Best New Albums: 2008 Edition

It's that time again…the time where I look backwards and reflect upon this years new musical offerings. In order to be eligible for this list, the album must have been released in 2008. I might post a best new discoveries list later detailing the non-new music that I've stumbled across this year.

As far as new albums go, 2008 was a fairly slim year. Not a lot of new stuff that I was interested in getting (although I still have to check out other people's top music lists to pick up the things I totally missed through the year) but what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality. There's some really awesome releases this year. So without further delay…let's get right into this.

1. 

   Watershed

   Opeth

   Opeth – Watershed
   
   My top album of this year, without any doubt is Opeth's Watershed. If anyone isn't familiar with Opeth, they're claim to fame is blending death metal elements (growled vocals, heavy riffs) with much lighter elements (clean vocals, acoustic guitars, keyboards, etc) to create music that's all about contrast. Everything has a purpose, particularly the growling which isn't overused and adds emotional impact to the songs.

   Watershed is their first album after losing 2 out of the 5 members and replacing them, so I was a little worried about the direction it would go. As it turns out those worries were totally unfounded. This album is totally Opeth, but it's something different too. They're progressing their sound while maintaining the elements that make their music special and unique.

   Probably the best part of this release is it's composition. It plays really well for listening as an album. It's very heavy up front (after a short acoustic introduction) followed by a very mellow couple of songs and then returns to heavy territory towards the end of the album. Heir Apparent has quickly become my favorite Opeth song.

   So, in conclusion,  this was far and away my favorite release of the year.

2. Ayreon – 01011001

   

   01011001

   Ayreon

   This was the first new album I bought in 2008 and I knew it was going to end up on the list as soon as I had my first listen to it.

   For those not familiar with Ayreon…this band is the brain child of Arjen-Anthony Lucassen, a man who can do pretty much everything. he plays all the instruments on this release except for some guest spots, the drums and most of the vocals. In fact, Ayreon really is all about the vocalists…17 vocalists in this case. All of Ayreon's albums are concept albums, part of a much broader story. The music is very eclectic, pulling heavily from the progressive rock genre, but there's also a lot of electronic and folk influences as well leading to an interesting mix of sounds.

   This album's story weaves it's way through all of the previous Ayreon albums, referencing past efforts and story events, becoming a thread that ties the massive storyline together. Interspersed into the main storyline are several songs that seems to be disjointed, referencing the doings of current humans, seeming to try to send the point that we're all trapped in our own little worlds and that we should look up and see what's really around us more. These sections are my only real complaint about the album as they don't really fit in with the rest of the storyline.

   But overall, this is one of my favorite Ayreon releases and I'll be playing it in heavy rotation for some time to come

3. Frost* – Experiments In Mass Appeal

   

   Experiments In Mass Appeal (Special Ed. CD/DVD)

   I wasn't sure if I would get this album in time to include it on the list, but thankfully, it arrived just in the nick of time about 2 weeks ago.

   As the last two picks, I'll explain the band a bit…Frost* is the result of a Pop music producer and songwriter Jem Godfrey. While spending his days writing and producing jingles and theme songs for various things, his free time is spent working on progressive music that sheds many of the traditional cliches that one associates with the prog rock genre.

   Their latest album is different in feel than their first, but it has the same Frost* undercurrent running through it. A little off-putting to me at first, I quickly came to terms with the new, slightly more pop oriented sound and really got into the album. Jem's hallmark is a very busy "wall-of-sound" sort of production on his albums. There's a TON of stuff going on in there, but it's mixed in such a way that it's never confusing and never becomes just a bunch of random noise.

   It's not quite as unique as their first effort was, and overall I like Milliontown better, but this is a very solid effort that went a little too far into standard pop structures. I also prefer Jem's vocals to the new vocalist, but Jem still does nearly half the vocal lines on th is one, so it's not such a big downside.

4. Porcupine Tree – We Lost The Skyline

   

   We Lost the Skyline (Limited LIVE INSTORE Performance)

   Ok, so this is the part of the list where I start reaching for albums. I told you this year was pretty slim. This album is a live album, of an in store appearance of part of Porcupine Tree, performing for about 30 minutes.

   What makes it really interesting is that because it's only 2 members of the band (Steven Wilson and John Wesley), they did a stripped down acoustic set with just the two guitarists, which lead to some really interesting and unique arrangements of the songs. Some work better than others, but overall, it's a very solid album and I'd like to see some of these get studio treatment, maybe as a B side somewhere.

   The best part is hearing Normal played live and hearing Steven Wilson talking about how hard it is to play on guitar. And in fact, he messes up once and starts the song over to do it right.

5. Apocalyptica – Worlds Collide

   

   Worlds Collide

   Apocalyptica

   
   The only thing you need to know about Apocalyptica is contained in the opening sentence of their wikipedia page: "Apocalyptica is a Finnish cello metal band." All of the music is created with the cello and, these days, drums. They got their start working on metallica covers but eventually they started writing their own material. This album is almost entirely original material from the band, aside from a cover of David Bowie's Heroes done in German.

   The band shines on their non-vocal tracks, creating really heavy riffs and emotional melodies in a very unique way. Songs like Dreamer and Peace really showcase their beautiful melodic side whereas songs like Ion are really all about being very heavy. It can be hard at times to tell that all of the music is done with the cello and not an electric guitar, but…it is.

   The downside of this release is the vocal tracks. They lean very nu-metal and are my least favorite part of the album. They could really do something special with vocal tracks but instead when vocals are introduced into the mix the music automatically swings into the generic nu-metal spectrum. The lone standout is the cover of Heroes which ended up quite nice.

   While I really like this album, the vocal tracks dent it's awesomeness enough to where if there was anything else released this year that I had purchased, it would probably get dumped off the list.

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