Album covers go counterclockwise from bottom left, starting with #10.

10: In Extremo – Sængerkrieg didn’t impress me a whole lot at first – they have yet to top their album 7 – but it’s grown on me of late, with catchy pipe riffs strewn throughout the album. It’s definitely not one of their better efforts, but In Extremo on a bad day still beats most other bands on their best.

9: Orplid – Greifenherz thankfully has little in common with their last album Sterbender Satyr: the songs are again short and dark, and denser sonically than Orplid has ever ventured before. Unfortunately it still has some of the coldwave quaintness of the last album (a xylophone appears from time to time) and doesn’t even come close to the first few releases, but it’s nevertheless a surprisingly good listen.

8: Elane – The Silver Falls came out right as I was getting tired of the last two Elane releases, and like Greifenherz, was surprisingly good. To the orchestral folk-pop mix has been added a good bit of melodic rock to flesh out the sound, and it succeeds wonderfully in that regard. Where the pop-folk got boring on the last few albums, the new influences sustain it well.

7: Sava – Metamorphosis is a real step forward since Aire. With new stringed instruments, more languages, and a denser sound all around, Metamorphosis is a great treatment of the spacey Sephardic melodies they love to reprise.

6: Corvus Corax – Cantus Buranus II, while not as good as the first Cantus Buranus and not breaking much new ground, is still a great concept, and is extremely well done. Though most of the album isn’t particularly memorable, the last two tracks – O Varium Fortune and Preces Ad Imperatorem, a reprise of Chou Chou Sheng from Seikilos – are easily some of the best tracks Corvus has ever produced.

5: Die Apokalyptischen Reiter – Licht is as eclectic as the Reiter ever were. With drumming ranging from soft rock (Der Elende) to death metal (most of the songs) and guitar work from funk (Adrenalin and Ein Lichtlein) to death metal (most of the songs) and of course the characteristic piano, the all-German album (a first for them), despite the overpowering bass pedal in a few places, is pretty excellent.

4: Unheilig – Puppenspiel doesn’t break much new ground for Der Graf. Complete with pounding dance beats, incredible basso-profundo vocals and a piano-orchestra ballad (An Deiner Seite), Puppenspiel is even more of a refinement of the already-tight production of Unheilig’s sound. I wish the album would have dropped a few songs – it’s a good 16 songs, several of which are obviously filler – but the good ones are great; even among the best of Unheilig to date.

5: ASP – Zaubererbruder presents ASP in a light far and away more mature than the self-consciously gothic early ASP, which given the EPs released before Requiembryo (which contained several songs that would make their way onto this album), makes it seem as if the Schwarzer Schmetterling series couldn’t have been finished soon enough. Nevertheless Requiembryo was a masterpiece despite the stylistic limitations there (it was the best of 2007). Zaubererbruder, a concept album about the German children’s book Krabat, takes the medieval influence that appeared briefly on Requiembryo and expands it to great effect. Except for the blasting Verwandlungen, the album is significantly less heavy than the last few albums, and though it doesn’t top Requiembryo, I would have been stunned if it did.

2: Rome – Masse Mensch Material was the most unique thing to hit my music library in a long time. Though older Orplid comes close to martial industrial at times, I had all but written off the genre after I found Der Blutharsch to be too repetitive and harsh to be enjoyable. Rome, however, is everything I had enjoyed about Der Blutharsch without the surliness. With one of the best vocalists I’ve heard, a brilliant orchestral aesthetic, bombastic beats, and guitar work almost reminiscent of post-rock at times, Masse Mensch Material is one of the best albums I’ve heard in the post-industrial and outlying genres.

1: Eluveitie – Slania is phenomenally ahead of Spirit, which itself was a good album. The catchy celtic-infused tunes overtop the death metal riffs provide more than enough melody to legitimize the harsh vocals. The quality is excellent, the instrumentation is masterful, and the melodies are infectious: never a dull or repetitive moment, the entire album has the most replay value since Requiembryo last year.

Honorable Mention: Mogwai – The Hawk is Howling. I almost included this in the top 10, but Sængerkrieg managed to edge it out in terms of enjoyableness. Nevertheless, Mogwai is among the better post-rock bands I’ve heard, and this is Mogwai at their best.

Best Newcomer: Nachtgeschrei – Hoffnungsschimmer, despite the weak vocals, is a strong medieval metal act with good production that, even with the pipe-riff-overtop-a-rock-song formula, manages to distinguish itself effectively from In Extremo.

Best EP: Agalloch – The White is Agalloch going for a post-industrial/neofolk feel. Though far from the clean black metal they usually produce, the acoustic sections and lack of drums throughout the EP work surprisingly well and make for a great atmospheric work.

Album I’d have included in the 2007 list if I had known it then: Uaral – Lamentos A Poema Muerto, from the two-piece Chilean outfit, contains by far the most beautiful extended acoustic guitar pieces I’ve ever heard. The vocals are a bit rough, but the acoustic sections, complemented by flutes, electric guitars, and even a pipe organ at points, make for an incredibly poignant album.

