We asked Pitchfork writers and editors to share their personal highs and lows of 2013. Check back for more installments of My Year in Music throughout the next two weeks.
Favorite Tracks of 2013:
01 Ruin Lust: "Tethered and Lashed"
02 Agrimonia: "Talion"
03 The Ruins of Beverast: "Daemon"
04 Blood Ceremony: "Lord Summerisle"
05 Darkthrone: "Leave No Cross Unturned"
06 Autopsy: "Mangled Far Below"
07 Oranssi Pazuzu: "Olen Aukaissut UudenSilmän"
08 Moloch: "Vomit Phobia"
09 Arckanum: "Dolgrinn"
10 Dread Sovereign: "We Wield the Spear of Longinus"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Agrimonia: Rites of Separation
02 The Ruins of Beverast: Blood Vaults—The Blazing Gospel Of Heinrich Kramer (Cryptae Sanguinum—Evangelium Flagrans Henrici Institoris)
03 Cloud Rat: Moksha
04 Yellow Eyes: Hammer of Night
05 Sacriphyx: The Western Front
06 Wormlust: The Feral Wisdom
07 Atlantean Kodex: The White Goddess (A Grammar of Poetic Myth)
08 Inter Arma: Sky Burial
09 Cult of Fire: मृत्यु का तापसी अनुध्या
10 Bolzer: Aura
Most Played Song of 2013: Cloud Rat, "The Needle and the Damage Done". I hadn’t paid much attention to the 2013 album from this Michigan grind troupe until I happened to catch them at a crust gig in South London. Ho-lee fuck. They blew the doors off the joint and had me sprinting for the merch table within five minutes. This harrowing Neil Young cover has stuck with me the most, both for the song’s inventive brilliance and how close to home it hits if you’ve ever lost a friend to a dark habit.
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: Merle Haggard, 40 #1 Hits. I grew up on outlaw country and Southern rock, and ol' Merle has always loomed large in my family’s record collections. Now I’m a city girl with a Bathory tattoo, but some things are hard to unlearn. Between him, Waylon Jennings, David Allan Coe, Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, and Bocephus, I really dug deep into my country roots this year, and have spent countless lonesome nights on the road listening to Haggard’s weary, knowing twang. This best-of is light on deep cuts but chock full of the old familiar songs that would pour out of scratchy speakers whenever we’d go rattling down dirt roads in my dad’s battered grey pickup, back when I was only young and the sky was always blue.
Musical Highlights: I have no idea how many shows I’ve been to this year, but the number’s pretty high and the memories are priceless, like: Getting to see Drowned, Agrimonia, Cloud Rat, Bolt Thrower, Katechon, Worship, Nihill, Ophis, The Great Old Ones, and Bestial Mockery in various countries, which was a fever dream come true. All the amazing festivals I was lucky enough to blunder into and be a part of, like Roadburn, Incubate, Kill Town Death Fest, Fall Into Darkness, Scion Rock Fest, Desertfest, Martyrdoom, Housecore Horror Film Festival, and the mighty Maryland Death fest, for which I once again served as editor of the official festival program. Celebrating Iron Fist Magazine’s first birthday. Getting hammered to Destroyer 666 with a bunch of old friends in Dublin, raging at Cruciamentum’s final UK gig in London, and improbably surviving yet another year of SXSW madness. Good times and late nights with the bands I was privileged to trundle across North America with in pursuit of riffs, revelry, and a decent night’s sleep: Cobalt, Corrosion of Conformity, Orange Goblin, Holy Grail, LazerWulf, and their hard-working, big-hearted crews, my eternal brothers of the road. Cramming into the dank recesses of the Underworld in London to witness one of Carcass’ first comeback gigs alongside my boyfriend and tons of our mates (best date night ever!). Standing onstage just behind Brian Patton’s towering amps to watch EyeHateGod and Melvins’ drummer Dale Crover sweat and scream their way through the NOLA sludge gods’ first live performance since the untimely passing of original drummer Joey LaCaze…then seeing ‘em do it all over again (this time with new drummer Aaron) at my two favorite NYC venues, Saint Vitus and The Acheron. Spending way too much money on a coveted 3XLP box set of Necros Christos’ early material (I REGRET NOTHING).
Musical Lowlights: Saying too many R.I.P.s (big love to Marianne, Joey, and Boone). Being too scatterbrained to release all the ridiculous powerviolence songs I recorded last summer with my boyfriend and our friend Donny whilst we were living in London and spending all our pocket money on cider (moving back to NYC mid-recording didn’t help). The time one of my idiot roommates let the cat in our room and it scratched up a bunch of my dad’s original Creedance records. Missing a lot of killer shows and festivals due to geographical misplacement. Nuclear War Now!’s stubborn insistence on making us wait an extra year before booking NWN IV (see you in November, Berlin!). The fact that I now know who Miley Cyrus is.