HM | The Hard Music Magazine

Favorite albums of 2009:
U2 – No Line On The Horizon
(lived up to my expectations, which were high…)

Austrian Death Machine – Double Brutal
(How Tim Lambesis could top Total Brutal is amazing & funny!)

Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster – III
(I can’t believe II was as good as I and III as good as both…)

Grave Robber – Be Afraid
(Such a fun scream-along album in the vein of Misfits … with almost a Gwar-like show.)

Owl City – Ocean Eyes
(This music oozes with joy. One of the year’s success stories, to be sure.)

Stryper – Murder By Pride
(I’m sorry, but I didn’t like Reborn, but really like this one. It’s so hard for a melodic metal band to impress these days. It’s like they have to justify their existence in today’s music world just to be heard … and then be really great to be great… Scorpions did it in 2004 with Unbreakable. Dream Theater has done it a couple times in this decade with Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence in 2002 and Systematic Chaos in 2007, but Stryper may have just done it with this one.)

Sleeping Giant – Sons Of Thunder
(Hardcore that’s like classic metal with huge drums and pounding breakdowns. Definitely making a statement and a buzz with their live shows.)

Skillet – Awake
(This band continues to build upon its new identity in the realm of modern and nu-metal and gothic-influenced rock. Melodies and power riffs aplenty.)

A Plea For Purging – Depravity
(If Iron Maiden had kept Paul D’Anno and followed his lead instead of the road they did take…?)

Demon Hunter – 45 Days
(While a DVD/CD combo set, it was both endearing to the band and creative…)

Becoming The Archetype – Dichotomy
(Strengthened its reputation for not only power in metal, but melodic songs that actually go somewhere, instead of circles and circles of blast beats and breakdowns… Nice.)

Red - Innocence And Instinct
(Partially unnoticed by the scene police, this band one-upped itself with another strong release of modern rock. As note-worthy as their touring itinerary is, these songs are good.)

Favorite live shows of 2009:
Seeing Owl City play the super small indoor room at Emo’s this fall was awesome. Seeing the joy of their studio album translate into a live setting was fun, as was hearing almost everyone in the crowd singing along to the lyrics (and not just the choruses, but each and every witty verse). It reminded me of seeing Dashboard Confessional play the same club (only the outdoors stage) packed with people singing along on his The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most Tour. I have the same feelings of “special” and “luck” to see an artist on the crest of a huge wave about the soak the entire earth with its music. Here’s a review I posted last month.

Seeing The Crucified nail it at Cornerstone Festival this summer was equally amazing. Not only were legends up on stage again performing their classic songs, but they were totally tight and bringing the rock with power and volume. Man, I had a smile a mile wide that night.

Seeing MUTEMATH play a huge stage with video screens on either side at this year’s ACL Fest was fantastic — and having a photo pass and capturing a bunch of cool shots (thanks to my friend Thomas loaning me his digital SLR camera for the weekend) made it an even richer experience. Here’s my review I blogged earlier.

Favorite concert moment of 2009:
It might have been seeing Bradley Hathaway perform a rare poem as an encore at a concert a couple weeks ago, where he ad-libbed and dropped in a tip of the poet’s hat to Levithepoet, who was sitting next to me.

Each of the four or five times I saw Seabird this year (SXSW, GMA, Cornerstone, RevGen, a show in Austin) and hearing vocalist Aaron Morgan start off the song “My Rescue” with his voice resonating across the room, practically needing no amplification: “I’m pushing up daisies… I wish they were roses… I feel like I’m drownin’… But nobody knows it…”

Favorite forwarded email to read repeatedly:
The story about the handicapped son who joined a baseball game late and who hit the grand slam home run on errors to win the game in the 9th inning. Only thing not tear-jerking about the story: one of those “You forward jokes all the time to your friends, but when it comes to something like this…blah blah blah, DELETE. My rule for forwarding emails is to delete any of those superstitious or guilt-inducing tags at the end, as well as erasing all the cc: addresses.

Moments/events that almost no one noticed:
The practical disillusion of P.O.D. as a working band in 2009. (What does this mean for their future?)

Norma Jean signed to Razor & Tie Records.

Favorite sit-down interviews:
Almost two hours poolside with White Collar Sideshow in Nashville at GMA.

John Davis of Superdrag in Austin at SXSW.

Talking to Jeph Howard of The Used in a small room at La Zona Rosa was pretty cool, too. We plan on running this one next.

That Flyleaf interview was pretty cool, too.

Favorite movies of 2009:
Inglourious Basterds was so delightful and fun. It was violent, too. I thought it was one of the best movies of the past five years, to be honest.

Lord, Save Us From Your Followers was a powerful and superbly-produced documentary. Love it and hope it screens in theaters in many more places soon.

Favorite subscription promotion:
The CD insert in the latest Red album, which has yielded good results = 194 subscriptions.
And our least-favorite big promotion was the Scream The Prayer Tour. Judging by subscription numbers alone = zero.