I’m not stumped, exactly, for this year, but as it happens I can quite easily keep the list of faves down to a mere ten. My longlist is only 31 records! Now, this is as usual a very personal thing – there are some HUGE albums from this year that weren’t my thing, which I mention in another bulleted list of nuggets here:
- 2000 was the year of…Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory. With thanks yet again to Wikipedia, this record “sold 27 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling debut album since Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction (1987) and the best-selling rock album of the 21st century. At the 44th Grammy Awards, it won Best Hard Rock Performance for "Crawling".” Wowsers. I was 15 and a raging Korn fan at the time, and so LP was just too smooth and lame and tame for me. Where Jonathan Davis would have a good ol’ swear, Chester Bennington (RIP) would say something like “you tried to take the best of me. Go away”. PG-rated metal
- The opposite of PG-rated, but still about as dangerous as a wet tissue, and also massive, selling c.8 million copies was…of course…Limp Bizkit – Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water. I did, however, absolutely love the Mission Impossible 2 song Take a Look Around, a silly lyric about little girls filling up the world today aside
- The original version of Lostprophets’ debut, The Fake Sound of Progress, came out in November 2000 (the more famous remaster followed in 2001). Is it an incredibly fun summery record? Is Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja a pleasingly titled earworm of a tune (that they allegedly wrote in mere minutes)? Do I still enjoy listening to it from time to time? Despite everything that singer Ian Watkins did? Yes
- Where Cave In’s first album was raging metalcore and their third album was melodic indie, the second album, released in this year, was space rock. Not bad, but I don’t love it like the other two (nor the 4th, released in 2005)
- Disturbed – The Sickness. Ooh wah ah ah ah!
- Eminem’s seminal 2nd album, the Marshall Mathers LP!!!
- Marilyn Manson was very much alive and well (he still is, tbf) and being accused of causing school shootings, with the well-received Holy Wood…In the Shadow of Death album
- Bruce Dickinson returned to Iron Maiden after a few years and a couple of albums off. Brave New World was the comeback record and of course it wasn’t bad because Iron Maiden albums never really are
- Rage Against the Machine’s 4th and final release, a covers record called Renegades, came out
- Heirs to Pantera’s groove metal throne Lamb of God released their first album (New American Gospel) under that name (it’s their second release if you count the album recorded under the Burn the Priest moniker)
- The ever prolific Melvins released their third album in a trilogy, the Crybaby. Very long and rather patchy and there’s at least one too many covers on there, but it includes a nearly 15 minute long track featuring the members of Tool
- Pearl Jam’s Binaural is hardly their best album overall, but there are one or two enduring numbers from it
- Thanks to the same friend of mine who got me into Korn, Metallica, heavy music in general, etc, I was big into a band called One Minute Silence around this time. I saw them with him at the Astoria (RIP), where I’m pretty sure I bought a bootleg hooded sweatshirt outside the venue and it only survived a handful of washes. Anyway, while they were ostensibly nu metal and very much of their time, they were actually rather smart, musically varied, and certainly very political (I mean, just read the title of their release from this year: Buy Now…Saved Later).
- Similarly for Pitchshifter, if you remember them (my dad once deliberately but amusingly misheard this as “shit shovellers”). The very early stuff was incredibly industrial (one of the records is even called that) and brutally heavy. They ended up a fairly slick rock band with lots of electronics (they would sometimes stick a track or two of free samples at the end of their albums). Not a little political or above a bit of social commentary either! I think I also saw them at the Astoria, and one of the band members proposed to his girlfriend on stage
- I revisited Raised Fist’s pre-Dedication catalogue as part of these blogs, and 2000’s Ignoring the Guidelines is certainly on a level with that record. There were clearly a good few years when the Swedish punks made impactful music with a bit of danger and edge (not wishing to miss another opportunity to shit on it, 2019's Anthems is the worst but not the only example of them straying into poppy shite territory)
A Perfect Circle – Mer De Noms
Not a Tool side project, as it is very much guitar player and songwriter (and previous Tool guitar tech) Billy Howerdel’s band, although singer Maynard James Keenan does play a huge and vital part. They are arguably a super-group in retrospect, but at the time drummer Josh Freese was known chiefly (but not solely) for The Vandals (certainly enough by itself, but he has since played with Nine Inch Nails and lostprophets among a whole host of others), bassist and violinist Paz Lenchantin was just starting out (she has since played in Billy Corgan’s Zwan and is currently in Pixies), and it would be a couple of years before guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen joined Queens of the Stone Age. (2003’s Thirteenth Step featured ex-Marilyn Manson bassist Twiggy Ramirez instead of Lenchantin, a reduced contribution from Van Leeuwen, and touring guitar from Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha. Talk about the circles some people move in!)
I’m wondering if Sea of Names (English translation) isn’t as timeless or endlessly re-playable as Tool, although it is certainly more straight-forward than what used to be Keenan’s day job. Less so than the average rock band, mind! There are a couple of duds on the tracklist too, but the album earns its place in historical best-of lists purely through the existence of the songs The Hollow, Judith, Orestes, and 3 Libras.
