Holiday Traditions, Metalcore Nostalgia, and Worshiping Our Own Past

Now that the holidays are upon us, it’s officially my power season. As much as I am a militant proponent of Having a Summah, Winter is a close second favorite for one reason, and that’s tradition.

Tradition is the all-encompassing, all-important, and infinitely-renewable source of holiday cheer. A celebration of our own past, and the past of our loved ones. It’s the one thing that makes this time of year truly precious and different from any other. Perhaps best of all, “tradition” is entirely unique from person to person; a double helix of reverence for our own history and memories.

Obviously, most people have traditions that they share with loved ones; picking out a Christmas tree, overeating at family dinners, watching specific seasonal movies, etc. Even the most atheistic household in the world probably has something unique that they do around this time of the year, even if it’s just going to the movie theater to avoid crowds. As great as those communal institutions are, I’ve been a staunch believer that the small, self-made traditions are as just as important as the big shared ones.

Tradition as a concept is so important to me that it was one of the first five posts I ever wrote on this site. Since I’ve already got multiple Christmas/year-end posts cooking up (and because I recognize my excitement for the holiday is offputting to some), I’ll instead use this specific write-up to focus on November.

Fueled by nothing but the endorphin rush of nostalgia and slavish devotion to the Christmas spirit, hyper-esoteric rituals begin to leak into nearly every aspect of my life by the time that Halloween is over. I watch specific episodes of TV shows, replay old video games, change the wallpapers on all of my devices, listen to old podcasts, and of course break out the winter music. In fact, one of the primary reasons for my seasonal exuberance is because I’m allowed to revisit music that’s only “acceptable” to listen to during these months.

As much as I love the gigabytes worth of Christmas music in my library, my “Winter music” playlist consists of much more than just on-brand holiday tunes. Over the years I’ve come to fully-embrace being the guy who gets into Christmas as soon as Halloween is over only because it marks the time of year that I get to break these songs out. Like I said, I’m not going to dip into holiday music on here yet. I don’t want to subject you guys to that much Christmas spirit, I’m merely trying to contain myself.

The point is that it would be a disservice to listen to these songs any time besides now, if only because it would make them less special. Obviously “Jingle Bells” would feel weird to listen to in July (and it does sound like a quirky character trait from a Noah Baumbach movie), but there’s just as much, if not more “regular” music that I relegate to the holiday season.

Case in point: the topic of this post. I tend to dip back into my high school-era metalcore around this time of year. Psychoanalyze that all you want, but I’ve now got a fiercely-cultivated playlist culling hundreds of songs from various years of angsty Christmases past. It’s a weird combination, but maybe this music provided me with some counter-programming that combatted both the warm holiday music and cold weather.

You can consider this write-up a bit of a pseudo-sequel to this post from earlier in the year about springtime metalcore. It’s weird because these two seasons are really the only time that I dip back into the genre, but man do I still have a soft spot for it. It’s mainly weird because these songs and albums now fill me with as much joy and holiday happiness as the tonally-inverse Christmas tunes.

At any rate, the same disclaimer on that earlier post applies here: I’m not necessarily proud of any of the music on this list, but it’s a concoction of albums that I find particularly potent. Records that have brought me years worth of happiness, and still have the power to collectively inspire me.

Artifex Pereo - Am I Invisible (2009)

Much like Julien Baker’s 2017 album, Am I Invisible begins with a single, eerie wooden creak. Perhaps belonging to an old floorboard or the frame of a handmade door, this haunted timbered gasp immediately gives the listener a sense of place, as if the entirety of Am I Invisible is settling into your headphones then and there. There’s a brief pause, and then the group’s vocalist Evan Redmon makes his presence known as he belts out the album’s title over a seemingly infinitely-layered vocal take. The remainder of the EP is a 25-minute sample platter that combines the best moments of Kurt Travis and Tilian Pearson-eras of Dance Gavin Dance. The album’s closing track “Neighbors” showcases the band’s already-sharp ear for songwriting, melody, and awe-inspiring emotionally-impactful build-ups. While the group only put out one more release with this early line-up, they still managed to capture something incredibly special on this early EP.

Bring Me The Horizon - Suicide Season (2008)

Back in high school, Bring Me The Horizon’s debut album, Count Your Blessings was the hardest thing I’d ever heard in my life. Filled with bangers like “Braille (For Stevie Wonder’s Eyes Only)” and “(I Used To Make Out With) Medusa” multiple tracks from this album would go on to become genre-defining anthems for this era of the hardcore scene. As you could imagine, the record was an absolute revelation in 2007 and served as the first real brush with deathcore that I’d found palatable at the time. When stacked against the genre-wide impact of their debut, most fans went into the band’s sophomore album with near-impossible expectations.

Softening every aspect from vocals to instrumentation, Suicide Season represents the band’s fully-fledged pivot into a more accessible metalcore sound. While it initially fell flat for me, something kept calling me back to Suicide Season, and in 2017 it’s now my favorite album of the entire genre. Filled with immaculately-produced songs of bile and aggression, tracks like “Diamonds Aren’t Forever” have come to represent the absolute best that this scene has to offer. While the band has continued on a path toward an increasingly-accessible sound, Suicide Season is an achievement that remains an untouched peak of 2000’s metalcore.

