Best of 2008 - from #80 to #71

80. dismember - 'dismember'
One of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (well, of Swedish death metal) that still stand strong and proud, along with Entombed, Grave and Unleashed, Dismember offer us yet another slice of bass-heavy, groovy death metal. By now nothing that Matti Kärki's band can offer will sound new, but that's not the point either. Even if they can still raise some eyebrows (like the unashamed Iron Maiden worship on 'Under A Bloodred Sky'), the point of Dismember is that you know what you can count on, and what you can count on is good - eleven more blasts of solid, exciting and no-frills proper death metal.

Dismember - 'Under A Bloodred Sky'

79. inverno eterno - 'póstumo'
You might not expect Portugal to produce a quality depressive/suicidal black metal project, but here they are - Inverno Eterno can slash wrists with the saddest of 'em, and they don't have to pretend that they're German or American to do it. With a very Portuguese display of emotions and lyrical expression, Inverno Eterno offer a desolate but painfully beautiful landscape to each of their songs, mostly within the norm of the genre but with some added flourishes that create their very own personality, like the creepy whistling on 'Depois Que Tu Morreste...' for example. A wonderful surprise, when we'd least expect it.

Inverno Eterno - 'Depois Que Tu Morreste...'



78. blindead - 'autoscopia / murder in phazes'
Featuring some known names from the Polish extreme metal scene, most notably ex-Behemoth guitar player Havoc and vocalist Nick Wolverine (who now screams for Antigama as well), Blindead sound absolutely nothing like those references would lead you to think. With Neurosis as the clear guiding light throughout the seven intricate, interweaved, concept-based songs, Blindead offer a remarkably surprising mix of sludge and technical doom metal, introspective, deep and worthy of several listenes to reveal all their hidden secrets. Bringing to mind Bloodlet at times by their fabulous dynamics, incorporating quieter passages among the stressful atmosphere and for their strained weight of composition, Blindead are a name to keep under a careful watch.

Blindead - 'Phaze I: Abyss'



77. anaphylactic shock - 'two thousand years'
Imagine a blackened Entombed, keeping the full rock-out swagger of the legendary Swedes but adding a bit of kvlt icy darkness to the whole thing. Now wrap that in a sort of post-hardcore atmosphere with truly venom-ridden vocals full of spit and bile, and what do you have? A fucking sexy band that you wish existed? Well, wish no more - Anaphylactic Shock are exactly that, and with their unusual mix of styles, the Dutch gang have been tearing up stages and ears alike with their furious live shows.

Anaphylactic Shock - 'Holy Land'



76. harvey milk - 'life... the best game in town'
It would have been a shame if Harvey Milk had bowed out during the seven year period of inactivity they went through. Even if their past legacy would ensure them a place in the hearts of the few who ever subjected themselves to the skewed freakery of their first two albums or the punishing bar-brawl rock-out of their third, there is way too much talent here to just put away, especially when the mighty Joe Preston (ex-Melvins, ex-High On Fire, ex-Earth and ex-Sunn O))), the man's resume reads like the coolest discography in the world) jumps aboard to lend his bass to the proceedings. Aaron Turner's Hydra Head wasted no time, and helped the guys put out 'Life... The Best Game In Town', which is a sort of celebration of everything Harvey Milk have ever done. There's the athletic dynamics of their early tunes coupled with the hard-hitting, to-the-point approach of their latter work, and everything flows perfectly in a gung-ho Motörhead-like fashion. Even their cover of Fear's 'We Destroy The Family' is put through the Harvey Milk processor, making it something very much their own. Unique and highly addictive, don't miss this.

Harvey Milk - 'A Maelstrom Of Bad Decisions'



75. flogging molly - 'float'
California's coolest Celtic punks march on, with yet another album that should come with Guinness coupons, such is the mug-raising quality of their pub tunes. Infused with an extra sense of melody as opposed to the punkier early records, 'Float' doesn't lose, nevertheless, any of its exciting drive. On the contrary, all the songs are even more infuriatingly catchy, and it's one of those records that you'll hum all day if you have the poor sense of putting on in the morning! If any bone in you is tickled by The Pogues or the Dropkick Murphys, or any aspect of Irish musical culture for that matter, you absolutely need this.

Flogging Molly - 'Requiem For A Dying Song'



74. caïna - 'temporary antennae'
Andrew Curtis-Brignell, the sole member of Caïna, achieved with 'Temporary Antennae' what might seem difficult - to follow-up his classic debut 'Mourner' with a record that doesn't even try to follow the horrid creepiness of that album but manages to still create an enveloping ambiance very much its own. Even if it takes a while to catch on, courtesy of less inspired opening tracks, by the time the warped-out 'Tobacco Beetle' comes on you're on your own again, lost within the confines of Andrew's mind. 'Temporary Antennae' is a crawling, dark beast to tackle, but one which offers within its Burzumic core a strange beauty and a bizarrely welcoming atmosphere as well. Light and dark, conflicting extremes and metamorphosis, and one more musical victory for Caïna.