AFI – The Art of Drowning
I honestly don’t know whether I prefer this or 1999’s Black Sails in the Sunset. Where The Art of Drowning earns points for my being my point of entry, it perhaps loses points for the dilution of the goth punk with rock and electronic elements. Looking back, that seems a silly thing to think a disadvantage, especially given BSITS was itself far from pure punk (squint and you’ll hear the influence of the Cure and the Smiths and the album title is taken from an Elvis Costello song, for goodness’ sake). Indeed, the drum-machine featuring the Despair Factor is one of their best ever songs! While Strength Through Wounding (BSITS) and Miseria Cantare – The Beginning (2003’s Sing the Sorrow) are far and away the best intro tracks AFI did (back when their albums all had a similar structure), I think the simple opener Initiation is the most perfect lead-in to The Lost Souls. Speaking of which, this was my, ahem, initiation, into the punk elements of shouted gang vocals and the idea of simple riffs played quickly. And while it didn’t open the doors of punk for me, everything from the artwork to the snowy Christmastime of first listening to it means never a winter will go by without me clearing 48 minutes and 33 seconds from my life to properly give this another spin.
At the Drive In – Relationship of Command
I’m saying this a lot about this period of time, but in terms of alternative music I was mostly just listening to nu-metal and metal. The love of most things post-hardcore and screamy would come a bit later. I do remember friends and acquaintances being in to ATDI at the time, but the tuneless barking thing wasn’t for me. Until second year of university, I think it was. I can’t quite remember how it happened, but ATDI, Soundgarden, Audioslave, and the Mars Volta all came along at once. Around the same time I was binging my X-files DVD boxsets and replaying Perfect Dark on the N64 (managing to complete it on the hard difficulty which I hadn’t first time around) so it must have been another instance of the stars aligning. Well anyway, right from the moment of the shuffling and drum intro to Arcarsenal, I was hooked on everything Omar and Cedric had done and would ever do. The lyrical and musical complexity only enhanced the whole experience. And while the powerful singing on Deloused in the Comatorium was all the more impressive since Cedric did not “sing” for At the Drive-In, it was the lack of bite in the bark on 2017’s Interalia that rendered that record inessential for me. Where Omar and Cedric can be sloppy (rhythmically and tunefully) they make up for it in the sheer energy of the performance. I will even admit that that serves them better in ATDI than The Mars Volta – see their rendition of One-Armed Scissor on Jools Holland, for example: musically horrible in some ways but as a performance it just works. My constant mentions of Omar and Cedric should not detract from the other three members of the band (at the time Jim Ward on guitar, Paul Hinojos on bass, and Tony Hajjar on drums) who not only brought an incredible solidity to the foundation but on several occasions shone out over their more recognisable afro-haired bandmates. The drums are incredible throughout, but even on One-Armed Scissor, an easy choice because it was the “hit” single, the musicality as well as the tightness is loud and clear. And that bassline on Quarantined is one of my favourites ever.
Deftones – White Pony
While this record will always come top in the best-of lists and polls, Deftones’ catalogue is so consistently excellent and often surprising that, outside of self-titled (perhaps, but definitely for me) and Saturday Night Wrist (I really like it but even I wouldn’t put it near the top), ask any given fan and their favourite could be any album. Well anyway, White Pony is certainly the iconic quintessential Deftones record – dreamy and heavy (that constant push and pull between singer Chino Moreno and guitarist Stef Carpenter’s preferences) and experimental, a sublime guest vocal on Passenger from Tool’s Maynard James Keenan, objective recognition via album sales and a grammy win for Elite, rap rock single Back to School to satisfy the label, and their biggest song in Change (in the House of Flies) although, like Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, I often wonder if they could drop it from their setlists from time to time with no-one being any the wiser.
There was a point when I preferred the heavier attacks of the Around the Fur, but when I was ripping a CD for my friend Matt to try to get him into Deftones (it actually worked, and we must’ve seen them live nearly ten times together) I found myself unable to choose just a couple of songs from White Pony. Back to School isn’t all that representative of the rest of the album, and Pink Maggit is a tad incomprehensible, but there isn’t really any filler on there.
Explosions in the Sky – How Strange, Innocence
The debut album from the Mozarts of post-rock, and yet everything from the musical arrangements to the song titles and artwork style arrived pretty much fully formed. An unfettered tear-jerking joy to listen to.
