BravePicks 2013: The Scribes Speak - David Perri
January 10, 2014, 10 years ago
Happy New Year from BraveWords and all the best for a headbanging 2014! To honour tradition, we always follow our annual BravePicks by handing over the pen to our devout scribes and let them speak out about the year that was and the year ahead of us!
So now we present each writer's take on 2013 with the always popular Brave Embarrassments, Concerts, Thoughts On 2013, Predictions For 2014 and What / Who Needs To Stop In 2014!
1) CARCASS – Surgical Steel (Nuclear Blast)
2) BEASTMILK – Climax (Svart)
3) EXHUMED – Necrocracy (Relapse)
4) CHILDREN OF BODOM - Halo Of Blood (Nuclear Blast)
5) KVELERTAK – Meir (Roadrunner)
6) CULT OF LUNA – Vertikal (Indie)
7) VOIVOD – Target Earth (Century Media)
8) DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN – One Of Us Is The Killer (Party Smasher/Sumerian)
9) EWIGKEIT – Back To Beyond (D.T.M. Productions)
10) SHINING – One One One (Prosthetic)
1) MEGADETH – Super Collider (Universal)
Enough risks, Dave... get back to selling, or rusting, peace.
2) SATYRICON – Satyricon (Century Media)
The aural equivalent of a disengaged, apathetic yawn.
3) TED NUGENT – Ultralive Ballisticrock (Frontiers)
Ted’s brain-dead politics taint the music, yet again.
1) KVELERTAK - Katacombes - Montreal, PQ
2) ERIMHA – Mavericks - Ottawa, ON
3) IMPERIAL STATE ELECTRIC – Zaphods - Ottawa, ON
Even after all these maze-and-labyrinth years involved in the extreme metal scene, I have never, ever witnessed a 12-month period of time quite like 2013. 2013 featured incendiary records from some of metal’s most beloved and notorious figures and just when you thought 2013 couldn’t be any more fire-on-fire, another uncompromisingly assertive album was released to massive acclaim. 1986 is the only other year that even remotely comes to close to what 2013 represents for the metal scene, and this scribe is grateful that he not only got the chance to experience such a phenomenon, but also was grey-haired (they’re starting...) enough to internalize and cherish such a rare vintage. Though my Top 10 list stands as my 2013 pinnacle moments, eminently competent albums were also brought forth for public consumption by SEPULTURA, ROTTING CHRIST, DEATHCHAIN, WOE, SOILWORK (yes, THAT Soilwork), HYPOCRISY, KYLESA, BLACK MARIAH, VHOL, COFFINS, FUCK THE FACTS, AMON AMARTH, BACKYARD MORTUARY, WATAIN, GHOST, TOXIC HOLOCAUST and SOULFLY. See? A gem-after-gem year, and yet an annum that completely belonged to conquering hero CARCASS. Not only is Surgical Steel one of the exceptional feats of metal perfection, but Reek Of Putrefaction, Symphonies Of Sickness, Necroticism, Heartwork and even Swansong (it’s actually aged WELL) all got enthusiastically pulled off the shelf for the first time in too long and received some major, and very much overdue, attention, allowing for metal fans the globe over to re-visit, re-listen and re-evaluate the Jeff Walker/Bill Steer/Ken Owen legacy. Long live all manners of corporal jigsore quandry...
ENTOMBED’s one-off reunion with Nicke Andersson and Uffe Cederlund on February 1st takes a left hand path and not-so-clandestinely becomes an entire tour.
TED NUGENT. He needs to stop talking.
