Heath Rave of Wolvhammer: Most Important Records of the Decade

The other day, one of the nicest dudes I know in Minneapolis asked to me write about what I would consider the five most important records of the ’00s to be. What a tough assignment. Important music. That is much harder than picking favorites, as it’s easy to love something without it being important. William Shatner’s last solo record is one of my faves of the ’00s, but I definitely could never categorize that record as important. It’s just 50 min. or so of feel good irony, produced by the wonderful Ben Folds. Important would have to be influential, genre defining if you will. So as I’ve stewed on this a few days, I now have for you my five most important records of the first decade of the new millenia, in a complete and totally biased opinion in no particular order.

Converge Jane Doe
I know that this is going to end up on at least a couple other people’s, but that’s because you can’t deny the brutal intensity and sheer balls to experiment with such a limiting genre as hardcore. Yeah, its a metal record, but Converge is a fucking hardcore punk band, hand’s down, and they made one the most brutal metallic hardcore records of all time. From the iconic cover art to the unbelievably too loud recording this record created a thousand photoshop layout lookalikes and I can only hope made a few scenester pussies grow a pair. A pure classic.

Ghostface Killah Fishscale
I’m gonna tell you all that I don’t know shit about hip hop, nor do I give a damn about it as whole. I still prefer to call it rap music, as I think hip hop is probably one of the most saccharine terms I’ve ever heard coined and I fucking loved Run DMC and that shit was rap dude. But like I said, I don’t know shit about it, but what I do know is that other than the RZA as Bobby Digital in Stereo this one of the few Wu solo records that comes anything close to classic 36 Chambers. Great programming, great guests, and tons of songs about coke, this is the quality that urban music should strive to achieve.

Darkthrone The Cult Is Alive
Oh man, hope this one pisses off all the “troo” and “kvlts.” Darkthrone has always had a punk influence, in fact real black metal in general usually does. And how much more punk or black metal can you get than by sticking a gargantuan Norwegian sized middle finger in the face of the genre that you helped create. No blast beats. No corpse paint photos. No ad-hoc satanism. Fuck you, we’re gonna write a denim and leather fucking heavy fucking metal record that sounds like its goddamned 1984 and we don’t fucking care because we fucking love Black Flag and Venom and we do whatever the fuck we want. Now that’s what black metal is.

Neurosis A Sun That Never Sets
I’ve seen this band nine times in 15 some odd years. This was my favorite band when most of the kids that love this stuff now were still in elementary school. I wouldn’t consider this their best, but, when I hear all the kids worshiping at the altar of whatever they’re calling it this week, “metalgaze,” “post-metal,” “ambient doom,” this is the record that I think gave the blueprint for all the watering down of slower paced heavy music that has flooded the market in the last decade. The loud/quiet dynamics and super long building of songs really started to show on this record as their older stuff was quite a bit more abrasive, and along with Isis who were the first to rip this band off, have created burgeoning genre of low rent slow heavy metal that I can’t even tell the difference between nowadays. If you can create a bunch of imitators, then you are definitely important.

Jesu s/t and Killing Joke s/t
I just couldn’t decide between the two. Justin Broadrick of Godflesh fame picks up guitar again and gets all My Bloody Valentine on your ass. Eight massive songs that reek of what I think Justin had always wanted to do with Godflesh but was too obsessed with dub and hip hop at the time to pull off. Then the sorely overlooked Killing Joke taps Dave Grohl play to drums for them, and pulls out a ripping sci-fi industrial metal masterpiece that pounds and stomps track after track including an amazingly reworked version of “Wardance.” Both important records from extremely influential artists.

Also: Ambassador Gun, Blue Ox, Wolvhammer @ Triple Rock Social Club