Life of the IT-Drummer

I promised you a top 10 list of my favorite albums of 2008, and here they are.

First let’s name some of the albums that unfortunately did not make the list:

• Keep of Kalessin - Kolossus
• Bloodbath - The Fathomless Mastery
• Tyr - Land
• Marit Larsen - The Chase
• Darkspace - Dark Space III
• Satyricon - The Age of Nero (It wasn’t that bad!)
• Cavalera Conspiracy - Inflikted
• Enslaved - Vertebrae
• Ihsahn - angL
• Helheim - Kaoskult
• Metallica - Death Magnetic (Best in a long time!)

Bonus: Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords. If you haven’t seen the TV-series, shame on you! It’s awesome, and you will eventually love the songs as well.

Biggest disappointment: Cult of Luna - Eternal Kingdom. Futile and uninspired in contrast to their previous album Somewhere Along The Highway (2006), which had some extremely good moments (”Dark City, Dead Man” and Finland). Sorry.

10. Textures - Silhouettes
This great band from the Netherlands mixes all that’s good in progressive metal. I would characterize them as a light version of bands like Gojira and Meshuggah, some melodic parts, and some real heavy parts. For me, their third album was a small setback from their previous album (Drawing Circles from 2006, it was amazing) but still good enought to barely make the list.

9. Opeth - Watershed
Opeths latest album is, as always, a solid piece of work. This time they has a fairly new lineup (Axe on Drums and Fredrik Åkesson on guitar), but that just didn’t seem to matter (mostly because Mikael Åkerfeldt makes most of the music and all decisions anyways :)). In this album they’ve tried all the last tricks in the book of tricks. There’s female vocals (on the soft song coil) and blast beats (on the Lotus Eater). Still I think this is a great album, much thanks to the powerful Hex Omega, the epic track Hessian Peel and the beautiful track Burden. Opeth always gives you something worth listening to.

8. Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
I’ve always enjoyed Coldplays music. They keep it simple, but still manages to keep it interesting. I think that their newest piece with the long title “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” is a step up from the a bit to straight forward X&Y-album. Songs like Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love and Death And All His Friends are really great songs, I think the decision to involve Brian Enos’ was a great move. It’s a solid album which is quite different than the other albums they’ve released and deserves to be on the list. The reason they don’t get a higher spot, is because there are (as always with coldplay) quite a few non-interesting songs on the album.

7. The Red Shore - Unconsecrated
I discovered this band by coincidence on the norwegian drummer forum (trommeforum.no when I first saw one of their live videos, and the music blew me away. Deadly fast death metal/death core with extremely lots of tempo changes and breaks, and fantastic drumming. Jake Green is a beast. Unconsecrated is a great debut album from this gang from Victoria, USA.

6. The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement
Read all about it here (unfortunately in norwegian)

5. Sarkom - Bestial Supremacy
If you wonder if norway still produces great black metal music, this is your confirmation. Their previous album “Aggrevation of Mind” was a dirty, thorough album with a unique vocalist. Their new album Bestial Supremacy is a more polished and great sounding album, in contrast to what you usually hear in black metal (with Pantheon I as an honorable exception). The album focuses on bringing a certain feeling or athmosphere, and does that exceptionally good. This does not mean that there’s not room for fast and aggressive tracks with lots of blast beats (the titletrack and Symbolic Revulsion as good examples). The craftmanship is excellent, the drumming is tight and heavy and it’s a matured band we hear. Well worth a spot on the list.

4. Elite - We Own the Mountains
On of the great surprises of this year. I’ve often wondered if there existed more bands sounding just a tad like Sworn and maybe Dissection, with lots of double bass, some blast beats and with heavy focus on good riffs and melody lines. And yes, it existed. This The newest album of this Mo I Rana-band entitled “We Own the Mountains” is worth it’s weight in gold. They even have half of the lyrics in norwegian without sounding lame. Nice job.

I’m putting out top three tomorrow at some time. Cheers.