RULES:
– Post up to 10 releases (5 minimum) and number your list. Your 1st pick gets 10 points, 2nd gets 9 etc. etc., 10th gets 1 point. Feel free to list more albums, but they won't count as picks.
– Non-metal releases only. Unambiguously metal releases get yeeted with the Heart of the Ocean.
– EPs, demos etc. are eligible too so long as released in 1997.
– If you were too busy seeing yourself on the big screen that year to rank your list, then each of your picks gets 5.5 points coz math.
1. Jedi Mind Tricks - The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological, and Electro-Magnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness
There was a good couple of years in the mid-2000's where all I did was do drugs and listen to these guys, and this album in particular. Found out years later that they also did a lot of drugs while making it. I always got a kinda psychedelic vibe from the album even though there's nothing conventionally psychedelic about the music. But it's some out there shit though, with the craziest rhyming and references you'll ever hear. Or if you're just a junkie for killer beat production, Stoupe (the Enemy of Mankind) is on fire here. Oozing creativity. Wish I still had the vinyl.
2. The Misfits - Static Age
This was actually the first Misfits CD I ever bought and I listened to it obsessively in high school along with The Cramps. Good times. Still blows me away to this day just how original they sounded for their time, and especially that they couldn't find a label to release this back in 1978. Label runners are some of the biggest retards in music history.
3. John Fogerty - Blue Moon Swamp
The album is so good you could be fooled into believing it's a 'best of' compilation. Instantly became a staple for all my family's drunken corroborees. I honestly listen to it just as much as anything CCR put out.
4. Burzum - Dauði Baldrs
Quite ironic that Varg has something in common with gangsta rap in that he released music while in prison. Dauði Baldrs is kinda like Varg's very own The Truest Shit I Ever Said. Anyways I love this album, in spite of not being the biggest fan of "dungeon synth" or whatever. I spent many long nights and Sunday afternoons painting Warhammer minis with this CD basically on repeat. It's so cheesy and so obviously limited in its range that it horseshoes around from bad into good.
5. Kool "Big Willie" Keith - Sex Style
Keith says some of the most off-the-wall shit on this record. But the comedy aside Dan the Automator's production is so fucking good! Between 1996 and 2001 Kool Keith was the king.
"I enter New York, no problem with my dick out. California porno star, my ass you can lick out.
Saying "what?" with sperm dripping down your partner's butt, I see MC's in my face with they ass up.
Let me put my cape on, my rubber and my mask up. Not no horror-core shit, this is porno-core.
I'm in the club naked man, I'm the fucking pro. Niggas can't wax no ass, girls should let 'em know."
6. Sensational - Loaded With Power
Bizarre album by a bizarre emcee. Probably a bit overly long but the vibe is so strange that if you're in the right mood you can really sink into the CD and it'll feel like time has stopped. I used to pop this into my discman and go for nightwalks to escape the drunken mayhem at home, so it holds a special introspective quality for me. Sensational definitely did a lot of drugs, at times it feels like he's half asleep. The guy is pretty infamous for being halfway homeless IRL and would record freestyle tapes and CD-R's to sell on the corner. Crazy stuff, pure outsider hip hop. At times it feels like he's just saying shit over the beat lol.
7. Quorthon - Purity of Essence
Absurdly long, but in the right mood it seems to blow by. Forsberg displays a pretty unique collection of influences over the hour and a half of rock music here. From the psychedelic 60's all the way through the spacey punky 70's and 80's to the newer sounds of the 90's like grunge, stoner and indie rock. Kinda like The Saints meets Alice in Chains. Imagine if Forsberg had formed a garage/noise rock band in 1983 instead of Bathory? Metal history might have been very different.
8. Company Flow - Funcrusher Plus
Even though production-wise it's quite abstract and experimental, the rhyming is very no-nonsense. Just straight up spitting words with no real care for hooks. Pretty relentless actually. If you're familiar with the members' later solo work and the 90's independent hip hop movement in general, you know what to expect. El-P (yes the same guy from Run the Jewels), Mr. Len and Bigg Jus all spit like underground battle rappers and say a lot of weird shit, often at a rapid pace, making it fun to listen along.
9. The Psycho Realm - The Psycho Realm
Formed by two brothers who crushed it so hard that B-Real saw them perform live and liked them so much he joined their group! He's only on this album unfortunately due to label bullshit, but if you love Cypress Hill's darker stuff (eg Temples of Boom) you gotta check this out asap. One of the brothers sounds like a bizarro world B-Real so it's a real trip. It's west coast (very Latin) but there's a definite "boom bap" influence, and even a touch of horrorcore. Smoked out too.
