The teenage years are always strange ones. Brimming with all these new feelings, overcoming new difficulties, and making some of the most influential choices of their lives, it can easily be said that the highschool experience is always an exciting one. Although every person's expereince is different, one thing always seems to play a role in the teenage life, the wonder that is music. Now, it may not affect some as strongly as others but every kid has that one album that they just rocked out, listened to to help them get through a rough time, or in some extreme cases used as an escape that moved them in ways they never thought possible. Now with the oncoming challenge of University and adult life looming in the distance, I've been thinking alot about this apprenhensive feeling that I once had for the teenage years, and the albums that helped me make it through and enhance these, at one time, trying years.
System of a Down's "Toxicity", was the very first album I ever enjoyed from beginning to end. Up to this point, I was more of a casual music listener, liking the occasional catchy radio song and usually never being able to sit down and listen to music for more than 30 minutes. Toxicity was unlike anything I had heard before, it was consistent, fast, bouncy and alot of fun, yet it possesed another side; songs like Aerials and the title track were probably the first instance in which music ever came close to moving me.
Rammstien's "Rosenrot" was an album that I acquiered around the same time as Toxicity and I love it. Til Linderman's deep voice worked well in both heavy rocking tracks and sad ballads, and the fact that album was all in German and I still could fall in love with it is just a testimony to its quality.
In Flames' "Come Clarity" is teen angst. There is no way around it, the cover depeciting a defeated looking man bearing his heart out is essentialy what this album is, the writings of a, at the time, depressed man exposing his soul to the world. At the time of me listening to this I was going through one of the roughest patches of my life, and this is the album every kid has with the "this album understands me" feeling to it, and at the time it did. With very pained screams and teary vocals this was the soundtrack for the hardest time of my life. Along with this it served as a landmark as my first metal album.
Killswitch Enage's "Alive or Just Breathing" served as a sort of pick me up to the teen angst of "Come Clarity". The lyrics were positive, and as a depressed 14 year old nothing felt better rocking out to some guy screaming about overcoming adversary. As lame as it sounds, it was very motivational music.
Scar Symmetry's "Symmetric in Desigin" was a huge revolution for me, at the time I had never heard something that was this damn heavy, or this damn catchy. It was good, fun, rock out and forget about all your problems kind of music and I loved it from the bouncy opening riff on "Chaosweaver" to the last time the chrous of "The Eleventh Sphere" fades out.
Grade 10 - No album played an important part in my life as much as In Flames' "Whoracle". At the time this album just astounded me. It was heavy, yet beautiful. Uplifting yet depressing. It was an escape of sorts, putting on Whoracle was like leaving the real world and being transported to this otherworldy dimension of moving guitar riffs and very raw and passionate sounding vocals. I knew about this album since grade 9, and it stuck with me throughout my whole High School experience, if anything this is a testimony to the affect it had on me.
Dark Tranquillity's "Character" was not the revolution that the other albums on this list so far were, but it was an album that I was constantly listening to and never really grew tired of, so for that (along with the amazing experience of seeing them live in 2007...or 06...I can't quite remember) more than earn them a spot on the list.
Kamelot's "Ghost Opera" was an astounding album that really affected me due to its beauty. Roy Khan powerful voice, the graceful keys and the album as a whole was really something special at the time. "Ghost Opera" entered my stereo and took a good year to get out, I loved this album more than I can even say.
Agalloch's "Ashes Against the Grain" served as the haunting soundtrack for my late night walks. The experience of going for long two hour walks and getting lost in the atmosphere of their music is truely unprecedented.
Up to this point in my life, I would have never have fathomed as intense and strange of a record as Unexpect's "In A Flesh Aquarium". What originally came off as a strange and random mix of various, became after various listens one of the best written, creative , intense, and all around amazing albums I have ever heard, and remains as such to this day.
Grade 11- After getting into music on such strange new levels of immersion, Paradise Lost's "In Reqiuem" surprised me with the amount of attention I gave it. Really, there is nothing here more than some gloomy hard rocks song, but Nick Holmes voice is so great and the songs so expertly written, the album couldn't help but own my stereo in eleventh grade.
If any two albums rivaled "In Requiem" that year, it would have to be ether Arcturus' "The Sham Mirrors" or Disillusion's " Back to Times of Splendor". Both these album were amazing pieces of art that truely felt like an adventure ( Arcturus being more spacey and trippy, while Disillusion was more organic and beautiful). Both these albums were grand and powerful and addicted me like nothing else, and to this day very few albums provided the experience these two did. While The Mars Volta's "Amputechture" and "Bedlam in Goliath" albums were another pair of albums that owned my life that year. The strange and winding song structures paired with the high almost fallsetto vocals made for truely compelling listens.
Grade 12- Possibly even greater than my experiences with " Whoracle" was the slow discovery of the My Dying Bride discography. Ok, technically this is ten albums but the affect they had on me was so great it could easily clasified as one of the most important moments of my life ( as sad as that may be). I had known of them and had the occasional flirtation with them since ninth grade, but the loss of my first serious relationship, a depressing dead end job, an insanely low self esteem and me becoming increasingly more alienated from friends and family led to me needing something. My Dying Brid became that something. "The Dreadful Hours", "Like Gods of the Sun" and "Songs of Darkness, Words of Light" became my intial experiences with them, and it was unlike anything I had heard before. It was just so beautiful and so rewarding, it made me feel whole. After this, essentially all of grade 12 was spent listening, discovering and immersing myself in masterpieces like "Turn Loose the Swans", "The Angel and the Dark River" and after MUCH anticipation their 10th album "For Lies I Sire". As strange as it may sound, even with their dark, dreary and melodramatic sound it made me feel happy, and after discovering them a certain wholeness was found in my life, and because of this (along with a few other factors in my life) my last year of high school saw me the most confident I had ever been, making some amazing new friends, doing things I otherwise wouldn't do and for the majority of the year just enjoying life like I never had before.
Although My Dying Bride was essentially all that was on the senior palette, several other albums including both The Arcade Fire's beautiful indie rock clas sics "Funeral" and "Neon Bible", Swan's dark folk opus " White Light From the Mouth of Infinity", Mastodon's spacey "Crack the Skye", and Kyuss's trippy "Welcome to Sky Valley" all impacted me greatly that year.
Although I may of just recently finished high school, writing this blog really brought me back to past pains, joys and adventures (alot of them are through connetation, not necessarily through the music them), but it really shows the power of music can have during the most impressionable years of someones life. Call me a loser if you must for having such a passion for music without playing it, but music played a very interagal part in my development as a person, and will continue to do so with bands like Neurosis, Giant Squid and The Pixies paving the road for challenges ahead.