Archived: Zoklet's top 10 Albums of the Decade (Final)

[AtrainV]

Well, here we are. It's not a finished list (as in not all of the albums have reviews), but maybe we can still get some out. If I have time tomorrow I'll write one for In Rainbows, but that's probably it for me. I already did De-Loused in the Comatorium and Funeral, so I'd prefer not to have my name attached to more than two on the list.

I'm going to reserve the first 11 responses for the top 10 albums and the runner-ups.

[AtrainV]

10. Radiohead - In Rainbows



No Review

[AtrainV]

9. Muse – Origins of Symmetry

When Muse released their debut album, Showbiz, it was greeted with mixed reviews. While most critics agreed that the band displayed obvious talent, comparisons to Radiohead led to accusations of unoriginality and even flat-out copying. Two years later, Muse released their sophomore effort, Origin of Symmetry, and distinguished themselves from not just Radiohead, but the rock world as a whole.

Origin of Symmetry’s tracks are often described as generally loud, heavy, dramatic, and complex; which is interesting, seeing the band made a point of simplifying their recording process in order to accentuate that they were a three-piece band. Really, this was a complete reversal from the strategy the band employed when recording their first album, in which they put a great deal of production into generally simplistic-sounding pieces. In fact, almost all the tracks on Origin have no more than four or five recorded layers (one track each for the guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and occasionally piano/keyboard/pipe organ), which allowed Muse to easily recreate the album’s songs during live performances. This surprised many audiences and earned the group’s live shows worldwide recognition.

The album opens with New Born, a track that starts as a calm piano melody and ends as a head-banging, bass-driven hard rock piece. The following track, Bliss, blends a keyboard arpeggio with a heavily distorted bass-line, which somehow manage to sensibly compliment each other. Plug In Baby, the album’s lead single, displays classical influences very rarely heard in rock (specifically, remnants of Bach’s “Toccata and Fogue” can be recognized). The song is often praised for its opening guitar riff, even being voted as the “13th best of all-time” by Total Guitar readers. Other tracks include a operatic synthesizer/piano piece (Space Dementia), a seven and a half minute epic that transitions from frantic to calm twice over (Citizen Erased), a distortion-heavy gothic metal track with high-pitched, screeching vocals (Micro Cuts), and a greatly praised cover of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse’s uplifting 1960s classic, Feeling Good. As if the album wasn’t stylistically strange enough, Muse experimented by using bubble wrap, a plastic bag, and animal bones as percussion for the track, Screenager; and a giant church pipe organ for the album’s overblown closer, Megalomania. No matter how separated the album’s instrumental techniques were, though, Bellamy’s consistently brilliant vocals provided flow and, in some sense, a much-needed feel of familiarity.

Origin of Symmetry didn’t just avoid rehashing the past, but also used completely unfashionable melodies and sounds, straying from all other new-millennium rock albums. While, at the time, it sounded like nothing else, knowing what we know about the evolution of music since, it could be said that Origin of Symmetry sounded a lot like the future of rock ‘n’ roll.

-VladieShark

[AtrainV]

8. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven



No Review

[AtrainV]

7. The Arcade Fire – Funeral

Which came first—the scene or the band?

The early 2000s were a musical renaissance in Canada—specifically in Montreal. Much of this was a result of the dedicated work of one record label: Arts & Crafts. However, The Arcade Fire do not owe their monumental rise to fame to this particular label. They were signed to Merge, the American indie super-label of the ‘90s. Whether it was the scene in Canada that brought the Arcade Fire to the attention of such a powerful label, or whether it was Merge’s signing of The Arcade Fire which opened the international community’s eyes as to what was going on up north of the border isn’t clear.

