The Top 5 List Thread

[Bloopy]

My all-time top 5 fav albums that aren't on Spotify (excluding cases of a cruddy remaster or all tracks at least being available on a compilation). Just out of curiosity... I don't need them to be there:

Budgie - Never Turn Your Back on a Friend (surprised about this one)
Wall of Silents - Looking Through Cadaver Eyes
English Dogs - Where Legend Began (just mildly surprising given their other thrash album Forward Into Battle is on there)
Creeping - Order of Snakes
The House of Capricorn - In the Devil's Days


5 responses to a 2009 Xmas party dietary question from a work database table I was deleting:

 

[CiG]

Top 5 recent performances by actresses that impressed me, or something:


1. Rhea Seehorn
Her portrayal of Kim Wexler was incredible. Once in a lifetime kind of stuff. No spoilers but the bus scene in the final season of BCS. Just wow. In a lot of ways she stole the show.


2. Zendaya
Euphoria, of course! But also Malcolm & Marie and Dune. I went from hating her in Spider-Man: Homecoming to thinking she was a true great.


3. Mia Goth
I mean... this is a pretty obvious one. I loved X, and while I thought less of Pearl her performance was intense. Her role in The Survivalist seemed to go under the radar, that was my introduction to her, as well as High Life. Can't wait to see her in Infinity Pool.


4. Kelly Reilly
Yellowstone is pretty much nothing but morally ambiguous characters, but Kelly's Beth Dutton manages to stand out and shine in spite of all that competition. Also a more underrated role she killed it in was True Detective season 2.


5. Taylour Paige
One of my favourite rising stars. I loved her in Zola (my favourite movie of 2021) and she was one of the few redeeming qualities of White Boy Rick. She's got so much crazy shit coming in the future, for example Tony Kaye's next film, and the Toxic Avenger reboot.

 

[Bloopy]

Albums that are the point in an artist's discography where I say nope, switching this off and just pretending they called it quits beforehand:

• Julie London - The End of the World (it'd be 6 albums earlier with Around Midnight if Latin in a Satin Mood didn't exist)
• The Offspring - Days Go By
• Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown (American Idiot is quite good in my books, but some things will never work twice)
• Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier
• Radiohead - Kid A

 

[CiG]

Top 5 releases of January 2023:


1. Hemorrhoid - Demo '23
Like Nekro Drunkz but faster and darker. It's over so fast!

Spoiler

2. Ahab - The Coral Tombs
First great album of the year. Totally zoned out and got engulfed while reading a book. Greg Chandler from Esoteric does guest vocals on the closing track.


3. Praying - True Hellman
Brand new discovery. Their BC page says it better than I can:
"...steeped in far out alternative sounds from the 90's, with a wide range of influences from Eyehategod to Iron Monkey, while incorporating elements of early grooving Electric Wizard, with a smashing dose of Nirvana, Melvins and more."


4. Space Camp - Gold Star
Another new discovery even though this duo seems to have been around for awhile. Extremely tortured art punk/noise rock with a lot of sludgy appeal and interesting digital hardcore elements. The singer is seriously strained and deranged.

Spoiler

5. SG Lewis - AudioLust & HigherLove
First great pop album of the year. It's a bit of an epic too. The low and high moments are a bit turbulent but there are so many gems on here. Good fun and beautifully produced.

Spoiler

 

[CiG]

I've got a bunch of lists...

Top 5 releases of February:

1. Pussies - Pussies
Albert Witchfinder & Hail Conjurer make nasty music approaching 70's proto-punk meets 80's noise rock.

2. Junkyard Choir - Wild Ones Never Die
70's Tom Waits with a rock & roll, soul, blues backing band, out of London of all places. Great female backing singers too.

