SLIPKNOT / STONE SOUR frontman COREY TAYLOR has picked his top 10 albums of 2011, which we have listed below. We managed to find most of the albums on Spotify, with the exception of Adele and Tom Waits – listen to the albums that Corey picked on Spotify by pointing your mouse in this direction.
21 – Adele
When I preach about people singing WITHOUT the use of auto-tuning and bullshit, Adele is the first person I think of. She’s amazing, and so is this album. Heart breaker, crooner, soul smith – she does it all and I love her for it.
The People’s Key – Bright Eyes
Easily one of the best and underrated bands alive today. The roots of the return of alternative are in this band’s DNA and their new album encompasses everything they do well… which is basically everything.
Give The Drummer Some – Travis Barker
Yeah, I’m a shameless whore since I’m ON this, but the rest of the album is equally good – Travis is one of my generation’s best drummers, and he lays down the sickest beats I’ve ever heard.
Sonic Mass – Amebix
If you like your sludge heavy and your melodies haunting, this album is for you. It features Roy (Stone Sour) playing and twisting knobs to create a bleak and beautiful soundscape that will sing you to sleep and cave your face in at the same time.
The Hunter – Mastodon
The Masters of Stoner Prog bring it again. You may need a fuckin’ calculator to figure it out, but the emotion all but pummels you into service. From start to finish, this album makes you earn it in a good way.
Worship Music – Anthrax
ANTHRAX!! MOTHERFUCKING ANTHRAX!!! WHAT FUCKING MORE DO I NEED TO SAY?!? IT’S FUCKING ANTHRAX!!! OWN THIS FUCKING ALBUM!!!
Bad As Me – Tom Waits I’ve been a fan of Mr. Waits for a very long time, and with each album he never disappoints. You ever wanna know why I approach every song with absolutely no fear? Listen to Tom Waits.
Unto The Locust – Machine Head
My boys are back with a clinic in riff-ology. This fuckin’ album tears your face off and replaces it with someone else’s face. Destructive, terrific… killer.
Undun – The Roots
When you just need to settle back and let the natural grooves of a band that knows their way around it have their way with you, The Roots have no equal. You may only know them as Jimmy Fallon’s late-night band. I know them as a band that could bring the soul back to music.
And of course…
Wasting Light – Foo Fighters
The best rock album of the year. Period. End of fucking list. Nothing else I need to say.
Aussie metallers, THE AMITY AFFLICTION, have revealed a lyric video for ‘Anchors’, which is premiering on Metal Hammer now! Click here to check it out.
You can pick up a copy of Youngbloods by pointing your mouse in this direction.
As is tradition here at Castle Roadrunner, we all sat down and chose our own top albums of the year…you can find our lists by clicking this link and you can find Spotify playlists for each list by clicking the names below. There may be albums missing and we have replaced some missing albums with older albums we thought were good replacements so you can get an idea of the bands we all dig. Enjoy!
Andy: Creative Services Manager
Kirsten: Publicist
Morgan: International Product Manager
Oli: Promotions Assistant & Head of Street Team
MACHINE HEAD‘s Robb Flynn has revealed his Top 10 Albums of 2011 and you can see his killer selection below. Robb actually lists TRIVIUM‘s new album ‘In Waves‘ as one of his Top 10 albums, which is nice as his label buddy, Matt Heafy, lists ‘Unto The Locust‘ in his ‘random selection of tunes he has enjoyed rocking out to this year’ – you can read Matt’s list by clicking here. And now, without further ado, let’s delve ‘unto Robb’s Top 10 list’ (fnar?!):
1) Times Of Grace – The Hymn Of A Broken Maní¢äåÂ
This record is unreal.
TRIVIUM‘s Matt Heafy has written a blog with his ‘random selection of my preferred “a-h’s of this year”’ that he feels ‘were worth jamming out to’. Check out who made his sort of list thingy, below:
c. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs (Deluxe Edition)
Although The Suburbs was released in 2010, the Deluxe came out this year.The Suburbs (and Mumford And Sons’ Sigh No More) were the albums I listened to each day on the drive to the studio while tracking In Waves. The song writing is impeccable, the lyrics are heartfelt and gripping. I didn’t “get” this band until I saw an international live performance of theirs – to put it in the terms I described it exactly to a friend after seeing it: “It was like the energy of Slipknot… and the amount of people (roughly)… but of a completely different musical universe.” The band members are all multi-instrumentalists, trading off on specific-instrumental duties, but utilize instrumentation differently than the typical musical sense. They’ll use violin “noise” as textures – it feels like they just do what they feel like doing, when they feel like it. It doesn’t stick to rules or genres or anything – it’s uniquely a sound of their own.
h. Machine Head – Unto The Locust
The world was definitely anxiously holding their breaths in anticipation for what would follow The Blackening. I’ve had a long musical-listening history with Machine Head (and a long-time friendship): MH was the first Metal band Iever saw live; the third band I’ve ever toured with; a band, with whom we toured together – drawing upwards of 6-8,000 people in the U.K. The Burning Red and Through The Ashes Of Empires are without a doubt, two albums that helped make me the musician I am today, and with Unto The Locust – Machine Head has again changed the game.
