KEN Mode

Emperor, “A Fine Day to Die”

Among the various albums to emerge from the second wave of black metal, In The Nightside Eclipse seems to me to be the one that really set the template that a lot of black metal followed. While it’s inaccessible, it’s not as inaccessible as many of the other early records from the scene, and the extra elements that Emperor played with are ones that many other black metal bands would end up also playing with. As such, if you were to listen to one old black metal record to kind of understand the music, this is probably a great choice.

Joe & Barbara, “You’re Astounding”

This comes from very late in the Stax run, from 1975, just before the label’s bankruptcy brought things to a close.

Aceyalone, “Five Feet”

Aceyalone was one of the founders of the Freestyle Fellowship, which we just had the other day. He went solo and had a string of albums ranging from solid to excellent. This comes from his 2001 album Accepted Electric, which is probably my favorite solo album of his.