10. Three 6 Mafia - Chpt. 2: "World Domination"
Even though it's my least listened to Three 6 album, it still goes hard as fuck. Kinda stands out in their early catalog because it covers a lot of ground genre-wise (as much as a group like this can anyway) but because of that it feels a little inconsistent. Still cuts like "Hit a Muthafucka," "I Ain't Cha Friend," "Who Got Dem 9's," the huge posse cut "Bodyparts 2," "Weed Is Got Me High" and the west coast-influenced "N 2 Deep" are all classics to me.
1. Eminem - Slim Shady EP
2. Shai Hulud - A Profound Hatred of Man
3. Down to Erf - Down to Erf
4. Jurassic 5 - Jurassic 5 EP
5. Andre Nickatina - Cocaine Raps
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Not gonna front, I was obsessed with that Backstreet Boys video when I was 9.
1. Kari Rueslåtten - Spindelsinn
2. Kari Bremnes - Månestein
3. Hedningarna - Hippjokk
4. Natacha Atlas - Halim
5. Anne Vada/Aki Fukakusa - Solrenning
6. The 3rd and the Mortal - In This Room
7. Kalenda Maya - Pilgrimsreiser
8. Skruk - Landet vi kommer fra
Edit: Had forgotten about Natacha Atlas. Still 75% of the artists in this list are from Norway.
Also the first Blackmore's Night album deserves a shout-out. For anybody unaware, this was Ritchie Blackmore's neo-medieval folk rock band, with his wife singing on the first few records. Magical stuff when you're in the right mood.
I have got all their albums which - as it seems - are very difficult to get nowadays. While I might not listen to them as often as e.g. Gåte or Garmarna, I still enjoy them whenever I give them a spin every once in a while. What makes them somewhat special is that they also used a didgeridoo on their first three albums, not a typical instrument used in this type of music, though it is also featured on three songs of Hedningarna's "Hippjokk" (but played by a guest musician). Unlike Garmarna, of which at least Gjallarhorn's debut reminded me the most when I first heard it, I've never seen them live, though, and as far as I understand, they are now defunct.
Also the first Blackmore's Night album deserves a shout-out. For anybody unaware, this was Ritchie Blackmore's neo-medieval folk rock band, with his wife singing on the first few records. Magical stuff when you're in the right mood.
While I have read about Blackmore's Night and their albums since their debut, I've so far never cared to check them out. I have just skipped a bit through the album-clip you've linked to and it seems I might like at least some of the stuff, but this will require further investigation. However, as far as folk-influenced music is concerned, I think I'm mostly drawn to artists/bands from northern Europe, especially Norway. To some extent, it might have got something to do with the rather dark mood of many of their songs and an often rawer, unpolished sound, maybe with some slight disharmonies here and there. I don't really know how to describe this properly, but I hope you get my drift.
Are you also familiar with the three songs by Hedningarna in which it is used or even their entire album "Hippjokk"? Out of those three songs, I'd say this is my favourite one as regards the use of the didgeridoo:
1. Björk - Homogenic
2. Headless Chickens - Greedy
3. leonard Nimoy - The Screaming Cage
4. Big Blue Blanket - Everytime You Smile
5. Anti-Nowhere League - Scum
6. Disjecta Membra - Achromaticia
7. Merzbow - Space Metalizer
8. Hieronymus Bosch - Hieronymus Bosch
9. Einleitungszeit - Aus Der Leichenkammer: "Klonieren Des Machinen Lärms"
10. Dam Native - Kaupapa Driven Rhymes Uplifted
HM:
Regurgitator - Unit
Inebriation - Whiskey Deadly
Chaos UK - The Morning After the Night Before
Must've been a good year - one of only a few where my non-metal list didn't need to dip down to anything I rated 3.0/5, the others being 1986 (updated compared to what I posted) and 1989. Well, a good year in my little corner where more than half of the artists I mentioned are from New Zealand...
Hmm, two aren't... exactly. Einleitungszeit probably isn't any more, but being power electronics most of their other stuff is similar. Dam Native's songs are on YouTube so mainly just missing out on the album intro/interludes/outro.
Big Blue Blanket's albums are on my Mediafire but that's about it so I'll send a link. They're playing a reunion show at the end of this year. I saw them once before... at their last reunion over 15 years ago!
I've got a demo-tape titled "Physikalanismatorikologonismus" by Disjecta Membra from 1990, but it turns out it's a different band - one from Germany, which is also to be found on Metal Archives:
Physikalanismatorikologonismus on the other hand would make for a suitably original name. I hadn't paid much attention to another Disjecta Membra being mentioned on Last.fm but I'm well aware there's a Russian metal band named Hieronymus Bosch, and of course listening to a band called leonard Nimoy gets weird too given the actor released music too.
