Top 10 Albums 2011

Speed demons or sweet feelings. The great gamut of music boiled down to that binary definition for most of 2011.

Music had only two roles: to put fire in my belly or smooth my furrowed brow.

I’m not cut out for new fatherhood, even second time around. My synapses need more help than ever to fire and my cranium is forever creaking, aching.

This list – my top 10 albums of 2011 – reflects this.

No black metal, no doom. Neither hip-hop, post-metal nor bass fuckery. Just various blends of death metal, crust and hardcore, preferably with that heartstarting Sunlight tone, or the polar opposite: the pastoral, the dreamy.

Roundup: Lana Del Rey; Converge; Trap Them; and Miasmal

Mmmm, I just LOVE jam. More jam please Mummy.

It’s been a while since I posted some quick-fire nuggets of MDG “wisdom” about my week in music rather than hundreds of words of self-indulgent waffle about a single record.

As always, I’ve veered from one extreme to the other.

From the metallic hardcore cacophony of Converge and Trap Them to the twisted Lynchian torch songs of Lana Del Rey with a dash of dank death from Miasma.

It’s been a good week.

Disma – Towards The Megalith

The entrance to my office

Mummy, mummy! I’ve found some death metal! Proper death metal and I like it!

Towards The Megalith, the debut from death metal sorta-supergroup Disma is as deathly as it gets in my book.

Old school death metal to the core (and no -core about it).

Partial as I am to hybrid sounds full of spunky punky fun, Disma just cranks out slow and low, filthy murk and I can’t help but like it.