Skummy Does The Top 50 Albums

[Skummy]

My turn! You know the drill by now, surely. I tell you what my favourite albums are, you tell me how wrong I am, we all forget about it in a week, and every day I curse myself for having forgotten something obvious. Let's start.

50. Merzbow - Pulse Demon

First (last?) album on the list is probably the album that set me off on my own particular musical endeavours of late, in the field of extreme noise, and despite my love for such works as Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" (especially Zeitratzer's orchestration of it) and the works of Prurient, it's the only example of that genre in the list. Probably for the best. This is quite possibly noise at the most punishing and confrontational while still retaining some resemblance to music, rather than just squalls of white noise - not that this bears much resemblance to "music" in the conventional sense either. This is Merzbow at his best, but also at his most confrontational; he'd go on to collaborate with much more "conventional" acts, and to incorporate elements of other genres and other influences into his own work - not here. This is a noise album, not a free jazz album or avant-garde classical, or any other term that gets attached to his later work to try and "legitimise" it, as if that matters, this is music taken to a logical conclusion. And it's fantastic.

Best tracks: Spiral Blast, Worms Plastic Earthbound

Worst tracks: Woodpecker No. 2, My Station Rock

49. Anton LaVey - Satan Takes A Holiday

This is one of the oddest albums I have ever heard. And that's coming from a man who obsesses over "outsider" music, and whose collection includes Robert Mitchum's foray into calypso music, Ken Nordine's word-jazz tributes to his favourite colours, and the incomparable album "Sing Along With JFK". This album, somehow, manages to surpass all that in terms of sheer oddity. Well, except maybe that JFK one.

What we have here is an album recorded by LaVey, the founder and former "High Priest" of the Church Of Satan, two years before his death, along with the director of his film biography and a Church Of Satan High Priestess. The album itself is comprised mostly of pre-1950 standards, showtunes and ballads, performed by LaVey on what sounds like the cheapest, tinniest synthesiser money could buy. In a shed.

Now, despite it's primitive sound and general outsider music quality, there is the possibility that I wouldn't enjoy this half as much if it weren't so incongruous, if I didn't know the history of LaVey - but fuck it, all music exists in context, and this is brilliant. If there's a dafter moment in musical history than the "most evil man in America" singing "Honolulu Baby, where'd you get those eyes?", I've not heard it.

Best tracks: Honolulu Baby, Hello Central Give Me No Man's Land, If You Were The Only Girl In The World

Worst tracks: Answer Me, Satan Takes A Holiday, Satanis Theme, Golden Earrings.

48. Sigh - Scenario IV: Dread Dreams

Black metal's only appearance on the list, courtesy of Japan's finest exponents of the genre. Sigh were never the most conventional of black metal bands, but this is probably the album where that first becomes truly apparent...it doesn't delve into the psychedelic influences of their later work which, frankly, is a bit silly, but throws some truly unexpected curveballs...most notably in the form of the doom-tinged "Black Curse" seguing seamlessly into a country steel guitar solo, only to cut out into clumsy white funk, only to drag you down to earth with another beefy doom riff. Lovely. That combined with the '80s thrash of "Iconoclasm In The 4th Desert", or the ridiculously out of place and largely pointless "Waltz - Dead Dreams" make this one of the stranger black metal albums out there, but also by far the most fun.

Best tracks: Black Curse, Iconoclasm In The 4th Desert

Worst tracks: Waltz - Dead Dreams, Divine Graveyard

47. Napalm Death - Scum

Another outing for extreme music, this time grindcore's sole position on the countdown, with an album that pretty much opened my eyes to extreme metal and grindcore. Lovely. "You Suffer" is a bit silly, but let's face it, it's genius. The whole album is...just brutal and unrelenting, but also utterly daft - and it has to be, really. Anyone that takes this kind of music entirely seriously is more than likely an utter bore - extreme metal needs a sense of humour, because it's intrinsically a silly, silly genre, and Scum has it in spades, while never once falling into the realms of parody. No, not even on "You Suffer". This is exhilarating stuff...almost certainly the first grindcore album, and I could delve into the history of it - near complete change of line-up before the album's even finished, no one in the current line-up of Napalm Death played on the album, whole thing recorded for less than fifty quid and all that - but what's really important is that this is just a bloody good album. It's heavy, it's brutal, but it's fun and it does what so many of its successors, what so many grindcore bands forget...it's got fucking tunes.

Best tracks: You Suffer, Multinational Corporations, Human Garbage

Worst tracks: Siege Of Power

46. Roy Orbison - Mystery Girl

Something of a change of pace. Mystery Girl was the final album recorded by Roy Orbison, the finest singer in pop music history. Bar none. It's also almost certainly Orbison's finest complete album. From the opening "You Got It" which rightfully is remembered amongst his finest singles, through the best song Bono & The Edge ever wrote ("She's A Mystery To Me"), a reworking of a previously dull, but in "The Big O"'s capable hands phenomenal, Elvis Costello track ("The Comedians")...hell, he even makes a song as superficially rubbish as "Windsurfer" sound decent, just by virtue of being Roy Orbison. This is, truly, an album completely outside of time and place; Orbison's voice anchors it firmly in his own catalogue, it couldn't possibly be anybody else, but at the same time, it's something apart; yet nor does it sound like a product of the 1980s, thank Christ. It says something that, with a back catalogue as stellar as Orbison's is, his final album can, with no undue sympathy, be said to stand up to the lot of it.

Best tracks: The Comedians, She's A Mystery To Me, You Got It, (All I Can Do) Is Dream You

Worst tracks: Windsurfer, California Blue

Coming up...avant-garde metal film scores, wizards walking by, a 1978 comeback by sixties MOR darlings, a debut live album that isn't a live album, a '90s forgotten gem and a stoner rock classic.

Edited January 15, 2009 by Skumfrog Millionaire

[Emperor Fuckshit]

"a debut live album that isn't a live album"

Hmmm... I WONDER what THIS could be?????

I'll be following, Skummy -- I trust your musical opinions and, even if I'm not exactly likely to go tracking down all fifty albums as a result of the recommendations, your writing about music is always worth reading and will no doubt continue to uncover stuff I've never even head of, let alone heard.

[GoGo Yubari]

... man, now I feel like I have to do Worst Track on mine too because I like that idea. I'll be reading, of course; even though a lot of it will drift away from my style, I respect your opinions on music the most out of anyone on EWB.