It‘s 2026, and that means we can finally start our little endeavor, where we list the 12 albums that define us throughout the year. I‘m very excited and can’t wait to see and hear everyone’s contribution!
For those of you who haven’t read about the project yet or need a quick reminder:
Everyone who wants to can participate.
You can maximally list one album per month.
You can post your entry whenever you’re ready, if you want to join later or don‘t manage to write in time before the month ends, you can still post it later in the topic for that month. But not in any other topic related to the project.
What you make of the prompt is up to you. I will personally write little essays that are more autobiographical than about the music or individual songs specifically, but you could also just write a review of the album if that’s more you’re thing. Just make sure to answer the question of how and why that specific album defines you in some way.
I think it’s fine to also post EPs or compilations if they fit the prompt as a whole work that is more than just a collection of nice songs.
Feel free to list other albums that could have also been the pick for what you‘re writing about in that month. I find it interesting to think about this myself and would love to read it.
Other than that, I want to try it with as little rules as possible first. Let’s do our best to keep the discussion focused on discussing the actual music and what people wrote about them. Let’s not get into „should I get a Syntakt or Digitone“ or „why would you need slices“ discussion here if for some reason a post might invite that.
Around 2007, I was working at a small record store and we had an instore gig by a local doom metal legend Reverend Bizarre who were doing their farewell tour. The shop was tiny and it was exhilarating witnessing three hairy, sweaty guys play doom metal at full volume with bare upper bodies in broad daylight
That moment planted a seed in my brain. I wanted to play doom metal too, but I didn’t play guitar or bass. I only had my synths. I asked a couple of my friends who also were synth hobbyists to join my band and explained my idea to them. We would play doom metal but with synthesizers and no sequencing or even arpeggiating was allowed. Everything would have to be played live, preferably with a bare upper body and lots of leather and studs involved. We would call it laser metal. Our band would be called Nightsatan.
Besides Reverend Bizarre, Black Sabbath, Sleep etc. We were inspired by an american synth duo called Zombi and John Carpenter’s (and Alan Howarth’s) Soundtrack work on his own movies - particularly Escape From New York. That movie is probably my top 3 favourite movie of all time and the soundtrack plays a huge part in it. We took the throbbing basslines from Carpenter and the ominous melodies of early heavy metal and combined them to create a brand new thing. Although at one point I realized Black Sabbath had kinda done doom metal played with synths already on Who Are You in 1973.
We learned some John Carpenter songs and sometimes played them live. Most notably we played the theme from Assault On Precinct 13 in Helsinki when we were there supporting the legendary Goblin. One of my favourite moments from the Nightsatan years can be heard on the Youtube video from that gig where someone from the audience thinks he recognizes the song and shouts ”ATTACK OF THE POLICESTATION!!!” on top of the intro to a completely different song. That’s comedy gold.
I love Escape From New York soundtrack album so much that at one point I had 7 different pressings of it with slightly different cover paintings and photos. I still have maybe 12-18 different John Carpenter soundtrack vinyls in my collection, but none of them are as dear as Escape From New York.
There wouldn’t be a certain laser metal band without that album and also I might not be as interested in synths if it weren’t for this particular album. It was a game changer for me and I’ll love it dearly for as long as I live.
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I decided to start off with this album just because I was afraid someone else might pick it too. The rest of my planned list is mostly more obscure stuff that I think won’t be as widely loved as Carpenter’s work.
I think a lot of people are defined musically by a short window - usually during their late teens - when taste is formed, aesthetic shaped, influences locked in - which is then carried throughout the rest of their life. A period of frantic openness, shifting, intense cramming in of stuff that isn’t ever possible again. During which records are bought, friends’ collections analysed, bands formed, split, formed again and split again.
When everything is music and music is everything. Before lives get filled with work, life, families, responsibility, the rest of it. The stuff that kills the space in which head tunes develop and gets in the way of making the music that could be made if only there were the space and time (and the people with space and time to make it with).
Sure some people manage to keep that window going. Through luck, through a choice of career that enables or encourages it. But for most of us, we have that one window. And as part of this little exercise, I’m going to mine it heavily for my choice of albums that defined me.
And I’m going to start with the sound of punk rock. Well not quite punk rock. But what felt like punk rock to me. Actually a load of the albums I’m going to pick over the year felt like punk rock, in the sense that at the time I encountered them, they lifted the bar in terms of what I thought music could be and whether or not it was something I could do too.