A Bullet for Pretty Boy - Revision:Revise (2010)

Hailing from East Texas, A Bullet for Pretty Boy’s debut album is a near-perfect Woe, Is Me doppelganger. Featuring punchy driving instrumentation, tight glitchy drumming, and absolutely crushing breakdowns, every track on Revision:Revise is a pointed showcase of each band member. Guitarist Derrick Sechrist belts out catchy clean choruses, alternating vocal duties with Danon Saylor whose throat-shredding screams impress their weight upon the listener’s consciousness.

While each track is thoughtfully put-together, the album’s definitive performance comes in its final six minutes on “I Will Destroy the Wisdom of the Wise.” The track, which initially made its debut on the band’s 2008 demo, finds new life here thanks to two years of instrumental honing, and a newly-added Tyler Carter feature. It’s quite hard to oversell exactly how much I love this track, but up until last year the song had the unique distinction of my most-played song of all time, and if 200 listens isn’t a commendation then I don’t know what is.

“I Will Destroy the Wisdom of the Wise” is my single favorite song of the entire metalcore genre, my wonderful discovery, and lone takeaway after years of embedding myself in the scene. Every element of the song is immaculate, a marvel to have been captured and recorded in such a flawless state, forever encased in unchanging code. Every word is considered, the drumming is ferocious, every moment is well-placed, and the Tyler Carter feature is the vocal cherry on top of an already delicious sundae. A triumph of the genre.

Chiodos - Illuminaudio (2010)

Fronted by the inimitable Craig Owens, Chiodos was a trailblazing post-hardcore band whose 2005 sophomore album All’s Well That Ends Well served as an entry point to the post-hardcore genre for millions of listeners. In late 2009 Chiodos announced their intention to carry forward as a band without Owens, publicly ousting one of the genre’s most seminal figureheads. Skeptical, cautious, and apprehensive, most fans went into the band’s following album with their guard up; how could the next guy possibly stack up? Like many other fans, I assumed I’d be over the band given the major pivot the comes with the changing of vocalists. In late October of 2010, a friend gave me an impassioned plea to give Illuminaudio a listen, and man am I glad he did. The record is a sprawling, conceptual, and voracious release that aimed high and still managed to surpass every possible expectation.

Much like his predecessor, Brandon Bolmer finds himself handling both clean and screamed vocals throughout the project, managing to reach both high-pitched Owens-esque croons and deep, soul-puncturing screams. The guitar and bass both sound full and rich, providing the perfect counterpoint to Tanner Wayne’s tightly-wound drum patterns. To put it simply, everything is on-point because the band wanted to prove their mettle now that the main star had left. Not only did Chiodos succeed, but they also created the best album in the band’s history and another one of my favorites in the metalcore genre. Owens’ eventual return in 2012 turned Illuminaudio into the unwanted black sheep of the Chiodos family, but in a way that makes this record all the more one-of-a-kind. Truly lighting in a bottle.

Crimson Armada - Guardians (2009)

With unrelenting vocals, and brutal machine gun-like instrumentation Crimson Armada’s debut album is a little rough around the edges but worth revisiting. The album’s title track “Guardian” alternates from fierce rapidly-spit screams to deep skull-crushing breakdowns. Similarly, “The Sound, The Flood, The Hour” is an absolutely punishing and ruthless track with a surprising amount of melody and musicality (once you adjust to the band’s vocals).

Dance Gavin Dance - Acceptance Speech (2013)

Far and away the most recent album on this list, Acceptance Speech released in the fall of my third year of college. While I’d largely grown out of the post-hardcore scene by 2013, Dance Gavin Dance remains the one group from the genre that I still listen to regularly. After numerous lineup changes, Acceptance Speech marked the band’s first release of its current incarnation featuring Tides of Man’s Tilian Pearson on vocals.

The album kicks off aggressively with “Jesus H. Macy,” luring long-time fans into a sense of familiarity with Jon Mess’ screamed vocals. The album is home to some of the band’s most experimental tracks like a crushing riff on “Carve,” chopped-up vocals on “Demo Team,” and the remix-ready “The Jiggler.” The album also hosts one of the strongest closers that the band has ever had on an album, making for a nice bookend of screamed Mess vocals.

While I didn’t think much of it at first, Acceptance Speech grew to be my favorite from the band. The entire record has a beautiful feeling uniformity and wholeness to it, making for one of the most pointed albums in the band’s discography. The whole thing has a wonderful haze to it, like it’s been filtered through a cold December night in the city. There are warm glowing lights, and you can practically see the steam rising off the band as they play. It was proof that Dance Gavin Dance wasn’t going to let one member stop them. I’m glad that they’ve continued with this lineup for so many fantastic releases now because this album only represented a new creative peak that the group set for themselves.