Regardless of which came first, the first half of the decade was locked down by Canadians, and The Arcade Fire were the poster child for this movement. If you, like many, were completely turned off by the direction that the mixed bag of emo/indie bands that the mid-to-late ‘90s were churning out, you were very welcoming of this movement. Many saw a need for a radical departure from the 3rd wave-punk rock-influenced mechanics that had already become monstrous clichés. Turning from that minimalist approach, these musicians decided instead to pursue something that mixed twee pop, shoegaze, post rock, and indie rock together. The sound they created was the multi-instrumented, layered, orchestrated, off-kilter, and ornamented sound that begged comparisons to the Talking Heads and David Bowie. This was the sound of Canada at the turn of the century, and this was the sound of The Arcade Fire.

Their debut album, Funeral, made good use of Win Butler’s vocals which wavered in hope as much as Conor Oberst’s voice wavered in angst. It was a sound that was very hard to forget and, without the superb instrumentation behind it, it might’ve left you feeling a bit worried that the man behind the voice was going to fall deathly ill at any moment. However, the musicality of the album was so perfectly arranged with so many different instruments, multi-layered movements, and mature arrangements that it managed to amplify the eerie quality of the vocals and transform them into something that seemed to fit just right. There’s no way you could keep yourself from tapping along to consistent bass-line of “Rebellion (Lies)”, and the quivering voice just added that necessary untrained quirk that kept you from clicking the next button on your friend’s iTunes.

Not only that, but this album had perfect movement from song to song. From the beginning, you’re struck with a series of songs under the same umbrella of “Neighborhood”. The forward marching “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” drives you straight through the song without allowing you time to dwell. The next 3 songs, “Neighborhood #2 (Laika)”, “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)”, and “Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)” reinforce the forward marching theme with sing-along choruses and bits of verses that hook you into some sort of quirky fantasy land where Dick Van Dyke could’ve had a great musical career as Bert, the rampant percussionist in Mary Poppins.

The wave has to break somewhere, and “Crown of Love” is a fantastic slow song that changes 3 quarters through to give you a little view of what to expect when you eventually make it to the much-loved “Wake Up.” This is the song that most people think of when they conjure up their memories of this album. This is a song that shows such a clear transition from pessimism to optimism, in such a dramatic yet natural way, that you can’t help but feel a bit of a smirk sneak onto your face and your body start to sway. It’s like walking out of a dreary Chicago pub and into the gentle breeze of a day that’s just the right kind of cloudy.

One of the last things that needs mentioning for this album is the seamless transition from the lead vocals of Win Butler to that of Régine Chassagne, the wispy voiced alternate vocalist. The tag-team approach that they take on many of the songs is refreshing, to say the least, but when she takes the helm on songs like “Haiti” and “In the Back Seat”, it really solidifies the album as something that defies indie stereotypes of “desperately artistic frontman” or “desperately artistic frontwoman” and combines them into something fantastically egalitarian in its desperation and artistry.

-AtrainV

[AtrainV]

6. System of a Down – Toxicity



No Review

[AtrainV]

5. U2 – All that you Can’t Leave Behind



No Review

[AtrainV]

4. Modest Mouse – The Moon & Antarctica

The Moon and Antarctica is the definitive Modest Mouse album. The band was given the dubious task of recording their major label debut, and following up what is considered one of the 1990's best indie rock albums, The Lonesome Crowded West.

Well if anything, they 1-upped the album and then some. This album finds the band experimenting with new effects and adding new instruments such as the violin and banjo to their sound (later the band would add FOUR more members for We Were Dead Before the Ship Sank, including Johnny Marr of The Smiths).

The album starts with the catchy "3rd Planet", which has some great lyrics. Issac Brock is a really good lyricist, and lyrics like "Everything that keeps me together is falling apart, I've got this thing that I consider my only art of fucking people over" certainly paint a depressing but brilliant picture. I also enjoy it's simple acoustic guitar line. "Gravity Rides Everything" is just as catchy and revolves around another simple guitar line with lots of backwards effects, especially on the precussion and feedback.

