Demon Pigeon’s Joyeux Noël Extravangaza 2012!!
Posted by admin on December 29th, 2012
Editor’s Note:
Fuck 2012.
Here’s how fucking sick we are of reading about how great the Olympics were, and about Gangnam Fucking Style, and about the The Apprentice Factor’s Got Talent:
Very Fucking Sick.
Yes, 2012 was yet another year rife with ironic novelty shit and over-weening pageantry to help disguise the progessive unravelling of Great Britain’s social fabric. So while the Government takes a machete to the social contract, we’re all kept enraptured and titivated by the movements of a bunch of thick inbreds. I might be talking about Team GB, or One Direction or even Josh Weeden’s Avengers Assembly but I’m not. I’m talking about the royal family. It can’t be a coincidence that nobody except Nicholas Witchell has given this much of a shit about the royals since the Tories were last in power.
Still, let’s keep trucking on, eh? Everything will be okay. At least we’ve got Mrs Brown’s Boys and Peep Show to laugh about! ahahahahahahaha :[
For quite some time, it’s been dawning on us here at Demon Pigeon that with each passing day, we become more and more alienated from what passes for popular culture. We don’t know our Tulisas from our Kardashians, and neither do we care enough to investigate; and we’ve yet to determine our feelings about Taylor Swift, but we know we don’t hate her. To be honest, we don’t even know what she’s for, never mind what she looks like.
So instead of all that bollocks, let’s take a look back over what we did pay attention to. That’s right, it was a load of ‘Hard Rock Music’, about which the rest of the world could not give a fuck less. One day soon though, it will come back into fashion, and we will be crowned King Fuzz of Mt Riff.
LIST BEGIN
- The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza – Danza IV
Should have been entitled Danza Jumps The Shark. The utterly hamfisted and underwhelming end to the Danza saga.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind
Just like all the other Converge albums, and yet somehow more so. Equal parts bafflingly brilliant and worryingly pedestrian.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Neurosis – Honor Found In Decay
We were going to review it, then we found this review which summed it up perfectly and thought “why bother?” Depressingly average from the kings of depression.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Royal Thunder – CVI
Opulent blend of stone rock and grown up people’s music with lovely lady vocals.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Orange Goblin – A Eulogy for the Damnned
Splendid stonking stone rock from the men who knew how to do it right the first time round. In 2013, they’re joining Clutch for a romp around the United States, and that’s pretty good going for a 15-year old band.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Soundgarden – King Animal
A return so achingly depressing in its bloated cynicism that it’ll make you vomit your childhood memories into your hands and smear them all over your tear-streaked, wailing face.
NOT ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Deftones – Koi No Yokan
Who cares about the fucking Deftones? It’s 2012, not 1997. Oh, as it turns out, we do. Who knew?
Deftones In Making Consistently Excellent Album Shocker: Wherein our titular heroes remember that an album should be more than a collection of odds and sods they found laying around in the studio and consequently end up writing their best album in over a decade.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Every Time I Die – Ex Lives
Continuing adventures in Party Hardcore from the most dependably dependable of metalcore bands.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Dinosaur Jr – I Bet on Sky
It turns out that nobody on the DP staff has actually heard this. So…
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Wo Fat – The Black Code
Riff riff riff. More riff. More. NO, MORE. Fuck it, just dump all the riff in there.
Shit, now it’s broken.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Amenra – Mass V
Disappointed by the return of Neurosis? Wanting to fill your little black heart with hatred and bile? Look not further than this horrifying slab of filthy doomy grimness.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Black Bombain – Titans
Four songs lasting over an hour with no song structures, endless guitar noodling and absolutely no point at all. In other words the perfect album for the Demon Pigeon staff.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- OM – Advaitic Songs
A great record for people like us, who hate tunes. Advaitic Songs is what this picture would sound like if you put it on a turntable:
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Bloody Hammers – S/T
Just because someone thinks the key to livening up depressingly sub par trad doom is to infuse it with Hammer Horror wannabe imagery does not necessarily make it so. Although Noel really liked this so go fucking figure.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- The Sword – Apocryphon
You can diss The Sword for somehow being either not cool enough for you, or too cool for you, but you cannot deny their albums are pretty mega, and have become more so at every step. This continues the tradition, and is better than anything you’ve done this year.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Karma To Burn – Slight Reprise
Re-release of the instrumental Stone Rock gods’ first album but without the vocals of the original. The only person in the world who wouldn’t like this would be the aforementioned vocalist. Or Noel.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Vision of Disorder – The Cursed Remain Cursed
The cursed remain cursed, but the legendary are rendered bland. Generic out of date hardcore from once mighty hardcore pioneers.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Devin Townsend Project – Epicloud
Widdly widdly widdly scream, widdly widdly sarcastic lyric, widdly widdly self deprecatingly childish lyrics, widdly widdly widdly.
