The countdown continues. I guess I’ll just upload 5 a day until I’m done, that gives me an excuse to not worry about posting original content. Go team lazy!

Top 50 of 2008: Honorable Mentions

Top 50 of 2008: 50-46

45.

Lakmé – Album

The Czechs are getting in on all the screamo fun now too. I doubt the last few years will stack up against the mid 90s when it comes to ‘legendary’ acts in the genre, but it sure might get close thanks to the contribution of Europe and Japan. Us English speakers really need to step it up, although I guess we are all too busy playing crunkcore and Fallout Boy tribute bands to do anything interesting. Lakmé would have been right at home on Ebullition.

44.

Algernon Cadwallader – Some Kind of Cadwallader

Go Philly. I guess the easy cop out would be saying something like “Well if you like Cap’n Jazz…” and leave it at that. I see people saying that like its some sort of negative thing, since when did sounding a little bit like one of the best bands from the 90s emo scene have a negative connotation? Besides, I think “Ghosts and Vodka with vocals” is a much more apt cop out comparison.

43.

Sigur Rós – Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

I feel like I’m betraying my hipster roots having a Sigur Rós album this low for the second consecutive year, but hey- at least neither of them were off the list entirely. This is them branching out a little bit, but because of that some of the songs miss the mark and drop them down. You’ve come to know what to expect from Sigur Rós, and this album changes that up a little bit. It’s like when a cereal you’ve eaten for years changes flavors, sure, its nice to try something different, but you still hope they put the yellow marshmallows back in.

42.

All Shall Perish – Awaken the Dreamers

Deathcore? Alright, lets go with that. You have probably heard of All Shall Perish, and if not just go walk around the mall and count the shirts outside of Hot Topic. They are kind of a heavy music media darling at this point. What they do isn’t groundbreaking, but they play a very technical and death metal influenced style of metalcore that compliments their musical talents and turns out very well. This isn’t as surprisingly strong as their last album, but it still sticks its head above the mediocrity that has doomed the rest of the bands of this ilk lately.

41.

Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer

While the newest Wolf Parade release sounds a little better and a little tighter than “Apologies to Queen Mary” it is also a little safer. Wolf Parade is probably the most easily accessible of the Frog Eyes family, but they certainly aren’t just straight indie rock. They make every song feel and sound like a tense outbreak of music, so tense that the strain is eventually too much and it snaps into a crescendo. This can be said about any of the bands in their umbrella, but it is more pronounced with Wolf Parade, and especially with this album, because of the lack of experimentation. Luckily the songs stand out incredibly well by themselves.

Poetry, microfiction, and short prose are my weakest points as a writer- luckily my otherhalf/partner in blogging crime, Becky, will soon be arriving on these very pages to pick up my slack when it comes to those categories, along with drawing which I am also quite lowly at. However, I’ve wanted an excuse to link to some stuff I found to just be terrific by a young writer and a friend of mine that deserves some attention. You can find her stuff over at Russian Housewives and I can essentially guarantee you will be incapable of being disappointed. The only excuse I could find was to dust off my entirely remedial poetry skills. I figure she is showing you hers, I may as well show you mine too.

The more absorbed my writing makes me
From a wooden desk and an office chair
The further this beer glass takes me
To a sticky bar and a hazy stare
Whiskey as a prerequisite to create
Costs a headache and a 20 dollar fare
But there are certainly worse fates
Than to love life and not care

One of my friends, whose insinuation that I am merely into Lady GaGa to be ironic has offended me so deeply I will not be linking to his blog, has dared state that Lady GaGa will not be appearing on this list, and that would be true. I never said I was a fan of her CD, I find her acoustic interpretations of her own songs (See September 7ths entry) to be so interesting that if she were to release an album of just them, stripped entirely of the pop nonsense (while as pop goes it isn’t bad and is so tongue in cheek it has to be an act) it would be an absolute guarantee here. Also- fuck you. My list, my celebrity obsessions, idowhatiwantwhatever.

Top 50 Albums of 2008: Honorable Mentions

50.

War of Ages – Arise & Conquer

You’ll be into this if you still think melodic metalcore has something to offer you, if not just move along. They are a bit technical, kind of like a cousin of All Shall Perish but a little bit more straightforward. I could see the mall going crazy for these guys someday, so take that for what you will.

