LISTED: 30 Best Albums of the Last Decade (2000 - 2009)
*As the year 2010 is about to draw its curtain close, it is the time of the year (of any year) for many music sites and blogs to come up with a top list of albums of the year. Yes indeed the year 2010 has seen many interesting releases worthy of at least a top 20 list. But here at The Genuine Mind Zine we decided to do things a bit different and take a look at some of the best (of the best) releases throughout the last decade. This may not be the most comprehensive list around, lack of hip hop records for one, but all the albums listed here are indeed the most precious of last decade's precious gems.
2. Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)
Pure unbridled badassery finally has a name, and it is called Mastodon. Over here at the Genuine Mind Zine when it comes to music, we review our music based on how it makes us feel when we listen to it, whether it excites us, or suffocates us, or comfort us, or give us a good kick in the back, or make us shed our tears, or give us orgasm (joking really). Some people can be really anal about the technicalities in the working of an album, like the absolutely rubbish Pitchfork, which we think defeats the whole point of listening to music in the first place. Because when you listen to music, it's always about the feel of the song, the flurry of emotion that carries with it that crashes onto your heart in wave after wave until you're completely drenched and engulfed with it. Listening to a song is an experience and should always be treated likewise - a good song moves you, but a great song makes you lose sense of yourself and transport you to another dimension.
As we inch closer to the pinnacle, sort of, of this list, thus likewise the experience that one person will go through as they listen to the featured album should increase dramatically; and when a startlingly honest album has made it only behind you in the third place, how do you top it off? The answer is of course simply by being Mastodon. It's like a one-pass-for-all entry pass that guarantees your induction into the honorary wall of awesomeness when you have a band that is called Mastodon, even without anyone actually listened to any of your song in the first place - it just doesn't matter. It's like going for a track day race where everyone has brought along their M3s and AMG C-classes while you drove into the garage pit in a Lamborghini, and straight away declared the winner even when the race haven't started yet. Because you're in a Lambo, it's awesome, so that's that.
With this entry, yet again I was in quite a crisis. You see, Mastodon started back in 1999 but only released their debut in 2002 with Remission. It was apocalyptically good an album. The impact of the record can be likened to like being hit on the face with a lorry that is on fire while pulling along a fully-loaded steel container containing bricks. If it doesn't kill you already by their sheer power of awesomeness, then your soul is ripe to be raped by its dark and suffocating atmosphere that even light fears to tread. This is the real black: they are specially tailored for that moment when the black clouds are rolling and thundering down the hill and into the darkly valley where the soulless roam and saints are burned on sticks; Cradle of Filth in comparison is pink and their music is to lullaby babies to sleep. Then two years later, out came the pseudo-creature from Melville's literary world and the tale of its' fantasy adventure, Leviathan.
It is a monolithic creature from the Jurassic age, unearthed from the thawing ice in the Antarctica, breathed back to life by the power of distorted guitar, killer riffs and a holy scream. It is a bone-crushingly spectacular album unrivaled even by Blackie Lawless' hair. The band then proceeded to release two more albums, all within the space of last decade, proving once and for all that there is no such thing as awesome overkill. If there is a gauge to measure quantity of awesome, you can go from as low as Bon Jovi, to as high as a million, and Mastodon would be sitting one notch higher than the highest point. So by now it's probably clear of the crisis that I'm having: if this list can make do with more than one album per band/artist, all of their four records would have made it into the top ten. Perhaps I could be shitty again and do what I've did with number 4 but, if you think that should happen, think again...
The basis to all of Mastodon's four albums is that they're all heavy stuff. All of their materials are jam-packed with complex structure and odd time signatures, buried within body slam-inducing riffs and a melody sense that is inspired by the sound of human bodies being crushed together with a stone grinder. But the slight difference that marks the change from one album to the next is in the intensity of the materials served. While the debut, and to a certain extent their third album Blood Mountain was an absolute killer, it reeks of too much paranoia that it can at times become a little suffocating, and after a while, a bit stretching. While "Sleeping Giant" may be Mastodon's finest track among many other (which come to think of it, all of their songs actually), it still does not salvage the album from plunging head first into the unforgiving abyss of darkness. This is the difference that makes their sophomore effort the outstanding one, because it is the 'feel good' record of the four.
Let's skip pass all the superlatives that I would shower on this band at any given time and chance and just focus on the 2002 release because they are just simply marvelous across all four albums. But there are times when even Mastodon can outdo and out-gun themselves. As how many other people have said before: too many of a good thing is not at all a good thing. And Leviathan was a considerable exercise of not playing themselves to the full potential. They know what they are capable of producing and are actually fully capable of doing so; but in this album, they didn't. Whether it's intentional or not, the result is rather profound because it made the album felt rather classy. And thus by not indulging in awesome overkill, or ahem being the real Mastodon, they have successfully made what we reckon is essentially the 'real Mastodon' album.