With the new album, MH does things that I didn’t expect would happen: a whole new melodic sensibility and level of catchiness I haven’t heard yet, utilizing different playing approaches (like Black Metal/tremolo-picking), and the song “Darkness Within” in general. The first time Robb played that song for me, my jaw actually dropped. Locust still feels incredibly Machine Head, but delves into uncharted territory previously unheard in their music.
a. Times Of Grace – The Hymn Of A Broken Man
See: http://matthewkiichiheafy.tumblr.com/post/14183854770/the-hymn-of-a-broken-man
f. Rise To Remain – City Of Vultures
It is still hard to grasp the fact that there are bands out there that are influenced by the band I am in. I’ve known the Rise guys for years – and have had the honor to be able to watch them grow as people, musicians, a band – they’re truly coming into their own. Austin’s voice live gives me chills – his vocals have come such a long way since his early demo days that it’s an insane rate of growth. Their new album isn’t quite out yet in the USA (it is in Europe), but let me tell you – it is an amazing preview as to what this band will become in the years to come.
The musicality is fantastic, Ben should of existed in an 80’s-shred band like Racer X (Hell – he can keep up with those dudes easy, I’m sure), Pat is a drummer capable of anything technically – but hearing him lay back into simplicity when it calls for it, really creates an impact. The songs are really something special – heavy, catchy; very now. These guys are the future of metal – and City is a fantastic promise of great things to come.
g. Rammstein – Made In Germany (Special Edition)
Rammstein is one of my top favorite bands in the world. This band is the entire package. Their creativity does not stop at music; it delves into heavy visual art: intense, performance-art style live shows; music videos that break all boundaries of what a music video is supposed to look like; the only massively internationally popular band that sings almost completely in German. Rammstein does it the way they want. They are creativity defined.
I feel bad using a greatest hits… but hey – if you haven’t gotten into this masterpiece of a band, this may be the perfect start. Their songs and style are uniquely their own; unmistakably – when you hear a Rammstein track – you know it’s them. Just get into ‘em.
b. Mercenary – Metamorphosis
See: http://matthewkiichiheafy.tumblr.com/post/14183894591/metamorphosis
f. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
If I had to describe this album in one word, it would be: beautiful. Musically, its it’s own thing. Instruments are used musically and texturally alike; at times, the song structure is its own style of structure – not traditional at all; I judge a good album on whether or not it makes me see a visual setting while listening to it – this is like an auditory soundtrack to a nature-scene. A mixture of all sorts of genres and instruments and textures – this album is breath-taking. It feels heavy, sad and uplifting all at once. It can feel hopeful and woeful simultaneously. Truly beautiful.
d. In Flames – Sounds Of A Playground Fading
See: http://matthewkiichiheafy.tumblr.com/post/13549095627/reroute-to-2112-gothenburg-sweden-touring-in
In Flames is a band, without whom – I would not exist in Trivium. In Flames has always been an impossibly vital band to the inspiration to be creative for me. Throughout their existence, they have created different sounds and genres within themselves – with Sounds, they’ve again paved way for something new for them. The catchiness of the songs, the feeling you get from the lyrics, the utilization of a mixture of their old Gothenburg roots and their layered-electronic-dimensional soundscapes really make something unique on this album. Watching 8,000-plus people in Gothenburg, Sweden singing their hearts out to every song from this album gave me goosebumps.
e. Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
Dream Theater is the only band in the world like itself. They’ve created their legacy by consisting of some of the greatest musicians in the world, who all can actually write incredible songs. When one strives to hit the level of playing that DT is capable of, typically – song-writing takes a distant back-seat. Dream Theater does not settle for this fate: from their inception, they’ve been not only capable of some of the most mind-blowing musical ability seen in an actual band, but they do it tastefully and within some really amazing songs.
With their new album, Dream Theater has captured (and topped) the magic ofImages, with a spin of what they’ve been doing in the later albums. I spent my school years coming home and watching Metropolis Pt.2 daily; I have John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline memorized and use it every single show as my warm up before performing with Trivium. I was privileged enough to be able to tour with the band, and I learned more musically on that tour than any tour I’ve done in my almost 13 years of being in Trivium.
The new album has everything anyone who has ever loved Dream Theater could ever want. It is one of their finest works with some of the greatest songs they’ve ever composed (and the musicality… well – it’s so damn good, it makes you wanna quit guitar/keys/singing/drums/bass).
h. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
Fleet Foxes has opened my brain and heart up to a new love for a new sound of music. Before Fleet Foxes, I never really knew this style of music (I’ll spare them from me trying to “label” the style), but lemme tell you – it’s something really uniquely their own. It pulls from things of the past, present and future. The song are incredible, the music really puts you somewhere nature-y.
