As of this writing, I have spent well over a week reading the flood of tributes, stories, and remembrances of Riverside’s guitarist, from everyone: those who knew him intimately, those who knew him casually, and those who knew him only through his music. It is astonishing how thoroughly he has touched people’s hearts, what an impression he made simply by being himself. I have not said anything substantial beyond shock and sadness, but I need to say goodbye now.
2016 started out as a year bound to go down in collective musical memory as a major suckfest, as one by one musical icons and beloved individuals left us…but for most of them, somehow it was not completely unexpected. Illness, age, lifestyle choices — we regret their loss, and mourn it, but at some level we know that it is inevitable.
This was not one of those times. Fate was not yet done with us. On February 21st, with both middle fingers stuck high in the air, she dropped the biggest karmic Fuck You possible on the prog music scene: She took Piotr Grudziński.
There are people in this world whose kindness, generosity of spirit, whose sheer genuineness set them apart. They find a way into your heart just because of who they are. I met Gru because of what he did for a living. I am broken-hearted because of the man he was.
2015 has been a wonderful year for new music, one of the best years in recent memory. Almost all the new releases I checked out were worthwhile, even the ones that eventually didn’t make the cut. What’s more, most of the albums I found that had come out in previous years were also exceptional. It is quite the opposite of last year when I had real trouble coming up with ten albums to talk about; this year the difficulty is deciding what to leave out. That is why I have gone with a Top 15 of 2015. Too much is just too good.
Some clear themes have emerged: this year’s music of preference seems to be either hard and heavy post-metal, post-punk, or sludge/doom metal; or beautifully sweeping songs, lush and melodic…there are few exceptions. But pretty much all of it features lots of great powerful riffage, and real honouring of the song. Instrumental music makes up a significant portion of the albums I chose. Established artists surprised by the shift in their direction, and new artists absolutely stomped into prominence.
This was also the year that the 1980s dominated: the influences from that decade are all over the damned place. Two bands active in the 80s that I hadn’t paid any attention to for years (or ever) blasted out of the past with monster releases. At least three other bands heavily reference 80s sounds (although technically one will not release their album until next year; at this point a single is available). Several decent live albums were released but only one snuck into the list. Live albums are generally not regarded as legitimate candidates for year-end lists, and the one that made it into mine was actually released in 2014, but fuck it, this is my list and I’ll include what I want.
And here we present my most beloved albums of the year — it was not easy to rank these last few; in fact, the Number 1 album did not arrive in the queue of possibilities until November, which is very late for consideration. But such an album….anyway, see for yourself.
Blindead: Live at Radio Gdańsk
I am cheating with this album. First, it is a live album and many people think that only studio releases should be considered for Album of the Year status. Maybe they are right but in this case I don’t care. Second, it isn’t a 2015 release at all, but came out the year before. I just couldn’t lay hands on it until very late in 2014 so I am pretending it is a current album. Sue me.
This is a great live album that presents impeccable versions of the last couple studio albums, along with several guest musicians including Piotr Grudziński of Riverside, playing guitar on the incandescent “A7bsence”. This is a band that deserves way more attention than they get.
Eschar: Nova
The first full length album from this UK-based prog metal outfit displays an astonishing level of maturity, an excellent follow-up to their first EP. Instrumental post-metal is a tricky genre – there are so many bands and they can all sound alike after a while, but Eschar have managed to avoid that trap with their thoughtful and sophisticated songwriting and intense playing. This album has not disappointed; and coming in at No. 5 it has clearly kicked the ass of a whole lot of more established acts. See my full review here.
Another new discovery for me this year, a French band who have been around for about 16 years, and another band who seems to have made a shift in the nature of their sound with the current album, away from earlier harder-edged metal. This is magnificently lush stuff, beautiful and sweeping and heartbreakingly melodic, played with intricate skill, a huge surprise to me. “Nebulous” is the attention-grabber but almost all the tracks are superb.