"Dark Center of the Universe" is one of my favorite Modest Mouse songs of all time. The lyrics show an unapologetic approach to the end of love, and "Well, it took a lot of work to be the ass that I am, And I'm really damn sure that anyone can, equally easily fuck you over" is probably the most blunt yet catchy chorus I've heard from the band. The violins on the track with the looming bass and drums at the intro is brilliant, and when the song picks up, that riff is just so upbeat and awesome, even as Issac rambles angrily. Awesome song.

"Perfect Disguise" is another classic, centered around a bluesy riff and mellow performance. I like the version on the 2004 reissue with distorted, spacy vocals included as a bonus track. It's another depressing but simple song. On the other hand, "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" picks up the pace and injects some life into the album. Revolving around some funk bass, fast-cymbal based drumming, and phasing guitar, it's a change in sound for Modest Mouse. Issac sings the vocals very fast in the verses before becoming a distorted mess for the chorus. Eventually they throw a guitar solo in... underneath a verse of lyrics.

"A Different City" was the first Modest Mouse song I ever heard, it being included on the skateboarding video Art Bars that came out when I was still skating. It's definately a great song, based around frantic sections of fast distorted guitars and spacy verses. It has a particularly anthemic chorus, despite being about isolation and doing nothing but watching TV and having no friends.

"The Cold Part" is a fairly simple song, mostly consisting of the same 3 lines repeated ad-nauseum and a bluesy riff with some violins over it. I guess this would be the first song that's not quite up to par with the others, it's not terrible but it's not a highlight. "Alone Down There" is also a fairly short and simple song that centers around a basic but powerful chorus.

"The Stars Are Projectors". This is the song many hardcore fans of this band will claim is their best. It's 9 minutes long and much, much more complex than almost any other song on the album. It starts out with a winding, feedback laden riff. Then Issac breaks in, with some severely distored and layered vocals. "In the last second of life, they're gonna show you how,
How they run this show, sure, run it into the ground". This is repeated a few times before breaking into an acoustic guided verse. The lyrics on this song are very confusing, seemingly just thrown together. I realize Issac's lyrics are almost always cryptic, but on this song they definately reach a peak of confusion. It's an interesting song to say the least.

"Wild Pack of Family Dogs" goes back into the simple mode, with lyrics about, well, a wild pack of dogs running through the yard and how it effected his family. All of this is based around a simple acoustic chord progression and an accordion. "Paper Thin Walls" starts off with a fairly fun sounding riff and urgent vocals which discuss voyeurism. It's another short but simple and upbeat song. "I Came as a Rat" is another fast and upbeat song, that is until the chorus where the acoustic guitar takes the lead and there's some cool spacy phasing in the background. "Lives" finds the subject matter of death and the afterlife yet again (Modest Mouse sure love dying and the fact no one knows what happens after you die). It's another acoustic track.

"Life Like Weeds" is one last epic on the album, which quickly bounces back and forth from fast, frenetic sections and lounging, slow sections, with a number of guitar solos thrown in it. The album concludes with "What People Are Made Of", a short noisy end to this brilliant album. Of course, the album concludes with an expected line: "And the one thing you taught me
'bout human beings was this, They ain't made of nothin' but water and shit". A fitting revelation to punctuate this masterwork.

As far as Modest Mouse went, this would be their hands down classic. After this, they took 4 years to put out Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and we all know what happened from there. That album was a major hit, they sold millions, went from being a trio to having 7 members as of 2009, and topping the US charts with their last album.

My version of this is the 2004 reissue with has 4 bonus songs, which are live versions of "3rd Planet", "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes", the distorted vocals version of "Perfect Disguise" I mentioned, and a short instrumental.

9/10

-Intoxicated Shaman (VinMetal666)

[AtrainV]

3. Radiohead - Kid A

After OK Computer's success, Radiohead could have easily recorded a straight sequel and no one would have complained. Considered by many to be the most important album of the 90's, no one would have faulted the Oxfordshire band for resting on their laurels and making an OK Computer 2. In fact, that's what most people expected.

But Radiohead have never been a band to stay in one spot for too long, and if their relatively short history had taught us anything at that point it was that we should expect something different, something entirely new. And we got that, in spades. Even if many of us weren't ready for it.

