12: Letzte Instanz’s Schuldig (“Guilty”) was a mostly uninteresting alt-metal album. But the songs were extremely catchy and stood out well one from another. Usually Letzte’s albums will have a few dud tracks which just don’t stick in the brain, but not this time around. This is as good of a pop metal album as anyone has produced, as far as I’m concerned.

11: Amorphis’ Skyforger caught me by surprise. Like Schuldig, it’s main asset is that its riffs are extremely catchy. Most of its songs in fact are built upon one or two riffs which are repeated through the whole song, which serves to make the songs very distinct in the mind.

10: Isis’ Wavering Radiant, however, is very unlike the previous two: the songs aren’t exactly what one would call catchy. But they are heavily atmospheric, and very heavy. The songwriting has improved since the last two albums, and after seeing them in concert this year I can also say they put on a great show.

9: Rome’s Flowers From Exile is a big departure from the martial atmospheres of their previous work. I liked those better, but the new Rome (self-described as “folk noir”, which will apparently continue with the next album as well) is hardly bad. It’s not as memorable as Masse Mensch Material (last year’s #2 album), but it definitely contains some emotive gems.

8: Eluveitie’s Evocation 1 – The Arcane Dominion was a worthy attempt at an acoustic album. The drums and bass give it a denser texture than one would expect from an acoustic album – almost as if it were a rock album (a la early Garmarna). For the most part the songs stand well on their own, though occasionally it falls into the rut of metal bands trying to go acoustic – the feeling that “this was originally a metal song” – though not nearly so much as bands which release acoustic versions of songs which were originally metal (e.g., Subway to Sally’s Nackt, Letzte Instanz’s Das Weisse Lied).

7: Faun’s Buch Der Balladen (“Book of Ballads”) would be several places ahead if it had more songs like Sigurdlied (“Sigurd Song”) and Tanz Über die Brücke (“Dance Over the Bridge”), brilliantly atmospheric harp pieces with haunting double-female vocals. As it is the album meanders around with mediocre to good songs around these two. They’ve chosen not to go experimental as they were playing with on Totem (2007’s #10 album), which you are immediately made aware of on the cover labelled “Acoustic”. It’s very much a throwback to early Faun overall, but that’s hardly a bad thing.

6: Subway to Sally’s Kreuzfeuer (“Crossfire”) doesn’t seem to have the touch that was apparent in Herzblut to Bastard (2007’s #2 album), but is still a worthy listen. There are a lot of catchy songs on the album, but they don’t have the unique folk-y sound that Subway at various points put on their songs. Nevertheless, their talent is still apparent, and the album is a fine listen.

5: Sólstafir’s Köld is an interesting mix of almost-black-metal, almost-post-rock compositions, and an almost-Western flair. Top it off with sludgy clean vocals, and it’s certainly a hard album to pin down to a particular genre. The dynamics of it, extended sections of minimalistic melancholy juxtaposed with towering anthems, make for a fine album.

4: Unto Ashes’ The Blood of my Lady was a big surprise, and by far the best album Ashes has ever made. The help from Sonne Hagal’s vocalist served well to make a much richer album vocally. The somber beauty of Sonne Hagal’s albums has also carried over, especially in the two songs lifted from Jordansfrost (Who Has Seen the Wind and Vengeance; by no coincidence the best songs on the album). There is much less of the eeriness that characterized earlier Unto Ashes albums (though it has not completely disappeared; I Will Lead You Down is very much traditional Unto Ashes).

3: Caspian has become one of my favorite post-rock bands. With Tertia, they’ve continued with wonderful and enthralling compositions – heavier than one would expect from Explosions in the Sky, for example, but never quite approaching post-metal from any direction. Tertia is even more heavily atmospheric than even The Four Trees (2007’s #7 album), with extended sections of reverbed guitar noise, and more experimental, with more glockenspiel and drum kits. It’s a fine listen, and like The Four Trees, rarely gets boring – a rare feat for a purely instrumental post-rock band.

