Thirteen Metal Albums to Listen to in a Dark Room, on Mind Altering Drugs

More than any other genre of popular music, metal asks the big questions: Heaven and Hell, Doom and Repentance, Extraterrestrial Life, the Limits of Human Endurance, Power and the Lack of Power, Evil and its Exact Nature. This sort of thinking leads to the use of psychadelic drugs as surely as cocaine use leads to bankruptcy court.

This is my Father's Day list, because when my brother asked what I would rather be doing for father's day than anything else, I answered truthfully. I never really thought about it until I listened to I came to the morning DJs on my local classic rock station muse about how their ideal Father's Day. For them, such a day would be spent in a strip club, surrounded by women who had, in their childhood, been neglected by their own fathers. I don't actually need that experience, largely because those places have worked out the details of fleecing money from the customer to such perfection that there is no fun in them anymore. I am not complaining, I actually got something like this for a birthday present last year, while the wife watched the kid, and it was a blast, though we got to very little metal listening. Ideally, I would like to take this voyage alone, or with one companion who, preferably, with a woman in a kimono coming down every now and again to offer me a cold beer, a glass of water, some gummi bears.

The components of the list depend upon the drugs. Dear listener, let us assume that you have imbibed a teacup full of psylocibin tea and smoked a medium sized joint of some strain of cannabis with a fancy name, which is still lit in the ashtray. I have defined "metal" rather loosely, because our friends in the Stoner Rock camp do this thing so damned well. Hopefully, you have laid these out on top of the CD player, or have handy playlists on your computer, because you will not be able to look for them once that tea kicks in...

Thirteen.

Opeth. Orchid. Morbid and beautiful. Opeth's musical ambitions shine more brightly some evenings than others.

Twelve

The Melvins, Stoner Witch. Stoner rock, not metal, but fuzzed out Texas psychobilly genius.

Eleven.

Blue Oyster Cult, Fires of Unknown Origin. This is more proto-metal than metal, but it is over-the-top freaky and ambitious all the way through, BOC's best, in my opinion.

Ten.

Cradle of Filth, Thornography. This might be a great one to start with. About fifteen minutes into it, you will find yourself wondering if Dani Filth really is singing those lyrics. Crazy vocal vamping, unbelievably weird songs about English depravity, horror, and magic, and the truly mindblowing "Rise of the Pentagram"....

Nine.

Tiamat. Clouds/The Sleeping Beauty. Imagine that the biggest, most meatheaded pro wrestler in the WWE had a secret leaning toward existentialism, and started asking the really bigquestions. This is pretty much what you would get, as a musical narrative.

Eight.
All of Apocalyptica's albums belong on this list. This is my personal favorite.

Seven.

Neurosis, Enemy of the Sun. Skip to the next one on the list if you start getting freaked out. This is some heavy shit.

Six.

Orange Goblin, Frequencies from Planet Ten. Yes, this is more of a stoner rock album than a metal album, but it is a masterpiece.

Five.

Enslaved, Monumension. ALL of the Enslaved albums belong on this list, but it would be redundant to keep listing them. This is my pick. Yours might be Maudraum.

Four.

Emperor, In The Nightside Eclipse. Intricate and strange, full of nuances. It is, essentially, an opera.

Three.

Sleep, Jerusalem. Mandatory.

Two.

Bathory, Twilight of the Gods. About twenty five minutes into the first song, you might be wondering how something this strange ever got recorded. It really is that weird. The first song is some 27 odd minutes long and progresses from one strange phase to another.

One.

Monster Magnet, Powertrip. Mandatory, especially if you are going through any sort of transition in your life, or needed to do some serious thinking.

7/2/2010 Just an addendum. I actually GOT my Father's day present this year...last Wed, due to a death in the wife's family and their sudden and unplanned trip to South Dakota. This left me with two evenings completely lacking in parental responsibilities. On Wed, I actually DID spend much of the evening with two strippers (one of which is a very close friend of mine), who brought me to the Violet Hour and PAID MY TAB. As for the trip itself, here is the soundtrack.

Bathory..Twilight of the Gods (only the first track, I actually grew impatient with it and decided I knew it too well)

Darkthrone...Dark Thrones and Black Flags

The Voyager Interstellar Record, whole damned thing. With the classical music, I also grew impatient because the pieces, including a decent stretch of Beethoven's 5th symphony, I knew pretty well. The "world" music blew me away....especially the Blues and Latin music.

Cradle of Filth-Thornography. It was amazing...because of the state I was in, I was able to make out all the lyrics clearly, and laughed through most of it.

Mercyful Fate-In the Shadows. Amazing again, for some of the same reasons.