When Kid A was released in October of 2000, it was exactly the album we needed even if no on knew it yet. Even if after listening to it for the first time we didn't realize it. "This doesn't sound like OK Computer?". No, not it didn't. And that's one of the reasons, for me personally, it's the best album of the decade.

The year 2000 was a weird year for humanity. A transitional year. We were really beginning our love affair with computers, but we were still very much afraid of them, as evidenced by Y2K. Could the things we were starting to rely on pull a HAL 9,000 and turn on us? OK Computer explored such themes, but it was Kid A that really delved in deep, even if it wasn't blatantly apparent at first.

It was our childhood filtered through technological bleeps and bloops that quickly turned terrifying. It was our paranoia put to the tune of computers, computers that could actualize that paranoia. It was voices we didn't understand, thoughts we couldn't quite complete. Kid A was an album that would define us in a very cold world, that was getting colder by the second. A world that was growing so fast we were afraid it would leave us behind before we could get a handle on it.

Kid A was and still is very much a real album's album. Something that only works as a whole. In a way, it may have been the last album. It hit right before file-sharing became the norm and every new album came cut up and distributed in song-sized chunks for everyone to digest in little pieces at a time. I truly feel sorry for someone who' only heard a song or two off Kid A because they would have missed the point entirely. Kid A is a work of art that demands to be disgested all at once. Only then can you understand it's true genius.

Kid A ushered us into the new millenium and it's only now, looking back through a filter of ten years, that we can really see just how right, and how important it was. It's themes of alienation, confusion, and even fear are just as relevant today as they were then. It's an album that perfectly encapsulated everything about it's time, but is also completely timeless.

-ManCannon

[AtrainV]

2. The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium

Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez had some big shoes to fill when they decided to dissolve At the Drive-In at the peak of their success with Relationship of Command. Considering its departure from the band’s previous albums, it was obvious that there some very ambitious and talented musicians in the band who were coming into their own. Many people looked at the split as a sad day for the post-hardcore scene of the ‘90s (one that would explode and then collapse in on itself in a very uncomfortable way during the early 2000s), but many others recognized that it opened up larger possibilities for a band that could fill the potential that was equaled in magnitude only by the size of the members’ afros.

Unfortunately, the next immediate outfit, De Facto, failed to garner much attention, and the group members (now including Ikey Owens who had performed with Sublime and the Long Beach Dub Allstars and Jeremy Ward—cousin of fellow At the Drive-In member, Jim Ward), decided to take things in a new direction.

Enter The Mars Volta.

In 2002, Cedric, Omar, Ikey, and Jeremy created a band featuring a dream-team of musicians (along with the four founders, it now featured Juan Alderete from Racer X, Jon Theodore of Golden¸ and sometimes John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers). This bombastic mix of Post-Hardcore, Dub, Speed Metal, Jazz, Flamenco, and Funk became a real force to be reckoned with. A year after this collection was brought together, they released their debut LP, De-Loused in the Comatorium.

This album is a fantastic mix of all the genres that the members bring with them. It starts out with the song “Son et Lumiere” which only barely breaks a minute and half, but leads listeners into believing they’re going to be listening to another dub record like those put out by De Facto. Just past the one minute mark, Cedric’s vocals cut in with a bout of cryptic lyrics which are then abruptly silenced by extremely calculated and purposeful machine gun drumming and overdriven guitars. This theme leads seamlessly into the second track, “Inertiatic ESP”, which sounds like it could’ve been a long-lost At the Drive-In jam. However there’s a distinct upgrade of musicianship that At the Drive-In could never have hoped to achieve during its reign.

The rest of the album has a similar feel of the stop/go, slow/fast, soft/loud rhythmic stylings that we’re introduced to in the first two tracks. However, each track manages to sound completely unique and necessary. The latin and jazz-influenced drumming, the Geddy Lee-esque basslines, the screaming synthesizer, the shredding post-hardcore guitars, the falsetto vocals… it all manages to stay fresh and powerful throughout the album. There’s a certain urgency to Cedric’s lyrics that goes completely over the listener’s head until they are reserached on the internet. It definitely has a similar poetic feel to some of the more cryptic lyrics of At the Drive-In (see: most of Relationship of Command).