Every album by this band is fantastic – their musicality and ability in their instruments is intense. This style of playing isn’t easy – this level of harmonic-intelligence of how to blend so many vocals, so many instruments into the fantastic arrangements that they do is something special.
This album makes me feel good, it’s an album worth living and loving during.
Hails and Horns website recently met up with Joe Duplantier from GOJIRA and they spoke about a ton of stuff covering all things GOJIRA including touring with Metallica and LAMB OF GOD, choosing Josh Wilbur to produce the album, the use of experimental sounds and what the band thinks of the Occupy movement. You can see some extracts from the interview below:
GOJIRA is currently in New York City at Spin Studios recording the long awaited new album, how did you guys end choosing this studio?
So I arrived in New York about two months ago with the idea of finding a studio and a recording partner, either a co-producer or engineer. In the beginning I had no idea where I was going. I was by myself and when I started looking at studios it wasn’t very easy as I wasn’t in my element and New York isn’t the first city someone’s thinks of for making an album. But I really wanted to make it in New York so that’s why we chose to record here since as co-producer I really wanted to chose something that worked. This studio was actually the first I vested and I found it perfect, it was almost a random finding.
For this album, the producer is Josh Wilbur, the same man who produced LAMB OF GOD’s new record, did you get in touch with him through LOG or did you seek him out yourself?
Josh Wilbur is actually the co-producer for this album because at first I was going to produce this myself. When I was visiting the studio, Josh was there and was putting the finishing touches on the LAMB OF GOD album. I didn’t know he was producing it at the time or that they were working together. He had me listen to some of the LOG takes and I found them to be really awesome and from there we decided to work together. Well, I invited him to join us for the album after a completely random meeting. It was actually pretty uncommon, usually these types of connections are made first by management but this time it was through a personal meeting.
In terms of the album itself, how is that going so far?
Everything’s going great. Usually we do it all really ourselves in our own place. When we do it at home we have a lot of mistake and we have to play catch up with ourselves sometimes. But with this new studio and Josh there really aren’t any errors made on the technical level and we do everything really one step at a time. We just finished the drum part and I’m really happy with how they turned out. I really think that it’s the best drum sound we’ve ever had until now.
Was the writing process different at all compared to The Way of All Flesh?
Yeah, on The Way of All Flesh we had just finished all of our tours and it kind of felt like we had to pull this album out of thin air. So we hurried ourselves a little bit for the writing of The Way of All Flesh. It was basically just Mario and I who worked on everything on the computers and it was only the two of us because the others (guitarist Christian Andreu and bassist Jean-Michel Labadie) had other things to take care of. So we pushed things a little bit but for this album since we’ve had more time we were really able to do things as a band. We jammed together a lot, we’d have entire sessions of nothing but jamming and it was the best way for us to compose. It really gives it a band energy that will really be felt throughout the album.
That sounds awesome, I know that you guys like to experiment with sounds that don’t necessarily come from instruments, what sort of wild and crazy objects have you guys been using for the new album?
So, we actually used a door. We like using acoustic sounds, natural sounds that don’t come from our drums or guitars. It not really a concept, we just like to send the listener on an auditory trip. When people listen to the album, we want to create a journey and with this album using the door, that’s actually the front door to the studio, is a big metallic door that sounds in the staircase that brings up to the studio. We spent a long time experimenting with the door, we banged a lot on it and we put different instrumental sounds over it. It almost sounds like it was a sound generated by a computer because it has a real metallic sound but it’s really 100% real.
You guys are definitely environmentally, socially conscious people, have you guys been paying attention to the Occupy movement and have you checked out Occupy Wall Street at all?
Yeah I actually went to Wall Street when it was first starting out and I wanted to go out and see what was going on. I know there’s a lot of people who are in support of this movement, a lot of people are angry, there is a sense of we’ve had enough. There’s also a bunch of different people at Occupy Wall Street. Some people are just there to have a good time and some people are really angry and want to destroy cars. But I think it’s good for American society to do some kind of protest. It’s important for any country that the youth expresses that they’re tired of taking shit. In France it’s a little different. It’s almost an institution that every year there’s at least some kind of demonstration in the streets, the people there have a much greater political conscience. In the United States I think it’s been lacking a bit of this, the last social demonstrations go back to the 60’s. I was surprised but also happy to have seen this in the United States.
This is something I’ve always been curious about, in your playing you use a lot of single finger tapping, was this something you discovered on your own or were inspired by another musician?