A Day To Remember - And Their Name Was Treason (2005)

A Day To Remember made a name for themselves in 2005 by embracing a unique mixture of metalcore leanings and bouncy pop-punk influences. While later albums are far more polished, fleshed-out, and nuanced, there’s something undeniably charming about the group’s debut. Every band member is still so young and green here, it’s endearing and inspiring to hear such a massively-successful and influential band in such a rough state.

Starting off aggressively with “Heartless,” the band eventually winds its way to the light with “You Should Have Killed Me When You Had the Chance” and “1958,” songs that offered glimmers of the group’s later brilliance. Even in this underdeveloped, underproduced, and underwritten state, there’s an undeniable appeal and magic at play on And Their Name Was Treason, and it’s easy to see how the band made a career out of jumping from pop-punk choruses to metalcore breakdowns. The first of many successful outings in an incredibly-fruitful career.

Dead and Divine - What Really Happened at Lover’s Lane (2005)

Much like A Day To Remember’s debut album, Dead and Divine’s 2005 EP captures a band in its charming infancy. While their later full-lengths would go on to favor (and hone) a much more aggressive post-hardcore sound, What Really Happened at Lover’s Lane features a softer, more careful approach to the genre. With crisp cleans and deeply-growled screams, each song explodes into brutal crescendos of original storytelling. The band’s masterful approach to the build-up is best exemplified by the album’s closing track “Goodnight, Quiet City,” an acoustic ballad that suddenly erupts into a fierce wall of grief before finishing in an orchestral swell accompanied by piercing anguished growls.

Emarosa - Emarosa (2010)

Things seemed to be trending upward for Jonny Craig in 2010, he’d rejoined Dance Gavin Dance after a two-album absence and mended fences with Emarosa in order to helm the group’s killer sophomore album. While things came off the rails quickly after its release, Emarosa’s self-titled record took every sound developed from the band’s earlierworks and improved on them markedly.

This is the first time the band congealed into a fully-formed, standalone entity. While many of his other projects see Craig’s vocals taking the lion’s share of the spotlight, on this release the band figured out how to fit his singing into the instrumentation in a way that everything folds together into one presentable package. It’s a record of constant forward momentum, and one of the best uses of Craig’s incredibly-distinct vocals.

Issues - Black Diamonds (2012)

Formed after the spiteful dissolution of the groundbreaking Woe, Is Me, Issues features a nearly-identical lineup of musicians with a few welcome additions. The group’s 23-minute Black Diamonds EP officially announced the members reuniting, addressed the previous group’s turbulence, and outlined their resolution to move forward with positivity.

After addressing the extra-musical drama, the remainder of the EP is simply overflowing with unique ideas, bringing dozens of fresh elements to a genre that had become stale within the space of a few years. By infusing metalcore with electronic elements, R&B, pop, hip-hop, and much more, the group managed to create something far greater than the sum of its parts: something wholly original and different in a scene where such concepts are often rejected and deemed unmarketable.

Featuring poppy cleans by Tyler Carter and deep fight-inducing screams from Michael Bohn, Issues added some much-needed excitement to the metalcore scene, and Issues’ originality helped differentiate them not only from their previous group but also from the rest of the genre. Two years later the band had released their first full-length, and an accompanying EP that reworked 8 of the band’s songs into newly-formed acoustic tracks. These acoustic versions managed to breathe new life into these already-great songs while also serving as further proof of the band’s musical versatility. These releases represented a positive turning point in my view of the genre and definitive evidence that there’s room for growth in this industry and in life.

Secret and Whisper - Teenage Fantasy (2010)

As with any other popular music scene, bands are born, break up, and then disappear forever. Throughout the early 2000’s literally hundreds of post-hardcore groups got together, created a Myspace, released some music, and then vanished as quickly as they’d appeared. Of all the bands from this era that released music and died out, the one that I miss the most is Secret and Whisper. If anything, I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that they worked together long enough to leave us something as heartbreakingly beautiful as Teenage Fantasy.

Probably the least “hardcore” of all the bands on this list, this would be my one recommendation to anyone reading this list who is not interested in the scene. It’s one of the most out-there and original approaches to the post-hardcore genre, and an entry I hesitated to include with the other entries on this list.

For 44 minutes Teenage Fantasy shines, glimmers, and brims over the top with fresh ideas. Simultaneously otherworldly and down-to-earth, the album is a glossy and emotional journey into the depths of frontman Charles Furney’s psyche. “Youth Cats” opens the album with a snarling guitar riff and a mythical lyric about the ‘lady of miracles’ who commands the river. Straight out of the gates Furney’s voice is volcanic, straining and stretching, brushing his upper register as the bass bounces back and forth beneath it. “Youth Cats” kicks the entire record off with an unrelenting forward momentum that gives the whole album a sense of immediacy and spectacle.