When there’s been enough time devoted to the lyrics, it becomes obvious that this is much more than just a thematic musical concept—there is a definite storyline that the album is telling. In fact, there is a short story that was written by Cedric which details how the songs represent a junkie’s slow decline into a daydream existence of harsh reality and drug-induced hallucinations (“Son et Lumiere”, “Inertiatic ESP”, and “Roulette Dares (The Haunt of).”

The story develops further as the main character (Cerpin Taxt) falls into a coma and the battle that is raging inside him becomes the focus of the story rather than his explicit battle of reality vs drugs. There's an immediate comparison that needs to be drawn between the theme of waking-life and dream-life, here. This part of the story can be seen in the next series of three songs (“Tira Me a Las Aranas”, “Drunkship of Lanterns”, and “Cicatriz ESP”). After he is brought out of this coma, Cerpin Taxt decides that he can no longer coexist with the real world and the world that he’s found in the drugs or in his coma-world. He feels that he must choose one or the other, and ultimately seals his fate through suicide. This climax is told during the final three songs, “This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed”, “Televators” and “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt.”

While future albums have not held up to the incredible standard set up by De-Loused in the Comatorium, you can see that this is a band that is always evolving and redefining itself. It has become clear that Cedric and Omar are very rarely satisfied with a static sound, and they are always experimenting with new directions. Perhaps we will one day see a release of a similar caliber to this debut, but it is unlikely that they will come up with another album with a similar sound.

-AtrainV

[AtrainV]

1. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is an album represents a peak in an entire paradigm shift within the band The Flaming Lips. From the band’s initial harsher, punk sound, several albums; such as the Soft Bulletin and Zaireeka (which was completely experimental) were precursors to the unique perfection achieved in probably one of the most notable albums of the ‘00s. The songs on this album are in no way similar to the band’s early work, with it resembling space rock and psychedelic pop. Despite the psychedelic overtones, the album has real soul; delving into emotion (love and depression), pacifism, war, mortality while still following Yoshimi’s battle as apparent in songs such as ‘It's Summertime’, ‘Do You Realize?? and ‘Fight Test’. The album also touches on more psychedelic notions such as artificial emotion, war with giant machines and notions of magic, apparent in songs as ‘Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell’ and ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1’. The album’s instrumental facets are songs are also worthwhile, an amazing example being ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 2’. The album had widespread impact for psychedelic rock, with Fortune magazine called the album "a lush and haunting electronic symphony... as strange as it is wonderful." The album’s influence from the decade just passed is far from over, with a psychedelic Broadway musical in the works. The album is certified gold by the RIAA and will probably be one of the defining albums of the past decade, shaping what the future of psychedelic music for many years to come.

-ZeppelinRules

[AtrainV]

Runners Up:

11. Between the Buried and Me – Colors
12. Muse – Absolution
13. Gorillaz – Demon Days
14. Eminem – The Eminem Show
15. Sigur Ros – ()
16. Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP
17. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
18. Tool – Lateralus
19. Audioslave – Audioslave
20. The White Stripes – Elephant

[AtrainV]

All right. That's all of 'em. If you want to submit a review for one of the albums that doesn't have one, feel free to contact me and we'll work it out.

[IWD]

What is this list based on? Is it from something? Or is it your personal preference?

[AtrainV]

In December, there was a vote. It's based upon the preferences of everybody who participated.

[AtrainV]

Wow, I thought more people would want to argue about this. Maybe it's just falling by the wayside, so I'll go ahead and top it.

[ManCannon]

I'm really quite surprised at what a good list this is as I didn't have much faith in Zoklet's musical taste. I was expecting a list comprised entirely of shitty metal albums.

