4. Exodus, Tempo of the Damned (Nuclear Blast)
And what, then, of metal? I mean, Christ, John (I imagine my anguished metal-friendly readers complaining), it's almost as though you've abandoned the stuff for good. Four weeks at a stretch you're gone, and when you come back it's rap, or esoterica. What happened?
You might well ask. It's the same thing that always happens when you immerse yourself completely in a style of music, or of literature: and it's not exactly saturation, either. It's that the need for originality increases as familiarity gives way to expertise. I've heard a good-sized handful of metal records this year that I liked well enough, but did many of them really inspire my internal metal evangelist? No; there was the End's Within Dividia, which was pretty great; Decapitated's new one is outstanding, state-of-the-art death metal; Anata's Under a Stone With No Inscription is an interesting death metal/metalcore fusion that works surprisingly well and gets better with every listen. But at the end of the day, the metal album that kicked my ass hardest was a thrash metal disc with a great pun for a title by a bunch of old-timers.
It made me conscious of my mortality, responding as strongly as I did to Tempo of the Damned: aren't there several dangerous points of comparison here to hearing one's high-school teacher getting all worked up about Graceland? After thinking about it for a minute I concluded that no, it wasn't like that at all, and that I was going to leave Doc Marten imprints all over your face for even thinking such a thing, asshole. I've said it before and I'll say it again: thrash metal is the stuff that doesn't actually get old, because anger is a preservative. Not political anger necessarily, though not apolitical anger necessarily either. Just rage. Clean, crystal-clear, exhilarating, life-giving rage. It's more fun when you share! You should hear this album, if only to remind yourself how truly sorry you've become now that you've sold out. >>