49.

¡Forward, Russia! – Life Processes

People really don’t like this band, I don’t get why. Take all the best parts of Bloc Party and mix it with an over the top art rock production and there you have it. Tom Woodhead has one of the most bizarre and recognizable vocal styles I can remember and it really helps the sound soar. The lyrics are a little odd and sometimes the songwriting drops off a cliff, but the songs that hit really hit, and those few misses aren’t bad enough to drop it off the list. Listen to this one without reading anybody else’s opinion on it.

48.

Contemporary Noise Sextet – Unaffected Thought Flow

With their hippin and their hoppin and their bippin and their boppin, kids don’t know about the jazz. Well here is something jazzy for you to get into. Although this is more of jazz on acid (not to be confused with acid jazz) than anything else. The Sextet Quintet released an album a few years earlier that surpassed this and transcended genres, and the follow up fell to the “but the first one was so much better” curse while everybody ignored how great it really was.

47.

Blood Red Shoes – Box of Secrets

If you like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the White Stripes, you probably own this already. It is a little bit grimier than either of those bands, but the love of hooks and distortion makes it an apt comparison. They definitely punch it up a little bit with some punk influences, and don’t listen to people who compare them with PJ Harvey just because they are a dirty rock band with a girl doing most of the vocals. This is some fun stuff, and PJ Harvey is just dull. Yeah. I said it. I’d fight you over that but you are probably an angry lesbian or weigh 100 pounds if that offended you.

46.

Archer in Jeopardy – Black Dog, Subside: The “I Doesn’t Matter” Story

I feel like this should have came out in 1995, both in regards to their brand of music and the recording quality. They emphasize the ‘emo’ part more than the ’scr’ part and they did it very well. This is another band that was a causality before they even got started, as this album was recorded in 2006, the year they broke up, and wasn’t widely released until 2008. Considering this was recorded three years ago now, they were actually ahead of the curve.

I know, I know. About a year late. At least I finally did it.

For the one of you (and that is counting me) that remembers how I did past top lists on other websites, it is an ever changing beast. As I hear more and more albums from that year that interest me, albums may be bumped down and albums may be moved up. Or I might not do anything because I’m lazy. I’m also fairly sure you won’t agree with anything I put up here, but that is the beauty of the internet- my musical taste can be flawless while yours isn’t and we can both still kind of get along!

I rolled a d20 to see how many honorables would get mentioned. The answer was 5.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The December Drive – Games

The December Drive played a loud and strained style loosely related to indie and with a pretty obvious southern influence. Maybe a Texan version of new Saves the Day? Which makes sense since they are from Texas. That is pretty damned south. Do they even have indoor plumbing? Games was their last CD as I remember reading they broke up, that might not be true but I’m too lazy to Google it. Go journalism!

Russian Circles – Station

It looks like I’m going to get all the post-rock out of the way early. They dropped a little bit of their originality on the way to this CD from their last one. If I get bored I’m just going to search and replace post-rock with hambone in this entire document and see if I can convince google thats what its called and start confusing hispters who wikipedia bands before they decide if they like them or not. “Man, that new Russian Circles cd is awesome. Some of the best hambone I’ve heard in a while.”

Walls of Jericho – The American Dream

I get some crap for this (and that will be a statement you hear a lot in this list since apparently everybody is way “too cool” for everything I listen to) but this is the best Walls of Jericho CD, and pretty far above everything else they’ve done. The Slayer worship helps. They must have finally been pissed off to change the fact that everybody has gone “Yeah, I guess they are ok” for the last decade.

She & Him – Volume One

Oh Zooey Deschanel, could you even be anymore adorable? This is one of the only good albums a band with an actor in it has ever put out.

Mindless Self Indulgence – If

This wasn’t exactly terrible like one would think, but this isn’t really here for that. I’m just putting this here because I’ve been using Mindless Self Indulgence to pick up promiscuous goth chicks since 2001. Come and get it ladies, I’ll pretend to believe in magic and fairies to humor your mental immaturity and decade old bitterness about being unpopular in high school too. … I’m just kidding Becky!

