This is a graph of the music I have/listen to by release year.  The blue line represents songs I have.  The green line is songs times the number of times I listen to them.

1994 was apparently a big year, surpassed only by 2008, which gets a huge bump listening-wise, I’m assuming due to the presence of Gods Of The Earth.

The program can break it out by genre, too, which is fun:

This is Metal only  (ranging from Black Sabbath to Goatwhore)

(Anybody know any good metal albums that came out in 1998?  Apparently, I’m missing out)

Rock: (a pretty generic category, ranging from AC/DC to Clutch to The Big Wu)

Alternative (Soul Coughing, Cake, The Decemberists, Murder By Death):

Punk:

(Note:  I lived with Ben in 2001)

Pop (LOL):

This stuff only covers listening history for the last three years or so since I had lost my iTunes Library somewhere in there and had to start over.

9: The Company Band – The Company Band (iTMS)

8: Tardy Brothers – Bloodline (iTMS)

7: Mike Doughty – Sad Man Happy Man (iTMS)

6: Weezer – Raditiude (iTMS)

5: Mastodon – Crack The Skye (iTMS)

4: Flight Of The Conchords – I Told You I Was Freaky (iTMS)

3: Slayer – World Painted Blood (iTMS)

2: Clutch – Strange Cousins From The West (iTMS)

1: Phish – Joy (iTMS)

A couple weeks ago I happened to look at Mike Doughty’s website during a moment of boredom and found he had a new album coming out. I had a short moment where I my heart jumped a little bit and I was really excited, but that was quickly replaced by a feeling of trepidation as I remembered my disappointment in Golden Delicious. So I made a mental note to keep an eye out for it and moved on.

About 20 minutes ago, as I was waiting for a server update to download, I had another moment of boredom and found out that Sad Man Happy Man had come out today. Not expecting much, but wanting to support Mike Doughty in his artistic efforts, I purchased the album from iTunes…

… and was pleasantly surprised to find an album full of the sorts of things I loved about Mike Doughty when I first started listening to his solo efforts: simple, moving songs with melody and grace played by a man and his acoustic guitar. And, even better, the album benefits from the addition of a cello and some honest-to-goodness rapping.

Basically, it’s album produced by one guy with a passion, rather than a record company.

Executioner

I think iTunes recommended this to me.  Damn good thrash metal.

Think that's gross, you should see the "Revisited" version

I’ll be the first to tell you I have an unnatural obsession with thrash metal, but this album stands out for me.  Kreator is a band that somehow never caught my attention until very recently.  Having recently listened to a couple of their older albums, I suppose I can see why.  Back in the 80′s, they were just one of many many thrash metal bands, and their stuff sounds pretty similar to early Exodus, really early Anthrax, etc… (not to mention the fact that ‘Kreator’ is one of the dumbest band names ever–I assume they were a Christian metal band for a long time) …but much like Exodus (another terrible band name), it seems the dark days of the 90′s did these guys good.  

It’s not ground-breaking or anything, but it’s damn fine thrash metal.  And to have a band that started out in 1982 making kick-ass thrash metal in 2005 is, in and of itself, impressive.

The one downside to the album is probably the vocals.  This is a German band after all.  Especially on earlier Kreator albums, the vocals can be a bit difficult to swallow.  In the case of Enemy Of God, though, they seemed to have found a way to blend the vocals with the music in a way as to not sound like a dying animal.

Kreator recently released a new album, Hordes Of Chaos, which is also pretty awesome.  And apparently their current style revival began in 2001 with Violent Revolution, which I’ve yet to hear.

Call it what you will, it's Black Fucking Sabbath

Yeah, I just need to post this to remember that it came out. I haven’t listened to it yet. I can almost guarantee it’s going to be pretty awesome, though.

AC/DC rules!

So it turns out I’m pretty stupid. For roughly 20 years now, I thought this was a live album.  I think because of the album cover, and also AC/DC’s confusing recording career, which resulted in Problem Child being on both this album and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.  In my defense, there was also a live concert movie by AC/DC called Let There Be Rock, so maybe I’m not that stupid.

As a result of me thinking this was a live album, I never listened to it thoroughly (obviously, or I would have figured out it was a studio album).  As it turns out, it’s awesome!

Ironicly, the only reason I realized it was a studio album was because Exodus covered the song Overdose on their album Fabulous Disaster, which was originally from this album. LOL

Me = dumb

In fact, I think I just inadvertantly pinpointed the whole reason I’ve not liked Exodus.  