Caïna - 'Tobacco Beetle'



73. akimbo - 'jersey shores'
...where Akimbo take their fascination with deep-sea horror to a whole new level. After those three songs about the Megalodon in 'Elephantine', 'Jersey Shores' is a concept album about a string of strange shark attacks that occurred in 1916, and it's damn near the closest approximation of such a hideous event as you can have without actually ending up in the belly of the beasts. Concept albums are a tricky business, especially for a band that is more known for its über-riffs than exactly their extraordinary storytelling abilities, but Akimbo pull it off in huge style. Telling the tales from the perspective of the victims themselves, Akimbo introduce some droning rhythms and all kinds of warped effects to their already respectable arsenal, lending a whole new weight to Jon Weisnewski's monstrous screaming and the band's punishing sound. Eerie but still in-your-face, 'Jersey Shores' is where Akimbo went up the evolutionary ladder, two steps at a time.

Akimbo - 'I Think I'm A Werewolf'



72. *shels - 'laurentian's atoll'
Although 'Laurentian's Atoll' is an EP, the breathtaking care and attention to detail that it has benefited from, as well as the sheer sparkling beauty of the music makes it very worthy of integrating this list. Showing that it is still possible to innovate within the post-rock spectrum, with truly unusual dynamics and a heightened sensitivity in the quieter parts, *shels sweep all the Pelicans of this world to a corner. The most interesting quality about these 37 minutes is the dream-like feeling of the music - a hazy, even unfinished ghostly appearance of these songs which sees them turn more into "pieces" than actual songs. Sometimes it feels almost free-form but without slipping into over-the-top esoterica, flowing wonderfully like your weirdest but most wonderful dreams would.

*shels - 'Wingsfortheirsmiles'



71. treponem pal - 'weird machine'
Marked, for better or worse, by the death of legendary bassist Paul Raven (Ministry, Killing Joke, Prong) during the recording sessions, 'Weird Machine' transformed into the best epitaph and most dignified homage a musician can get - a wonderful album, full of his own talent for people to remember him by. It's nevertheless unfair to reduce this album to Raven - 'Weird Machine' sees Treponem Pal return in sparkling form, showing everyone how industrial metal should be done. With the mighty Ted Parsons on drums, vocalist Marco Neves uses his animalesque voice like few times before, creating a cyber-metal record free of all the pitfalls and cumbersome mistakes that this genre usually suffers from once you step outside the absolute classic bands (see: every band that Raven has played in). Maintaining a very musical, structured approach to the machinery-like environment, Treponem Pal dropped a true bomb with this album.

Treponem Pal - 'Mad Box'

Best of 2008 - from #90 to #81

90. earth - 'the bees made honey in the lion's skull'
Now that all the hipster kids have discovered drone through Sunn O))) or Boris and turned it into a trend, it's a welcome fact that Dylan Carlson has returned to show everyone that this sort of thing has been around way before everyone started paying attention to the mysterious men in robes. Fortunately, Earth aren't merely rehashing 'Earth 2' over and over, regardless of the temptation to cower in the shadow of that timeless classic - 'The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull' is still abstract and hard to get your head round, but it's simultaneously Earth's most musical record so far as well, which is also the result of a heightened importance of the remaining band members. Drummer Adrienne Davies and organist Steve Moore play a role as essential as Carlson's, and together they mix a skewed sort of beauty with the punishing slowness that they are known for.

Earth - 'Engine Of Ruin'



89. black shape of nexus - 'microbarome meetings'
Black Shape Of Nexus are a band that you can always count on to go by the less obvious route. When the suffocating despair of their self-titled debut is still ringing in our years, they opt to follow it with a limited-edition drone album, removing any trace of doom and just throwing you helplessly into a huge black vortex that will consume you without mercy. Four songs (in the vaguest sense of the word) in 66 minutes that will earn you a medal if you can sit through them all the way through without flinching uneasily in your seat and begging for mommy.

Black Shape Of Nexus - 'Microbarome D'



88. suffocate for fuck sake - 'blazing fires and helicopters on the frontpage of the newspaper. there´s a war going on and i´m marching in heavy boots.'
Yes, yes, the title is a huge pretentious mouthful, but let's leave that alone for now. We've heard all the jokes about the band with that album title, but focus on the music itself and you'll be hugely rewarded. Suffocate For Fuck Sake offer a weird conceptual album based on a girl looking back on her time at a mental institution (complete with interview samples and everything), and the music is every bit as intense as that idea suggests. A difficult emotional rollercoaster, 'Blazing Fires...' sounds like a slightly more oddball Isis, or a sort of Cult Of Luna with the heavy parts amplified in their brutality and the more sensitive parts thrown to an emotional extreme that is hard to take. Dark and beautiful at the same time, it won't be an album you'll forget in a hurry.

