyes
2. Midnight – No Mercy for Mayhem
3. Fistula – Vermin Prolificus
4. Judas Priest – Redeemer of Souls
5. Arctic Sleep – Passage of Gaia

THE WORST THINGS I’VE HEARD ALL YEAR

1. Electric Wizard – Time to Die (Witchfinder Records) A monster snoozefest and part II of a pair of back to back failures for the band. Don’t get me wrong.  I love this band.  They’re slippin’ though, and things haven’t been too rosy since We Live.  This album is practically the same riff that goes on forever ad nauseam.  The first time I heard the record I thought, “Cool, at least the production is there,” but these tunes have no legs.  It bored me after roughly two weeks, and I have no desire to go back to it.
2. Black Map – …And We Explode (Minus Head Records) I gave Black Map a shellacking on Hellride and who I am as a reviewer seemed to come into question over it. Featuring members of Dredg and Far for folks who care about that stuff, this is a wet noodle release of limp hardcore, radio tuned stoner riffs and alternative rock.  It’s also about an hour of my life that I’ll never see again.
3. Down IV – Part II (Down Records) I’m a long-time fan. I’ve seen them live.  The whole shebang.  Where’s the songwriting on here?  I’m not hearing it.  Though it’s no surprise to most, but Phil’s voice is shot to the point of detracting from any good groove the band gets worked up.
4. Prong – Ruining Lives (Steamhammer) Power of the Damager brought back some semblance of the Prong that I spent a lot of time with in the 90s. Carved in Stone was BARELY passable and now we’re sailing with a broken mast back into Scorpio Rising waters again.  Time to step it up or hang it up.  Way to flush my childhood down the drain again, man!
5. In Flames – Siren Charms (Epic Records) Has In Flames honestly been worth hearing since, Colony? Serious question here.  For me, and as usual this is my opinion because this is a free country (Ha!), they haven’t made the grade since Whoracle.  Still, like an absolute slave I listen to every new thing they put out even if I don’t buy it.  You haven’t heard military torture music till you’ve heard this stuff, believe me.  Anders is still trying to sing too?  Funny, but I’m not laughing.

I really need to pick up the new Today is the Day and Agalloch releases because I haven’t gotten to spend much time with them.