Riverside: Love, Fear and the Time Machine
I did so want this album in the No. 1 spot, because I am unapologetically in love with this band, but alas it was not to be. Riverside’s sixth album follows the now-familiar trajectory of the last two in its uncompromising shift in style and direction, but this time there is something different. It is paradoxical. On an individual song-by-song basis it has moments of incomparable beauty, and at least one track that seems to be beyond transcendence…but the overall impression, the afterglow, as it were, when the last song ends, is almost like a musical coitus interruptus: a curious feeling of incompleteness. We know it is Riverside, there is no mistaking the characteristic sounds and nuanced richness of the guitars, drums, and organs…but the songs are more strongly bass-and-voice driven than ever before. And while Duda’s singing is more purely beautiful than anything he has ever done, there is a disconcerting lack of vocal diversity, an unusual absence of the playfulness of voice that Duda is noted for. This leaves a strangely mono-tonal aftertaste when the album is done. It seems very much like an album in limbo — not quite Riverside but not fully a Mariusz Duda effort either. One walks away from it vaguely dissatisfied.
Sisters of…: The Serpent, the Angel, and the Adversary
This was the Album of the Year for me for most of the year, until a very late contender showed up. But…this. This album is something. Sisters of… is a guitar/drum duo out of Missouri, and this is their first album, following up an EP from a couple years back that astonished almost everyone who heard it. The Serpent… is an absolute behemoth of an album. Hard, relentless black instrumental post-metal that offers no mercy; listening to it is like clinging to the top of a runaway locomotive, loud and terrifying and yet exhilarating as hell, as long as you hold on for dear life. Face-melting, heart-pounding, unstoppable.
Killing Joke: Pylon
This album literally came out of nowhere, hitting my consciousness late in November. Killing Joke are a band I have paid very little attention to – well, none at all, really — apart from “Love Like Blood”, a song which everybody knows, I knew nothing about them except, like Shriekback, they’d been around since at least the 1980s. I followed a link someone posted to one of the tracks from the album and it grabbed my interest long enough for me to follow up – and boy am I glad I did. I found the first couple or three listens a bit iffy, I couldn’t quite decide…and then Boom! Like a ton of bricks. This is just one monster of an album, industrial post-punk, compelling and addictive and heavy – sardonic, excoriating lyrics that deal with a bleak post-modern-age world: politics, the disconnectedness of virtual connection, wars and misery — everything I need. Number One with a Bullet.
2015 has been a wonderful year for new music, one of the best years in recent memory. Almost all the new releases I checked out were worthwhile, even the ones that eventually didn’t make the cut. What’s more, most of the albums I found that had come out in previous years were also exceptional. It is quite the opposite of last year when I had real trouble coming up with ten albums to talk about; this year the difficulty is deciding what to leave out. That is why I have gone with a Top 15 of 2015. Too much is just too good.
Some clear themes have emerged: this year’s music of preference seems to be either hard and heavy post-metal, post-punk, or sludge/doom metal; or beautifully sweeping songs, lush and melodic…there are few exceptions. But pretty much all of it features lots of great powerful riffage, and real honouring of the song. Instrumental music makes up a significant portion of the albums I chose. Established artists surprised by the shift in their direction, and new artists absolutely stomped into prominence.
This was also the year that the 1980s dominated: the influences from that decade are all over the damned place. Two bands active in the 80s that I hadn’t paid any attention to for years (or ever) blasted out of the past with monster releases. At least three other bands heavily reference 80s sounds (although technically one will not release their album until next year; at this point a single is available). Several decent live albums were released but only one snuck into the list. Live albums are generally not regarded as legitimate candidates for year-end lists, and the one that made it into mine was actually released in 2014, but fuck it, this is my list and I’ll include what I want.
So: onto the list, starting at Number 15 and working upward.
Ghost: Meliora
Ghost are a band with a clever, well-formulated gimmick, and they are not unskilled, and Meliora is an album of nice poppy metal, nothing too straining, pleasant to listen to, but I do not understand why everyone seems to think this is a great album. No, it is not “great”, it is well done but not exceptional by any means, and there could be other contenders for the bottom spot that didn’t quite make it. This is the kind of album I play when I do not want to pay too much attention to what I am listening to: it has to have some merits in terms of good song structure and decent melodies, but not too demanding of one’s attention. Meliora fits.