Tooting my own horn: Epta Astera – Ero Cras was released this year too. Give it a listen!

Idly scouring the internet as I sometimes do, I came across an article entitled 50 NES Quotes You Should Know. I’m no gamer and have no emotional connection to the games of olde like most in gamer culture, but I (correctly) assumed most of the quotes would be funny, and was also keen on being able to make references to old school video games besides “Do a barrel roll!” and “Abort/Retry/Fail?”. And while the article was a success in that regard, the main revelation was gleaned from an offhand comment beneath the fourth page of the article:

Christianity says that people are inherently good and that deep down we all want to do the right thing. Video games prove the opposite is true.

This is not a nitpicky point. This is not a quaint theological issue. This is, quite literally, the first point in the Gospel message: people are inherently not good (Romans 3:10, Isaiah 64:6, 1 John 1:8, Isaiah 53:6). This is the very reason we need a savior (Hebrews 9:22, 1 Peter 3:18, Isaiah 53:5) – because we are unable in our own strength to bridge the gap of sin between ourselves and God – even to make motion in that direction (Romans 3:23, Romans 3:11). It is the foundation and purpose of the entire Christian faith that people are totally, though not irreparably, depraved.

This is the difference between Christianity and generic religion. This is the distinguishing feature that must be emphasized above all the self-help masquerading as trite religion, and the failure to communicate this point is the reason first of all that Liberal Protestantism is virtually extinct, and furthermore the reason for the continuing decline in the quality of what now passes in the Church: it makes itself irrelevant without this point. People see Christianity as just another self-help mechanism, and no one is telling them any differently – some false teachers have even exacerbated the problem by broadcasting from within that Christianity is about self-help (you may have culled from previous articles my scarcely concealed contempt for Mr. Osteen).

The Church loves to talk about “cultural relevance” – engaging the culture where it’s at. Unfortunately this misguided attempt at relevance just makes it indistinguishable from all the other voices. The Church must preach not only Jesus, but why Jesus. Relevance – not only cultural but trans-cultural – requires that we be unmistakably clear on the fundamental issue of depravity.

 

Pat Robertson, January 2008:

“he said oil would reach $150 a barrel – the price hit $100 on Wednesday – with the dollar continuing to lose value in 2008.”

Reality, October 2008:

“Crude has now fallen about 40% since surging to an all-time record $147.27 a barrel on July 11.”

So close, Pat! Despite the fact that your “prophecies” are for the most part relatively safe bets that any pundit/meteorologist could predict, they have once again failed to materialize. And that was back in October: Oil prices per barrel are less than a third of their high now, not to mention the dollar is doing great compared to both the battered Euro and the beleaguered Yen now.

Even more ironic is that it was his correct (if fairly safe; you could smell the bad economic news from a mile away) prophecy of a stock market crash that caused his oil prophecy to fail to materialize. Maybe he never got around to taking Economics at Washington and Lee. Either that or we were supposed to be in for Stagflation II: The Revenge of the Oil Shocks.

Of course Pat’s prophetic track record isn’t exactly the most illustrious, even putting this aside: no nuclear attack in 2007 (one of the more frighteningly specific ones), no hurricaines ravishing the coast in 2006 (on the opposite end of the safe spectrum, but nevertheless still wrong). But when the Lord takes to mocking your predictions like this, it’s probably a good sign that God is not telling you this stuff, Pat.

Surely by now every American is aware of the collapsed credit market and the imploding American auto industry. So what are the automakers telling us to quell our fears?
(WARNING: The sample of commercials is non-representative and based on two nights of watching an hour of TV.)

Honda was subtly and soothingly reassuring, with a hypnotically calm voice:
“Rest assured that now, as always, you can still get low APR financing.*”
*for well qualified buyers

One desperate-sounding Ford dealer accosts viewers with the fact that it has learned nothing from the credit crisis:
“Helloo-oo! Looking for a lease? Finance with Ford and everyone’s approved!“

One Mitsubishi dealer set in with an entire economic treatise:
“Think you can’t get credit? Well I want you to know that’s just not true! Yes our sales are down but that’s due to low consumer confidence and not lack of credit! With demand low and supply high now is the time to buy your new Mitsubishi! We have good relations with over 50 lending institutions who are ready and willing to extend you credit!”
Translation: He does not forgive [lack of credit for you], he does not forget [his econ 101 class]. His group has over 9000 lending institutions… AND THEY’RE ALL RAPING CONSUMERS

That annoying Suzuki dealer is still putting out commercials. My gosh I hope he goes bankrupt. Really, who buys Suzukis anyway?

One Nissan dealer rehashed Honda’s message in peppier form:
“Think you can’t get approved? Think again! Come on down to…”

Toyota’s annual Toyotathon commercials seem to exude an air of “Crisis? What crisis? Oh really? I hadn’t noticed”. They’re probably going to be first in line for the dance on the laurels of the Big 3 anyway.

And finally, I have yet to see any commercials from GM or Chrysler, or any of their affiliated brands. Probably because they have no advertising budgets anymore.