Anyway, now I’m finding the fact that I didn’t like them for so long kind of unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how you look at it, I suppose), because it turns out they’re pretty awesome.

I discovered this, probably not surprisingly, via Reuben.  He happened upon the Shovel Headed Kill Machine album a while back and played some of it for me while we hanging out in Buffalo Wild Wings before a show at The Myth (Megadeth, maybe?)  and it’s a whole bunch of awesome.

A few months ago, after listening to the album again, I decided to go back and check out older Exodus.  They’ve had a long and varied career, so I consulted the internet to try and determine what would be considered their “classic” album.  It turned out to be Bonded By Blood, a fact I now find kind of amusing.

Anyway, after listening to Bonded By Blood, I was less than impressed.  To my brain, it sounded pretty much like really old Anthrax, back when they were still with Neil Turbin, which IMO, is not a good thing.  So, that was the end of that… for a while.

Today, as part of my alphabetical-by-artist listening strategy, I came back to Exodus.  I had three albums in my iTunes:  Bonded By Blood, Shovel Headed Kill Machine, and The Atrocity Exhibition – Exhibit A.  While listening to Bonded By Blood for the second time ever, I decided to do some research on Exodus, because I vaguely remembered that the former lead singer of Testament was once in the band.

As it turns out, Exodus has one of the more interesting band histories I’ve ever read.  Paul Baloff, the singer from Bonded By Blood only sang on that one album before being replaced by Steve Souza, who got replaced in Testament by Chuck Billy.  Steve did 5 albums with Exodus before leaving in the 1993 to be replaced by Paul Baloff, the singer from Bonded By Blood.  Exodus broke up not long after that, and then reunited in 2001 for a benefit for Chuck Billy.  A year later, Paul Baloff died, to be replaced, once again, by Steve Souza, who then quit the band after one more studio album.

And then basically everybody left, which is when Exodus recorded Shovel Headed Kill Machine.  Since then, they’ve basically had the same line-up, although the original drummer came back.

And, as it turns out, they rerecorded Bonded By Blood with the new lineup, so now it’s possible to listen to the album, which has some awesome songs on it, performed in such a way that makes them not sound like crap.  So yay!

Anyway, after reading all that, I decided I have to listen to more Exodus, which is what I’m doing now.

And guess what?  Aside from Bonded By Blood, they’re totally kick-ass!

And I think I’ve figured out where Exodus went wrong and why they never got recognition that other thrash bands of the time did (like, oh say, Metallica, Megadeth or Anthrax):  every album, up until Force Of Habit, in 1992, started out with either silence or someone talking.  If one were to gauge the band based off of 10 seconds of the listening to the first track off each of those first four albums, you’d have no idea whatsoever what the band sounds like.

Here’s what I have to say about this album: it’s thrash metal and it was released in 2008. It pretty much sounds like any random thrash album released between 1985 and 1994. There’s nothing spectacular about it, but at the same time, it’s awesome. The songs that stood out for me were ‘Dread Command’, ‘Shoot To Thrill’ and ‘Born Of The Ruins’. I remember thinking during one of them that it sounded like Testament. In fact that’s pretty much the best way to describe Warbringer. They sound like Testament; especially ‘Dread Command’. The riff in that one is a pretty direct reference to a Testament song, but I can’t remember which one.
So, you know, pretty kick-ass.

This is definitely one of the more unfortunate band names I’ve heard in a while. Granted, the band is made up of two brothers whose last name is Tardy, but it sounds like a terrible sitcom based off the Hardy Boys where some network executive decided it would be hilarious if the sleuth brothers had down syndrome.
Aside from that, though, this album is pretty fuckin’ awesome. Essentially, two of the founding members of Obituary had a little too much time on their hands and decided to write even more awesome metal songs, even though Obituary is currently putting out an album basically every other month.
So, if you’re familiar with Obituary, I can tell you this: the vocals are exactly the same. The guitars aren’t quite as sludgy and the tempo is just slightly more upbeat. Other than that, it’s essentially another Obituary album. Which is awesome, cause those guys rule.
Unfortunately, this album isn’t currently available on iTunes, which means that nobody will buy it because they can’t find it. Oddly enough, it’s not even available to purchase from the band’s website. Amazon.com is probably your only choice.