Suffocate For Fuck Sake - 'We Are Driving Through Darkness'



87. we are the damned - 'the shape of hell to come'
One of the surprises of the year in Portuguese extreme metal, We Are The Damned served up a potent, punked-up Entombed blast that has made waves in every place that it was given a chance. Fast, loose and devil-may-care in attitude, its razor-sharp riffing was complemented by an enormous revelation - diminute vocalist Sofia Loureiro might look like the (tattooed) teenager next door, but when she opens her mouth, all shades of hell come out at once. Impressive!

We Are The Damned - 'Release The Wolves'



86. javelina - 'javelina'
One look at the beards on most of Javelina's band members will let you guess correctly what you can expect musically from these Pennsylvania natives. Ass-heavy, downtuned sludge is their game, and they practice it with an extra portion of motherfucking giant groove to boot. With Mastodon seriously wimping out on their new album, it's reassuring to know that there are lesser known bands that can crush anyone in their unrelenting pursuit of heaviness, on their debut album on top of it. One of the most cool-sounding blasts of weight of the year.

Javelina - 'Gored To Death'



85. KYPCK - 'cherno'
KYPCK (pronounced Kursk, like the sunken submarine) is the new band of Sentenced's Sami Lopakka, and it's all about Russia - from the overal theme, right down to the lyrics, everything is Soviet about 'Cherno'. What might be a silly gimmick actually works, and it makes you wonder how no one thought of this before - the ice-cold and the militaristic aura of mystery surrounding Russia's culture lend themselves perfectly to some doom. Heavier, slower and more cavernous than Sentenced, while still maintaining a mournful melodic sense, KYPCK seems to be much more than a one-off project, and if 'Cherno' is a valid indicator of what they can do, that's good news.

KYPCK - '1917'



84. wrath of the weak - 'alogon'
A sort of My Bloody Valentine gone black metal, Wrath Of The Weak are one of the best projects of the whole crop that shows that Burzum was a musical entity almost two decades ahead of its time. Taking that blueprint and expanding it through hazy atmospheres full of fuzz and open-wide sonic landscapes, anguished cries in the distance and truly enveloping creepiness, Wrath Of The Weak offer an album that will take its time to sink in, but one that will reveal itself tremendously when it does. Even if that 20-minute monolith of the last track feels like a chore to get through, the previous six will draw you in like a movie. A scary, unpleasant but fascinating movie.

Wrath Of The Weak - 'Chapter I: A Leap Of Faith Ends When You Crash To The Ground'



83. witch - 'paralyzed'
Witch rock harder than you and they're most likely older than you too! Featuring J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr (on drums, not guitar!), 'Paralyzed' is simply a blast of old-fashioned rock'n'roll energy, a sort of more excited and vibrant version of Black Sabbath that make a hell of a racket and seem to have enormous fun while doing it. Full steam ahead tracks like '1000 mph' or 'Space God' remind you why rock music needed to be invented, and they have the huge merit of not taking themselves excessively serious. A majestic, swaggering beast of an album that shows young kids how this kind of thing should be done.
Witch - '1000 mph'



82. poisonblack - 'a dead heavy day'
Three albums in and Ville Laihiala has finally figured out the ideal formula for Poisonblack. If the first album was way too camp-gothy, albeit with some good songs, and the second album was mostly bland and forgettable, 'A Dead Heavy Day' is brimming with memorable choruses, razor-sharp riffs, downbeat lyrics and a healthy rock-out atmosphere. Sounds familiar? While it would be unfair to write this album off as a Sentenced sound-alike, that's precisely what was lacking in the two previous albums, that typical Sentenced icy punch that grabbed you by the neck. Ville seems to have finally stopped running away from his past, and acknowledging his Sentenced years while maintaining what are essentially Poisonblack characteristics (check out the clean-vocal melodies on 'The Days Between', for example) he has finally made an indispensable album.

Poisonblack - 'The Days Between'



81. moho - 'chotacabra'
'...He Visto La Cruz Al Reves' might be unbeatable in its blackened sludge/crust attack, but the follow-up doesn't embarrass this Madrid power trio in any way. 'Chotacabra' is dark, foreboding and noisy as hell, enveloping the listener in a pitch-dark atmosphere while still pounding him with monster riffs and scary growled vocals. 'Terror Ultramarino' or the 16-minute long 'Anciago' feel like enormous sea serpents crashing through your boat and eating you up alive. Ouch!

Moho - 'Terror Ultramarino'