For me it happened first with a band called Green on Red and their 1985 album Gas Food Lodging. I’m not sure they are much remembered now. They had a brief moment of glory, got signed to a major label, did two astonishing tours, bickered, split up, got into heroin, kind of petered out. Some of them still make decent music - check out Chuck Prophet’s live shows or Chris Cacavas’ solo work or tortured vocalist Dan Stuart’s occasional solo efforts. But at the time, in their brief prime, and in a fairer world they should have been huge, the biggest band on the planet.
Why did they fail? Perhaps because they arrived a decade or more before the resurgence of Americana. Perhaps 2-3 years too late to capture what became REM’s audience. They were pure rock and roll, but perhaps not enough for a world preparing for grunge. Mainly they fucked up their moment and never recaptured their one great year. But for better or worse, it was in 1985 that they shone, and they shone on me.
I’d had an acoustic guitar for a while. I tried to sing. I was terrible at it. Punk was long gone, so the idea you could make decent music _without_actually_being technically_very good_at_it or having lots of gear was pretty radical to 16 year old me, sitting in my bedroom in the north of England without effects pedal or amp.
Even the John Peel show, listened to religiously every night, seemed to showcase bands who could play fast, or had big amps, or really clever ideas. But all I could do was strum in a kind of desultory way. This music thing felt unattainable, pretty much beyond me.
Then, in mid 1985 a new DJ turned up on Radio 1, some guy called Andy Kershaw, playing a show once a week that (initially, before it turned into a world music thing) showcased a slightly different type of music - Robyn Hitchcock, Jonathan Richmond, Loudon Wainwright III, and a lot of bands from what was apparently known as the Paisley Underground and/or the American Guitar Invasion. The likes of the Long Ryders, Rain Parade, Dream Syndicate (the last two of which, between them, eventually gave birth to Opal/Mazzy Star) and, for me, the best of all of them. A kind of knock off of Neil Young with cracked vocals, twisted sort of country guitar lines that melted your head, and just something about them - Green on Red.
And in 1985 they had just released their greatest (by some way) album Gas, Food, Lodging. One of those albums that - for me - changed my world.
Just a listen to it blew my head off. In terms of what it was possible to be and do. Songs with three chords you could strum. Mostly straightforward cowboy chords. With vocals that were both spot on, but also endlessly imperfect. That you could learn and play along to. That you could sing as you played (the strummy bits, not the rather fine guitar licks which were and remain beyond me). And who pulled that all together into an album that then (and relistening to it now) sounds pretty much peerless.
I was lucky enough to see them twice in 1985 as they toured the album, and at one of the shows no-one made a sound from start to finish of the set. We were all in shock at what we were experiencing - just pure rock and roll perfection. Before they - well Dan Stuart - fucked it all up with drugs and ego and all the sorts of things bands do.
But this isnt about their live shows. It’s about the album. Which is not much more than half an hour long. But for that half hour it’s (mostly) perfection.
Starting with That’s What Dreams, an organ heavy, guitar lick heavy exercise in home and depression, with some spectacular broken vocal harmonies, and an epic vibe. And you could play it with open D, open G, open C and then D again. That was about it. And fill the gaps in your head. This was attainable music to a music desperate teen.
Track 2 is Black River. Another exercise in proto-alt-americana using their favoured DCG chords. Less epic. More of a world weary song of years spent on the road (slightly disingenuously for what was at the time quite a young band). But they delivered on the vibe and pushed the album forward to.
Track 3 - Hair of the Dog - a hard drinking song, more riffs than chords. Not one to play along to as an incompetent teen. But short, hard and heavy enough to nevertheless keep you going to
Track 4 - This I Know. A pretty bang on take on the Neil Young/Crazy Horse sound using C, G, Am and F. When to be honest normal Neil Young was usually way too complex and way too unfashionable to play (this was six years before NY burst back into relevance with Arc/Weld). Not my favourite on the album but still astonishingly good stuff.
The last track on side 1 is Fading Away. In some ways a song that feels like an outtake from their previous album Gravity Talks, in that its less country, more psychedelic/paisley sounding. But again with its basic D, G, Em, D structure, for a kid with a guitar and not much else you could be them. And they were fucking great.
Side 2 is where the action is, though. With a run of 4 songs - Easy Way Out, Sixteen Ways, The Drifter (the best serial killer song ever?), and Sea of Cortez that dived into the heart of Neil Young, stole his soul and presented it back to him way better than he ever managed. Any of these songs could have been on the best of Neil Young’s albums and not felt out of place. And most of them you could play along to…
It ends (for reasons that are incomprehensible given what else is on the album) with a terrible cover of We Shall Overcome (in preference to the much better non-title track which ended up on a follow-up 10inch EP). But you can forgive the band that. Given quite what they delivered beforehand.