The Fierce and the Dead: Magnet
I do admire Matt Stevens; he is a dedicated guitarist and untiring in his self-promotion, which one must be in this day of DIY musicianship. However I tend to prefer his band project, The Fierce and the Dead, over his solo efforts. Magnet is a brief EP that came out this year showcasing their eclectic style, hard-rocking somewhat freeform math/post-rock.
Steven Wilson: Hand Cannot Erase
I write this as I am listening to Insurgentes, Wilson’s first solo album. The differences between these two albums, the first, and his fourth, could not be more stark. Insurgentes is superb; but I find that listening to H.C.E is an exercise in sheer determination to get through it; it must be done though because it is, you know, Steven Wilson and he is god (or something). Naturally, the album is superbly executed with exceptional performances by the musicians, beautiful melodies, and is at times almost poppy (a welcome shift away from the jazz influences of the last two albums) — and while it is clearly meant to grab at the heartstrings I find it so obviously manipulative that it just leaves me cold. But you can read my (rather generous) review here.
7. “The Serpent” by Sisters of…: Album The Serpent, the Angel, and the Adversary
We have reached the part of the list where the order of the top tracks almost doesn’t matter; at this point they are *all* monster, heavy-rotation superstars. So it is apropos to begin with a beast of a track from an insanely heavy album; it also illustrates the kind of stuff I have lately found to be what greases my wheels most — blistering full-on prog/black/metal/post-metal…man when that is done right, it just doesn’t get much better. And these guys do it right.
6. “YANA” by Dead Letter Circus: Album Aesthesis
The album is a bit inconsistent, for some reason Dead Letter Circus have trouble living up to their enormous potential. But this soaring alt/post-punk track never fails to give me chills. Just one of those songs I inexplicably love.
5. “Oko” by Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster: Album Wires/Dream\Wires
An absolutely epic track from a long-anticipated album; these guys can pull off some of the best, heaviest, most thoughtful instrumental post-metal out there, and this is just a taste of what they can do.
4. “Planck Length” by Au4: Album And Down Comes the Sky… (2013 release)
The album this song is from came out in 2013, but I only discovered it this year. And it is an absolute *killer* of an album, it is by far the best thing I heard this year and then some, it really is my album of the year, except I can’t make it official.
It is hard to pull a favourite track from it, I could have listed four or five, but this one snuck up on me. Industrial trip-hop about physics — and really, any song that can use “One point six times ten to the negative thirty-five” as a lyric, and make it work — well, that’s some awesome songwriting right there.
3. “Annabelle” by Sisters of…: Album The Serpent, The Angel, and the Adversary
Another track from one of the best most intense albums I have heard this year. “The Serpent” was face-melting in intensity…and somehow “Annabelle” manages to take it up a couple of skull-cracking notches from there. This is the kind of stuff that eviction notices are made of.
2. “Everyone is Everyone (and Everything is Everything)” by Au4: Album And Down Comes the Sky… (2013 release)
Yes, this album is so extraordinary it supplied two songs in the top 5 of 25. Believe me, if there were songs from 2015 as good, I’d stick ’em here. But there aren’t…or at any rate, since the album can’t qualify for Album of the Year I’m going to promote it this way. You can find my review of the album here:
I cannot get enough of this track.
1. “Caterpillar and the Barbed Wire” by Riverside: Album Love, Fear and the Time Machine
The album might not be their best, but this song…!! I really cannot stop listening to it; there are days when I think it just might be the greatest song Riverside ever created. Everything comes together in this track for me: the great martial rhythm compliments of Piotr Kozieradski’s drumming; Piotr Grudziński’s beautiful and nuanced guitar themes, the organ, the bass lines, the words, the singing…man it just hits every sweet spot, it digs deep into my soul where transcendence lies. It goes beyond mere words.
14. “Saturate Me” by Riverside: Album Love, Fear and the Time Machine
The most purely prog track on the new Riverside album, just effortlessly done without ever sounding derivative or neo- or like anyone else in prog today, and probably the heaviest track on the album. And besides — this track just kicks *epic* ass live.
