2005 in the Mix

Andrew Bonazelli

1. Every Time I Die, "Bored Stiff" (Ferret). iTunes
2. Pelican, "March Into the Sea" (Hydra Head).
3. Arsis, "A Diamond For Disease" (Willowtip).
4. Darkest Hour, "Convalescence" (Victory).
5. Torche, "Vampyro" (Robotic Empire). iTunes
6. Nile, "Lashed to the Slave Stick" (Relapse). iTunes
7. The Red Chord, "Antman" (Metal Blade). iTunes
8. A Life Once Lost, "Vulture" (Ferret).
9. Withered, "Like Locusts" (Lifeforce).
10. Aeon, "God Gives Head in Heaven (Acoustic)" (Unique Leader).

It was a good year for art-metal. Hipsters everywhere earnestly pretended they understood the esoteric sound collages, drones, and jazzercise on Southern Lord's, Hydra Head's, and Ipecac's rosters, a phenomenon nicely documented by Jon Caramanica in The New York Times. It was an even better year for good cop/bad cop metalcore, as Trivium, Killswitch Engage, and As I Lay Dying taught the dehydrated Ozzfest faithful how to sing (for their $5 bottled waters) again. But as, er, "pleasant" as those two developments were for the ever-expanding sphere of extreme music, it was a fan-fucking-tastic year for mad dog death metal. There's something to be said for all bad cop vocals, all the time—not to mention, you know, riffs. So, even though there are a few divergences here, let's get to sayin' it.

1. Hilarious Buffalonian smart-asses dropped the disappointingly repetitive and trite Gutter Phenomenon (the only prescription is no more cowbell, thanks), but "Bored Stiff" is a deliriously deviant beatdown, with Keith Buckley's slurred Casanova hey-ya ("Hey there, girls! I'm a cunt!") anchoring a backbreaking breakdown.

2. Not the truncated album version air strike, but the unabridged, lumbering EP epic (20:28), featuring a devastatingly morose, four-chord dirge outro that lasts forever in the best possible way.

3. Composed for a "metal ballet," for God's sake, but there's nothing flowery or laughable about this two-man Virginia juggernaut's staggering death metal sweep.

4. Notorious for sprinting just ahead of the pack of At the Gates clones, the D.C. quintet takes a welcome left turn, sitting on chiming arpeggios, a kindergarten-simple lead riff, and vicious double kicks to deliver their activist credo. "Stagnant time is a breeding ground for regrets and wrongdoings," indeed.

5. Everyone's trying (and miserably failing) to channel Ozzy these days, but for a more original and nonironic take on the vintage Sabbath stomp, these ex-Floor and ex-Cavity longhairs tilt a triumphant witches' brew of chug.

6. The "Since U Been Gone" of Egyptology-obsessed death metal.

7. From a concept album about lost souls loitering around frontman Guy Kozowyk's pharmacy night shift. It's all the rage to fuse the disparate elements of grind, death, and thrash, but it's rarely executed as memorably as on "Antman."

8. Shit moniker, but this is metalcore how it oughta be: rabid, unhinged, and just comprehensible enough that you feel the dread of being between the crosshairs. Heavily informed by Lamb of God, but far better.

9. Cut from the same ultraproficient marrow as Mastodon, but more interested in interweaving genres, a la Arsis and the Red Chord—in this case, doom, grind, and black metal. 2005's unsung revelation.

10. Bonus track: It wouldn't be a metal best-of without an appallingly offensive country/western version of a death metal nail-bomb that posits, "Heaven is for faggots." Yes, tongue is firmly in cheek on the homophobic front . . . if not the religious one.

Gavin Borchert

1. Georg Druschetzky, Concerto for six timpani, 1st movement, Alexander Peter, timpani/cond. (Naxos). iTunes
2. Mozart, Gigue, K. 574, Richard Goode, piano (Nonesuch). iTunes
3. Weber, Oberon, Overture, Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, John Eliot Gardiner, cond. (Philips). iTunes
4. Franz Berwald, Wettlauf (Foot-Race), Gavle Symphony Orch., Petri Sakari, cond. (Naxos). eMusic
5. Josef Rheinberger, Organ Concerto in F, 1st movement, Paul Skevington, organ (Naxos). iTunes
6-11. Bartok, Romanian Folk Dances 1-6, Uccello, led by Matt Haimovitz (Oxingale).
12-13. Strauss, "Daphne's Transformation" and "Moonlight Music" from Daphne, Renee Fleming, soprano (Decca). iTunes
14. Strauss, Oboe Concerto, 1st movement; Jonathan Small, oboe; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Gerard Schwarz, cond. (Avie).
15. Berio, Sinfonia, 3rd movement, Gothenburg Symphony, Peter Eötvös, cond. (Deutsche Grammophon). iTunes
16. Osvaldo Golijov, "Tancas serradas a muru" ("Walls are encircling the land"), from Ayre, Dawn Upshaw, soprano, with the Andalucian Dogs (Deutsche Grammophon). iTunes

Leave it to Naxos to unearth oddball repertory no other label would dare to. Like a disc of 18th-century timpani concertos by composers who treated a rank of kettledrums like a giant marimba and gave them actual melodies for a change. Or a Swedish composer whose dashing, headlong 1842 evocation of a steeplechase could have been written by John Adams last Tuesday. Or a pair of organ concertos by Liechtenstein's greatest composer, a musician with a startling knack for catchy tunes.

On his miraculously crystalline and subtle all-Mozart disc, pianists' pianist Richard Goode offers a 90-second Gigue that skitters and syncopates like Stravinsky. John Eliot Gardiner leads a thrilling, incisive period-instrument recording of Weber's problematic Oberon. With dazzlingly colorful music but a plot that's gawky and incoherent even by fairy-tale standards, CD is probably this opera's ideal home. Similarly, Daphne combines ravishing music with what-was-he-thinking? stage directions. Fleming keeps pouring out vocal ribbons of satiny gold even after Apollo turns her into a tree.

Another Strauss expert, the Seattle Symphony's Schwarz, released a wonderful double disc (with his other, trans-Atlantic orchestra) containing two immense tone poems and two slender, Mozartean concertos. You can hear his graceful, transparent way with the Oboe Concerto live when he conducts it with the SSO, March 23–26. Uccello is a cello ensemble Matt Haimovitz is bringing to the Tractor Tavern on Jan. 21; their hallucinatory version of Bartok's astringent Dances incorporates sound effects you've never heard from cellos before.