And it left me at 16 years old with a belief that I could also do that rock and roll thing. Which I spent the next 6-7 years doing. Not successfully, or anywhere near as competently as the source of that inspiration and motivation. But anyway. A bit of an unstructured ramble. This is where it all started for me. This is the album that opened my window.
An obscure bit of now mostly forgotten proto-Americana. But it did the job for me.
I’ve kinda missed the whole Green On Red boat even though judging by your description it’s right up my alley. I love R.E.M. and many other american bands from that period. I’ll have to take a listen to this album when I’m at work again next week. This for me is basically the whole point of this thread to find new music and read interesting stories on them. Thanks!
Thanks for taking the time, and for introducing me to an album I had somehow overlooked in my early teens. I’m looking forward to listening to this while re-reading your notes.
This is an outstanding start to any post ever. Entertaining, unexpected, ever more ridiculous and brilliant the more you dive into the detail. To the extent it demands being reread several times. Bravo. Please post some Nightsatan for us at some point. Tops on or not.
I take a perverse pleasure in making something this dorky my first pick. I won’t win any scene points for a rock compilation from a fad that you only see remnants of in your local thrift shop. The first CD I bought with my own money would be a cooler pick.
But if I’m being honest, this is my real origin story. Guitar Hero is where I started developing a taste in music that wasn’t just handed to me by the radio. It got me into metal (because obviously final boss music is the best music). It got my friends opening wishlisting songs, which expanded my music library. And it’s the reason I picked up real instruments.
And the soundtrack itself is great! Nearly all covers done by WaveGroup Sound, it’s wider in scope than your average rock station, from Sabbath to the Donnas, White Zombie to Bad Religion, Bowie and Boston to Helmet and the Edgar Winter Group. And developer Harmonix dedicated a whole bonus section to their local bands, which impressed on a young Sleepside the importance of supporting your local scene.
Thank you, Guitar Hero. You were the cool older sibling/muso friend I never had
This album - or more precisely, this band - was a cultural moment. It’s probably the most mainstream of my entries and that’s the main reason it‘s on the list.
I only really discovered it in 2005, when its double follow up Mesmerize/Hypnotize was released. This was the peak of the Iraq war and the shitshow that was the Bush years, and System of a Down were probably the loudest voice among many that made sure teenagers and young adults knew what the fuck was going on in the US and the world. They didn’t even have to be on „Rock Against Bush“ to get the attention, because they already were the biggest metal band of the world at that point. At least that’s what it felt like to me.
Of course, their politics wasn’t really what we were mainly interested in at the time. We were teenagers who just wanted to get drunk and then freak out to loud music, in parents‘ gardens and garages. And SOAD were the consensus soundtrack that always drew the biggest crowds. Our friend group at the time was still quite diverse in terms of tastes, at least when it came to rock music (which was the dominant genre for young men at the time where I grew up). There were those who loved Guns‘n Roses and Metallica, and those like myself who mainly listened to Hardcore, Punk and Metalcore. The odd Indie kid and the odd Death/Black Metal kid. But we could all agree on SOAD, and so Mesmerize became the soundtrack of our summer, and Hypnotize the soundtrack of our winter. Even when we couldn’t choose our own music, you could always count on the „DJ“ to play Chop Suey at some point and crowds (of mostly men) coming together and singing „trust in my self righteous suicide / when angels deserve to die“. Even at the most uncool and conservative parties - of which there were plenty, because we grew up in the deep countryside of southern Germany.
It’s not that hard to explain why this was possible: SOAD became popular during the nu metal wave and then survived it because their melodies are just unbelievably strong, their songwriting so good, and their appearance so fascinating. Yet thinking back on it now, it still seems like a miracle that they were the consensus band that reached far into the mainstream. They were overtly political, their music was harder than what most people listened to, they were so goofy and weird, and they included fucking Armenian folk tradition into their metal songs. But that’s what made them so interesting to me and allowed me to give them a chance at a time when I refused to listen to any band that my classmates knew because that must have meant these bands were sellouts. I was starting to get interested in politics at just that time. I was listening to harder music but became a bit bored of it. I was goofy and weird. And my best friend A.‘s family came from Armenia.
