Top Whatever Number Songs of Whatever Year It's Almost Done Being

After a long blackout, Mouthful of Acid is back up and running.  I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, except the non-Americans, who might not even know that we celebrate the generosity of the native Americans that the pilgrims took advantage of shortly before slaughtering them for land and precious, precious gold.  It's a time of the year that is exemplary of all of the major American values, including eating, watching football, getting drunk, and (the next day, at least) shopping.  Mine was great, and as a red blooded American dynamo, I was the picture of what it is to be an American for the entire long weekend.  

Since I had Thursday and Friday off, I did nothing but eat, drink heavily, drive my mom's golf cart around, and regret doing all of those things after the blank periods where I would fall asleep on the couch and remain unconscious for nine hours or so.

And I also drove in a parade.  Or rather, through a parade.  What a weekend!

With the end of Thanksgiving, the end of the year is upon us; Christmas cheer is running high and I'm actively avoiding grocery stores and shopping outlets as much as I possibly can.  It's not the throngs of people attacking each other with pepper spray for a copy of Modern Warfare 3 (which they could have gotten if they just preordered it like a normal human being).  It's not the gaggles of squawking psychopaths out to make their family's Christmas as good as possible by purchasing them things because they don't ever do things for anybody else any other time of the year.  They aren't the problem.

No, it's the Christmas music.

There's nothing that I hate more than Christmas music; it's really a canon of music that only has about 15 real entries, and none of them are actually any good.  It's just the season that they're associated with.  The only thing that I can honestly say I enjoy as little as Christmas music is breaking my bones, which I've done plenty of in my time (ask my mom if you don't believe me), and thankfully I haven't broken as many bones as I've listened to Christmas songs.  So I've resolved to take a page from my uncle's book this year and avoid Christmas stuff until the last possible moment, take care of everything I need to do in a frenzied scramble, and show up to our family Christmas gathering smelling like marijuana to give my wife the gift that I just bought for her at the 7-11.

It seems to have worked for him so far, so I assume that it will be perfect for me.

The other thing that December brings us is the Blogmosphere's endless stream of Top [Number] [Musical Thing] of [Year] lists.  Not to be outdone, and especially since I've finally fully regained consciousness, I will be slowly releasing my Top Whatever Lists over the course of however long it takes for me to get bored of doing that.  So in that spirit, here are what I have decided to be the best fucking songs of whatever year this is.

1) All Pigs Must Die--"Sacrosanct"

This song has everything that you would ever need for anything, including D-beats, crunchy riffs, and Ben Koller.  This song dominated my playlists this year, and I would listen to it so much that the guy I work with who only listens to Atmosphere would tell me to expand my musical palette a little, for God's sake.

He's so high and mighty since he started listening to Weezer also sometimes.

 

2) Opeth--"Slither"

Opeth are the only band who could achieve what they did with Heritage; just think if In Flames did an all acoustic band, or if Cannibal Corpse suddenly decided that they were going to make an entire album that sounds like Frank Zappa.  That shit wouldn't work, but Opeth can do it.  And it doesn't just come out okay, either.  This isn't like when I cook dinner for my wife, and there's a bunch of disasters and a horrible mess, but the food is technically edible; it's more like if I made dinner and it turns out, whoops, I'm like Emeril, or that fat lady that everybody loves these days.  You know the one.  The crown jewel in Opeth's treasure trove of music is "Slither," a song which Mikael Akerfeldt himself declared to be "a ripoff of Rainbow."

3) Abysmal Dawn--"Perpetual Dormancy"

You know what I like?  Heavy metal.  You know what I really like?  CRUSHING DEATH METAL.  Abysmal Dawn wrote what was probably my favorite tech death record ever with this year's Leveling the Plane of Existance, and the first time I heard this bone-crushing riff, I FREAKED THE FUCK OUT.  This song has everything you need in a death metal song, including the sick Morbid Angel-style "pulverizing slow riff."  I'm not allowed to listen to this in the car anymore, because my wife doesn't like the intensity, and also because I got distracted by how awesome the song was and ran over my neighbor's dog.   Whoops.

4) Today is the Day--"The Devil's Blood"

I've never been in to Today is the Day until just lately; I've explored their back catalog and decided that, as I've said before, I'm not a noise guy.  But their new material is decidedly less noisy and more powerful, and this song gets my fists pumping every time.  I especially like to think of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin giving people the Stunner when I listen to this song, because I don't do research, but I do know that Steve Austin is the name of the main man in Today is the Day, and I therefore assume they're the same people.  Which makes me frightened of Today is the Day.

5) Trap Them--"Damage Prose"

I'm a Trap Them superfan, and this song is so crusty and awesome that I'm all giddy thinking about it right now.  I don't have much to say other than that, and that I'll bet the track everyone else lists from Darker Handcraft (if they do a song-related thing like me, that is) would be "The Facts," which rocks, but not as much as this.  Oh, and I <3 Chris Maggio.

6) Protest the Hero--"C'est La Vie"

I love busy, wanky guitars.  I love Rody Walker's weird singing voice.  I love Protest the Hero, and this song is a great example of a song that is as legitimately catchy as it is structurally labyrinthine.  And the breakdown at about 2:05 always gets my heart pumping, and not just because the song is full of hamfisted references to suicide.  When Protest the Hero fly, they soar high, and there's no "too close to the sun" for them.  Here's the official video for the song, which I've never watched before.  Enjoy.

 

7) Exhumed--"Distorted and Twisted to Form"

Exhumed are a symbol of everything I stand for, including crusty death metal, D-beat slams, and pictures of zombies eating guts.  This song is the reason that I'm glad they came back from their extended hiatus and made an album.  If you had asked me if it was a good idea, I would have told you "No, if they came back and made an album, it would probably suck."  Well, Exhumed, you made me eat those words, made me eat them like they were made of guts and I was a cool zombie doing cool zombie stuff.

8) Dream Theater--"Lost Not Forgotten"

Speaking of wanky prog, it's Dream Theater!  This song not only has the best guitar solo ever, but that wank at the beginning?  Perfect.  Fuck you, I love Dream Theater.  But you should probably ignore the lyrics.

9) Anaal Nathrakh--"Who Thinks of the Executioner"

Holy fucking balls, the intensity that Anaal Nathrakh bring to the table is almost too much.  It's like the aural equivalent of that show Breaking Bad, where you can't imagine such intensity being kept up for long, but then it FUCKING IS.  The only downside to Anaal Nathrakh is that there's no Bryan Cranston, and I love Bryan Cranston.

10) Rotten Sound--"Hollow"

If there's one thing I can't get enough of these days, it's grind.  Sweet, sweet grind, and I think Rotten Sound is my latest grind obsession.  They do the D-beat that gets my D-boner to stand at attention, then they punish you with slow, crushing riffing before bringing the crust back.  And I love the crust, except the kind that's on my underwear, because it's hard to clean off and it eats RIGHT THROUGH THE RUBBER GLOVES OH GOD NOOOOOOO!

So there's my list of my favorite songs of this year.  Since I'm almost certain that nobody reads this crap anymore, I'm afraid to ask, but I will anyway: Did I miss anything?  If you tell me in the comments, I'll be...surprised.