Top 10 albums of 2015

Ween is back for 2016, fuckers!

Well shit. It's already February, huh? Seems like this annual top 10 list goes up later and later every year. At the rate I'm going, my top 10 albums of 2025 might not see the light of day until 2027. Honestly, I'm really just a music journalist in name only at this point. This is only the 12th post I've made on this blog since 2011, and four of those (including this one) are just my annual top 10 albums lists. Two of them didn't even have anything to do with music and one was just a rehash of all my old 3?aK posts, so yeah, suffice it to say that writing about music has kind of taken a backseat to damn near everything else in my life lately. That said, a bunch of labels still send me promos to check out, and Village Voice still sends me a Pazz + Jop ballot every year, so I feel obligated to at least post a top 10 list for all of you loyal Tempe Carnivore readers out there.

Like last year, I've included the points I awarded each album on my 2015 ballot. Each voter gets 100 points to distribute amongst their top 10, with no album receiving more than 30 points or less than five. Also like last year (and every single year I've published a top 10), this list is predominantly metal. Deal with it.

Top 10 albums of 2011

Well, it's that time of year again. Music critics around the world are revealing their Top 10 (or for the really ambitious, Top 25) albums of the past year, while angry, anonymous internet commenters are ripping them to shreds for being too mainstream, too obscure, too hipster, too hip-hop, too trendy, too nerdy, too old-school, too new-school or some other petty grievance. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people take it as a personal affront every time you pick 10 things and rank them, but hey, that's what we're here for. Some people make lists, and some people bitch about them. I'm happy to be in the former camp.

In my case, you could justifiably label my Top 10 as "too metal." It's no secret that I'm a metalhead first and foremost, but it's hardly the only style of music I listen to. Over the years, I've shown plenty of love to non-metal releases in my year-end Top 10 lists, but this year just seemed to be a really good year for metal (or maybe just a down year for hip-hop, indie rock, etc.). Outside of a pair of country albums, this list is all metal. Hell, even the two country acts on my list have metal albums to their credit.

But you know what? So be it. Maybe I'm just getting old and set in my ways, but these are the 10 albums that moved me the most this year. Throwing in a token nod to Fleet Foxes, White Denim or the Black Keys just didn't seem right in a year that featured so many great heavy releases. So feel free to leave a comment below lambasting my picks. I've developed some thivk skin over the past few years, and it just wouldn't feel like a proper Top 10 list without disgruntled commentary.

Elder - Dead Roots Stirring (Album Review)

Elder - Dead Roots Stirring
Release date: October 25, 2011 (Meteor City Records)

Every once in a great while, an album comes along that almost leaves you lost for words. I say "almost," of course, because here I am, sitting down to write a review of one such album, and sure enough, I've managed to produce a few dozen words already, but I'm still trying to figure out how to effectively communicate how much I fucking love the new Elder record.

It'd be easy to write this Boston-based trio off as just another in a long line of Sabbath worshipping stoner metal bands, and admittedly, that alone is usually enough to impress me. Indeed, Elder's 2008 self-titled debut landed them squarely in that category, earning the band comparisons to stoner rock luminaries Sleep and Kyuss. But on Dead Roots Stirring, Elder not only avoid the dreaded "sophomore slump" that befalls so many bands that put out such a promising debut, they make stoner rock seem as fresh and viable a genre as it's been in decades.