From there literally every. single. track. hits. Throughout the 44-minute running time the vocals soar, the drums hit hard, and the guitar rumbles, all of which swirl together like paint on a well-worn wooden palette, resulting in one singularly flawless record. Even the slower songs like “Upset Seventeen” have a Daniel Johnston-esque charm to them that make them more personable than nearly every other post-hardcore song you’ve ever heard. There are weird electronic diversions like “Pretty Snarl,” and even typically-boring song topics like love and death are addressed in surprisingly eloquent and thoughtful ways. Sometimes the group ventures out even further than expected, addressing topics like animal testing on “Star Blankets” and drawing parallels between serial killers and stardom on “Famous For a Century.” Everything is handled with a surprising level of tact, but also in a way that nothing sticks out as a poor fit. The entire record is unreal, cavernous, and dream-like. It impacts you once and then slowly envelops your body like warm sand. Truly unlike anything I’ve ever heard before or since. A wonderful and underappreciated masterpiece.

We’re Not Friends Anymore - You Are Television (2010)

Clocking in at a blazing 13 minutes, We’re Not Friends Anymore’s second (and final) EP finds a band that is hungry for success. The vocals explode and smolder, and the instrumentation brings a distinct groove and movement, making for surprisingly danceable tracks that spring to life. It is a breakup album, but one that seems as ready to move on as it is willing to dwell in the past. I’ve never heard anything like it, and the EP’s punctuality makes for a breezy listen that will quickly embed itself in your brain and worm its way to your heart.

This is only an abridged list of my favorites, you can listen to these albums and many others through this Spotify Playlist.

The Crossroads Between Objectivity and Nostalgia

Something I’ve spent the majority of my “adult” life grappling with is the intersection between art and nostalgia. It’s a concept that I’ve only recently come to recognize but has essentially acted as the thesis for this entire blog without me even knowing it. As a result, this post feels like what the past year’s worth of writing on here has been building towards.

Reflecting on my most recent metalcore-infested post I began to think “why do I love these albums so much?” Even within that blog where I’m gushing over these albums, I repeatedly felt the need to clarify that I don’t think they’re great feats of art. Is that because I’m embarrassed of liking them? Probably… But there’s more to it than that.

In that same post, I also talked about my positive (or not-so-positive) memories associated with each album, and I even gave a wine-like pairing of what I was doing while listening to each album. Earlier this week Of Mice & Men surprise released a new song called “Back To Me” with their new line-up sans-Carlile. It’s always a bummer to see someone leave a band (especially due to health-related issues) but it’s also a bummer to hear a band without the member that you held most dear. Listening to the new song led me down a Tidal-binge on the rest of the band’s greatest hits. Over their eight years as a band OM&M have undergone a significant shift in sound, transitioning from breakdown-heavy metalcore, then nu-metal, and more recently full-on buttrock. It’s not a transition I love, but God knows I respect their freedom to chase that artistic dragon. When I pressed play on the band’s 2011 standout O.G. Loko I realized something: when all’s said and done, this track (from an album I’ve barely listened to) didn’t sound all that different from the band’s 2010 album that I hold so dear. Someone coming to the band from an outside perspective would probably find the two indistinguishable.

A brief history of Of Mice & Men

I’ll be the first to admit metalcore is a genre that breeds repetition and cookie-cutter behavior. Fans know what they want, and most bands are happy to give it to them. That’s another one of the reasons I respect OM&M’s shift toward nu-metal and away from their origins: it’s a risk. At the end of the day, there’s not that much of a different between the band’s first album and the second. The difference for me was that I listened to the first ravenously during an awesome time in my life, and only listened to the second a few times at most. There’s probably someone a year my junior who feels the exact same way about the band’s second album compared to their third. And so on and so forth.

To get away from metalcore (and back to myself) I’ve spent the last several months ranking and re-ranking my favorite albums of all time. Some of the categories like classic rock were easy. Not only because it’s a genre I’ve been listening to my entire life, but those albums and songs have saturated our culture for decades. There’s some sort of rough consensus in the collective unconscious that The Beatles are great… and you know what? I agree. Because of this weird conflux of pop culture, history, and personal experiences, I can easily say that Abbey Road is not only my favorite Beatles album, it’s also an incredible piece of art that I feel no shame (or risk) in elevating on a high pedestal.

Then I look at hip-hop. The genre’s been around since long before I was born, but it was a genre I only started to personally engage with a few years ago. As a result, most of my favorite hip-hop albums are from that exact time frame. I know they’re not all “incredible” (at least not as incredible as Abbey Road) but part of that is recognizing my own inexperience with the genre. I know, I know, I know there’s older hip-hop I need to listen to that are essentially as “classic” as Abbey Road, but it takes time and effort to become fluent in a genre. I have barely listened to Jay-Z, UGK, Madvillain, Biggie, 2 Pac, and a whole host of other artists that I know are great. It’s like that guy who hasn’t watched Star Wars. He knows it’s a good movie, but you incredulously asking “Seriously? You haven’t watched STAR WARS?” just discourages him. 

I recently watched Casablanca for the first time a week ago (shout out to Mother’s Day). That’s a movie that’s frequently held up with Citizen Kane and Godfather as “literally the best movie of all time.” For years I’ve known that it’s great. It’s been on my “to watch” list… and you know what? It was pretty good. What can I add to the conversation about Casablanca that hasn’t been said before besides ‘yep, everyone was right, it is really good.’ There are other movies like Fight Club and From Dusk Till Dawn that I recognize aren’t peaks of cinematic triumph or artistic feats like Casablanca is, but you know what? I like them more. I like them more because I’ve seen them more, I’ve had more time to digest them, and I have more positive memories tied to them. That doesn’t mean they’re better than Casablanca, but I like them far more.