3. Parasitario - Everything Belongs to Death
Killer mixture of Swedish and Dutch death metal, from Japan.

4. Corpse Eater - World of Doom
Relentlessly bulldozing/puking one-man deathgrind from Germany.


5. E.T.D. - Nefarious Means
Awesome old school 80's style grindy death metal shit from Texas.

Top 5 releases of March:

1. Nuovo Testamento - Love Lines
Great catchy pop music.

2. Massacred - Lunatic Massacre
Best current Mortician worship. Fluids? Never heard of her.

3. Protrusion - Protrusion demo
Revival of proto-brutal death metal?

4. Death Reich - Disharmony
Vader worship from Sweden!

5. Expunged - Visions of Agony
Canadian Swedeath with chainsaw Hellhammer riffs.

Top 5 action flicks of 2022:


1. Top Gun: Maverick dir. Joseph Kosinski


2. Ambulance dir. Michael Bay


3. The Lair dir. Neil Marshall


4. Black Crab dir. Adam Berg


5. Lost Bullet 2 dir. Guillaume Pierret

 

[EspaDa]

Top 5 tracks by Plavi Orkestar (right now)

1. Sava tiho teče
2. Ljubi se istok i zapad
3. Lovac i košuta
4. Bolje biti pijan nego star
5. Soldatski bal

 

[no country for old wainds]

carrying on my '80s movie rankings from last page...

1984

1. Blood Simple (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)
my favourite debut and my ultimate comfort movie, a deadpan masterpiece on slugs slithering along streams of sweat all the way to damnation. i watch it every year.

2. Repo Man (dir. Alex Cox)
best goddamned car in the yard! as a disaffected suburban male who dreams of sticking it to the man by uhh repossessing cars and fighting aliens, i naturally have the poster on my wall.

3. Stranger Than Paradise (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
another droll film about grumpy go-nowhere do-nothing american kids yearning to escape their concrete prisons during the reagan years. there's something profound in these yawningly empty images, although the characters aren't in on it.

4. Blonde Death (dir. James Robert Baker)
same theme again, this time applied to the lovers-on-the-run genre. sunny SoV scuzz with a feverishly literary mind and a vulgar trashy heart, written and directed by "the angriest gay man in the world".

5. Love Streams (dir. John Cassavetes)
cassavetes ruled the '70s, but his final film is just as great. no other filmmaker ever looked so closely at people and their neuroses.

1985

1. After Hours (dir. Martin Scorsese)
top 3 scorsese, top 3 city at night movie, honestly might be my favourite screenplay of all time.

2. Ran (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
not only the best shakespeare adaptation and the best use of colour, but the original and best version of no country for old men.

3. A Zed & Two Noughts (dir. Peter Greenaway)
the original and best dead ringers, or wes anderson with all hints of twee replaced by disgust and decay.

4. Tampopo (dir. Juzo Itami)
life-affirming culinary western overflowing with love for food and movies. another one i might just start watching every year.

5. Typhoon Club (dir. Shinji Somai)
buncha kids trapped in school after hours during a typhoon and finding/losing themselves (through, yknow, rape and suicide and stuff).

 

[CiG]

Don't think I've ever heard of Blonde Death.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Don't think I've ever heard of Blonde Death.

"the next week passed like a montage of sheer and total romantic bliss. when we weren’t sunbathing in the backyard, sharing intimate secrets and laughing joyfully over sweet nothings, we were going for long and windswept drives through the vast mediocre expanses of orange county, drenched with a poignant mutual enthrallment that was almost too much for our mere physical bodies to contain. i suppose we packed a lifetime into that single week, with more joy and laughter, more bliss and euphoria, and more good clean honest heavy-duty fucking than most timid couples know in 20 or 30 years. by the fourth day, burt was starting to stink pretty bad, but we even turned disposing of his body into a fun-packed afternoon.

i believe even clorette saw how in love we were. behind that gag i sensed a soft-headed gaze of bemused approval, i guess she couldn't help seeing what all people no matter how foul or deranged have always seen: the world truly belongs to young lovers. still, the problem of exactly what to do about clorette continued to nag. knowing as i did now that vern had caused my real mother's death, i had abandoned my plan to simply keep clorette alive long enough to confess. instead, between hot kisses and hotter still bouts of ecstatic sex, i pictured both vern and clorette strung up in the garage like rancid sides of beef, link and me shoving clutch hooks up their asses and yanking hard til everything slipped out like a pinata full of guts. of course, i kept these visions to myself, not wanting to disturb our perfect bliss, and perfect it was."

