Question Of The Week: A Year Of Song, A Song Of Year
Hey MetalSucks reader! How’s your boner? Wet ‘n wild, we hope. Now sure, it might still be upset about having spent the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend with no MetalSucks Question Of The Week; truth be told, our bonerz etc. didn’t like it any better than yours. But we’re back and asking the tough questions for metal people. Today we look back at the 92% finished year of 2012! Welcome to your kinda overly personal and revealing MS QOTW.
Fearless. Controversial. Half-baked. We give it to you straight every Friday afternoon. Straight into TMIville! Here’s this week’s question:
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Inspired by our survival of another year of wild, wonderful weirdness, we asked our staff the following:
So what was your major jam this year, the one that might soundtrack a slideshow of your 2012 highlights?
Was it an old jam? A 2012 jam? One u heard for the first time this year? One u merely forged a fresh connection to? Read the MS Staff’s sexpert answers and answer for yourself below!
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ABYSMAL SHAWN
Paul Simon‘s “You Can Call Me Al”. Seriously, watch the video. It captures my every day activities of 2012 way too well. Not to mention the fact that my friends like to follow me around backing everything I say with “Boom baby, boom baby” for some reason.
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GRIM KIM
According to Last.FM, the five bands I listened to most this year (excluding vinyl, tapes, and live performances, ’cause fuck knows Saint Vitus take the cake for that last one!) were Venom, Bathory, Necros Christos, Hank III, and Weapon. According to iTunes, the song I listened to most on there was Abigail’s “Hellfire and Damnation.” With that information at hand, I’m going to assume that the universe is out of whack and is really trying to tell me that I need to listen to more Motorhead. Let’s go with “Iron Fist” in honor of the impossibly rad new UK metal magazine I’ve started writing for, and because Sodom covered it when I saw them a couple weeks ago with Gospel of the Horns, and because fuck it — heavy metal is the law, 2012 was a damn good year, and I don’t wanna live forever. Devil’s grip, the iron fist!
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KELLHAMMER
2012 has been an interesting year, wrought with various struggles. To avoid going into full-on pity party mode (as I am so often guilty of doing), I indulged in a lot of female-fronted and angry-as-fuck ’90s tunes: Hole’s My Body the Hand Grenade and a hell of a lot of Babes in Toyland. “Bruise Violet” has been a favorite of mine for well over a decade now, and this year the song really stepped up to the plate; it’s aggressive, raw, dirty, and just what the doctor ordered when you feel like punching a wall or two.
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ANSO DF
Dude srs I wager that there were fewer than ten days in 2012 when I did not at least think of Steely Dan‘s “Time Out Of Mind.“ Let me count the ways: I worship its drum performance, so my hands when idle would kinda reflexively tap its beats. And like every other time I thought about drugz, its chorus lyrics would spring to mind and start the jam pumping again in there. Then I’d run into other lyrics in unexpected places: this awesome stud’s Twitter, Yacht Rock, chez party friends, the radio (!), a random wedding band (!!), my ringtone, shuffle, etc. I even thought of the shit when ceaselessly rocking this unrelated but similarly awesome jam which, like “Time,” makes reference to cherry wine. The song was all over my life, like my private Groundhog Day, or like in American Psycho when after a while Bateman is hearing “New Sensation” everywhere he goes. Crazy right? It’s my jam!
http://youtu.be/l4TjfMtC6Kw?t=23m45s
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SAMMY O’HAGAR
2012 did not lack quality soul-soiling metal; in fact, quite the opposite. But this summer when I finally got around to Origin‘s 2011 album Entity, I was impressed (to no one’s surprise). And amid the fret-skipping guitar nerdcraft, “Saligia” punched me in the fucking gut. The album doesn’t slouch up to that point, but the song is just so perfect. The more I listened to it, the more it dawned on me: “Saligia” is the best death metal song I’ve ever heard. Everything is there: It’s a three-part suite but not at all pretentious. It’s epic as fuck but doesn’t resort to Amon Amarth’s shirtless fat guy theatrics. It’s unreasonably fast but filled to the brim with RIFFS — not just riffs, but incredible, enviable riffs, tunneling death metal riffs, percussive tech-death riffs, neo-classical guitar noodling. The impossibly technical solo at its climax (at 4:39) gives me chills every time. The rest of the song lets you down easy — well, very relatively — so as to prevent your heart bursting out the top of your skull. Sure, some 2012 songs made me feel more (like this) and some were heavier, but I don’t know how death metal tops “Saligia.” I don’t expect it to.
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VINCE NEILSTEIN
“West Ruth Ave” by Night Flight Orchestra. Hooks for miles. Danceable grooves. Unfuckwithable dad-rock riffs. The silky smooth voice of Speed Strid (Soilwork). Love at first listen!
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Wow so u can tell which of us spent 2012 yearning for the past, which have been battling emotional turbulence, and which are nursing drug problems lol. Now it’s your turn! What song soundtracks your 2012?
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