Merry Christmas! For the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… a Megadeth beer… in a tree!

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, the metal was cranked, and all the proggers were soused…

In that festive spirit, here now is a supplement to our previously published list of the Top 10 Prog of Albums of 2019. It’s a list of yet another batch of our ten most-listened-to albums of the year. This time it offers a record of the ten explicitly metal albums that we listened to the most (in chronological order) throughout the year.

True, there is much fine metal on the earlier list (Tool, Opeth, etc.), but this supplementary list had to be created because there were still more great metal albums that we listened to heavily, no matter how proggy or not they were.

So, without further ado, let us add to the historical record a list that is best appreciated in tandem with our earlier one. But this new list is called our Top 10 Metal Albums of 2019:

Soen, Lotus, kicked off the year with a slab of pure metal perfection. From the genuinely thrilling guitar sounds to the compelling vocals, this band has developed a unique sound that stands out among the competition. 2017’s Lykaia was a masterpiece, but the production had some flaws. On Lotus, any such obstacles have been removed, and the band rocks without restraint on it, yet still within the majestic confines of superb songwriting.

Battle Beast, No More Hollywood Endings, showcases an incredible versatility, part of which answers the question of what a metal ABBA would sound like. While the first three tracks deliver a more commercially presentable side, “Unfairy Tales” and “Endless Summer” do the same, but with even more of a heartstopping edge, furnishing what should have been number one radio hits, were radio still a thing. The sonic edge then becomes a metal sword slaying everything in its path with our favorites, “Raise Your Fists” and “The Golden Horde.” This album proves that a great band is never confined to one genre or style, but instead ranges freely, sowing musical excellence wherever they go.

Spirit Adrift, Divided by Darkness, is a non-stop metal thrill ride in the classic style from start to finish. But surely its finest track occurs unexpectedly, in the number four slot. “Angel & Abyss” clocks in at 6:32 and delivers a killer one-two punch of what is reminiscent of first Sabbath then solo Ozzy. The galloping Ozzy section contains what are the most exciting air-guitar inducing moments of 2019. There’s even a Crazy-Train style vibraslap and maniacal Ozzy-like laugh just before the fadeout. Metal doesn’t get any more satisfying than this. Trust us, every track on this disc is a winner too.

Black Sites, Exile, serves up a diverse yet classic rock-infused infused array of delights. If you need proof, start with the track “Feral Child” which rips your face off. Then stick around for the prog-worthy “Coal City,” which tells a fine story and delivers the musical goods beyond expectations. You’ll want to spin the album multiple times, again and again just like we did.

Cwn Annwn, Patron Saint, is the kind of album that makes doing this web site for free more than worthwhile. Every now and then, we get an email from an unknown band asking us to listen to their work. When we sampled Cwn Annwn’s latest, a band we knew nothing about, we were unprepared to be so blown away. This intense album was so good we just couldn’t stop listening to it, and in fact it probably came to be the most listened to disc we played all year. The songs are just that good, and the band plays with such conviction. The crowning glory on every track is rendered by vocalist Julie Stelmaszewski, who has one of the best voices we have ever heard. Why is she not famous, and packing the stadiums? Why is Cwn Annwn not recognized for being one of today’s greatest metal bands, and touring the world? Perhaps it is because of what are for most people unpronounceable names. Well, let us spell it out for you in clear monosyllables: BUY. THIS. DISC.

Paladin, Ascension, has some of the wildest metal we heard all year, with every ounce of guitar blazing with dazzling virtuosity. There are so many favorite moments here, we cannot begin to name them all, for we would never stop, not just with every track, but within every track. Anyway, check out the glories of “Divine Providence” and “Fall From Grace.” No doubt when these cats play live, the cops must want to give them speeding tickets as they walk off. If they can catch them, of course. Good luck with that.

Michael Sweet, Ten, doesn’t just turn it up to ten, he turns it up to eleven and beyond. There are in fact twelve tracks of unsurpassed metal here. The album just doesn’t quit with track after track of headbanging vigor and head-exploding guitar solos. There’s only one ballad track (“Let It Be Love”), but of course Sweet slays it on that one too, thanks to his preternatural voice. Our favorite rockers include “Lay It Down” and “When Love is Hated.” But to be honest, the favorite is always the track from it that is currently playing.