Here is what will happen; The House will amend their version of the bill to include a public option that is close to the HELP version and not as strong as the one Rockefeller proposed. The Senate will have a bill with nothing close to a public option, one that is just a hand out to the insurance companies for being such great guys. Both will pass, although the few Progressive senators in the Senate may stand up and vote against it, it will still pass.

It will then go to committee where the House and Senate will ram into each other headfirst and let it languish through a large time of political bickering, where they will be assaulted by the Right (and at this point those of us who rightfully felt betrayed and sold out and will be calling for DNC overhauls and primaries to eliminate Blue Dogs) and make the capitulating Democrats look even worse in the polls for 2010, most likely it will be the death knell for their majority. Eventually, fearing backlash from their districts (who will support the public option, be ignored, and turn against their representatives who, somehow, will read that as “they don’t want a public option”) Conservadems will bend over to please the obstructionist Republican minority.

Harry Reid will conference on the decision with Obama, as he as already said he will, because he is a huge pussy, and Obama will sell the progressives out once and for all by asking Reid to push for letting President Olympia Snowe be the voice of “reason” and either introduce a “triggered” (read: ineffective and never happening) public option or weak and worthless series of co-ops. All of this with a mandate that we all purchase into either A) private insurance thus providing them with billions of dollars of extra revenue or B) enroll in these coops that won’t be any better than any inefficient private options.

At this point, even more Americans will be uninsured than they are now, and now they will be forced to stretch themselves further and pay for a private plan as an entirely captive audience or be forced into paying a $3800 tax.

Republicans will see that all they have to do is be obstructionists and lie about everything to their diminished base to get what they want like crying babies and continue to block anything resembling real reform. They will continue with their hate speech and spurring along racist ideals by having elected politicians make absolutely mind blowingly horrible statements like Trent Franks who recently said, to the cheers of a group of anti-abortion wingnuts, in regards to Obama “He has no place in any station of government, and we need to realize that he’s an enemy of humanity. ” He said this to the same group of people that breed the groups that plant bombs in clinics and kill doctors and innocent people in the name of “god.”

And this will continue unchecked and unabated, the government will continue to be stagnant and ineffectual, and all because the Democrats would have lost their majority for not listening to the people that voted them into office when they had the chance to make a difference.

So you might be wondering why I’m posting this album right now, an album that most likely is already in your collection if you are reading this blog because you are friends with me or because we share similar musical taste. You should probably check your calendar though, but before you do, make sure you are ready to feel old.

Ten years ago today, the Dillinger Escape Plan released Calculating Infinity.

This might not seem like a big deal to many of you, but if it wasn’t for hearing this album, I never would have gotten into music the way I did.

It wasn’t long after it came out that I had actually heard it, but that is skipping ahead a little bit.

Like almost everybody else our age, the greatest source of music was older brothers and friends’ older brothers. The internet was just coming into its own, and it wasn’t the source of infinite music that it is now. You could find stuff if you really looked, but it was hard- mp3s were only about two years in the public eye at the time, and I certainly didn’t use the internet for anything more than playing my friends at Duke Nukem and Strike. That means pretty much every story somebody our age has about an album that smacked them in the teeth and said “this is what you like now” has to begin with “I had a friend who had a brother that” or “my older brother showed me” and jump from there.

So, I had a friend who had an older sister.

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So it has happened. I, the brave and wonderous Gavin, have experienced what you mortals refer to as “The Red Ring of Death.” I’m not particularly surprised or bothered by this, as I don’t have many 360 games I need to review currently and the ones I did need to do, I have already finished up. Plus this is a 360 from 2006 that hadn’t had any problems until now, so I consider myself in a rare group for that one. It is a bit frustrating though, I seem to have atrocious luck with electronics and failures- luckily I’m fairly adept at conquering foes such as this. Tomorrow, if I’m not entirely lazy, I will be traveling to Home Depot to purchase the tools I need to vanquish the evil that is the RRoD. It doesn’t seem to be the most difficult thing in the world, I will report back for debriefing when it is finished.

