Domingo 16 Nov 2014, 12h:15
Alright, two entries in one day - Knocking them out! Or maybe my life just sucks and I have nothing better to do than drink beer on Sunday and write blog posts for my own amusement. *SIGH* — 2009 I finally got to see AC/DC live. Huge stadium, nosebleed seats… Still a great show by all means. But I have to say, I felt a bit removed from the spectacle. Not to analyze it any further but I checked AC/DC on my list and despite it being one of my very favorite bands, I don't think I need to see them again. I saw Black Sabbath too… Well, Heaven & Hell but it's Black Sabbath to me. They should have just hung it up after Dio passed. At 66, he was still amazing live. Primal Scream at the Tavastia club in Helsinki was awesome too, never seen so much broken glass on the floor after a concert. Saw Circle play the Psychotropic Caravan festival, I had a fever coming on so that experience is engraved in my memory. And Deep Purple played in my hometown… They really should just play more of their newer songs and stop jamming "Smoke On The Water" for 15 minutes. "Rapture Of The Deep" was actually the highlight of the show for me.
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Moon Safari is THE Air album for most people but for me, Love 2 holds a special place in my heart. I don't know what it is. I did see the band on tour supporting this album the following year but in general I just find it thoroughly pleasing. I think anyone into 70's krautrock would find something to like about Love 2. It features similar driving motorik beats and the overall feel is dreamy and sometimes even quite dark.
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Church Of Misery - Houses Of The Unholy
Houses Of The Unholy earns a place on this list just for including the grooviest riff the band ever recorded. Of course (of course? Of course!) I'm talking about "Born To Raise Hell". I love that f*cking song! But that's not all, the whole album grooves from start to finish. Everything you love about distinctly 70's heavy rock is turned up to 11 if not 12 here and it just blows your mind.
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I remember getting this highly anticipated album on day of release and listening to it straight through just sitting on my bed. It took me a while to fully get into it, Endgame seemed like a huge leap forward from United Abominations. Dave Mustaine really pushed his boundaries writing these songs and as a result we got an album that's just about as challenging as their magnum opus Rust In Peace. "Dialectic Chaos", "This Day We Fight", "44 Minutes", "1,320'", "Bodies", "Endgame", "The Hardest Part of Letting Go... Sealed With a Kiss", "Head Crusher", "How the Story Ends", "The Right to Go Insane" - these are all awesome songs. Yes, I realize that's just about all of them. Almost all of them. ;)
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Philippe Petit - Philippe Petit Scores Henry: The Iron Man
If there was one important drone/doom album released in 2009, it was probably Sunn O)))'s Monoliths & Dimensions. I came upon this album later on as I bought a bunch of Beta-Lactam Ring releases on sale and it surprisingly left a much bigger impression on me than the seminal Sunn O))) release. Here Philippe Petit had the idea of creating a soundtrack for an imaginary film bringing together Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man and David Lynch's Eraserhead. Great idea and great execution. The result is exactly what you might expect from that description. Are you intrigued? Go check it out.
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Still, late in to his career, Iggy Pop turns out an amazing album. The vibe on Préliminaires is down right cynical if not misanthropic yet the range of songs still manages to include everything from an upbeat jazz number like "King Of The Dogs" to the acoustic blues of "He's Dead / She's Alive". As the name suggests mr. Pop also experiments with songs in French but while the idea may not seem all that great, they're well realized and fit the flow of the album perfectly. "Nice to Be Dead" is the closest to what you might expect from your usual Iggy Pop album and it's without a doubt good enough for any future career spanning best of compilation. It bothers me how much I can relate to this album. Just listen to "A Machine For Loving", it's a pretty grim way of looking at life.