Victoria's TOP!... albums.

Finally, for you, Vikki's top IN GENERAL "heavy" albums. Consisting of all albums worthy to he of being top! As always, it's personal preference not so much essential listening

ENJOY THIS OCD FUELLED LIST!

1		Electric Wizard Come My Fantatics... (1997) In as much as it touches misanthropy and apocalyptic themes, so it does uplift and inspire! The production is crisp and refreshing, every instrument's role is felt and every song carries one another into the other and sees the album flow beautifully. Not a single song leave you wanting more and niether do they have you wanting less. Haunting, massive, anthemic and inviting you into the void better than any other album could, this is my all time favourite record!
2		Boris Amplifier Worship (2003) Amplifier Worship is pure evil. After eerily drawing into the opening track the band puke tone and vomit a barage of phasing at you, doing just about everything else there after. Ganbou-ki is an aural acid ceromony that you can only barely embrace, Hama's opening baring over you until it throws itself into a psychedelic heavy metal tornado ebbing and flowing, grinding and droning until it sees its peak in kuruimizu and gently builds up to a chiming, dissonant bastardized post-rock. The album's experience sealed justly with the chugged riff ritual of Vomitself, textured with Atsuo's solemn calls, distant in the rumbling amplifier worship.
3		Sun City Girls Horse Cock Phepner (1987) Horse cock phepner is a truely original creation of the Sun City Girls, taking childish vulgarity and applying it to the bitter idiosyncracy of the occult, the 'girls have made an album that confuses, alienates and swears a hell of a lot. All three members see their roles, talents and creative pursuits fulfilled, all variety of genre, style, song and form are touched not just masterfully but with a pantomime sinister that the Sun City Girls do only too well. There's political themes a plenty but never so involved that it detracts from the music, only adds to the mood, adding a string of vague familiarity through an otherwise hostile and very surreal listen.
4		Jesu Jesu (2005) An album I'd struggle to recommend. The self-entitled enormity of jesu's first full length release is just so magnanimous in all possible aspects; tone, texture, melody all the while central to a strong theme of tender melancholy that slowly veers toward morbid chastisement in its final moments. Like free-associative hymns for a very head-strong 21st century, they welcome your vulnerability and engulf you in sound. With its brute-like yet ominous force, Jesu’s self-titled is a spiritual experience at the very least.
5		Harvey Milk Courtezy and Good Will Toward Men (1997) The greatest Melvins album the Melvins never made! It’s plodding, dopey, mopey fun with heart wrenching tales backed by gut wrenching wails from the get go but all along the way there’s musical ingenuity to put the most conscious of iconoclastic notorieties to deep shame. Imagine Winnie the Pooh’s Eeyore with an alcohol problem, further overweight and generally unwashed. I’m not making any analogies here I just wanted to put that mental image in your head. THAT’S THE KIND OF ALBUM THIS IS!!
6		James Plotkin's Phantomsmasher Phantomsmasher (2002) Phantomsmasher’s Phantomsmasher is the child porn star of Atomsmasher leaping free in a celestial zaniness. Screaming ever content serenity, ever thrashing - sometimes bouncing - with a rock and roll spirited finesse. The splatters of digital zips and squirms littler the fold in uniform chaos waiting for the steel-strong melodies and bass drills to claw the listener further into a state of Buddhist lunacy, tugging frustrated at every emotion, heart-string and bodily rhythm to keep you mindful of the furious aural ecstasy. GOOD ALBUM!
7		James Plotkin's Phantomsmasher AtomsAtomsmasher (2001) The Rules get fucked heavy in what was once Atomsmasher but is now Phantomsmasher’s exhilarating debut attempt at smashing atoms. There’s drumming drilled into a digitally altered frenzy, guitar chimes, riffs and grinds that play keys so jolly Disney’s getting nauseous, a vocalist with a break-neck, reverb heavy agenda and electronic samplings done in such poor taste that breakcore itself is pacing the corridors manically looking for the parties responsible. Yes, Atomsmasher is a hilariously musical abomination to music as all these aural atrocities form a texture so self-sufficient and unheard of that the skeptics can only sigh in immense frustration as the drug fuelled idiocy have their fun.
8		Sunn O))) White1 (2003) Breathing deep two major hallmarks of the occult; Sabbath tinged heavy metal chord works on the one end and apocalyptic spoken word invocations the other, the Sunn o))) collective bring about their most maturely formed, brilliantly engineered and musically satisfying record to date. Julian Cope provides a stunning exert of original prose over a soaring analogue-fuelled landscape carved by a single, ominous riff. Runhild Gammelsæter performing what almost seems like a spontaneous norse incantation before an almost primal ceremony of palm muted guitar play and intricately formed, intimately placed drum machine loops. The final movement sees Gammelsæter’s soothing sighs amidst a texture of crooning bass and awry guitar twangs. A true homage to the occult!
9		Exhaust Exhaust(1998) This Montreal collective have forged a truly original sound and style of their own. The twisted manipulations of tape and rhythm, drums and bass all address the listener as though these are the natural flourishing of any typical, sullen, lifeless recording studio, or perhaps the soundtrack of a late Soviet landscape, a hangover warped baleful with a lasting acid trip the night before. It’s dark as all hell and twice as enigmatic, it brushes over a variety of styles with the same dank gaze, never letting you detract from the fact that no matter how playful, infectious or solemn it become, the Exhaust machine is an entity purely of its own nature.
10		Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine Rampton (2002) The cornerstone of any lethargy soaked existence and a milestone in the doom metal genre. The production is SO perfect for this style of music, all four members; Greaves, Anderson, O’Malley and Dorrian clearly have an appreciation of the style that allows them to forge something a true fan of doom can appreciate. All applications of the term “mudbath” to any style of music have been made redundant by this insistently dirty release, even in it’s seldom moments of reticence the musicality and sound are all too suffocating. Perhaps the finest moment, between two 20 minute tone-caked processions of misanthropy is a cover of Killdozer’s New Pants and Shirt, which puts the catchy mud-pop classic to a welcome home in the eyes of the glazed eyed world-weary; slowing it right down, tuning guitars right down and laying on endless messy fuzz without ever leaving behind its true virtues as a song.