The Darkness, Easter is Cancelled, redeems rock and roll and brings it back from the dead beginning with its killer first track, “Rock and Roll Deserves to Die.” From there, things just don’t let up as “How Can I Lose Your Love” continues to convict us that this is the best album from The Darkness since Permission to Land. And then track number three, “Live ‘Til I Die,” tips the scales and makes this their best album ever. When Justin sings about his youth, the music turbocharges the track into pure transcendence:

Well, I went through some changes at the age of fourteen
And discovered all the joys of rock wear:
I made a point of wearing unfeasibly tight jeans
And endeavoured just to grow my hair.
But kids can be cruel; I wasn’t popular at school:
I became the subject of a campaign of ridicule.
But I’ll stick by my guns
And rise above the laughter of the ignorant ones.

Incredibly, the vocals on this track achieve the same heights (literal and metaphorical) as Freddie Mercury on Queen’s “Under Pressure.” In addition, note that the title track “Easter is Cancelled” is, like the album art, only apparently sacrilegious. On closer scrutiny, and on more careful interpretation, both are in fact mocking the sacrilegious conceptions of Christianity (hello, red hats) that hypocritically pursue worldly power and really see no need for redemption through suffering. Finally, the closing track “We Are the Guitar Men” celebrates the fact that rock and roll, even amidst this lousy generation, is truly alive and well, and The Darkness are its metal heralds.

Gygax, High Fantasy, sneaks its way onto our list with a svelte album that charms with only about half an hour of twin lead guitar-infused, spellbinding tracks. Compared to their previous two albums, it seems like they don’t bother self-editing on this one, since the guitar work is quite crazily bursting out at the seams everywhere. Some people might say this is overplaying, but holy shirt-balls is it awesome. We say it sounds like us jamming in the garage. Or at least what we are trying to sound like. Forking Gygax actually does sound like this!

Tygers of Pan Tang, Ritual, arrived late but dominated our playlist anyway. Where others could try to nitpick and find fault with one, two, or even three different tracks on here, we would rather disagree. They are are all fantastic songs, each in their own way. Perhaps our favorites can be named out loud: “Destiny,” “White Lines,” “Words Cut Like Knives,” “Damn You!” and “Love Will Find A Way.” Oh wait, also “The Art of Noise.” Oh man, we just named more than half the album. Okay then, we should really name the whole thing: Ritual. Yes, the entire album is killer. Rock on, you metal heads.

Merry Christmas from Progarchy!

By the way, if you didn’t get yours yet, it’s not too late to ask Santa for a copy of the new CD from The Raconteurs, Help Us, Stranger…

In the meantime, here are some Christmas rarities…

Since it was released in October, I’ve been listening multiple times to Rafart’s new EP, Dasein.  Some might remember that I wrote, back in 2014, about Chilean composer and Chapman Stick player Francisco Rafart and his full-length release, The Handbook of the Acid Rider (2013). Since then, Rafart has released two EPs, the all-electronic Get in the Grid (2014), and Dark Night of the Soul (2015), as well as some individual tracks.  You can search “Rafart” on Spotify, or find him on Bandcamp, or go to his own web site.

 

Dasein features guitarists Filipe Saalfeld and Pat Nuño on guitars and Patrick Dalton on drums. Unlike Rafart’s previous releases, two of the four tracks on this EP include vocals.  I’ll admit to being partial to the instrumental tracks, but listen for yourself.  I would say that the urgency of Rafart’s vocal style adds an interesting additional dimension to his composition and performance.

Rafart presents Dasein as being about his quest for authenticity.  The reference of the title is to the concept of Dasein in the thought of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).  ‘Dasein‘ (literally “being there”) is the German word for existence, and Heidegger’s best known book, Being and Time (1927) made it into a technical term, in a way that has influenced a wide range of subsequent European philosophy, most famously the stream known as “existentialism.”  This reference caught my attention immediately, because his work has influenced my own thinking strongly, and I teach his writings to college students.  (Some readers might remember allusions to his thought here and there in my series of posts on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Rafart is attuned (a nice Heideggerian word) to the way in which my Dasein, my “being-in-the-world,” consists in my having been thrown into the world and enmeshed (before we are even conscious of it) in a matrix of meaning, toward which my most fundamental mode of directedness is care.  What this means is that whenever I stop and wonder about my existence, I find that it is already caught up in a complex set of caring relationships, caring about and for other people, caring about projects that I’m engaged in, caring about things (in the general sense, as in “how are things?”). Within that matrix, Heidegger notes that I am usually in a mode of going along with doing as “one” does, doing what “they” (Das Man) expect.  This is a sort of “falling” away from authenticity, where my doings might be doings that are authored by me, owned by me, my doings, rather than what they do, or what they expect me to do.  To be authentic does not come easily; it is not the default setting.  It requires effort, resoluteness.  One gets the sense that it is risky, and potentially costly.

