1. Art By Numbers - Reticence: the Musical
2. Metric - Synthetica
Metric is a unique flower in the sea of clones and faux-pretension art rock can sometimes have. The band doesn't busy itself with conveying an image or being too 'experimental', but rather works around their sound. The result is a surprisingly fun, chill little romp in the form of their June album Synthetica. While not as striking and energetic as Fantasies, Synthetica is overall a far more approachable album - lyrically and musically. The fun thing for me about Metric is that often in harder music good lyrics are eschewed in favor of 'brutality', but Metric brings the intensity along with a healthy dose of lyrics I can take seriously, and great variety - 'Dreams so Real' is a slow, moody, electronic groove, but the followup song 'Lost Kitten' is upbeat and as adorable as the song title. Bottom line - Synthetica is a fun album, one of the Canadian group's better ones so far.3. Miss May I - At Heart
And thus begins our slog through the Warped summer mediocrity. Straight out of Rise records comes the first - Miss May I's At Heart. If chug and repetition is your thing, this is your album. If typical angsty vocals and monotonous screams are your thing, plug it in. It is still beyond me how this band has accrued such a large fan base with the release of At Heart. While their previous albums Monument and Apologies are for the Weak were still fairly forgettable, they had their moments. At Heart upped two things - breakdowns and terrible lyrics. When you name a song 'Ballad of a Broken Man', you have officially stopped trying. Perhaps most annoyingly, the band continues to call itself 'metal'. Sorry, kids, but headlining Warped and being on the cover of AP makes you about as metal as Breathe Carolina.4. Whitechapel - Whitechapel
Everyone loves to hate Whitechapel. Whether it's frontman Phil Bozeman's douchey comportment, the plethora of blast beats every song seems to need, or the fans' stereotypical lack of intelligence, the band seems to invite mockery. In any case, the band released a self-titled album this summer and, well, it's actually pretty damn good. Lyrically, the band has become a more believable form of angry (furious, in fact) as Bozeman opens the album with "We have been somatically defiled, exiled, and now the new era has come to an end"! Different from previous Whitechapel releases, there are hints of technicality and an actual lyrical message. Overall, Whitechapel preaches utter pessimism, but ultimately believes that apathy is the only real way to survive - the world sucks, suck it up. In the instrumental department, there are actual riffs now and then, and occasionally a rare solo or clean (guitar) break. Bozeman breaks up the screaming with occasional spoken parts. Perhaps most eerily of all, the album begins and ends with a forlorn piano portion. If that isn't a departure from previous style, I don't know what is.6. The Ghost Inside - Get What You Give
Scott Vogel may hate their guts (then again, he hates everyone's), but the Ghost Inside have become a major contender in the modern melodic hardcore scene. Get What You Give marks their fourth album, and is one of their strongest yet. This year, they brought a certain amount of much-needed variety to the incredibly pop-punk lineup at Warped - a sonic reminder of the genre's roots, and were the tour's heaviest band besides After the Burial. While at times, modern hardcore shines through in all its questionable repetitiveness (There's pretty much a breakdown every song), The Ghost Inside compensate with their tasteful use of clean vocals - often as backing - and melodic riffs that are tinted with hardcore simplicity but modified with an atypical emotion. 7. Linkin Park - Living Things
Linkin Park's evolution continued this year with Living Things - 2010's A Thousand Suns was an odyssey in electronic rock that took the tired nu-metal band in a completely different direction. Ultimately, it wasn't perfect, but was still a fun time. Living Things is their second try at perfecting their completely new sound, and, truth be told, it's quite the listen. The band's melodic sound persists, and while Living Things is definitely softer than ATS, it certainly supersedes the hackneyed Minutes to Midnight. Chester Bennington's vocals meld nicely with the synth, which is now at an all time high. Guitars play a minimal role at best - and while lyrically the band still has some ways to go, by sheer virtue of the fact that this is Linkin Park we're listening to, and that it's so different than anything before, that I can immediately forgive it. That being said, Mike Shinoda's rap remains to be completely out of place.8. Chelsea Grin - Evolve EP
8. Memphis May Fire - Challenger
Part deux of Warped mediocrity reporting in! Texas' Memphis May Fire rushed their second album in as many years in late June this year, this time featuring such great cameos as Kellin "scenegirl boner" Quinn and the infamous Danny Worsnop. Compared to 2011's The Hollow, which I'm going to go on record saying is a stellar album, Challenger isn't great. It's the quintessential Rise/Fearless record - preachy, hackneyed messages and terrible lyrics to convey it, breakdowns, and an overused synth. The part of Challenger that stuck out the most was, ironically enough, the instrumental track at the end 'Vessels', and even then, Sleepwalking and the Hollow will always be my choice if I want to play Memphis May Fire. That, and the title is goddamn stupid - implying your band is special because they had to work hard is like saying your family was unique because they suffered during the Great Depression. 9. Abandon All Ships - Infamous
Egotistical, untalented Toronto Guidos Abandon All Ships are pretty much the band to despise this year. They don't merit more than a sentence, but this record is a wretched pile of shit. I tried to be realistic and approach it back in July, but that was being too nice, and my hatred of this band has only grown. 10. Skip the Foreplay - Nightlife
While pretty much jumping on the crunkcore/dubstep experimentation bandwagon this year, Montreal's Skip the Foreplay released their debut album earlier this year to en masse praise. Nightlife is quite the record - out of many bands who played around with synths this year, Skip the Foreplay did it right - the dubstep wobbles and synth-y undertones pave the way for a metal attack that's quite unlike most other metalcore. There's a glaring lack of breakdowns, and the band tastefully incorporates dance elements in a way that stretches the genre and, while it is silly, makes for one hell of a listen. Jesus...there's still more left. This is where I'll leave off for this week. See you fuckers next time.
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