Well, it’s been a long while since I’ve put anything fiction up on the intertubez. Probably since my stint at moodspins and my  Hunter S. Thompson tribute. I have a weird superstition about showing people my work before it gets published, and since I’m not living in a solid gold house and drinking champagne for breakfast you can probably tell how well thats going. I also began to focus on writing comic books scripts, which is something that doesn’t exactly make for the most exciting reading material. I forget who said it, but I remember reading a comic writer say that, while writers create the story and the characters, an artist has all the fun since their finished work is interesting and eye catching, while a writers finished work looks like a bank statement. I also mainly only do long fiction, and my last attempt at doing a serious serial was put on hold due to my pursuit of a video game journalism career.

Recently I’ve begun to collaborate on a few things with an absolutely fantastic artist by the name of Rebecca Holdcroft, and I’m not just saying that because the two of us could use the word collaborate as a bit of sexual innuendo, she really is fantastic. The problem is that I finished the last comic book script I did nearly six months ago, and the novel I was working on was wrapped up nearly a year and a half ago pending me rewriting a good amount of it because I’m a fickle artist type, so to say I was rusty was a bit of an understatement. Nothing I was doing was really coming out the way I wanted it to, so I decided to do something constructive and work the rust off in front of the ten of you who actually read this blog. I decided to do something nice and easy. I’m not scripting anything out, or doing a plot outline, I don’t even know where I’m going with it. I can’t tell you how many pages I’ll release a week or any of that. Hell I’ll probably go back and change stuff and you will get to witness my incredible obsession with rewriting. Hopefully it will be interesting to you both from a story standpoint and to see how my creative process works. Feel free to leave me any feedback or creative criticism, as I’ll most likely take it into consideration since this project is 100% malleable.

First entry after the jump.

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A very long time ago, back when I actually had dreams of turning this very website into a respectable webzine establishment and not just an online portfolio and a place to, how do I put this eloquently, to post bullshit on, I began to post mix CDs every month. I got bored with it after a while but after some discussion with members of my cult commune facebook close knit group of friends, I decided to bring it back and bring it back in style. So to all you dear readers, and according to my webstats there are four of you, I present you my terrible musical taste in a palpable form. This is the moment you have been anticipating more than comprehensive health care reform with a strong public option.

The epic return of the monthly random music mix- only with this you don’t have to worry about Max Baucus, Blue Dogs, or race-baiting obstructionist lobbyist’s fucktoy Republicans messing it up.

01. Funeral Diner – Journeyman
02. The Hal Al Shedad – The Question is Moot
03. On the Might of Princes – At Half Mast
04. Early Grace – Run
05. L’Antetam – We Built Our Heavens
06. Ghostlimb – The Force that Gives Us Meaning
07. Lion of Judah – Idle Hands
08. Anaal Nathrakh – Castignation and Betrayal
09. Yage – I Have Gun You Too
10. Fasts – Let’s Join Fasts Brigade
11. Slayer – Cult
12. Winter Solstice – Calibrate the Virus
13. Harlots – The Weight Unweighable
14. Reversal of Man – Quantis
15. A Wilhelm Scream – The Horse
16. The Holy Mountain – The Sovereign State

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Halo 3: ODST is the best Halo game made so far.

Now, what that actually means and if that is a backhanded compliment is up to some debate. It also depends greatly on the level of your Halo fanboyism. If you are like me and find the overall plot to be kind of goofy and the multiplayer to be underwhelming in the face of so many other, better multiplayer experiences, you are obviously going to have a differing opinion from somebody who constantly wishes a PIN could be three numbers instead of four so theirs could be 117 or owns a Xbox 360 and hasn’t purchased a game since Halo 3 dropped into their lap like Chris Rock in Dogma.

So I posted some Frog Eyes the other day and figured it was only logical to post some Sunset Rubdown next. It is without any hesitation that I call the newest Sunset Rubdown album the best thing I’ve heard this year. It is just thoroughly fantastic from beginning to end- the right amount of hooks, the right amount of experimentation, the right amount of awesome. Here for your aural pleasure is the best song on their best CD, Black Swan. It is pretty easy to tell why this band is so great and their live show almost always comes through.

I digress- this year did not disappoint in the pleasant surprise department. Although “pleasant” may not be the best word to describe a fairly traditional revenge drama as blood soaked at this one was. The name of the film in question is WET. I remember seeing a short trailer for WET in this same theater during a double feature of Ms. 45 and Thriller – A Cruel Picture. I mentally tagged it in my head to check it out but it got lost in the shuffle until now.

