The Blog Of Beez

Honesty is something I’ve always loved in my bands. I want to believe every note, every word that’s uttered and in this field, Lower Than Atlantis are streets of every other band out there at present. Mike Duce is as open a book as you’ll find in music. Blunt, to-the-point and having an unbelievable way of conveying the teenage angst that follows you into adult life, he’s one of my favourite lyricists in world music and, in my personal opinion, the most promising songwriter in rock right now.

‘Far Q’ was a brilliant record but the leap made from that to ‘World Record’ is almost immeasurable. If Dave Grohl wrote ‘Beech Like The Tree’, people would be swinging off of his nuts for years. ‘Deadliest Catch’ is a proper, bona fide anthem. ‘Could You? Would You?’ is lyrical perfection. ‘Another Sad Song’ gave me goosebumps the first time I heard it and hearing the tent at Hevy festival screaming it with vitality and incredible amounts of passion was one of the best moments of the year and the song is, in my opinion, an absolute classic.

Quite frankly, if you’re a fan of earnest rock music, I can’t see a reason to not fall head-over-heels for this album. There’s elements of Reuben, Nirvana, Hundred Reasons, a raw punk edge but wrapped in warmth and melody. The songwriting has shades of the honesty that Billy Corgan wrote with on the Siamese Dream.

When all’s said and done, I believe in Lower Than Atlantis in a way I rarely do with bands. I believe that they’re hungry enough, that they’re talented enough to make it big, that their best years are ahead of them and that everyone who isn’t on board at present will come around to this lot. ‘World Record’ is the best album of their career so far and, in a year rammed with brilliant albums that I’ll be listening to for years to come, my favourite album of the year.

Stand out track: ‘Another Sad Song’

Album of the year: Number 2 - New Found Glory - ‘Radiosurgery’

If you can’t be self-indulgent on your own top 20 albums of the year, when can you be? It’s no secret that I fucking adore New Found Glory. Of all of the pop punk bands to ever do it, in my personal opinion, nobody has been as consistently brilliant as New Found Glory. I’ve loved every record they’ve put their name on from the bottom of my heart. Even ‘Coming Home’. Yeah. Have that.

Anyway, the past three NFG albums have all been different to each other (‘Catalyst’ had synths whizzing around all over the place, ‘Coming Home’ was all pianos and emotion and ‘Not Without A Fight’ was classic NFG from the first 2 albums) and ‘Radiosurgery’ is yet another variation on the NFG theme. This time it’s a power-chord lead, virtually breakdown free zone that harks back to the early days of pop-punk.

This is a homage to The Mr. T Experience, ‘Dookie’, the sugar pop feel of The Ramones’ Phil Spector produced masterpiece ‘End Of A Century’…it’s a real throwback to the simplistic nature of pop-punk. At a time where you have A Day To Remember adding metalcore screams, The Wonder Years and Fireworks taking things in a bit more of a ‘right-on’ direction and with Green Day having spent the fast few years cuddling up to U2, NFG took things back to saccharine sweet melodies, hack-and-slash fun fret-work and a summer feel all year round.

The main thing that got me with ‘Radiosurgery’ is that this really takes me back to the bands and feel that drew me to pop-punk back in the early-to-mid 90’s. Along with a non-bed wetting Green Day, NFG can still write the biggest chorus in the game (‘Summer Fling Don’t Mean A Thing’ is by far and away the best punk chorus of the year and for as long as I can remember as just one example) and every single song sounds like a last-minute injury time winner.

Stand out tune: ‘Summer Fling Don’t Mean A Thing’

Album of the Year: Number 3 - Mastodon - ‘The Hunter’

Yeah, as has been massively publicised (mainly by me), I was THAT guy that didn’t really feel ‘Crack The Skye’. I could appreciate it being a landmark metal achievement and the sound of a band delivering a sprawling, cinematic album that constituted a journey in its truest meaning but, y’know, I missed the straight-up ragers that Mastodon have always delivered and that crunchy guitar tone.

As the Atlantan metal titans did press for ‘The Hunter’, they remarked that they missed people going bezerk at their shows. ‘The Hunter’ will totally rectify that and sees one of the most accomplished bands within the world of rock firing on all cylinders.

