Top Albums of 2017 - Jon Rosenthal

Urarv is strange. There are elements in Aurum which seem familiar on the surface level: the black metal-esque riff-work, the harsh vocals (Aldrahn’s unique howling, ranting, and raving), the rhythmic intensity. It all feels like black metal, but there is this air of avant (or at least progressive) rock which takes the band into a completely separate territory. Aldrahn, Patricia, Sturt, and the surprising addition of Ynleborgaz (Make a Change, Kill Yourself…, Angantyr) take the initial separation of black metal approached by the second wave stalwarts in the late 1990s to early 2000s — what was initially called post-black metal — and twist it into a jagged, uncanny valley version of itself. It resembles black metal on the surface, and yet there is something “off” about it: something unsettling which suddenly becomes glaring and upsetting. Of course, upsetting seems to be the root of Urarv’s inspiration, first conceived by Aldrahn’s meditations on modern ego during a stay in a mental care facility, and Urarv itself seems to separate from black metal’s definition-obsessed ego.

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What a befuddlingly unique, playfully dark album. The band’s self-described “progressive pop” is certainly true to its name, a dark cabaret of stark, urban electronics, complex compositions, and snide charm. Never before have I heard such a stunning representation and complexities of interpersonal relationships through a ten-minute ballad about baseball, and yet I am wholly convinced. Even now, after spending months and months with Blackbox, I find myself mostly unable to put into words why I like it, and yet each listen is completely mesmerizing and revitalizing. I suppose this sort of reaction isn’t really to be expected from someone who is supposed to, you know, write about music, but being presented with something so completely unique presents problems for the writer.

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It seems unfair to include this album on a year-end list. I haven’t been able to listen to it often. It makes me cry. I think it makes a lot of people cry. Phil Elverum has always been one to make music so sincere it borders the uncomfortable, but the plaintive manner in which he mourns his wife’s (Geneviève Castrée, 1981-2016) death through diary entries and explanations to his infant daughter is just heartbreaking. It feels so real, wearing his sadness on his sleeve to somehow make sense of it (in his own words, “it’s dumb”), and his exceedingly lonely musical performance only enhances his wandering ramblings. Little hints at melodies from old songs of heartbreak (the small reference to “The Moon” in “Soria Moria” just ruins me) carry so much more weight now from the broken man trying to hold himself upright for his daughter. I honestly can’t listen to it without full preparation, because my day will be over and I will be inconsolable. How does something so emotionally potent exist? Does something I can’t listen to really deserve to be a favorite of mine? From the bombastic, zen mind explorations of Sauna, we return to Elverum’s fragile state, that which fueled so much of his music. I feel wrong liking this as much as I do.

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What kind of year is it where Satyricon’s new album is a “dark horse”? After their self-titled album’s abandoning of the “black ‘n’ roll” style to which they had grown accustomed between the legendary Rebel Extravaganza and The Age of Nero, the slate was wiped clean for this long-standing, creative duo. Now under a much more progressive guise, Satyricon turns black metal on its head through odd phrasing, deep textures, and lengthy melodies, all of which traverse their discography but with a future-bound momentum. Sigurd “Satyr” Wongraven is generally one to think himself a genius (and quite literally reinforces that in Dayal Patterson’s Black Metal: The Cult Never Dies, Vol. 1), but this is the first time in years where I side with his ego. Maybe this new direction was sparked by his own experience with mortality, or maybe he just got bored of stagnating, but Deep calleth upon Deep‘s own creative spirit reflects the bizarre nature which made Satyricon’s early works so inspired and venerable.

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I revel in gloom. It’s true. I also love Planning for Burial, which is also true. Thom Wasluck is this well of creative despond, and each piece of music he releases is like an arrow straight to my soul. Maybe a little closer to Leaving this time around, Wasluck’s reaffirmation of “Gloom,” some misshapen mass of metal, slowcore, post-rock, and shoegazing ambiance, is all the more bombastic and heart-baring. Below the House is this strange “missing link” between what I thought was a duality in my taste, bridging my love of soft, textured indie rock with the volume and violence of metal. A truly stirring album.

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Following a mildly disappointing career as a rock band (I felt Kristoffer “Garm” Rygg’s voice was too smooth and sultry for what was otherwise great music), Ulver follows my entire musical timeline. From the beloved Trilogie onward, there was this modernizing which felt like, for lack of a better term, “growing up.” Or “out.” Throughout all the adventures through electronic music, trip-hop, ambiance, Garm and Tore’s vision still retained the darkness held at Ulver’s core since even before Tore even joined the band in 1997. Returning back to the electronic music which defined their mid-period (Perdition City, Blood Inside, and Shadows of the Sun), Ulver flexes the pop sensibilities learned from their active, rock-era, and made a glorious gothic, electronic pop album. Sincerely put, each song packs a wallop; from “Rolling Stone”‘s infectious chorus to “1969”‘s dark brooding, it seems that Ulver’s post-Trilogie career was building up to this moment. Wolves evolve, and so do we.

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The bar for creativity in black metal has risen yet again. For someone who particularly enjoys the stranger half of black metal’s lineage, the return of Fleurety has been met with warm emotion and nostalgia. Joined by a man of equal importance to that creative movement, Ved Buens Ende’s Carl-Michael Eide, we find ourselves thrust into a modernist future, where pop, progressive rock, black metal, and jazz are one and the same. Always ones to give metal convention the one-fingered-salute, Zweizz and Alexander N. refocus their songwriting skills and what was originally a kaleidoscopic, wide view becomes a destructive laser. Rhythmic, joyous, childlike, artful, harmonious, disturbing, The White Death runs this cartoonish, delightful gamut which screams “You didn’t listen to us in the 1990s and now you’ve stagnated.” Fleurety will forever be this beacon of silliness which hurls damnations at the horrendously conservative nature of the style they initially denied.

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God, what a beautiful album. Granted, I feel all kinds of beautiful nostalgia when listening to To the Bone. After so many post-Porcupine Tree albums where Steven Wilson flexed his instrumental prowess, which was fine, he finally returned to the glorious “progressive pop” which made me first fall in love with his music. It seems that remastering all these seminal progressive and art-rock albums (Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, XTC, Peter Gabriel, et al.) has reawoken Wilson’s ear for ear-catching, evocative songwriting, and this tour de force reaffirms and expands upon what made Porcupine Tree so great. I’ll be honest when I said I hesitated listening to this, and even dismissed it at first. It wasn’t until a few months later, when the big voice harmonies hit during the opening title track, that I realized just how stupid and dismissing I was. The emotions I feel when listening to this, somewhere between emotional fragility and intense happiness, left a lasting impression which I relive with each new listen. I listen to To The Bone almost daily, and count the days until I get to (finally) see him perform in May.

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