WM's Top Ten for 2016

It’s that time of year people, there is snow on the ground, the fireplace is flickering its satanic majesties in the background and I just curled up in my red and green Snuggie^TM with a Jameson neat to give you the gift that keeps on giving.  Yes, it’s time for my Top Ten List of new albums for 2016.  

2016 was a tough year, my spiritual guide Lemmy died three days before it started.  Then Bowie died and everyone else it seems.  But the music of 2016 was amazing.  We saw some new bands and some familiar ones put out an astounding number of great albums.  To put all of those together into a list of ten based on my personal preferences is tough to do because there was so much that I enjoyed this year.  But for you good people, I will do my best.  

10. First up is Mississippi Bones and their fourth release 2600 A.D.: And Other Astonishing Tales.  

Heavy, crusty blues rock from this 6 piece band from Ada, Ohio that is so prolific they don't have time to take themselves too seriously.  2600 A.D. is catchy, very well done and one I found myself going back to frequently this year.  



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9. Next we have from Bordeaux, France Mars Red Sky and their third release Apex III: Praise For The Burning Soul.  The album is a wonderfully crafted, complex journey of sound.  The ability to take a song from the first few notes of massive and crushing fuzz to a delicate meandering piano accompanied only by vocals, as they do in the title track Apex III, shows their mastery of dynamics and arrangement.  

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8. In the eight spot is Nine Years from Montreal, Quebec's Mountain Dust.  Pure, gritty, beautiful heavy blues rock and roll in all it's glory.  Nine Years is one you instantly fall for and fall hard.  It is a turbulent love affair and the emotion is always center stage, but brought forth in tones that shift from boozy bravado to placid introspection.  A tremendous album and now one of my favorite bands.      
   


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7. Orion by King Buffalo takes my seventh spot.  This album is a gorgeous and dizzying journey of heavy riffs and driving percussion delivered with vocal elegance from this Rochester, New York trio.  This is not one of those albums you skip from song to song trying to get to your favorites, it is an experience that can only be undertaken properly from beginning to end.  

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6. Whores. Gold. A raucous front kick in the face that is almost as good as seeing them do what they do in front of a crowd.  This album hits hard again and again and then it hits you once more for good measure after the cops have locked them in handcuffs.  This three piece out of Atlanta, Georgia have made an album that has taken aggression to its most beautiful state, completely raw and unforgiving with the sarcastic brilliance of the lyrics being the only thing as malleable as the title of the album.

     

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5. In my fifth spot I have the return of one of my favorite bands.  Greek stoner legends 1000mods brought us their third full length release Repeated Exposure To... and it is everything I could have wanted. 

 
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4. Coming in at the number four spot is the London four piece Elephant Tree and their self-titled first full length album.  This album is beautiful, cohesive and impressive.  Combining elements of blues, stoner rock, doom and psychedelia this is where music is headed.  The sixth track Echoes is my song of the year and a great illustration of their abilities to bring all these elements together and move music forward.  

 
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3. In the third spot is Swan Valley Heights from Munich, Germany and their self-titled debut.  You know you are listening to something special when after each spin you find something more to enjoy, your favorite song changes again and again until it covers every single one on the album.  This album is a masterpiece. 

 
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2. The second spot goes to Borlänge, Sweden's one and only Greenleaf and their Rise Above The Meadow.  With each listen I am more impressed with the talent, songwriting ability and obvious love of their craft that these four gentlemen possess.  Individually they are all amazing in their own right, together as they show through this release they are somehow even more.   

 

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1.  My album of the year goes to Boston's own Gozu and their fourth release Revival.  What struck me from my first listen of Revival is how resolute these four gentlemen are in their single purpose of  bringing something different and truly their own to the table.  To do so with the precision, style and fearlessness they display on this album is a triumph we all get to share. 
 
 

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Album Review: Resonance by Kingsnake

This album is a road album.

Not in the way one normally thinks of a road album where you can drive through the countryside mindlessly while being entertained with what comes out of the speakers. No this is a road album and the machine driving is Philadelphia’s own Kingsnake and you are the one getting run over.

This gas guzzler doesn’t have heated seats or child safety locks and it sure as hell ain’t got a back-up camera because it just doesn’t do reverse. Kingsnake’s fourth album Resonance growls and rumbles like an eight cylinder big block while spitting shredded tires in plumes of burnout smoke.

I have long been a fan of Kingsnake and feel this latest album is their finest work to date.  This 43 minute journey starts with Dairy Of A Bad Man which certainly seems appropriate. The band fires up the engine and announce their intentions with an up tempo warning that gives way to the growling vocals of Bill Jenkins:    

Well lemme tell you I was raised by wolves, yeah that’s what all the people say
"He needs to mind his manners and read more books!” As they beg the creator that I would grow to be a civilized, pacified, well-dressed mess

The pedal gets expertly pushed by the rhythm section of Matt Farnan on drums and Matt Kahn on bass while the high octane guitar work of Brian Merritt brings the song to full bore. This is how you start a road trip right here people.




There are no sightseeing points of interest on this voyage as every song demands your full attention to the road and every gravelly turn brings a flavor all its own. The barroom brawl feel of Evening Blues gives way to the driving bass thump of Preachers Of Heresy. Right when you think you have it all figured out Miss Sorceress is in front of you and all you can do is grip the steering wheel tighter and hang on as it takes you through two separate gears of heavy goodness. The crushing second part of this one is Kingsnake at their best, ripping loose, barely holding the road and really not even giving a shit about it just knowing that they will make it through by the grace of the gods.
 
Skeletons takes things down some challenging terrain so they back off the gas a bit to keep the wheels firmly on the dusty road they are taking us. Behind The Sun gets us back on the open pavement in a style that harkens back to the rock gods of yesterday updated with some of the latest technologies. It’s like a resto-mod ’72 Mustang Fastback with a brand new 600 horsepower crate engine.

Next up is Athena and she is the shortest song on the album but this goddess of wisdom comes with a fury. End Of Time is a heavy blues masterpiece that showcases what I so enjoy about this ride. As the penultimate track we get the wonderfully greasy bass line backed up with a drum beat that forces your head back and forth in time. The guitars go from wailing out from on high to chugging heavy from a place blacker than fresh asphalt. The message of the lyrics has one of the most memorable lines in an album full of them:  

The hunter, the pig, and the preacher
Who you gonna trust when it’s the end of time?

The album closes with Phoenix which is simply, a fucking powerhouse. It is the perfect heavy, hard driving, raucous close to the album. Resonance ends with a rebirth and nothing will ever be the same again.

What impresses me most about this album is not the individual performances by these fine musicians which are all fantastic, but how all these parts fit together into a cohesive, beautifully-crafted, finely-tuned beast of a machine. Each note, each song belongs right where it is and makes the trip feel like an expertly guided tour of heavy, bluesy, dirt-under-your-fingernails rock and roll and one of my favorite albums of the year.

Just remember this beast gets eight gallons to the mile and definitely ain’t street legal.

Hold on tight people.

http://www.kingsnakephilly.com/

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- WM