 

[CiG]

Jesus that's pretty unhinged.

 

[Bloopy]

Top 5 caterpillars by species:

1. Uraba lugens (gum-leaf skeletoniser)
2. Kunugia divaricata (the other skull-faced caterpillar)
3. Acharia stimulea (saddleback caterpillar)
4. Calpodes ethlius (Brazilian skipper)
5. Papilio troilus (spicebush swallowtail)

Spoiler

 

[no country for old wainds]

nice! remind me to do a moth one later. will be UK ones only, mind

 

[CiG]

Top 5 action flicks of 2022:

2021:


1. One Shot dir. James Nunn


2. Gunpowder Milkshake dir. Navot Papushado


3. Castle Falls dir. Dolph Lundgren


4. The Ambush (الكمين) dir. Pierre Morel


5. Without Remorse dir. Stefano Sollima

 

[Bloopy]

5 worst Metallica songs:

1. The Unforgiven III
2. Purify
3. Invisible Kid
4. Am I Savage?
5. Bad Seed

I downloaded the mastered for iTunes version of Death Magnetic last year and I'm finding unfriggin' 3 a bit more tolerable now - not much worse than I & II in my books. I didn't like the unofficial fan masters of the album as they didn't sound Metallica enough to me somehow. So I'd been listening to the unmastered Guitar Hero III mixes with just a limiter applied to bring them up to volume.

Worst now...

1. Purify
2. Invisible Kid
3. Am I Savage?
4. Bad Seed
5. My World

Dishonourable mention: ManUNkind. No tracks as bad as these on 72 Seasons, which is quite a feat for them I suppose.

 

[Bloopy]

I was looking for this image when I posted last week. Anyway, have this now.



Top 5 songs from St. Anger:
1. All Within My Hands
2. Sweet Amber
3. Dirty Window
4. St. Anger
5. Shoot Me Again

When it came out, Dirty Window was my fav... so funny. And I prob didn't expect Shoot Me Again to make it to #5.

 

[no country for old wainds]

1986

1. The Fly (dir. David Cronenberg)
synthesises tragedy and horror so perfectly that it makes them seem like two sides of the same coin, always rooted in one another. they're both there in our failed striving to transcend our bestial roots and gain dominion over nature, our fundamental inability to understand and connect with one another, the inevitable disintegration of our bodies and minds, our inability to gain power without sacrificing humanity. the ending is so desperately sad, and so utterly fucking disgusting.

2. Down by Law (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
tom waits, john lurie and roberto benigni is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most unlikely leading trio ever to be cast in a movie, but somehow they're hilarious together. and i don't think anyone has made B&W look this good since colour took over.

3. Combat Shock (dir. Buddy Giovinazzo)
makes other vietnam movies seem like silly fantasies. this is the real shit. this is what comes out of a brain fucked by the war.

4. Little Shop of Horrors (dir. Frank Oz)
it's just great filmmaking. worldbuilding, tone, pacing, atmosphere, characterisation, dialogue, songs... can't fault any of it, and it adds up to something low key mesmerising. the director's cut has the added perk of being completely committed to apocalypse, no compromise.

5. Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch)
i find the worldview a little simplistic/conservative and kinda roll my eyes at the robins etc, but i'm also haunted by the darkest moments in this absolute nightmare of a film. nobody is better at showing the repressed bubbling up into the world like bile.

1987

1. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (dir. Todd Haynes)
the only Barbie movie you truly need.

2. The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (dir. Kazuo Hara)
would The Look of Silence be even more compelling and thorny if the 'protagonist' misled, harassed, threatened and bullied every single person he interviewed? you bet it would. he's the angriest character ever put on film, except he's not a character.