This was so good I would have been crazy to not post it. There have been a bunch of wrestlers have great years left and right, but very few having as good a year as Chris Hero. I don’t think he has had a single match below **** in the last six months now, and Go has been just as hot putting together a string of fantastic matches himself. These two former Sweet and Sour stablemates put on a relative clinic a few months ago. Everybody is asking who is going to be one of the new faces of ROH now that Dragon and Nigel are gone, but I don’t have that worry since I know Chris Hero could be the main player of any league in this country, and certainly should be the one that takes one of those spots at the very top of the card.

Chris is Awesome. Clap clap clapclapclap.

I’ve been a bit busy lately and have been neglecting you, dear blog. So as penance here is some Frog Eyes.

Ah, anime. The most often maligned, yet entirely enjoyable, form of foreign entertainment available to us on these shores. This is due in part to how insufferable most people who declare themselves “otaku” (weeaboos to the rest of us) actually are, and isn’t an indictment to the artistic capability of the anime in question. With top notch animation, well crafted scores, and generally intricate and thought provoking storylines, anime should be considerably more respected than it is. BlazBlue, given to us as a gift from the gods that provided us with the criminally underrated Guilty Gear series, would be considered amongst the upper echelon of fighting lore if being inspired or related to anime wasn’t so easily maligned thanks to the average American fan of it being borderline socially inept (no offense, of course, but if you don’t consider Naruto a lifestyle choice than this mocking isn’t directed towards you.) Although, on the other side of the spectrum, if you don’t have at least a basic enjoyment of the style, this might not be the game for you.

The iPhone. No piece of technology can claim to be a representation of my generation, if not this entire era, than the iPhone. Regardless of your feelings towards it, I personally don’t prefer it, it would be impossible not to acknowledge how it has been a gamechanger in the world of cell phones. With one swoop of its mighty overrated arms, Apple singlehandedly ushered in the era of the smartphone to groups of people who otherwise may have been slow to take it on. The marketing geniuses that they are, people of all walks of life (and more importantly technical prowess) were lined up from Apple Store to Apple Store when the iPhone was released. For proof of this look no further than yourselves. In my own personal experience, as a tech savvy, apathetic, jaded 20-something starving artist with an awesome beard, I am considered a goto for any issues previous generations may have with their trendiest piece of technology, whether I know about that technology or not. When people who at one point owned Betamax players began asking me how to set up their iPhones, I knew things had changed. It is only a matter of time before every cellphone is a portable assistant and the days of simply passing the time playing a black and green tinged Snake while waiting for your ride outside of basement punk show are long, long gone.

My attempts to wedge video games into other sub-cultures continues.

There are few things as classy as a good drink, or at least that’s what I’ve been told by countless hours of advertising and product placement. But what’s helped develop my positive view on drinking even more than every spot of pro-drinking marketing is actually a certain group of people, one that is much maligned in this day and age: the beer snobs.

With the announcement that Nigel McGuinness will be going with AmDrag to the WWE, the match they will have in New York gains a new level of significance. It will be both competitors last match in Ring of Honor and, obviously, will be a very emotional experience for the wrestlers and the fans in attendance. One of the best examples of a farewell match was the 2/3 Falls match that Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko had in front of our beloved sweatbox of a bingo hall.

Speaking of that bingo hall, tickets are cheap as hell to Dragon and Nigel’s last TV tapings in Philadelphia, probably their last shows in that building ever assuming the WWE uses them right (big if) so go to ROHwrestling.com and buy some tickets if you are even close to the area.

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Yeah, so guess who is actually insanely talented as well as insane. My admiration for this pop broad grows so much larger than it should daily. I’m going to write a bizarre time travelling cyberpunk movie just so I can have a role for her pop-opera deal. Lady GaGa and the Spiders from Mars? Or has that been done. Lady GaGa’s Tommy? Lady GaGa Superstar? I’ll figure it out. This is the official start of my grass roots campaign to hang out and do some lines with Lady GaGa.

I mean, discuss movies with. Thats what I meant by lines…