Back to music. 

In creating that list of my favorite albums I’ve fudged a lot of genres, added categories, and made incredibly arbitrary distinctions, all because I wanted to fit more albums on there. I don’t put all those genres or albums on the same level. My favorite metalcore album does not stack up to my favorite classic rock album, that’s comparing apples to oranges. Or apples to pool cues.

A separate conversation within this is exactly how long an album should take to be placed among your “favorites.” And even more: what about an album that’s new to you, but “classic” within its own field?

Up until this year… Hell, up until a couple months ago, I’d never listened to The Strokes debut album Is This It. Until 2017 the only three Strokes songs I’d heard were “Reptilia” (shoutout Rock Band 1), “New York City Cops” (shoutout iTunes DJ, you will be missed), and “When It Started” (shoutout Spider-Man 1 soundtrack). Ironic since “New York City Cops” and “When It Started” were swapped on the US version of Is This It due to 9/11… but I’m getting wildly off-topic here.

Pictured: A bastion of high art

---

The point is that it took me seventeen fucking years to listen to one of the greatest “indie” records of my lifetime… But is it fair for me to claim that? Sure I like Is This It a lot, but I’ve only listened to it about 10 times according to last.fm. So is consensus swaying my perception? Is two-decade-old critical acclaim forcing me to enjoy an album more than I really do? Is personal shame making me think higher of the record than I should be? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Is This It is great, no matter how you cut it. Removed of nostalgia, I enjoyed it and continue to play it every couple days.

Meanwhile, another album that didn’t quite make the cut into my favorites list was 2016’s Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast. It’s an album that I adore, but (again) I’ve only had a handful of months to really sit with the album and let it marinate. As much as I wanted to say ‘this is one of my favorite indie albums’ I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. This is an album I’ve listened to more than the Strokes, yet it didn’t carry the acclaim of “definitive album of the 2000’s” and thus I didn’t feel comfortable ranking it up against the classics. Same with Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial. I love the album, but I don’t feel comfortable enough with my personal feelings toward it, nor its place in history to confidently place it amongst my favorites of all time.

I’ll admit I’m overthinking all this. All these albums and movies are great, and at the end of the day, nobody really gives a shit about my “list” or ranking of these albums. Yet this is a concept I’ve been struggling with lately on an artistic level. How can you stack an album that you’ve been listening to for a decade up against anything else? How can a movie that been heralded as the greatest of all time (for 75 fucking years) really compare to anything that I’ve seen a dozen times? How do you even begin to compare the two? 

To bring this full-circle (and give a total cop-out answer) I think the answer is a case of “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Those two OM&M albums are great. I think they’re an acquired taste for sure, but an outsider to the genre would probably hear two songs next to each other and probably think ‘these are different songs?’ 

I think all these qualifiers are sliders. Personal history. Critical acclaim. History. Context. Time. are inextricable from art. I guess I’d argue the art can still be judged on its own in a vacuum, but that’s not how anyone judges it… ever. We hear, see, and experience things on our own terms.

I guess if anything I’m arguing that personal history (nostalgia) is one of the most powerful influencers when it comes to my interpretation and experience of art. I use music like a time-traveling drug. You know that feeling when the holidays hit and you hear “Silent Night” for the first time? I have a calendar year’s worth of songs like that. I have albums that bring me back to distinct times, years, and moments in my life. I love that art can do that. I love that this coming August I can put on Frank Ocean’s Blonde and it will transport me directly back to Summer 2016. That kind of personal connection to music is something that can (sadly) never be duplicated. The beautiful part is that we all have our own narratives like that. We all have a list of albums… or movies…. or food… or podcasts… or whatever that evoke something within us. I’m just far more obsessive about documenting my own. 

My own history. My own context. Some far-off part of my own mind is the reason that I don’t like one Of Mice & Men album as much as it’s nearly-identical predecessor. Unfortunately, that conflux is something that can never be fully translated or explained no matter how hard we try. That unique perspective is the one thing we share, even if nothing’s shared. And that’s what we bring to art. That little piece of us that adds onto to something that’s already an inherently human and beautiful and pure creation. It’s what makes art beautiful. It’s what makes the world beautiful.

The Hidden Beauty of High School Metal

I am not a cool person.

Despite concerted efforts to highlight my exceptional taste, willingness to branch out, and seek artistic alternatives within overcrowded frameworks, I’m just a nerd. Anyone who knows me in real life can attest that I’m in fact not the cool person (ironically) pictured above. Actually, this blog is as much about my own embarrassing history and musical hangups as it is trying to turn people onto good things. The point is it’s all kinda good, you might just need to shift your perspective, lower your expectations, or revert your brain to a child-like state to enjoy them.

This write-up is definitely one of those. Don’t expect any discussion on “traditionally good” music, thoughtful insight, or analysis of the new Kendrick Lamar album. Make no mistake, this is all embarrassing shit.

