Alex Newton's Top 50 of 2013

1. The Ocean – Pelagial

In the wake of The Ocean’s polarizing duo Heliocentric and Anthropocentric, their next album was bound to be a make-or-break affair. With Pelagial, however, those fears about the Ocean’s future can finally be laid to rest. Based around the very cool concept of descending through the ocean, Pelagial feels more natural than anything else by the new lineup. Songwriter and guitarist Robin Staps’ original idea was to start with a clean, ambient “surface” feel and move steadily towards a “distorted and abrasive sound for the doomy depth-passages at the end of the album”. Indeed, the serene major-chord piano of “Epipelagic” sets a tone unlike anything in The Ocean’s catalogue, despite seascape sounds that otherwise whisper of Fluxion’s opener, “Nazca”.

Album Review: Ulcerate - Vermis

Album Score: A

There may not be a more convincingly apocalyptic band than Ulcerate. Death metal groups constantly promote themselves as “brutal” or “heavy” or “crushing,” but this New Zealand trio has mastered the art of soul-withering songwriting by honing its craft on a deeper level. Fitting together layers of dissonance in a way that makes sense is a difficult task, since it often goes against established musical paradigms, but it’s what Ulcerate thrives on. Due to the fact that every line on Vermis builds off this foundation, the album is fundamentally saturated with intense emotions of utter dread and bitterness towards a crumbling world. Welcome to Ulcerate’s perfect musical hell.

Artist of the Day: Ulcerate

Ulcerate's fourth album, Vermis,drops this September.

In the field of Death metal, it’s becoming increasingly hard to stand out from the crowd. Progress is often limited to incestuous genre hybridization, so bands turn to advertising themselves as the most “intense” and “brutal” out there. Immolation created suffocating dissonance, Morbid Angel perfected blast-beat thunder, and Death injected the genre with philosophy and unpredictability, so it would seem there’s little left to say that hasn’t already been screamed. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Michael Hoggard and Jamie Saint-Merat decided it was time for the genre to take a step back and breathe a little. Born of their insane guitar and drum chops in 2000, Ulcerate started as a talented but otherwise unremarkable death metal outfit. After the band added and dropped a number of musicians, it settled on a trio of Hoggard, Saint-Merat and bassist/vocalist Paul Kelland. Those three would lay down the album Everything is Fire, and for once, death metal had a legitimately fresh sound.

Eli's First Annual Year End Album Tournament

Welcome, welcome, to Eli’s first annual “Year End Tournament.” Here I indulge in egregious amounts of pretentious tomfoolery, all in attempt to wrap up my final thoughts on music in 2011.