13. “Discovery One” by Eschar: Album Nova
A mighty track from the first album by Eschar, post-metal that is imaginative and heavy and melodic all at once, and performed with confident aplomb. Unfortunately it seems as if the videos of the Nova tracks have been removed. For a taster, here is a live version of “Monolith” from the same album.
12. “The Drifter” by Klone: Album Here Comes the Sun
This is a beautiful album, rich and atmospheric, and I could have chosen a number of tracks from it. The video is worth watching for the drum playthrough. All the members are great musicians.
This is the first year I have decided to compile a Songs of the Year list, but then 2015 has been a rather good year for music. It was hard to restrict the list to just 25 tracks; there could have been many more. Not only could most of the year’s best albums have contributed more than one, there are several songs from earlier years that I have included in the list, because I only discovered them this year, and they are too great to leave off. Most of the tracks do have associated videos, but not all of them do. I will note that when relevant.
So: starting at No. 25 and working my way up:
25. “He Is” by Ghost: Album Meliora
A great sing-along track from an album that is definitely fun and listenable but not truly “great” (at least in any real meaning of the word).
24. “Beyond Metropolis” by Shriekback: Album Without Real String or Fish
The 80s are back…in a big way this year, and 80s alternative icons Shriekback do it the best. The cleverly post-apocalyptic track “Beyond Metropolis” is the one that grabs me most from this album, but there is no video for it alone. Start at 17:33 in the link below, or listen to the whole album.
23. “Happy Returns” by Steven Wilson: Album Hand. Cannot. Erase.
Wilson does pop. Or something like that. This track does have its poignant moments, but I simply cannot muster up the interest to place it higher.
Continuing on with the Gigs of the Year…now we are into the good stuff. I saw some great shows this year as well as some no-so-great. The best concert of the year also turned out to be the last one I saw — I had high hopes for this gig, and the guys did not disappoint.
Riverside (The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland)
This was the fourth of the four gigs in a row that I caught during the Love, Fear and the Time Machine tour in North America. It was a difficult show; Duda was sick and exhausted, battling some kind of throat infection. Cleveland came the day after blowing the roof off in Chicago and Mariusz was essentially running on fumes, doing his best to not just phone it in but clearly struggling, short on energy and fighting his way through the songs. However, towards the end he got a huge injection of energy when the crowd belted out Happy Birthday (and mangled his name; his expression was priceless). That really seemed to make him happy and boosted the last few songs.
Árstíðir (Church of St. Stephen’s-in-the-Field)
I can’t remember exactly how I came across this outfit, gentle folk rock/post-rock from Iceland; I tried a few tracks from youtube and they didn’t really grab me, far too sedate; but the idea of seeing a band like this in a church seemed like something worth checking out. And they really were very good, very musical, personable and intimate, a beautiful setting, it was a special evening.
Riverside (The Mod Club, Toronto)
Toronto audiences are a bit weird. Really hipster alty and metal types, not really into prog, and I was a bit nervous about the turnout for Riverside given the size of the venue. And the crowd was smaller than I had hoped for, a couple hundred people or so, but the show, being the first of four in a row I was to see, was a great introduction to the new material and new stage presence of Riverside. They were much heavier on stage than the new album would have suggested, lots of energy; and it was the first time to experience the beauty of “Found” with the lights.
As the end of 2015 looms, it is time to start thinking about the Musical Year that Was. I will begin with a two – part post on the gigs I attended, starting at the bottom and working my way to the Show of the Year.
I took in a lot of gigs this year, more than I realized. A few of those were post-rock or related shows in the style that generally does not appeal to me; I went in large part because some notable bands in the genre passed through town. I was willing to give them a chance because more than once I have been pleasantly surprised by a band’s live performance when I was not a fan of their albums. The major news of course was the return of Riverside to North America; I managed to take in four of their shows via a massive roadtrip.
Swans, (Opera House)
I was actually excited to see Swans, a rather legendary band in some corners, and one that has been around for a long time. Their last two albums have been interesting. But…an hour and three long drony meandering musical excursions later I had had enough. Bored to tears, I left, the first time I had walked out of a gig in memory. Even a naked Thor Harris was not enough to keep me there.