*As the year 2010 is about to draw its curtain close, it is the time of the year (of any year) for many music sites and blogs to come up with a top list of albums of the year. Yes indeed the year 2010 has seen many interesting releases worthy of at least a top 20 list. But here at The Genuine Mind Zine we decided to do things a bit different and take a look at some of the best (of the best) releases throughout the last decade. This may not be the most comprehensive list around, lack of hip hop records for one, but all the albums listed here are indeed the most precious of last decade's precious gems.
2. Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)
Pure unbridled badassery finally has a name, and it is called Mastodon. Over here at the Genuine Mind Zine when it comes to music, we review our music based on how it makes us feel when we listen to it, whether it excites us, or suffocates us, or comfort us, or give us a good kick in the back, or make us shed our tears, or give us orgasm (joking really). Some people can be really anal about the technicalities in the working of an album, like the absolutely rubbish Pitchfork, which we think defeats the whole point of listening to music in the first place. Because when you listen to music, it's always about the feel of the song, the flurry of emotion that carries with it that crashes onto your heart in wave after wave until you're completely drenched and engulfed with it. Listening to a song is an experience and should always be treated likewise - a good song moves you, but a great song makes you lose sense of yourself and transport you to another dimension.
As we inch closer to the pinnacle, sort of, of this list, thus likewise the experience that one person will go through as they listen to the featured album should increase dramatically; and when a startlingly honest album has made it only behind you in the third place, how do you top it off? The answer is of course simply by being Mastodon. It's like a one-pass-for-all entry pass that guarantees your induction into the honorary wall of awesomeness when you have a band that is called Mastodon, even without anyone actually listened to any of your song in the first place - it just doesn't matter. It's like going for a track day race where everyone has brought along their M3s and AMG C-classes while you drove into the garage pit in a Lamborghini, and straight away declared the winner even when the race haven't started yet. Because you're in a Lambo, it's awesome, so that's that.
With this entry, yet again I was in quite a crisis. You see, Mastodon started back in 1999 but only released their debut in 2002 with Remission. It was apocalyptically good an album. The impact of the record can be likened to like being hit on the face with a lorry that is on fire while pulling along a fully-loaded steel container containing bricks. If it doesn't kill you already by their sheer power of awesomeness, then your soul is ripe to be raped by its dark and suffocating atmosphere that even light fears to tread. This is the real black: they are specially tailored for that moment when the black clouds are rolling and thundering down the hill and into the darkly valley where the soulless roam and saints are burned on sticks; Cradle of Filth in comparison is pink and their music is to lullaby babies to sleep. Then two years later, out came the pseudo-creature from Melville's literary world and the tale of its' fantasy adventure, Leviathan.
It is a monolithic creature from the Jurassic age, unearthed from the thawing ice in the Antarctica, breathed back to life by the power of distorted guitar, killer riffs and a holy scream. It is a bone-crushingly spectacular album unrivaled even by Blackie Lawless' hair. The band then proceeded to release two more albums, all within the space of last decade, proving once and for all that there is no such thing as awesome overkill. If there is a gauge to measure quantity of awesome, you can go from as low as Bon Jovi, to as high as a million, and Mastodon would be sitting one notch higher than the highest point. So by now it's probably clear of the crisis that I'm having: if this list can make do with more than one album per band/artist, all of their four records would have made it into the top ten. Perhaps I could be shitty again and do what I've did with number 4 but, if you think that should happen, think again...
The basis to all of Mastodon's four albums is that they're all heavy stuff. All of their materials are jam-packed with complex structure and odd time signatures, buried within body slam-inducing riffs and a melody sense that is inspired by the sound of human bodies being crushed together with a stone grinder. But the slight difference that marks the change from one album to the next is in the intensity of the materials served. While the debut, and to a certain extent their third album Blood Mountain was an absolute killer, it reeks of too much paranoia that it can at times become a little suffocating, and after a while, a bit stretching. While "Sleeping Giant" may be Mastodon's finest track among many other (which come to think of it, all of their songs actually), it still does not salvage the album from plunging head first into the unforgiving abyss of darkness. This is the difference that makes their sophomore effort the outstanding one, because it is the 'feel good' record of the four.
Let's skip pass all the superlatives that I would shower on this band at any given time and chance and just focus on the 2002 release because they are just simply marvelous across all four albums. But there are times when even Mastodon can outdo and out-gun themselves. As how many other people have said before: too many of a good thing is not at all a good thing. And Leviathan was a considerable exercise of not playing themselves to the full potential. They know what they are capable of producing and are actually fully capable of doing so; but in this album, they didn't. Whether it's intentional or not, the result is rather profound because it made the album felt rather classy. And thus by not indulging in awesome overkill, or ahem being the real Mastodon, they have successfully made what we reckon is essentially the 'real Mastodon' album.
Labels: 30 Best Albums of the Last Decade (2000 - 2009), mastodon
posted by Hafeez at 10:46 PM
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