The only two in the Top 10 I don't personally enjoy are System of a Down and U2. I've never liked U2 and I doubt I ever will, but I did listen to Toxicity endlessly back in high school. It's not an album I much care for now, but I dob't begrudge it a spot on the list.

[AtrainV]

Yeah, it's a far-cry from my list (aside from De-Loused), but I'm pretty satisfied. Maybe there's a negative correlation between people who read the first post (and follow the voting directions) and amount of crap-metal listened to.

[ManCannon]

Originally Posted by AtrainV

Maybe there's a negative correlation between people who read the first post (and follow the voting directions) and amount of crap-metal listened to.

A distinct possibility.

[Kilgore Trout]

Happy and surprised to see Yoshimi at the top. Thumbs up Zoklet.

[Herpy Derpy]

Too much Radiohead not enough metal. Seems like more people should have voted for metal albums.

[AtrainV]

Well, I think one of the issues is that lots of people voted for a lot of different metal albums. It's obvious that metal and electronic music are the most listened-to genres on Zoklet (just take a look at the genres thread), but that doesn't mean that there's much agreement on which bands or albums are better than others.

[Shrike]

Well decent list apart from SOAD and U2.

From the list I own Origins of Symmetry and De-Loused, and voted for De-Loused.

[MandatorySuicide]

Originally Posted by AtrainV

Well, I think one of the issues is that lots of people voted for a lot of different metal albums. It's obvious that metal and electronic music are the most listened-to genres on Zoklet (just take a look at the genres thread), but that doesn't mean that there's much agreement on which bands or albums are better than others.

Makes sense. I wonder, though, what sort of system you used to determine the final list. I remember Opeth's Deliverance being one of the most often mentioned, and it's not in the top 10 (or the top 20, for that matter). Is it just that it wasn't ranked highly enough on those people's lists?

Anyway, pretty good list overall. Glad to see that Lift Your Skinny Fists made it into the top 10.

[AtrainV]

The way I did this list was I assigned points in reverse order for how you ranked the albums. For example, if you ranked an album at 10, that album got 1 point, but if you ranked an album at 1, that album received 10 points. I didn't think it would be fair to give the same amount of points for an album that just barely made somebody's list as one that they definitely felt was their favorite of the decade.

As for Opeth, I think many of the people who mentioned it didn't fill out the form, and so their votes were not counted. Moreover, many of the people who neglected to fill out the form also neglected to put albums in order or to name 10 albums--these issues would work against the point-system I was using.

[baz:.]

Can someone please make a torrent of these albums?

[AtrainV]

Well, I don't have all the albums, but I'm sure you should have no trouble finding them individually. They're not obscure.

[Intoxicated Shaman]

How the fuck did U2 get that high up?

[Dark Lord]

It's a very good list. I trust in Zoklet.

[Psynthetic]

lolz I've got all of those albums, including the runners up. I don't know dick about hosting torrents though.

I'm surprised that Lateralus didn't rank higher.

[AtrainV]

I was also surprised Lateralus didn't make more of a showing. It's not one of my favorites, but I know that a lot of the users here worship it.

[Nerd Fangs]

Fuck yeah, kid a, deloused and yoshimi are the top three.

I heavily approve.

[NamelessNom4d]

I definitely think Lateralus should've made it into the top 10, but whatever. Colors is a great album too, glad to see it mentioned. I think anyone can appreciate that one, even if they aren't a metalhead.

[The Jitterskull]

wtf @ 16

[The Explanation]

Good list, I wish I had noticed it when it was up for vote. Glad to see Modest Mouse and Muse up there.

[Captain Politik]

No Avenged Sevenfold album "Avenged Sevenfold"???

[MandatorySuicide]

Originally Posted by antonio123

No Avenged Sevenfold album "Avenged Sevenfold"???

Are you really so surprised?

[TLV]

Wtf, who voted for this shit?

[AtrainV]

Originally Posted by MandatorySuicide

Are you really so surprised?

Seriously.

[Jesus of Nazareth]

Fucking gay... SOAD? Faggot...