2: Altar of Plagues’ White Tomb is a lot like Sólstafir, except more so. It’s clearly post-black-metal, with harsh vocals and sprawling compositions (though without any hint of uplifting shoegaze atmosphere), and again the dynamics are what make the album. The production is extremely good, and the atmosphere is masterfully woven, evoking somewhat of a post-apocalyptic angst.

1: Newcomer Wardruna bursts onto the scene with Runaljod – Gap Var Ginnunga, a beautiful and haunting concept album about the runic alphabet. Reminiscent of Karl Sanders but without the kitsch, Runaljod is minimalistic, heavily atmospheric, and extremely dark, weaving its themes through understated fiddles, ancient horns, distant chants, and a variety of improvised percussions. It’s definitely an album to get enveloped in, and I eagerly await the rest of the trilogy.

Best EP: Wolves in the Throne Room’s Malevolent Grain was leaps and bounds better than their forgettable full-length Black Cascade which followed shortly after. The first song, A Looming Resonance, is not only by far the best songs Wolves has ever done, but possibly one of the best songs I know (and I don’t say that lightly). With a dark shoegaze atmosphere constructed with black metal stylings and the immaculate vocals of Jamie Myers of Hammers of Misfortune, the result is an extremely emotive and poignant song. The other track Hate Crystal was above par for Wolves too: though more typical for them, the chord progression at the end also turned out very emotive. It’s a shame Black Cascade didn’t follow in this vein.

Best Artwork: Amesoeurs’ Amesoeurs.

Best Split: Though I was tempted to give it to Panopticon and Wheels Within Wheels’ It’s Later Than You Think, I can’t withhold it from Alcest and Les Discrets’ split. Alcest’s Percées De Lumière was more reminiscent of Amesoeurs than Alcest, and yet managed to sound better than Amesoeurs (though still not quite as good as Alcest from Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde (2007’s #3 album)). However the real standout from the EP was Les Discrets’ L’ Échappée, a beautiful not-quite-black-metal-but-heavier-than-most-post-rock song with strong vocals, confident percussion, and very present guitars. I look forward very much to what Fursy will create with his upcoming album.

Best Compilation: The World Comes to an End at the End of a Journey, featuring six post-black-metal artists Ethereal Beauty, Shyy, Heretoir, Soliness, Dernier Martyr, and Dopamine. Heretoir and Shyy were definitely the highlights of the compilation, but there was nothing worse than listenable on the whole album. The maturation of this scene as these bands release albums and get big is going to be a fine development in the still nascent post-black-metal-scene.

Tooting my own horn: Epta Astera’s SALIGIA was released this year. You should give it a listen!

Though it was originally instituted for the protection of the distributors of media, copyright has come to be regarded in popular mindset as protection for the incentive of artists and innovators to create. The distribution industries know that the function of protecting the distributors as such has been made unnecessary by the advent of the internet, so they no longer try to justify copyright laws that way. They would have us believe instead that without copyright laws, actors, musicians, and writers could not make a decent living.

No doubt this is true for a few artists in the case of music, but copyright is hardly a windfall for artists in the current regime. Royalties from media sales account for a very miniscule portion of the average artists’ income.

So whose interests do copyrights serve? Certainly not those of the average artist signed to a major label, who in most cases does not even own the copyright to his work. Given recording and production costs, only the most successful artists will ever see any profit from media sales: the money for everyone else is in concerts and merchandise – naturally saleable items.

Why then do record labels exist, if artists usually can’t reap profit from their intellectual property that way? They are middlemen, lubricating a market in the absence of suitable technology. They collected and fronted the large amounts of capital necessary to make a recording, press it, distribute it, and market it. They negotiated for scarce shelf space in retail stores and for playtime on the radio. They were the artist’s voice to the world.

But that was a world without the infrastructure and technology we have now. Where before you had to invest large amounts of money before you could even think about producing music, the returns to investment diminish much more quickly now: anyone with a computer and a microphone can self-produce music of a reasonable quality. This simply was not possible in the world where record labels thrived. The barriers to entry in media production are practically nonexistent now that we can record, mix, and master all on an affordable computer. Not only that, but the advent of the internet allows artists to self-distribute on their own terms. With no limited shelf space for which to negotiate, nothing is required but a website (and even that is becoming unnecessary with services like myspace and last.fm).