Well I’d say we only tap with one finger because we’re not super technical pros! *Laughs*, with one finger it’s easy! I couldn’t really say how since we’re kind of influenced by everything up to now. We also don’t really have the style of going super fast. What interests us is finding some kind of emotion and that’s how we’ve created some sort of identity.
Read the full interview by clicking this link.
Sonic Shocks stopped by Wembley Arena the other day to catch ALTER BRIDGE, BLACK STONE CHERRY and THEORY OF A DEADMAN live on their recent UK tour. They spent time with members from each band and their video interviews are now up online. You can see the videos interviews below and be sure to check out the show review in the last 2011 issue of the magazine – you can pick up a copy by clicking this link.
THEORY OF A DEADMAN’s Tyler:
BLACK STONE CHERRY’s John Fred:
ALTER BRIDGE’s Scott:
You can pick up a copy of each of the band’s latest albums by clicking the links below:
They’re big. They’re bad. They’re back. They’re LAMB OF Oh My Fucking GOD. Find out more about the incredible free Bloodstock calendar, plus Metallica, KISS, Motley Crue, Testament, ZAKK WYLDE and much, much more!
Ladies, stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen. LAMB OF GOD are back, and with new album ‘Resolution’, they’ve reminded us once again why there is no one who can make us bang our fucking heads like they can. In their ferocious new issue, LAMB OF GOD frontman Randy Blythe takes on the haters with all the bile-fuelled venom we know and love him for, as he and the rest of the band talk in depth about the effect that the internet – and the keyboard warriors it has produced – has had on the music industry, human relations and even society itself.
LAMB OF GOD might well be packing the first great album of 2012, but for now, it’s also time to look back at what has been an incredible year for metal with the Metal Hammer 2011 CRITICS’ POLL! They polled the finest minds in our field to bring you the definitive end-of-year list for a twelve-month face-melter that brought the likes of ‘Unto The Locust’, ‘Worship Music’, ‘The Hunter’, ‘Five Serpent’s Teeth’ and so much more. Who made it to album of the year? You know there’s only one way to find out…
Not bad, right? Well, there’s a hell of a lot more. As well as LAMB OF GOD and that beast of a poll, Metal Hammer are still packing more heavyweights than a WWE orgy! There’s a feature with KISS legend, GENE SIMMONS, who discusses God, groupies and settling down with his new wife. ZAKK WYLDE chats with new JUDAS PRIEST shredder Richie Faulkner about life as “the new guy” in one of the biggest metal bands of all time – something Zakk once knew all too well about. AND on top of that, there is a review from the explosive live show from WITHIN TEMPTATION.
Click here to pick up a copy of Metal Hammer…
As we previously mentioned, this Festive Season we will be featuring a Christmas Message from some of our artists that we were able to get in front of a camera when they passed through the UK. Each day we’ll be featuring an artist with their Christmas Message and other content. There will be some exclusive clips and playlists thrown in for good measure so stay tuned for our daily Christmas update…Ho! Ho! Ho!
Today’s artist is ROYAL REPUBLIC and you can find his Christmas Message by clicking this link. Hover your mouse over the image and click the links you want to watch / listen and or be directed to. You can share the image on your Facebook or Twitter (with all the links embedded) by selecting the ‘share’ button at the top lefthand side of the image. Share the ROYAL REPUBLIC joy and festive wishes!
We will be featuring two artists at a time on our Facebook page but you can find the collection of Christmas Message images over on our Christmas themed Tumblr page by pointing your mouse in this direction.
Compiled from Kerrang’s own choices and YOUR suggestions, Kerrang! Radio’s Top 25 Album Covers of 2011 have been announced. Scroll down to see which of our Roadrunner artists made the cut and where they came in the poll – we have quite a few high scorers in there, including a number 1!
25. OPETH: ‘Heritage’
Designed by long-term collaborator Travis Smith, who counts Devin Townsend, King Diamond, CKY and Avenged Sevenfold amongst his clientele, ‘Heritage’s sleeve is packed with symbolism. We’ll leave you to work out the meanings…
See a large version of ‘Heritage’’ by clicking here…
9. MACHINE HEAD: ‘Unto The Locust’
Along with the scrawled writing, the visually striking part insect/part human thing could be lifted straight from a horror movie.
See a large version of ‘Unto The Locust’ by clicking here…
2. MASTODON: ‘The Hunter’
Parting ways with Paul Romano who designed all Mastodon’s previous album covers, the band enlisted the services of wood carver AJ Fosik who created this 3D masterwork. See how it was made by clicking this link.
See a large version of ‘The Hunter’ by clicking here…
1. TRIVIUM: ‘In Waves’
Bleak, surreal and visually arresting, the stark black and white ‘In Waves’ cover is a work of dark beauty. In fact, it’s hard to think of a more powerful sleeve this year.
See a large version of ‘In Waves’ by clicking here…
See the Best Album Covers in high resolution RIGHT HERE.