BEST OF 2007 - Heavy Music

by Simon T Diplock

We elbow the skinny jeans and asymmetrical hair cuts rudely to one side to cast a look back at the heavier end of 2007

"While the indie schmindie world was busy having a fit over Radiohead doing things without a record label, Enter Shikari had been scaling charts and selling out venues without a hand from ‘the man’ since January. "

2007 has been a strange year for rock’n’roll. And by rock’n’roll we mean the stuff that scares old people, gives you bruises and makes your ears bleed - not just any slimy set of skinny boys with six-strings. For rock’s real deal it’s been a strange year because it hasn’t really belonged to anyone. Sure, electronics gave metal bright new avenues to explore, rock of the southern and stoner varieties resurged, and all those ‘core’-suffixed mini-genres just got louder, madder and badder, but no lone brilliant band stepped up and took the world by storm.

In fact, such was the diversity on show that, depending on your source, the year was won by a myriad of different bands. Some of them great - like Nine Inch Nails or Machine Head or High On Fire. And some of them, well, not so great - one weekly rag even suggesting that My Chemical Romance might be the best band of the last 12 months. Pah! The groups that really got people excited could eat those witless puppets for breakfast.

Groups like Every Time I Die for example. If it was exciting, interesting, catchy, and even just a little bit cool, heavy music you were after this year then you needed just one album, ETID’s fourth, ‘The Big Dirty’. Okay, so a few staunch scenesters denounced the band for going too far down southern rock’s dusty road, but plenty more people joined the storm of support for them. And they weren’t fooled by any fancy viral ad campaign, hi-tech web game or gushing online review - just a brilliant from-start-to-finish, top marks record from a band on fine form.

Not that technology didn’t play a part elsewhere. More music is now available to more people for more of the time. Hell, go online and, even if you want constant blast beats and death screams, new music is available all of the time. Even as MySpace begins to die on its arse, heavy bands, most with little to no other way of getting their sound into the world beyond their local scene, have used the site to springboard themselves to the next level. Job For A Cowboy and Through The Eyes Of The Dead now boast record sales as strong as their friend counts. And while the indie schmindie world is still having a fit over Radiohead doing things without a record label, Enter Shikari have been scaling charts and selling out venues without a hand from ‘the man’ since January.

That’s right, not all the year’s rock’n’roll success stories started on the wrong side of the Atlantic. UK metallers Architects, Devil Sold His Soul and Shaped By Fate all turned out records that people will still be trying to decipher this time next year, Bring Me The Horizon successfully sent deathcore, much improved, back to the Americas, and The Ghost Of A Thousand rattled punk-rock’s cage with a vengeance, and should have got bigger than God doing it too. Or at least bigger than Gallows.

Other highlights included Will Haven’s vociferous return, Poison The Well proving, once again, that you can be emotional and smart and still be crushingly heavy, The Dillinger Escape Plan perfecting their angry art and Between The Buried And Me putting most other modern metal bands in the dust with their ‘Colors’ opus. And yeah, yeah this is the scary-looking, bearded and sweaty corner of New-Noise but it can’t rain all the time so special mentions also go to Yndi Halda, Dopamine and I Was A Cub Scout for helping to cool our collective jets just occasionally.

Things didn’t always go so superbly though. Names like Arise And Ruin, Blessthefall and Vanna provided momentarily exciting distractions but, alongside thousands of other faceless bandwagon-jumpers, will probably never be heard from again. Korn continued to pursue volume over talent (despite remaining a killer live band), Avenged Sevenfold released a self-titled effort that was an embarrassment to whatever ugly genre wants to claim them and acts like A Perfect Murder, Send More Paramedics and The Gorgeous all called it quits. And, quite apart from some shoddy albums hitting the shelves and bands breaking up, members of Decapitated, Quiet Riot, The Red Shore, Arsonists Get All The Girls and Ministry lost their lives. We salute you gentlemen.

The busy but wide open nature of rock’n’roll in 2007 might suggest that things went awry, that there were no real contenders, and that, in the absence of one big band, nobody had the balls to take the last 12 months and make them their own . But looking back, I'm more inclined to suggest that heavy music this year has enjoyed strength in depth rarely afforded it before. It might mean that year went without a headline act but the supporting line up was as strong as ever. And what with bands like Genghis Tron, Sky Eats Airplane, Blackhole, Hexes and Your Demise steaming up the ranks, the return of Max Cavalera, Mastodon and Metallica on the cards and a shouty punk even topping 2007’s cool lists, it doesn’t half feel like things are building towards a great 2008. See you there.
jeff said on January 8th 2008 [report abuse]

im sorry, but i think you are retarted. i do not like any one of your posts or do i think they take any though thought in writing them. your a moron.

ZombieDave said on January 13th 2008 [report abuse]

Is itt bcoz hee cant writ gud lyke wott ewe kan? If only everyone could be less 'retarted' like you, the world would be a happier place I'm sure.

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