As the amount of capital necessary to make good quality media declines, a multitude of smaller, more competitive record labels are able to spring up (and indeed have sprung up), allowing the artist to outsource things which he may not have expertise in, such as production or album art. At the same time, as internet broadcasting has obviated the need for vast investments in broadcast towers, a multitude of smaller, online radio stations have sprung up, negotiating directly with smaller artists and labels and filling niche markets which could never have been filled by airwave radio.As storefront distribution becomes more irrelevant, so does that advantage of a major label. In fact, the only irreplaceable service of the major record labels is sheer marketing muscle.

This is the business model of the labels: their business was built on investing in a few big acts simply because the cost was so prohibitive. So when costs came down, rather than downsizing and investing in vast numbers of new artists, they expanded their artist repertoire a bit, and shoveled the savings into marketing. Modern pop acts are, and have always been, nothing more than marketing dollars behind a pretty face.

Perhaps this was acceptable twenty years ago when it would have been infeasible for artists to self-publish. But there is no excuse for its continuance through the advent of the digital age. Yet it persists. The question must then be asked: why do major record labels still exist at their size? The answer is simple: copyrights.

Copyrights and intellectual property protections, as discussed earlier, are a windfall primarily for the record labels. This secures for them vast streams of capital, which are then funneled right back into marketing more pop culture monoliths. Indeed, the niche markets served by new radio stations are a threat to the dominance of the monoliths. The major record labels have been trying to stifle smaller radio stations by mandating exorbitant royalty payments for radio play, in order to secure the market for a cartel of monolithic radio stations, which would no doubt play only the monolithic acts.

Exactly the same problem exists in the movie and television industries. The major studios build their business on investing huge amounts of capital in monolithic blockbusters. As the barriers to entry continue to fall, the money is invested into marketing. This gives us, like in the music industry, a small number of actors with exorbitant salaries and near universal recognition.

This is not what culture should be: it is neither good nor natural. Where government fiat normally does no worse than to make the market inefficient or place financial burdens on one party or another, copyright laws have become a blight upon culture itself. By enforcing distributors’ claims on culture, we do not incentivize the creation of culture – we stifle it, and homogenize it. Consumers have fewer choices in a world where copyrights are owned by a company whose only irreplaceable service is raw marketing muscle.

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned… The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.
Wikipedia, Ponzi Scheme

This post is intended to expand on the philosophical ramifications of a sociocentric theology. Whether Christian or not, the only feature required for the applicability of this post is the belief in the happiness of others or of society as a whole as a final moral end.

This is an incredibly common view, both among believers and outside the Church. Among those to whom the question of the identity of God is unimportant, it’s only natural to see the sociocentric portions of all major world religions as more or less identical: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Even those without so much as a philosophical thought in their head mostly subscribe to some form or another of the theory that the goodness of a person is tied to how he treats other people. The vast majority of people who would consider themselves “good” (more than likely the vast majority of people in general) justify the claim with reference to their treatment of other people.

The happiness of other people is thus made out to be an end in itself (that is not to say that it may not be an end at all – for how theocentrism subsumes the goals of sociocentrism and autocentrism see The Ends of Faith). This works in practice – it has worked for the entirety of human history, and as far as we can see it will continue to work: but its working is not a necessary feature of the universe.

The movie Children of Men is set in a world in which it does not – it cannot work: humanity is suddenly infertile, and the human race is dying off. Part of the brilliance of the movie is its portrayal of the existential horror of the collapse of that moral system. A sociocentric morality can abide as long as there is a posterity to bequeath one’s life to: The perpetuation of the rewards that a sociocentric morality promises and pays requires a perpetual flow of people into the world in order to keep the scheme going. It does with our lives and labor what a ponzi scheme does with our money. The investor depends on future investors to pay his financial returns; the social moralizer depends on future posterity to be the beneficiaries of his life and thus pay his moral, spiritual, or karmic returns.

