2004 in the Mix

1. Mastodon: "Blood and Thunder" (Relapse).
2. Neurosis: "Burn" (Neurot). - iTunes
3. Pig Destroyer: "Terrifyer" (Relapse).
4. Isis: "Backlit" (Ipecac).
5. Cave In: "Trepanning" (SxSW sampler).
6. Blood Brothers: "Love Rhymes with Hideous Car Wreck" (V2). - iTunes
7. Old Man Gloom: "Volcano" (Tortuga).
8. Loincloth: "Noise International" (Swami). - iTunes
9. Zombi: "Cassiopeia" (Relapse).

As a born-again metalhead, I advanced from infancy to toddlerhood this year. For better or worse, that signifies the end of innocuous exploration and the onset of rules and structure. I'm trying to keep my standards simple: no dreadlocks, no mall-goth or whiny metalcore, no acts affiliated with Ozzfest that aren't named Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, or Slayer. Well, the last condition is pretty sketchy, not to mention already bending, strictly on the strength of last year's much-improved second stage (Darkest Hour, Lamb of God, Unearth), but to hell with that freak show—the above list corresponds just fine with my meager, formative ideals. If I'm going to embrace aggressive music—and we can just get it right out of the way that, no, the Blood Brothers are not now nor have they ever been "metal"—I want it to be (a) artful and ambitious without being arrogant, and (b) kick-ass without being wanky.

All of these tracks are compositionally adven- turous, most are culled from clever concept albums, and—with the exception of the Blood Brothers and the unsettling Pittsburgh-based instrumental horror- prog duo Zombi—they all Fucking Slay. Many an eye rolled when Mastodon revealed that their second full-length would be based entirely on Moby Dick, but when the simple stutter-step riff of "Blood" is overwhelmed by Brann Dailor's signature alien drum flurries and the paranoid bark, "I think that someone is trying to kill me!" an instant stoner classic is born. Cave In wisely interpolate the Slayer-informed thrash of Until Your Heart Stops and the Rush-like swing of Jupiter on "Trepanning," an impressive hybrid comeback that flaunts a wild, mimicking solo bridge and finally justifies their long-standing hype. Guitarist Aaron Turner, the reigning king of glacial brainiac thud, is here twice: with Isis, whose Panopticon is a muscular, gorgeous study of surveillance, and with Old Man Gloom, whose more directly aggro Christmas obsesses about, well, primates. Of course, Turner and Co. owe much to art-metal forebears Neurosis, who returned in all their bizarre Waits-and-Cash-go-psycho glory on the very Neurosis-ly titled Eye of Every Storm.

Tying for first place in the Most Disturbing Lyrics department are grind superstars Pig Destroyer and the ever-deviant Blood Brothers, two outfits inspired by the grotesqueries of sex and love. The former generates an almost oppressive amount of noise via Scott Hull's tornado drone riffing; the latter evokes the twisted finale to Carrie with a subdued, quite literally autoerotic dirge. All the dirty talk necessitates ending this mix with two esoteric, imaginative instrumentals. Virginia's Loincloth have thus far only formally surfaced beside the Hot Snakes hipness of this year's Swami Records sampler, but their math-metal milkshake is so potent that only the cadaverous, Argento-inspired synth of Zombi could generate a sufficient comedown. Dreadlocks not included . . . this year.

GAVIN BORCHERT

1. Handel: "Calm thou my soul . . . Convey me to some peaceful shore," from Alexander Balus, Renee Fleming, soprano (Decca).
2. Wagner: "Mild und leise" (Isolde's Liebstod), from Tristan un Isolde, Deborah Voigt, soprano (Deutsche Grammophon). - iTunes
3. Elgar: Violin Concerto, 2nd movement, Hilary Hahn, violin (Deutsche Grammophon). - iTunes
4. Gavriil Popov: Symphony No. 1, finale, London Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, cond. (Telarc).
5. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5, finale, Kirov Orchestra, Valery Gergiev, cond. (Philips). - iTunes
6. Osvaldo Golijov: "Lua descolorida," Dawn Upshaw, soprano, with pianist Gilbert Kalish (Nonesuch). - iTunes
7. John Adams: On the Transmigration of Souls, New York Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, cond. (Nonesuch). - iTunes

Gathering a Best of 2004 list took 10 minutes; these CDs leapt off my shelf into my arms, demanding more attention. No soprano today, and very few ever, offer a sound quite as creamy and opulent as Renee Fleming's. This magically serene aria from an obscure oratorio is the most fascinating track on her recent all-Handel disc. Deborah Voigt has recently added the notoriously challenging role of Isolde to her repertory. The arrival of a new Isolde on the planet is always a milestone, and she hits it out of the park. Osvaldo Golijov leads a quiet academic life in Massachusetts, turning out one stunning work after another; as far as I and many other critics are concerned, he can do no wrong. "Lua descolorida" was the lyrical high point of his theatrically multiculti 1999 setting of the St. Mark Passion text; Dawn Upshaw sings it on a glorious disc alongside songs by Debussy, Fauré, and Messiaen.

Hilary Hahn's Elgar recording is a polished, luscious performance of a deeply heartfelt (and expansive: 50 minutes) work by a composer whose best music, I think, is in his concertos. Gavriil Popov was a slightly older contemporary of Shostakovich—he didn't have Dmitri's coping skills, but possibly had just as high a level of genius. The explosive, and often snarky, finale of his Symphony No. 1 (1934) could have been written last Tuesday—the sort of envelope-pushing music the Soviet regime didn't care to hear from a comrade, which Popov stopped writing when Stalin's minions began cracking down on "formalism." He never managed to find a way to satisfy his own sense of integrity, an audience hungry for honesty and substance, and the dictates of the cultural commissars—as Shostakovich did four years later in his Symphony No. 5. It gets a torn-from-the-gut performance by Valery Gergiev, who seems to be on track to record all 15 of Shostakovich's symphonies, two or three a year.