Glassjaw – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence
I hated this when my friend first played it to me. I thought it was godawful trashy noise. Nothing like the tuneful proper music of, er, Korn… But then somehow the quick-fire (sub 2 minute) track Babe grew on me, then the hardcore screamy approach in general, then Glassjaw’s sophomore album Worship and Tribute, and then finally the rest of EYEWTKAS. It gets a bad rep for its production, but that’s certainly aged better than the rampant misogyny in the lyrics – it is one of the most purely angry records I have ever heard, as Daryl Palumbo rages against his Crohn’s disease and seemingly every woman who’s ever wronged him, but to me the songs and the performances are great enough to try to gloss over the more-than-unfortunate aspects of it. To their credit, the band themselves play very little from it these days, and asked fans not to buy the remastered version, but I think might be for other reasons like their hatred of the Roadrunner Records label. Actually, I just googled it and in a 2017 interview with the Guardian Palumbo said ““It deserves scrutiny. You don’t talk to a woman like that. It took being that angry to write [the debut album’s lyrics], to make it work for my instrument in the band. I was always like ‘Argh, revenge!’ Fall in love easily and then fall into hate easily. I didn’t have to say it that way ... It’s stupid, you don’t speak face-to-face to a woman like that. I was angry. It’s offensive.”
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven
Four tracks. Each over 20 minutes. Every of second of it epic and thick and dense and glorious and yet not that difficult to listen to and even less so to enjoy. The artwork and Coney Island spoken word sample (“they don’t sleep any more on the beach”) alone have spawned countless internet memes and references. Although the “comeback” albums (at this point there as many, three, released in 2012-2017 as there were from 1997 to 2002) are universally wonderful and lauded as such, LYSFLATH is probably up with F#A#[infinity symbol] as top two material.
Pantera – Reinventing the Steel
Back when I was a teenager and going to gigs in London was daunting, Pantera and Slayer and their fans were scary in a way that Korn and Slipknot weren’t. There is no basis for thinking that and I have never felt unsafe at any gig I’ve ever been to, so this would have been nothing more than fear of the unknown. I was still at school as I started to get into Pantera and Slayer though –I would have been 16 or 17 when I bought Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power record from a shop in Newcastle (while there on a family holiday). My friend Dan who was the authority on all things proper metal (the aforementioned and Metallica, at least) used to say this record wasn’t as good as the others as the songs weren’t as good quality. Now, RtS certainly isn’t as good as the “great trilogy” (there it is again) of Vulgar, Far Beyond Driven, and The Great Southern Trendkill. It is not a well-crafted album like those, so much as a decent collection of 10 songs. When you are as good as Pantera, though, a decent collection of 10 songs you throw together is still a lot better than average. And, much more controversially, I prefer it to Cowboys from Hell. That record has some greater standout movements but it has a little too much of the glam from Pantera’s early career left in it.
Radiohead – Kid A
Bob “Judas” Dylan goes electric! Radiohead go electronic! A very down-to-earth friend of mine was a big Radiohead fan but he was all about the guitar records. I might have started getting over my “guitar music only!” constraint by then, or I was being contrarian against this friend, but I liked and like Kid A. A lot. It was conceived and recorded as a pair with 2001’s Amnesiac but while they have distinct atmospheres and sounds, Kid A is for me far and away the superior of the two. Everything in its Right Place and How to Disappear Completely are two of the most achingly gorgeous songs they ever released, guitar or no, and Idioteque is a track I will happily dance to in my living room with no one else around (Radiohead’s 2003 song Sit Down, Stand Up is another rare example of that!).
St Germain – Tourist
I was recommended this by a colleague and friend in the Fruit and Veg department at Waitrose, where I worked when I was a student, given that I liked Jamiroquai and The Cinematic Orchestra e.g. acid jazz and nu jazz. Well, certainly if you like those acts and those genres more generally it would go without saying that you’d like St Germain! While “St Germain” is one person, Ludovic Navarre, and the music is more produced and processed than Jason Swinscoe’s TCO, this is not to say it doesn’t have plenty of acoustic instrumental collaborators, features and solos, so I come away from a listen eminently satisfied.
A playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5oiFWWpnZlnHOb7QeCJcRS?si=I9q2p0bhSGqFTLttmqr6iQ
- A Perfect Circle – The Hollow
- AFI – Sacrifice Theory
- Amen – Refuse Amen
- At the Drive In – Enfilade
- Cave In – Big Riff
- Deftones – Knife Prty
- Disturbed – Down with the Sickness
- Eminem – Stan
- Explosions in the Sky – Remember Me as a Time of Day
- Glassjaw – Siberian Kiss
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Sleep
- Immolation – Father, You’re not a Father
- Iron Maiden – Out of the Silent Planet
- ISIS – Celestial (the Tower)
- Lamb of God – Black Label
- Limp Bizkit – Take a Look Around
- Linkin Park – Crawling
- Lostprophets – Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja
- Marilyn Manson – The Fight Song
- Melvins – Divorced
- One Minute Silence – Roof of the World
- Pantera – Hellbound
- Pearl Jam – Insignificance
- Pitchshifter – Hidden Agenda
- Placebo – Special K
- Radiohead – Idioteque
- Rage Against the Machine – Beautiful World
- Raised Fist – Running Man
- Sick of it All – Blown Away
- Soulfly – Back to the Primitive
- St Germain – Rose rouge
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