Ryan's Top Music of 2009 Part 1: The Beginnenning

As promised, here I am once again, this time with a list of my favorite music from 2009.  When I made a similar list last year and looked ahead, I thought this year's musical landscape looked pretty bleak.  Oh, how wrong I was.  2009 proved to be quite an awesome year in music, particularly this past fall where it seemed like a ton of new releases from some of my favorite bands were released within the span of a month or two.  With me making as little money as I do yet still wanting to support the bands that deserve it (even though I know full well that the labels take a good chunk of the money and most bands don't even see it unless they go Platinum), I am limiting my list to albums that I have actually paid for.  Of course, that leaves a lot of albums that have gone unlistened.  And I do mean A LOT!  Therefore, to kick off the ceremonies, here's a list of the Top 15 Albums of 2009 That I Wanted But Didn't Get:


1) Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Agorocalypse
2) Every Time I Die - New Junk Aesthetic
3) Converge - Axe To Fall
4) Slayer - World Painted Blood (I did listen to a good chunk of it at The AV Club and it's typical Slayer, which is always good.)
5) Dethklok - The Dethalbum II
6) 3 Inches of Blood - Here Waits Thy Doom
7) Darkest Hour - The Eternal Return
8) Muse - The Resistance
9) Arsonists Get All The Girls - Portals
10) 1349 - Revelations of the Black Flame
11) The Mars Volta - Octahedron
12) CKY - Carver City
13) Psyopus - Points of Reference
14) The Red Chord - Fed Through The Teeth Machine
15) Andrew WK - Gundam Rock (Seriously, Andrew WK released a cover album of songs from the Gundam series in Japan.  How awesome is that?)

Before I get into the official Top 10 list, there are a few albums that I've downloaded (whether it be legally or not) which I felt should get some sort of recognition.  So much like how the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance just gets some off-handed mention at the Grammies, here are a few ancillary awards before we get to the REAL stuff:



The "Blaqk Audio" Award: William Control - Hate Culture
Last year, I gave an honorary award to Black Audio's Cex Cells because I felt that it deserved some recognition despite the fact that it came out the previous year.  This year, the circumstances are so uncanny that I just decided to name it the "Black Audio" Award.  You see, in 2007 Davey Havok and Jade Puget  of AFI decided to use some of their off-time to make an electronica album under the Blaqk Audio banner.  A year later, Aiden singer wiL Francis went under the pseudonym William Control to release a similar, though darker, sounding album.  However, where Blaqk Audio's dance beats are so authentic that they could be legit club staples, William Control comes off as the love child of David Bowie and Crispin Glover conceived at an S&M club and raised by a drunk and abusive Hugh Hefner.  But oddly enough, no matter how emo ("Beautiful Loser"), depraved ("Strangers" and "The Whipping Haus") or Hot Topic-goth ("Cemetary") the lyrical content is, you can't deny that the new-wave influenced beats are damn catchy.  So if you want to shake your ass and wear guy-liner and/or man-scara, you can't go wrong with Blaqk Audio or William Control.  I guess it just boils down to whether your odd choice to wear makeup is because you're metrosexual or emo.

Honorable Mention: The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die
I've been aware that The Prodigy has always been around these past few years, even when they haven't been popular in the States.  Honestly, I haven't even listened to them since The Fat of the Land.  But when I saw people were putting Invaders Must Die on their year-end lists, I had to check it out.  From the opening moments, it took me back to middle/high school when Firestarter and Smack My Bitch Up were all the rage and I only had to worry about girls liking me despite my odd choices of music, as opposed to worrying about paying bills AND about girls liking me despite my odd choices of music.  After listening to Invaders, I've had the urge to go seek out the rest of their albums.