Chaos reigns in the world of Children of Men because their moral referent – other people and posterity – is suddenly revealed in all its mortality and transience. As long as human extinction is not on the visible horizon, we can pretend that posterity is immortal; that the value of our moral referent is absolute in some respect. We can pretend that we are valuable as long as there is an infinite posterity with some continuity to our own.

This is the delusion of sociocentric morality. It tries to rise above autocentric morality by attaching itself to something outside and above itself. But where autocentrism does not have to concern itself with the permanence of its referent (after all if the self was of primary import in life, the death of the self makes further questions of value irrelevant), sociocentrism burdens itself with the necessity of a permanent external referent, even though the permanence of its chosen referent is as illusory as the profits of a ponzi scheme.

Thus sociocentrism, though coming with a high-minded guise, is a necessarily unstable philosophy which must either fall to autocentrism, theocentrism, or if it is stubborn to hold out against either side, nihilism.

Star Trek often catches a lot of flack from the American Right for portraying a Socialist space utopia. Certainly there is a vast, far reaching central government, and the human race is indeed portrayed as enlightened beyond self-interest. But should Star Trek be totally thrown out for its political philosophy? I believe there’s more to redeem it than to condemn it.

Humanity is constantly portrayed as completely altruistic in the Star Trek universe – it has evolved to the point that selfishness is no longer necessary. Indeed, those interested in personal gain are often portrayed in a less than flattering light. As a sidenote, only replicator technology would allow the utopia of the Star Trek universe by eliminating scarcity of most things – the show is hardly based in economics, but the fundamental importance of the replicator to the Starfleet economy is usually neglected (I suspect the technology was put in for another purpose, coincidentally the necessary technology to sustain their economy). Nevertheless, there are still devious Capitalists – mostly harmless, but sometimes a deadly nuisance. Star Trek is obviously not friendly on the surface to Libertarian ideals.

But there is a more fundamental theme to Star Trek, one that is by all accounts completely commendable: a strong commitment to individualism. Though Starfleet is indeed a Socialist utopia, it is not always a perfect one. One of the most common themes of all the series is the captain’s deliberate defiance of a direct order, and saving the day by doing so. Successwise, captains have a vastly better track record than Starfleet, illustrating extremely well the knowledge problem of centralized government (though Starfleet never does seem to learn to back off the regulations. Often times one gets the impression that they’re just suggestions).

Star Trek is in fact rather schizophrenic in its attitude towards its utopia. It is generally good and enlightened, though often misinformed, having to be corrected by intrepid Enterprise captains. Occasionally though, the writers let Starfleet embody every problem of tyrannical government, making the captains not only occasional rulebreakers with exceptionally good judgement, but outright traitor-heroes. The story of Insurrection, for example, puts Starfleet stopping barely short of genocide, forcibly relocating an eternally youthful race to another planet where they would eventually die. The crew of the Enterprise has to renege, fight against Starfleet, and save the Ba’ku. And there is never a bit of moral ambiguity in their decision.

Where the original series and The Next Generation have these themes implicit in the actions of their captains, Voyager states them explicitly. How many times throughout the Seven of Nine rehabilitation subplot did Janeway lecture Seven on the virtues of individuality? She’s even been known to lecture the Borg Collective on the evils of collective consciousness. They’ve been called a race “as close to pure evil as any race we’ve ever encountered” – where the defining feature of that evil is their collective consciousness, their forcible homogeneity.

So Star Trek promotes a Socialist utopia with a strongly individualist culture? Star Trek has always had a moralizing component to it. Though their stereotype of Capitalists could be called unfair, their utopia could be excluded from the moral, thanks to the replicator. Heck, if we eliminated scarcity, why not have a Socialist utopia? It’s the best of both worlds: universal opulence without the servility that is for now inevitable in Socialist attempts to promote it. With the moral component of its political structure falling to the consequences of simple economics, the strong individualist themes of the show commend it far past its unfair stereotypes condemn it.

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!