Repeat until bored to tears. Can you stop for a bit now please, Devlin? Just sit down and have a Double Decker or something.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Down – Down IV, Part 1: The Purple EP
An EP with a title more tortuous than a Harry Potter film, and content duller than an evening watching Harry Potter films.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Cryptopsy – S/T
You know when you accuse death metal bands of selling out you sound really really dumb, don’t you? You do know that, right?
Anyway, Cryptopsy drop the experimentation with ‘THAT’S NOT bR00TULz METULZ!’ and instead deliver a crushingly brilliant death metal opus.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Unsane – Wreck
Unsane continue to sound unlike anyone else. Well done them.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Ufomammut – ORO Opus Primum/Opus Alter
Italian doom lords mark their move to the big time with an utterly delirious two-part masterpiece filled with space riffs, vocals recorded through a pillow and a low end deep enough to rupture time.
We almost reviewed both parts of this in full, but to be honest this is all you really need to know about ORO: The second half may lack the first’s heady brilliance, but overall, if it weren’t for Colour Haze, this would actually be a genuine contender for…
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Old Man Gloom – NO
This is either the most wantonly self indulgent of half arsed hipster-doom twaddle, or a blinding return to form from the most exciting collective in metal. Possibly it is both.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Meshuggah – Koloss
As much as it appears that on the face of things, the new Meshuggah album is a dizzying new high in tech metal, what you are actually experiencing is a massive dissociative state, because it is actually as exciting as standing in line at the chippy while they cook your cod. With no 3G signal.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- High On Fire – De Vermis Mysteriis
“Grroooooooooooowwwllllllllllgrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooowlllllllllllllllgrrroowaaallllllll. BELLOW.” – Matt Pike, 2012.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Baroness – Yellow & Green
Just utterly lovely prog-pop noodlings from bus journey unfortunates. Noel wasn’t that keen, but who cares what that miserable sack of guts thinks?
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- 16 – Deep Cuts from Dark Clouds
Do you like the monotony of Hatebreed, but find the pace just that little bit too fast? Try New “Sludgy Hardcore” from 16 instead! You’re guaranteed to be mildly diverted for its duration, and with no lingering aftertaste, or even any memory of its intrusion into your life! Order now and receive two for the price of one!
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- The Mars Volta – Noctorniquet
Noctorniquet?! Are you for real? Further adventures in navel gazing self indulgence from world’s foremost experts in tedium.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- The Smashing Pumpkins – Oceania
Oh Billy.
- Sigur Rós – Valtari
If I could listen to this on endless repeat while my life passed me by, I probably would. An excellent attempt by Iceland’s biggest exporters of coffee table-friendly music to utterly shed their mainstream commercial appeal. By refusing to play any ‘songs’ or have any ‘melodies’, Sigur Rós have ended up making a beguiling, haunting and beautiful album.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Death Grips – The Money Store
Have you ever listened to modern hip hop and thought ‘What this needs is to be sonically unfathomable and delivered by a rapper who both looks and sounds like a meth ridden tramp’? Then The Money Store is for you.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Pelican – Ataraxia Taraxis EP
How to make the Post Rock Sound Intolerable Boring Part Four, by Pelican. We were going to write about this as well, because we found out that Pelican don’t even live anywhere near each other, and record all their music remotely using the Dropbox app on iPad.
That was well worth mocking, we thought, but then we realised it’s absolutely impossible to get a joke out of a band this fucking dull.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Black Breath – Sentenced to Life
Just about the least sophisticated bunch of angry nonsense, and also the most fun.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- ISIS – Temporal
Not content with pissing all over their legacy with a seemingly endless spew of badly-recorded live albums, ISIS mark their sad passing with a rummage through a box of old tapes and demos Aaron Turner found under his sofa. Then they pad it out with yet more shitty live recordings. Utterly worthless.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Kylesa – From the Vaults Vol 1
If ISIS’s collection of odds and sods at least makes sense in the context of their break up, then releasing a collection of songs while your band is still together—songs good enough to appear on what have been, at best, okay albums—seems the ultimate act of hubris.
Except it isn’t. The ultimate act of hubris is to call the resulting shower of shite Vol 1, thus causing fear of a sequel.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
- Colour Haze – She Said
Holy fuck what a record. Why aren’t you listening to it right now? A beautiful mulch of stone rock riffs, booming big-bum bass and jazzed-up drums. All this is rounded out by strings, rhodes piano, horns, conga drums, theremin, some sort of panflute thing, probably, and God only knows what else. Add in a production job that practically forces you to crank it up and wallow until your hearing is begging for mercy, and you’ve got an album that we can’t—for the life of us—put down.
ACTUAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR!
Right. See you next year, tossers.
Tags: Made-Up Lies, Reviews