Best Free (And Legal!) Download: Hyper Crush - Mixtape Pt. 2
After seeing this '80s influenced hip-hop trio decked out in Hypercolor and Vanilla Ice hair and the "DJ" playing a keytar while wearing a Power Glove, you may have the knee-jerk reaction of writing Hyper Crush off as a gimmick group.  And while only about half of the songs their debut album "The Arcade" were all that great, Hyper Crush released a mixtape of renditions of their favorite '80s songs to absolutely free on their website to tide fans over until their next album drops.  Just from the intro alone, which incorporates classic quotes from The Wizard, Happy Gilmore and The Karate Kid, is enough to psyche you up for the lead track, which is an old-school rap about Street Fighter.  Add to that a handful of original songs and video game covers along with versions of such classic tracks like "Send Me An Angel", "Don't You Want Me" and Mr. T's classic "Treat Your Momma Right" and you have a quality free download (which you can still get from their website HERE or a free physical copy from their store if you're into that sorta thing).  Yeah, they may have a bit of a gimmick but I think it's a shame that Hyper Crush are being lumped in with the current brat pack of white-boy-techno-crunk-wannabes like 3OH!3, LMFAO and Brokencyde (all of whom I enjoy on varying degrees of novelty value) and rich-fashionista-skank-ho-rappers like Ke$ha, Uffie and Millionaires (all of whom I hope die in a fire).

Honorable Mention: Super Mash Bros. - All About The Scrillions
Consider Super Mash Bros. a poor man's Girl Talk, partly because their mash-ups though brilliant are nowhere near as complex as GT's and partly because they release their albums as free downloads, possibly avoiding multitudes of lawsuits they would surely receive if they had sold their albums for a profit.  Whereas Girl Talk will use up to 5 or 6 songs at the same time for part of a mash-up, Super Mash Bros. opt for a more straight-forwards approach.  Usually they'll just stick the vocals from one song and the beat of another and make it fit together just so.  Take for example the track "NPH FTW" which uses Pitbull's "Go Girl" set to Muse's "Black Holes and Revelations" which later turns to the classic "Mr. Sandman".  Or the track "@LaurenConrad Get Us On The Hills" which incorporates Jimmy Eat World, Ludacris, Devo, Missy Elliot and Disturbed, just to name a few.  Or "Still Bleeding", which sets Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" to Daft Punk's "Television Rules The Nation".  All About The Scrillions (as well as previous album Fuck Bitches, Get Euros) are available for download at lazerwolf.com.


Biggest Disappointment: AFI - Crash Love
I wonder if a metalhead admitting to liking AFI is lot someone coming out of the closet.  Sure I may be disappointing fellow metalheads but I'd be lifting a huge weight off my shoulders.  For all of his posturing and feminine appearance, I like to think that Davey Havok is a consumate frontman and I'd rather have AFI take up radio airspace instead of the current rash of "butt rock" like Nickelback and Hinder.  Hell, there's a part of me that enjoys recent records like Sing The Sorrow and Decemberunderground more than their street cred heyday albums like The Art of Drowning and Black Sails in the Sunset.  But I have to say that there was something missing from Crash Love.  Maybe it's the flirtation with electronic elements that they've exorcised with the Blaqk Audio side project.  Maybe it's the random spurts of aggression left over from their earlier albums.  I could make the argument that AFI wanted to make a more radio-friendly album but that probably wouldn't make much of an argument considering I can hardly remember any of the songs.  And that's where Crash Love becomes a disappointment: it's not bad, it's just not memorable.  Honestly, the only songs I remember are "Medicate" and "Beautiful Thieves" and that's primarily due to their recent inclusions on Guitar Hero 5 and Rock Band DLC.  After listening to a full album stream at The AV Club, Crash Love went from a must-buy album to a maybe-download-later album.

Honorable Mention: Combichrist - Today We Are All Demons
Really, any hate I have concerning this album stems from the fact that I bought it in the dead of Winter when my car CD player (which is really the only place I listen to CDs) skips to the point that it renders CDs unlistenable.  So I had to wait a few months until Spring to actually listen to it (my computer was dead during that time as well) and when I did, it was just kinda "meh".  That plus the reason I bought the album was because of the remix of the title track on the Underworld: Rise of the Lycans soundtrack, only to find out that it was the exact same song and wasn't all that great to begin with.  I hate when remixes aren't actually remixes.

Alright, with that out of the way, it looks like I won't get into the actual Top 10 list until the New Year rolls around.  I'm about halfway through that write-up but hopefully I'll have #'s 6-10 up by the weekend.  Also, there's a few more ideas I have for the blog that might get in the way of finishing the list but they're just that: ideas.  I'll give you an update when things become a bit more concrete.  But anyways, be safe in your New Year's celebrations tomorrow night.  If you have to drive out in the snow, be careful.  If you're gonna drink, don't be a douchebag about it.  I want to see you guys make it to 2010.