ChordStrike

Robert's 5 Favorite Metal Albums of 2009

Metal music fanatics are not only die-hard in their love of the music, but stone-hard in their opinions about what makes great metal.  I certainly have mine, and they tend to lean towards bands that push the boundaries of the metal.  I am welcoming a debate about my choices.  Please critique, harangue, and question my list.  And most of all, add your favorites in the comments.  I'm always looking for recommendations.  Cheers!

1. Wolves in the Throne Room - Black Cascade

This Washington-based, environmentally-minded band just gets better and more focused with each record.  From beautiful ambient drone washes to the harshest of black metal screams, this record encompasses what is great about metal in the new millennium.

2. Mastodon - Crack the Skye

Mastodon are the most consistently great band in metal.  No record or live show ever disappoints.  Complex, moody, and striking, Crack the Skye is another milestone in a career made of them.

3. Cobalt - Gin

This Denver-based band has taken all of the elements from their past records and combined them into something unique and totally gratifying.  Another group expanding the definition of black metal.

4. Jesu - Opiate Sun

Justin Broadrick has never rested on his laurels.  Always challenging himself, this new Jesu EP strips away some of the more light elements of the last few releases and ups the crunch, while still keeping the pop songwriting sensibility (in the loosest of terms).  Amazing.

5. Katatonia - Night is the New Day

Katatonia has mastered it's melding of doom and progressive metal to the point that it could become rote.  But the band pushes itself enough with each release that every album is a new discovery.

Chip Kidd's Killer Rolling Stone Cover

Peep the cover of the most recent issue of Rolling Stone. It's nothing if not an object lesson in the powerful simplicity of graphic design done right. No surprise, I suppose, since the cover was conceptualized by Chip Kidd.

For those who don't know of Kidd, he's most highly renowned for his book-jacket designs, in which medium he reigns (among the living) absolutely unchallenged. His Work: 1986-2006 is a superlative greatest-hits collection culled from two decades' eye-popping book jackets and worth every penny.

Then again, maybe this issue's perfect cover should be a surprise, given that the former bastion of music journalism has lately taken to featuring incomparably horrible covers like last issue's inexplicable image of Shark Boy winning a wet t-shirt contest.

As for what's between the sheets, well, RS's look back at the '00s is predictably loaded with slavish applause for Radiohead's Kid A ($7.99 today!) and nearly everything U2 and Bruce Springsteen did, touched, or thought since the turn of the millennium. Ho humbug...

     --Jason Kirk

12 Days of Christmas

The holidays are upon us, and in the spirit of spreading holiday cheer, we've lined up a 12-day series of special offers that you'll only find here.  Starting today and continuing through 12/17, we'll unwrap a unique new offer at the start of each day, available for one day only (today's offer: enter to win everything in Lady Gaga's Amazon.com shopping cart!).  We've done our best to find something for everyone.  Find out about all of our offers by signing up for our daily 12 Days e-mail. 

Happy Holidays from all of us here at ChordStrike!

--Bri Nguyen

Norah Jones Remixes by Beck, Beastie Boys, Santigold

Norah Jones has been working for quite some time on cultivating a bit of an edge--a difficult undertaking for a woman with a honey-sweet voice who took the music industry by soft, cuddly storm in 2002 with one of the mellowest albums ever recorded.

The Norah of today is more complex. She plays the guitar. She's laid down vocals on a Q-tip track. Her soft, loopy hair has been jettisoned in favor of a shorter style. And most recently, she's enlisted the most unlikely producers to remix tracks from her latest album, The Fall: the Beastie Boys, Santigold, and Beck.

Pitchfork has the scoop:

First up: the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock and Mike D, whose "NYC remix" of "That's What I Said" turns Jones' original into something resembling dubstep. It's pretty weird! You can hear it over on RCRD LBL. Also, Santigold and Snotty have turned the Jones track "Chasing Pirates" into downbeat electro; Stereogum has that one. And Artist Direct has another remix of "Chasing Pirates", this one from Droogs, a collective that includes Beck.

Check out the remixes and let us know what you think. Is this a brave new direction for Norah, or should she stick to the knitting?

--Courtney Powell

Best Classical Album, 2009: - Bach - Solo Cantatas

This album was released in February, so we had almost a full year containing some excellent recordings in which to check our judgment and yes, this is the best disc in the classical canon for 2009.

Bernarda Fink as contralto soloist with Petra Müllejans directing her and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, offer three Bach cantatas "Geist und Seele wird verwirret," BWV 35, "Gott soll allein mein Herze haben,"  BWV 169, and "Vernugte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust" BWV 170.  All are from a minor fault-line in Bach's output, coming after three years of composing, rehearsing and performing a cantata a week, they focus less on the chorale as a musical and textual pivot and more on the solo voice.  Bach also elevates the organ from the traditional meat and potatoes continuo role, to full concertante instrument.

The Freiburg ensemble kept up an impressive recording schedule in 2009, what with the recent release of an exceptional "Die Schöpfung," (Haydn) under Rene Jacobs, and there is ample evidence on this record, to show why they have become the 'go to' band for authentic instruments. Freiburg's ensemble work is the best of all worlds, giving us the hearty soul of a classical orchestra, but from the authentic texture of original instruments, with breath-taking individual contributions (I'm thinking of the woodwinds, especially.)  Unlike the Haydn box set, Petra Müllejans serves a unique role within the orchestra as both a Musical Director and principle violinist, so the result is light years away from a "what the conductor wants" mindset.

Seminal works, like these cantatas, don't fare well if they're loaded up with superstar brilliance.  Quite often the path to the center of the work is subtractive in that the interpreter removes any and all obstacles between the author and the lucky audience.  On this recording, Bernarda Fink personifies this stripping away of the unnecessary.  Soaring above fine tone and consummate musicianship, she renders some of the most introspective, uncomfortable texts with utter humility and simplicity.  No raised pinky, no chewed scenery, just you, Bach and words that leave you nowhere to hide. -- Hugo Munday.