A Difficult 2011, 20 to 16

I've already posted full reviews of each of these albums, so the blurbs are relatively short for this installment.

20. Abriosis—Tattered and Bound

Abriosis are the only other Canadian band to make this list. I had to give them a placing based on their ripping live set and this world-class album. Tattered and Bound is a masterclass in discordant, technical death metal. Old-school, raw metal of death got most of the press in 2011, but I’m always in the market for a few key tech-death albums every year. Abriosis cut through with clarity and precision. Attention, Willowtip!

19. Earth—Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I (Southern Lord)

For all their sprawl, the last few Earth albums were tightly wound. There was great discipline in their repetition and tempos. It was like watching a tightrope walker; balance and symmetry in action. On Angels of Darkness... they let go of all that and did not fall. The music often just hovers there as Dylan Carlson directs the band with a light touch on the guitar. Get ready for Angels of Darkness II very soon.

18. Led Bib—Bring Your Own (Cuneiform)

I love Led Bib’s brand of raucous, hard-hitting action jazz. It’s exciting to hear saxophones duking it out for supremacy as the rhythm section races away like Prost and Senna side by side, heading into turn one. The dynamics and live power of five crack musicians playing together delivers the kind of jolt that I don’t often get from rock records. I haven’t sampled much of Cuneiform’s jazz roster, but I’m glad I took a chance on Led Bib, first with 2009’s Sensible Shoes and now with this fantastic follow-up.

17. Nicklas Barker—El Ultimo Fin De Semana

The soundtrack album lives on. Nicklas Barker’s main band is Anekdoten, and he brings that band’s melancholy (and Mellotron) to this collection of instrumentals written for a Spanish thriller. Some rock soundtrack albums work well as rock albums, full stop, such as Pink Floyd’s More Soundtrack (appreciated here) or Air’s The Virgin Suicides. Those albums incorporated songs amidst the musical interludes, whereas this one doesn’t. Still, its eerie snippets of music form a nicely sustained mood piece. The opening theme of “Celestial Ghost” will get under your skin immediately.

16. Six Organs of Admittance—Asleep on the Floodplain (Drag City)

Ben Chasny turned in quite an intimate record this time around. Asleep on the Floodplain offers a number of solo guitar performances as well as forlorn ballads and a big, buzzing hypnotic thing (“S/Word and Leviathan”) that's either the product of inspired improvisation or a happy accident in the studio...maybe a bit of both. Chasny's understated virtuosity has never been more evident. I'll always be impressed by his ability to create such vivid pictures with simple elements.

Abriosis—Tattered and Bound

I try to keep my ear to the ground and my finger on the pulse, but things still slip through. Case in point, local tech-death band Abriosis, whom I first read about in Cosmo Lee’s Decibel demo column. I made a mental note to check them out, then didn’t follow up. I am a fool. I finally had a chance to catch Abriosis earlier this summer at the Riffs Not Riots show, where they knocked me on my ass. I could not believe that these guys weren’t from Quebec, Canada’s home for Advanced Metal Studies. Afterwards, I looked them up online and found that they were offering this new album as a free download. It’s ridiculous to me that this world-class work of art is being given away, so I promise to buy a t-shirt or some physical product next time I see them, all right?

Abriosis fuse the avant-garde discord of Voivod with the breakneck, off-time thrash of Atheist, along with more modern death metal influences. They’re vicious but cerebral. They wield their technical abilities with wisdom and taste. Dissonant as they are, they’re not deliberately perverse with it. The song structures make sense and every song offers a few accessible riffs for the listener to cling to amidst the mayhem. “Repudiate the Lies” is especially catchy, and has the added attractions of a brief bass solo followed by a guitar workout that unleashes some serious Holdsworth shit.

What stands out for me is the care with which each member of Abriosis crafts interlocking parts. They don’t simply duplicate each other; each musician contributes something audibly distinct in creating this huge wall of metal. It’s especially gratifying to hear their screaming, growling vocalist (now ex-vocalist) synching his lyrics to the flow of the music instead of ranting distractingly overtop of everything. (I hope his replacement follows suit.) As my neighbour Luke said to me after seeing their set, the band clearly listens to each other. Nobody’s caught up in their own trip; they all rule as one.

This near-flawless debut full-length will definitely help them build an audience—their summer tour to Halifax and back couldn't have hurt either—and I hope they can link up and tour with some more established bands to take their lockstep brutality worldwide.