A few months back I tried to compile a list of my favorite albums of all time. What originally started as a top ten list quickly evolved into an amalgam of over 100 albums spanning dozens of genres. From the first time I heard AC/DC at 11, to high school heartbreak, to collegiate celebration, this document is a comprehensive look at my taste and who I am as a person.

While the hip-hop section needs some diversification, I’m pretty happy with the general makeup of this look at my musical soul. One of the biggest sources of shame, however, is the “metalcore” category. It’s a genre that I listened to all the way through high school and has become taste-defining for better or worse. Metalcore is a very “seasonal” genre for me, and with spring officially upon us in Oregon, I’ve recently broken out a handful of these records and found myself falling back in love with them.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is almost fully nostalgia. I don’t think these albums are high art, or even worthy of the praise that I’m about to heap upon them, but they bring me back. You know what I was doing in 2009? Enjoying life. I had my first real girlfriend, I was walking to school every day in the warm sunlight with a (now sadly discontinued) Quaker Oatmeal To Go bar in-hand. I was listening to this music, my friends were listening to this music, and it was a scene that I cared about deeply. It was a healthy way to let out teenage angst, and it felt like a genre that was “alive,” with new bands and ideas popping up regularly… Honestly very similar to how I feel about the hip-hop scene right now. But in high school metalcore was just unknown enough and just unpopular enough for me to fully rally behind. It informed my personality, my clothes (shout out to Hot Topic), and absolutely served as the soundtrack to these four formative years in my life.

A Skylit Drive - Adelphia

Adelphia is the sophomore effort of Californian metalcore band A Skylit Drive. Fronted by abnormally-high-pitched singer Michael “Jag” Jagmin, Adelphia allowed the band time to take a more structured, varied, and thoughtful approach to their songwriting which improved markedly on the band’s earlier sound. The combination of Brian White’s screamed vocals with Jag’s nearly-feminine singing is an intoxicating mix that (when paired with the tight instrumentation on this record) made for ASD’s most memorable record.

Pair with: Gears of War 2 King of the Hill on Pavilion

Of Mice & Men - Of Mice & Men

Of Mice & Men began with a blistering cover of “Poker Face” uploaded to Myspace in early 2009 (in case you needed a reminder of where we’re at in time). After being kicked from electronicore band and crabcore creators Attack Attack!, screamer Austin Carlile embarked on a new venture named after the Steinbeck novel of the same name (cleverly differentiated with an ampersand). Within a year of the Gaga cover, OM&M had dropped their eponymous full-length album to critical acclaim. Clocking in at a little over 30 minutes, Of Mice & Men is an unflinching album that rides on the coattails of Carlile’s throat-shredding vocals, as best exemplified by the closing track’s final minutes.

Pair with: post-work drives to nowhere in particular

I See Stars - 3-D

Perhaps most embarrassing of anything on this already-embarrassing list, I See Stars is a techno-influenced metalcore act from Ohio. Comprised entirely of teenagers at the time, I See Stars released their debut album 3-D in April of 2009. With song names that alluded to Fight Club and Shell Silverstein, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more Taylor-Grimes-tailored album in 2009. Everything about this album, from the keyboard-infused breakdowns to the inexplicable Bizzy Bone feature just clicks for some inexplicable reason. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures… but there’s definitely music I listen to that I wouldn’t play in the presence of others, and 3-D is one of those.

Pair with: 7 am springtime walks to high school while enjoying an aforementioned Oatmeal Bar

In Fear and Faith - Voyage

In Fear and Faith stand alone as one of the most unique bands on this list due solely to their instrumentation. This genre reuses the same sounds, themes, and ideas so much that it became cookie cutter within a few years of its explosive growth at the end of the 2000’s. In Fear And Faith presented an alternative: a metalcore act that centered around a theme (pirates of all things) and more importantly the Niroomand brothers Mehdi (drums) and Ramin (guitars and piano). Ramin’s keys alone added a level of composition and sophistication that was unlike anything else in the genre at the time. Their debut Ep Voyage remains my favorite release of theirs, but their second EP Symphonies highlights the absurd talent of the Niroomand brothers.

Pair with soaking up the sun and basking in the insanely violent X-Men Origins: Wolverine game (which was better than it had any right to be).

Broadway - Kingdoms

The enigmatic (and hard to Google) Broadway is a metalcore band that takes queues from pop-punk and tackles a variety of relationship issues from the perspective of the band’s high-pitched singer and screamer Misha Camacho. The band’s debut album Kingdoms follows the exact beats of a relationship that’s in the process of falling apart and served as the perfect medium for me to project my own relationship strife onto at the time of its release.

Pair with: sadly playing Metro 2033 in the midst of a breakup.

Alesana - The Emptiness

Speaking of breakup albums, Alesana’s The Emptiness was my go-to album for a sad spring break trip to the Oregon coast. The Emptiness is a concept album loosely based around a mishmash several of Edgar Allan Poe stories told through Shawn Milke’s shrill clean vocals and Dennis Lee chilling screamed vocals. This cinematic and aggressive retelling of a failed relationship was exactly what I needed to hear at the time.