Heidegger draws this understanding of authenticity (and the conviction that most of us are usually inauthentic) from the 19th Century philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, who is considered the first “existentialist.”  Heidegger (unlike Kierkegaard) seems to intend it as if it carries no value judgment, as if it is not necessarily bad to be inauthentic, or good to be authentic.  But it has been difficult for many to read Being and Time that way, to say the least.  The idea is also deeply complicated by the shadows of Heidegger’s association with the Nazis in the 1930s.  But Rafart joins a host of “existentialist” readers of Heidegger, who struggle deeply with their possibilities for authenticity.

So how is this struggle manifest in Rafart’s music?  I suppose the reader might expect me to pronounce, however provisionally, on his success at achieving authenticity.  But my (hopefully well-informed) suspicion is that it doesn’t work that way.  It is, for rather complicated reasons (having to do with the ways in which we are Dasein), always possible for others to look at my doings and to see them as inauthentic; authenticity is never worn unambiguously, “on my sleeve,” as the saying goes.  It’s not that one simply cannot tell.  It’s not that it is accessible to me but not to you; it’s not unambiguously accessible to me, either.  But rather than seeing that as some sort of failure or disappointment at not getting an answer, let’s change the question.

What happens when I listen to Rafart’s music as, itself, his struggle for authenticity?  What if the struggle is right there for me to hear, instead of being something that I try to detect behind, or even “within” the music?  I submit to you that if you understand from beginning that the music is the struggle, and not a manifestation, or “product” of the struggle, you will be able to hear it.

You will be able to hear it.  Notice that I held back from saying simply that you will hear it.  Why?  Because this whole “struggle for authenticity” thing can apply to listening just as much as it applies to composing, performing, etc.  One may always listen inauthentically.  I can listen as “one” listens, or as “they” expect me to listen.  I hope that I don’t have to give you a long, boring philosophical argument for this:  If my listening is not authentic, if it is not my listening, then am I not listening in a mode that will necessarily miss whatever it is in the music that goes beyond the saying of “one,” or of “them”?

I like Rafart’s composition and playing very much indeed, and I recommend it to you.  But what matters most to him, if we take seriously what he has written about his music, is that it is made and shared as authentically as possible.  So this is not just the sort of review that one writes when they ask for a review.  It is an invitation to accept Rafart’s gift, to listen with open (authentic, if you can manage it) ears, and to risk taking up your own side of the struggle.

Here is a playthrough of a track from Dasein, on YouTube:

https://www.rafartmusic.com/

 

Some people think Weather Report is frightful…

But the fire their music brings is so delightful…

Today is the most auspicious date of 21/12, so tradition demands we share our Top 10 Prog Albums of 2019 with you.

So, without further ado, the list below proceeds in chronological order, listing the ten albums that we listened to the most as each successive month in 2019 passed:

Steve Hackett, At the Edge of Light, is a highly addictive disc that can be returned to again and again with much enjoyment. Who would have thought that Hackett — even more so than Gabriel, Collins, Rutherford, or Banks — would become the Genesis member with the greatest longevity and prog productivity? But the facts are inescapable. Denizens of Progarchy must salute the mighty Hackett, who proudly flies the prog flag and who this year delivered one of the most impressive slabs of satisfying musical excellence. Prog on, Steve, prog on!

The Neal Morse Band, The Great Adventure, is one of the greatest things Neal Morse has ever done and one of the greatest concept albums ever. Remarkably, the entire composition can be seen as musical variations on the song “A Love That Never Dies” which is an incredibly impressive achievement: the album is not episodic (a familiar concept album failing) but rather an amazingly integrated artistic whole, one sign of which is the intricately unified musical composition itself.