The opening one-two of ‘Black Tongue’ and ‘Curl Of The Burl’ is Mastodon in full ‘Blood and Thunder’ mode, dropping two of the best metal anthems you’ll hear in this or any other year in quick succession with consummate ease. They re-enter the world of psychadelia that ‘Crack the Skye’ thrived on in the second half of the album but with added sharpness to their bite and a harder hitting sound than last time out. The Pink Floydian tones of the album’s title-track are blissful, the vocals both chillingly haunting and oddly uplifting at once. ‘Octopus Has No Friends’ is the sound of both of these elements to the band’s sound crashing into each other in a head-on collision of awesomeness.

An album that you can really crawl into and find more within it’s guts with every passing listen, ‘The Hunter’ is another stroke of excellence from a band that we’re fast running out of superlatives for. Every bit of hype you read about this album is justified because it’s a fucking rager.

Stand out track: ‘Curl of the Burl’. (Does it sound like Mastodon playing a Bee Gees riff to anyone else?)

Albums of the Year: Number 4 - The Black Dahlia Murder – ‘Ritual’

To state the obvious, I am not and never will be an authority on extreme, death or black metal. It’s best to get that out of the way now for fear of trolling and so that I can say that I have no idea whether or not ‘Ritual’ is a stand out record in the bigger picture of those worlds or if The Black Dahlia Murder are the best band within said scenes but all I can say is that, to these ears, both of these statements are absolutely true.

Something that truly stands out on this monster of an album is the surgical precision with which everything is carried out here. Where a lot of albums from the extreme end of the spectrum are soiled with muddy sound and a willingness to just make things as brutal as possibility, consequently sounding messy as fuck, there’s a finesse and cleanliness to this Michigan metal crew that they manage without compromising an ounce of heaviness. Riffs are fired out one after another like white-hot samurai swords repeatedly slicing through flesh. The none-more-metal theme of death through various evil rituals adds to the overall nasty, sinister vibe of the album. The drama with which each track blasts and builds is almost orchestral in its approach and execution.

I’ll hold my hands up and say that albums from this world are rarely my cup of tea but this masterpiece has been on constant rotation since its arrival earlier on in the year. It blasts away like a day in Basra, it’s technically flawless, it doesn’t allow your attention to waver for a split second and though it’s relentlessly heavy, it ebbs and flows like all of the very best metal albums do.

To say that I’m chomping at the bit for these guys to come over in January doesn’t come remotely close to how much I’m looking forward to their upcoming shows. Even if the heaviest you usually go is Lamb Of God, Slayer, Suicide Silence territory, I implore you to give this album a bash. You won’t be sorry.

Stand out track: Carbonized in Cruciform.

Albums of the Year: Number 5 - The Black Spiders – ‘Sons of the North’

If you’ve listened to any of the podcasts I’ve been involved with over the course of the last two years, the chances are you will have been subjected to me waxing lyrical (and swearing a lot) about the qualities of The Black Spiders. A ten-legged, multiple-bearded beast, this bunch of northern upstarts have given classic-tinged rock n’ roll a much welcome shot in the arm and kick in the bollocks.

Not since Airbourne’s ‘Runnin’ Wild’ has a band crafted an album as perfect for generations past and present. The stomp of AC/DC, the fuzzed-up reckless abandon of Zeke and Turbonegro, down and dirty grooves that give you the munchies just listening to them and some of the biggest anthems of the year make up ‘Sons Of The North’, a beardy behemoth of an album.

There’s great elements all over the shop here: the production gives every song nuts like an elephant’s swinging sack, the guitar solos and dual-guitar parts smoke, the riffs are powerful as fuck and the choruses are to die for. More than anything else though, the album’s just cool as fuck. The sassy feel of ‘Kiss Tried To Kill Me’ and ‘Just Like A Woman’, the outstanding thudding brilliance of ‘St. Peter’, “fuck you and this one horse town”…there are an abundance of moments on this album that just feel like victory.

This is a collection of front-to-back, wall-to-wall massive, hairy rock songs with nods to the greats of yesteryear but enough of the band’s own abundance of character and charm to make it distinctly Black Spiders. Simply put, ‘Sons of the North’ is a real triumph for British rock music and the year’s essential purchase for huge arena-sized rock tunes.

Stand out track: ‘St. Peter’.