Pair with: a sad, rainy Oregon coast.

We Came As Romans - To Plant A Seed

We Came as Romans were one of my first few “real deal” concerts (i.e. going with a group of friends and not my parents). Experiencing the rawness, energy, and passion of this genre firsthand was a life-affirming experience that solidified the genre’s legitimacy for me. We Came As Roman’s debut album To Plant a Seed features 10 vaguely-religious tracks that delicately balance Kyle Pavone’s autotuned cleans with Dave Stephens’s low growls. Being within 20 feet of the entire band as the music faded and the entire venue joined in on the opening track’s group chant was a magical moment I’ll never forget.

Pair with: a crowded, sweaty Hawthorne Theater

Miss May I - Apologies Are For The Weak

Last but not least, we have Miss May I’s debut album Apologies are for the Weak. This tightly-honed metalcore album is biting and unrelenting enough to hold your attention, but just lyrically veiled enough to serve as background music when you need it to be. The defining moment is the breakdown in “Forgive and Forget” accompanied with clean vocals of all things.

Pair with: learning to drive in the early Oregon Summer in between fits of GTA IV.

---

I don’t think these albums are high art. I don’t think they’re the greatest of all time. Hell, I don’t even think they’re the greatest within their own genre. My favorite season is always whatever one we’re currently in the midst of, and this spring has simply brought out an immense happiness in me. Partially because of the sun, and partially because I can revisit all these albums again, if only for a few months. They’re special because I only listen to them a handful of times a year. Sure they inform my taste, personality, and a very distinct time in my life, but it’s nice to be able to revisit those memories. Even if they only evoke split-second pangs of beauty and happiness, this grouping of albums served as the soundtrack to a formative time in my life, and what are we if we don’t appreciate where we’ve come from? That’s something to treasure and hold close, no matter how embarrassing.

On Lyrics

I don’t think lyrics matter.

Well they do, but that statement was the only attention-grabbing way I could think to start this. What I mean is that I don’t think lyrics should be the main focal point of music. It took a bizarre combination of music genres for me to arrive at this conclusion, but let me see If I can walk you through my reasoning.

In my junior year of high school I discovered the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. The albums Ágætis Byrjun and ( ) specifically worked their way into near-daily rotation on my iPod. At the same time I also began to fall deeply into metalcore as I frustratedly grappled with my first real breakup. Metal’s harsh screaming vocals, pounding cannon drums, and abrasive guitar seemed to be a perfect reflection of how I felt internally most of the time. Any time I needed a break from that aggressive stuff, I’d go straight to Sigur Ros and use them as an escape. It was like mixing uppers and downers: I used these two genres to accentuate whatever I was feeling at the time. In jumping back and forth between two (seemingly) different types of music so frequently I started to notice some odd similarities. The primary connection I noticed was the way they both approached lyrics. As much as I loved the hardcore scene at the time, I almost never understood the lyrics. The typical criticism of “how can you even tell what they’re saying?” was completely valid. At that time I never had an answer to that criticism, but now I realize it was because I didn’t care about the lyrics; I cared about the music.

Lyrics are great. I’m a writer, I’m obligated to love the written word. Within the context of a piece of music however, I feel that lyrics shouldn’t be viewed as the most vital element. Even in hip-hop, a genre where the voice is the primary focus, there are still interesting ways to create music without focusing on the words explicitly… but I’ll come back to that in a second.

The connection between Sigur Ros and my newfound escape of metalcore was lyrics. Not the content, or the delivery, but the approach. Unless you spoke Icelandic, you had no idea what Sigur Ros songs are saying. Furthermore, some of their songs are written entirely in “hopelandic” a nonsensical language invented by the band which has no meaning. As the band describes hopelandic as “a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as another instrument.” While that’s an interesting and novel approach, to an average listener (especially an American high schooler) the whole thing was unintelligible to me. As was metal. I began to realize that both genres were approaching vocals in the exact same way. Obviously you can make out the occasional lyric in a metalcore song, but to me the vocals simply became a part of the larger musical texture. I understood the emotion that was being conveyed without understanding exactly what was being said. I began to view the voice as an instrument.

While both of the genres were using vocals to the same end, they both had very different applications for me. Metalcore became the devil on my shoulder that screamed unknowable words in anger, and Sigur Ros became the angel who gently sang me into a lullaby-like trance. There was suddenly a duality to nearly all of the music I was listening to, it simply became a matter of asking myself what I was in the mood for.

As time wore on I got over that relationship and moved away from metalcore. I wasn’t that mad all the time, and I didn’t want to be. I transitioned into a more positive pop-punk phase which centered heavily around The Wonder Years. While their vocals are far cleaner than what I was used to, the ever-present nasally punk style was still difficult to decipher at times. After listening to The Wonder Years for some time I sat down one of their albums album and a lyric sheet in front of me and ended up discovering an entirely layer to the songs. Not only did I understand what was being said, I suddenly saw a deeper level that the music was operating on. There was something interesting about listening to an album dozens of times and only fully-deciphering it when you sit down with that as your intent. Listening to an album with unclear vocals makes a record replayable and allows the listener to fill in the gaps with their own meaning. Lyrics can add an additional layer to something that’s already enjoyable.