Big Big Train, Grand Tour, shows that BBT, like the Neal Morse Band, maintains its place at the forefront of prog excellence. It’s not all reruns and remakes of Genesis and Yes, as the cynics could complain about prog. No, prog is indeed a mighty tradition, and we salute the greatest originators and practitioners within that tradition, as we always must. But we also recognize the new originals and finest craftsmen of our day. BBT remains firmly in that camp, and Progarchy was born out of a shared love for their greatness. So, we are pleased to report that this year they continue to have still never wavered. No, they steadily prog on in glory.

IZZ, Don’t Panic, bursts forth with a blaze of early Yes-inspired tribute, and soon morphs into its own distinctive quirky and whimsical prog idiom. The musicianship and wonderful vocals here are a source of never-ending happiness. This album repays repeated listens and firmly established itself on our short list of the most loved.

Whiteside’s Daughter, The Life You Save, is a short but stunning concept album with a highly compelling story about physical and spiritual abuse. Its high impact hard rock is established with perfect guitar riffs and a Southern metal idiom. The terrifying grip of “Abomination, Exorcism” highlights the dramatic crux. The album ends with a climax that could be read either way: hopeful resurrection from the ashes, or tragic demise. In any case, the definitive articulation here is the undeniable power of rock and roll within the economy of real salvation.

District 97, Screens, exhibits D97 from every appealing side of this truly multi-sided and musically accomplished group. While it starts off by showing us the D97 we already know and love, soon it shows the D97 that is still growing greater and more unexpectedly bliss inducing. The track “Bread and Yarn” stages an ambush on the listener’s expectations and, for this reviewer at least, become one of the most thrilling musical adventures of the year. No less than Bill Bruford has endorsed this band’s prog cred, so if you are not yet a listener, then why are you still depriving yourself of so much joy?

Tool, Fear Inoculum, blew us away with its devastating sonic blast. There is so much happening here that must be celebrated. It is not only the greatest thing Tool has ever done, it attains the heights of the greatest and most compelling prog metal of all time. If one album were to be chosen as the favorite of the year (as hard as that is to do with so much excellence this year to choose from), we would most likely ratify the judgment of Progarchy’s Rick K. that Tool has indeed here given us the album of the year.

Opeth, In Cauda Venenum, is another remarkable prog metal achievement. Yet again, here we have another venerable collective of artists who have unexpectedly delivered their finest album to date. The depth and richness of this stunning album will be savored for years to comes. For those who would choose this as their album of the year, the judgment is most understandable. Tool only wins out in our own heart because of the even more relentless heaviness of their metal, whereas Opeth here unveils a tenderly delicate sophistication in many quiet and even jazzy moments.

Flying Colors, Third Degree, offers us their third album which surpasses their second and comes close to regaining the heights established by their first. The bonus track that begins the second bonus disc, “Waiting For the Sun,” is actually our favorite track from the entire panoply. On our playlist, we place it as track one, and then the rest of the album falls into place in regular succession. So, if you do not yet have the special box set edition of this album, you have to get it, because without it you are lacking what is, in our opinion, a magic key for unlocking and opening up your own most proper disposition to the glories of the musical gifts contained within. Besides, you get coasters, and why don’t more bands have collectible coasters for your beer? Megadeth is doing it right, by actually creating their own craft beer, and you would think more prog bands would be open to doing this creative thing. As usual, BBT is already doing it, but alas we cannot obtain their BBT beer in the New World. But we are pleased to report that Megadeth’s A Tout Le Monde beer is most delicious: a formidable saison ale that also looks good on our Flying Colors coasters.

Yes, From A Page, was unexpected in terms of just how much it stunningly measures up to the greatest of Yes’s historical output. The four new studio tracks unveiled here have us convinced that in some alternate corner of the multiverse, Benoit and Oliver are rightly the prime movers of late-era Yes. The vocals and keyboards here are absolutely perfect and an unforeseen source of never-failing delight. Yes is truly one of the greatest prog collectives of all time, and here we have revealed the shining example of two largely untapped sources within the Yes tradition of boundless creativity and musical joy. Well done, gents. To be musically surprised by a band name that has been around this long is a welcome gift. Prog on indeed.