Mono (Lee’s Palace)
Mono is a well-regarded Japanese post-rock outfit and would seem a shame to miss them, but that slow atmospheric going-nowhere-fast style of post rock is just not for me. I stuck it out for most of the gig but split early. I got the point, and I can say that I saw them.
Haken (The Hard Rock)
I wrote a brief and rather scathing review of their album The Mountain for Prog Archives, and I still do not understand what appeal these guys have. However, I decided to take a chance because sometimes a band whose studio stuff you don’t like can put on a decent live show (see: Anathema)…but nope. Their derivative style of prog is no better live and the frontman is exceedingly irritating with all his rock-star posturing.
Explosions in the Sky (Nathan Phillips Square)
Another iconic atmospheric post-rock outfit, this time from the US. It was a free gig around the PanAm games that were held in Toronto over the summer, and that was the main reason I went; I already knew I was not fond of them. They were energetic, and skilled, but all the songs ended up sounding the same.
Everyone is Everyone (and Everything is Everything)
Lost Her Way Home
The Propagation of Light (Through the Ether of Emotion)
So Just Hang On, Beautiful One
In Three Seconds I’ll Be Gone
Forever Dancing Under a Fallen Sky
Wherever We Begin to Fall (Broken Glass Will Surely Follow)
The Empty Gorgeousness of All
Planck Length
Over the Edge It Goes
The great thing about social media is the sheer amount of music that can be found, via recommendations and links from friends, from various genre-based Facebook groups…Youtube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp…there is more great music out there than I will ever get to hear if I live to be a hundred. The disadvantage of social media is, well, the sheer amount of music… yeah. I could spend my entire day online just clicking links. It is both exciting and daunting at the same time. I simply have to bypass most of the stuff that people share: no time, no ability to focus on it, whatever. I know I have missed a lot.
But eventually there comes some time to poke around, to sample the links that folks seem to be most excited about. On one day I decided to try out a video shared by a few of my friends who were so enthusiastic they were almost incoherent. The band had a strange name seemingly taken from the Periodic Table, and the album cover was a rather beautiful bit of art.
This, the very first track I heard — which I believe is the last track on this album — stopped me dead in my tracks. I could not quite fathom what I was hearing. All I knew was that I had to hear more of the album, and when I did I had to hear it again. And the more I played it, the more I had to play it. It dug in deeply and insistently and relentlessly, like some musical version of Cordyceps, and zombie-like I was compelled to play the thing. Over and over. This does not happen very often, and usually if it does, the album does not last for very long. It gets overplayed and then set aside. But so far there seems no evidence that I can overplay …And Down Goes the Sky. This album seems to have found a special niche in my soul.
Confession time…and some context. I will say right off the bat: I struggled mightily to review this album when it first came out. I made a few attempts, and even posted some, but frankly none of them ended up worth the time it took to launch Word. It pains me to say that they were pretty much the sort of hagiographic piles of adulatory crap I deplore reading from others, and deep down, even at the time I wrote them, I knew it. But I chose to ignore my gut.
What I think happened was this: Shrine of New Generation Slaves was the first album that Riverside released after I discovered them and became a fan, and I had just spent most of the preceding year immersed in the band’s (and Lunatic Soul’s) discography, listening to almost nothing else, stunned and exhilarated by the discovery of music I had been waiting for all my life. Naturally I had a huge emotional stake in the new material.
When the special blue vinyl pre-order arrived (the first of the several versions to hit my doorstep) and the playing began…well, things started to go south from there. My immediate reaction was: This is not the album I have been waiting for. But because at some level it had to be that album, and the accolades began pouring in from all directions…I suppressed my instincts and spent the next year trying to talk myself into loving it. Even the video accompanying the first single, “Celebrity Touch”, didn’t dismay me as much as it should have.
…But now a couple of years have passed, and I hope I am far enough distanced to deal with SoNGS fairly. The truth is, I don’t love the album, and that is tough to admit. So let’s get this party started.
