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.

I wanted to write about music, and thought about writing about some 2022 albums I liked. I started typing it up for a private Discord and then remembered, duh, I actually have a music blog. So let’s blow the dust off this thing and post about some music I liked. “Best” is meaningless here, as any of these albums might strike my fancy on any particular day, and ranking them seems extremely iffy. Will any of these albums be in regular rotation next year? Five years? I have no idea. So, this is just a list of some releases you might have missed that I liked, and maybe you should check them out.

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.