3. Housekeeping (dir. Bill Forsyth)
a family drama that slowly slides away from suicide, tragedy and loneliness into a fantasy world. there's nothing else really like this eccentric film, my best way of describing it is if john sayles tried to do Close Encounters.


4. Robocop (dir. Paul Verhoeven)
it's fucking Robocop, man.

5. Predator (dir. John McTiernan)
it's fucking Predator, man.

 

[CiG]

Some monthly favourites...

April:

1. Smoulder - Violent Creed of Vengeance
Huge step up from the first album imo.

2. VoidCeremony - Threads of Unknowing
Death metal in the sweet spot where tech and prog meet.

3. Killer Kin - Killer Kin
70's proto-punk revivalism.

4. Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good!
Tiny let down that the best tracks ended up being the early release singles aside, nu-disco queen doin' her thing.

5. Liquid Shit - Repulsive Bodies
Sounds like Melvins went death metal.


May:

1. The Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom - Summoning the Gatekeepers
Crusty doomy black heavy metal for working class curmudgeons.

2. Caprahed - Caprahed
Phil's post-Lucifer's Fall solo project. Great Aussie doom.

3. The Hell - The Hell
Noisy snotty Cleveland hardcore punk, pure 80's.

4. Galvanizer / Morbific - Galvanizer / Morbific
Two killer bands, but Morbific's side is vastly superior.

5. Khanate - To Be Cruel
Liked this more than I expected, especially the final track. Never was huge on this band but I might have to go back through their stuff.

 

[CiG]

Some monthly favourites...

April:

1. Smoulder - Violent Creed of Vengeance
Huge step up from the first album imo.

2. VoidCeremony - Threads of Unknowing
Death metal in the sweet spot where tech and prog meet.

3. Killer Kin - Killer Kin
70's proto-punk revivalism.

4. Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good!
Tiny let down that the best tracks ended up being the early release singles aside, nu-disco queen doin' her thing.

5. Liquid Shit - Repulsive Bodies
Sounds like Melvins went death metal.


May:

1. The Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom - Summoning the Gatekeepers
Crusty doomy black heavy metal for working class curmudgeons.

2. Caprahed - Caprahed
Phil's post-Lucifer's Fall solo project. Great Aussie doom.

3. The Hell - The Hell
Noisy snotty Cleveland hardcore punk, pure 80's.

4. Galvanizer / Morbific - Galvanizer / Morbific
Two killer bands, but Morbific's side is vastly superior.

5. Khanate - To Be Cruel
Liked this more than I expected, especially the final track. Never was huge on this band but I might have to go back through their stuff.

June:


1. Church of Misery - Born Under a Mad Sign
This might honestly be their best album to date. Especially the final 2 tracks.


2. Dipygus - Wet Market
Apparently this material was supposed to on splits that fell through due to the lockdowns. Surprisingly coherent as a mini-LP.


3. Static Abyss - Aborted from Reality
Slight step down from the first album imo but still killer doomy death metal from Reifert & Wilkinson.


4. Repuked / Depression - Repuked tolkar repuked / Leuchtfeuer einer transzendentalen Singularität
Depression are one of the most underrated deathgrind bands around. Here it feels like they're paying homage to Impetigo and Macabre. Swedish Autopsy/Pungent Stench worshipers Repuked re-recorded some old demo tracks and a brand new track. Sounds better than the originals imo.


5. Face Taster - "Booger" LP
Nonsensical, idiotic new wave punk rock retardation by the geniuses responsible for bands like Sockeye and 100 Story Building Drowning in Cum.

 

[Bloopy]

View attachment 33735
3. Static Abyss - Aborted from Reality
Slight step down from the first album imo but still killer doomy death metal from Reifert & Wilkinson.

They seem to have focused on letting the doom do doomy things a bit more, so a step up in Bloopbooks. Either way, a lot cooler than having 2 albums trying to be almost identical.

 

[The Butt]

List of 5 most painful things that suck and/or are shit

5 - breaking your ankle
4 - living
3 - living
2 - living
1 - living