Which brings me back to hip-hop. One of my favorite hip-hop artists Young Thug started out as a very divisive figure within the rap scene. This article by the New York Post does an excellent job of articulately explaining why Young Thug’s music is fascinating. I often use that write-up as a primer when trying to get friends into Thug and while I think the whole article is a great read, it is long. I’ll post an excerpt here that’s relevant:

“genius.com is the watering hole around which today’s rap enthusiasts gather to parse lyrics and ponder the meaning of life. Young Thug has pages upon pages of lyrics posted on Genius. Many are riddled with debates not over what his words might be trying to convey, but what’s actually being said in the first place.

The refrain of “Lifestyle” crescendos with Young Thug’s syllables piling up like rush-hour wreckage. The crowdsourced consensus at Genius states that the rapper is “livin’ life like a beginner and this is only the beginning,” – but “beginner” sounds a lot like “volcano,” and the garbled ambiguity of the whole thing elicits a distinct pleasure.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped conservative rap fans from turning Young Thug’s inscrutability into a punch line. Less-than-imaginative listeners simply hear it as a stylish quirk. But it’s really a mode of being. Instead of skipping off into the hyper-communicative valleys of the Internet, Young Thug conceals things. He mangles his words in mumbles, swallows them in yawns, annihilates them in growls. He’s not concerned with being understood. So we listen a little closer.”

Within the past year there have been a whole crop of new artists in the hip-hop field taking after Young Thug. Up-and-comers like Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi Vert, and Desiigner have all sparked online debates over what “hip-hop” is and where lyricism fits within that.

My two cents (as you can probably guess) is that it doesn’t matter. Music is music. In fact, two of the artists mentioned above don’t even consider themselves rappers. So what does this mean? Are we headed for a Idiocracy-like future where all music is mumbled nonsense? I don’t think so. All I think this means is that the tides are changing. There will always be lyrical music, and people who need to get something out that can’t be communicated through sound alone. The difference is it’s just becoming more acceptable for this alternative non-verbal approach to be viable.

I love this type of music because I can project whatever I want onto it. That’s why I started to love it in high school. I could listen to the abrasive angry stuff and get my emotions out in a safe, harmless way. I could listen to Sigur Ros and reflect, or use it to bounce back from a spiral caused by too much of the other stuff. It all became a mirror of my own thoughts and emotions.

I still look at music the same to this day. Sometimes I listen to an album so much that I’ll memorize the lyrics, but my first listen is always dedicated to taking the piece in as a whole. Trying to decode what’s being said can end up taking away from the overall experience, so I don’t make it my sole focus.

Lyrics are just one piece of the music. You could pay just as much attention to the guitar, or the drums, or the beat, but lyrics are an easy thing to focus on because they’re decipherable. The lyrics are often at the forefront of the music (there’s a reason people call singers as a frontman), they give listeners a common point of reference and something concrete to focus on.

Furthermore, lyrics can add onto a song, but they can also detract massively. In the case of The Wonder Years, The Upsides was an album that I already loved before I knew every single word. Sitting down with the lyric sheet simply added an additional layer and gave me a deeper appreciation for something that I already loved. On the flip side, lyrics can be flawed, and it’s easier to notice flawed lyrics than flawed music. There are only so many words at the end of the day, but there’s an infinite number of sounds. A bad lyric can stick out like a sore thumb, just look at the mania surrounding a single lyric on Drake’s most recent album. Or listen to Ab-Soul’s verse on Chance the Rapper’s “Smoke Again” and tell me his plea for ass-to-mouth isn’t off-putting. Kanye’s magnum opus “Runaway” is a track I love but one that still contains a handful of lines and deliveries I don’t really dig. The song’s verses are followed up by a four minute outro which contains no words, but a garbled vocalization from Kanye. As discussed in this video those four minutes are a prime example of what vocals (not necessarily words) can do in a song.

I believe (at least within hip-hop) the lack of emphasis on lyrics can be traced back to Kanye whose early work represented a shift not necessarily away from lyrics, but towards a greater emphasis on sound as a whole. This was movement was capitalized by people like Lil Wayne who have decent rhymes, but were carried by swag and personality more than anything else. The current crop of “non-rappers” (Yachty, Uzi, etc.) are simply the next evolution of that.

Ultimately everything falls into a spectrum: on one side you’ve got extremely lyrical artists like Kendrick Lamar or The Mountain Goats, and on the other end you’ve got the complete absence of lyrics in groups like Sigur Ros or Explosions in the Sky. Don’t get me wrong, I love it all, and I’m definitely not “anti-lyric” I just believe taking a song as a whole is more powerful than taking it at “face value” and only paying attention to the lyrics. Every piece within the music is vital, lyrics are simply one component. Lyrics are as important or unimportant as you want them to be, but I think focusing too much attention on them turns music into a narrow art form. Emotion can be conveyed without words, and songs can tell a story through sound, we just need to listen to the whole thing.