What really cemented the status of SOAD for me and makes me choose Toxicity as the first of my twelve albums that define me is yet another reason that stems from this lengthy prologue. Because they were the consensus band, we covered more songs from Toxicity with my first band than we did of any other band. And frankly, they were a better fit than Lynyrd Skynyrd or Boysetsfire, who we also covered. This means that several Toxicity songs were among the first ones that helped me find my own voice as a singer: Needles, Toxicity, Psycho and Aerials. I even sang Aerials as a part of the prom night band (which played it save otherwise and only gave me a spot to shout on some other songs). And when we started to write our own songs for my band, they ended up being a weird blend of overtly political and serious and at the same time goofy and absurd. Naturally, all of this means I had to listen deeper to Toxicity and it became more than the soundtrack to get drunk to that Mesmerize started out as. It also aged much better and is timeless to me, despite it being so clearly an album that was only possible in 2001.
In hindsight, I find it almost impossible to choose any other album from the metal bands I used to listen to at the time that I still enjoyed when listening back to it for this list. I find most of them cringe, and I‘m turned off by the displays of masculinity of most bands that also took themselves way too serious.
There’s nothing about Toxicity that I find cringe, and as soon as „Prison Song“ started to play, I was reminded of what makes this album so special. We‘re bombarded with a wide ranging set of arguments trying to connect the prison system in the US to drug and crime policing and the role of the US as world police and sponsor of dictatorships across the globe. Yet it’s all delivered in an almost comical way, with five different vocal styles from three singers and growls and grunts that almost seem like a parody of nu metal. (Nightsatan were only founded two years after I discovered SOAD, so I didn’t know Laser Metal, probably would have gone with that instead and my life would be a different one). And 40 minutes later, the album ends with „Arto“, which must be the clear frontrunner for „boldest ending of an metal album ever“. If you need any proof that this band and this album was and is special, you only need to listen to these songs. But you‘d do yourself a disservice, because you‘d miss out on the all time melodic vocals of „Psycho“ and „Deer Dance“ set to folk inspired riffs, the percussion of „Forest“ or the stupid fun of „Bounce“. Which is why I pick Toxicity as the first of twelve albums that define me, representing my metal phase that was my first intense music phase, probably bookended by SOAD.
Quintessential track:
Prison Song
Entry could have also been:
System of a Down - Mesmerize/Hypnotize
Unearth - The Oncoming Storm
Killswitch Engage - Alive or Just Breathing
Mudvayne - L.D. 50
So refreshing to read this. I was a semi professional dj for around 20 years in my hometown and those social circles can be very restricting. I’ve always loved many kinds of music and also a lot of metal but for those 20 years I had to kinda hide it, to pretend to be something ”cooler” than I really am.
Quitting djing in 2017 felt like letting my stomach flab out after holding it tight and flexing my muscles for a very long time. Finally I could be who I really was and listen to ”awkward” or ”mainstream” stuff that was somewhat frowned upon in the dj world.
Also I’m a huge nu metal fan. Korn started it all for me and I still listen to them every once in a while. Every year I expect for it to turn out as Loco Summer and the return of nu metal, but it hasn’t happened yet.
It’s one of the things that fascinate me a lot when thinking about my youth: those few bands or artists that found a loophole to introduce styles and politics into circles that had strict boundaries that were supposed to ensure that this shit and these people don‘t get in here. SOAD are definitely a prime example of that for me.
A very very tough ask … and needs introspection! … myJan:
A Tribute to Jack Johnson - Miles Davis
[Edited back to 1 Album for Jan]
Rationale: sense of experimental journey, spread hard left to right, multiple genius at work back in the time tunnel, fumbles (but loose whilst beautifully tight), unpredictable, echoes, interaction, non-quantised, structure free, timeless, jazzy, inspirational, mojo & groove, accessible moment between Miles bebop to Miles avant garde … etc
‘that define me’ - (a) my aspiration and enjoyment listening to freeform/flow grooves (b) love the aesthetic of the mix/instrumentation, simple, panned, vintage/timeless, analog, all human
1971 but you can sense how it has fed across the spectrum all the way to 2026
Cool you’re in, but the idea was to not post the whole list at once but take your time and spread it throughout the year, with one entry a month. That means your list can cook a while and evolve and you can write a bit more about each entry. So maybe better to keep the full list for yourself and edit it in the background, while telling us about one fixed entry each month.
Actually I’m on a bit of a journey to find new music as part of my NY2026 as I’m a bit vintage … so will work on editing my post accordingly
Maybe edit your starting post to be more specific (for those like me who don’t read bullet points ) that it’s 1 album per month to allow us ruminate on laying down the gauntlet on the January feels, vs the February feels etc
I still have a promo disc of Toxicity somewhere with Needles, Deer Dance & Version 7.0 (when it wasn’t titled Toxicity yet apparently) and Suicide before it got neutered to Chop Suey.
Some great memories from that time and I will definitely have an album from that whole ‘nu metal’ era on my list as well.
Ramones - Ramones
This album hit me like a bomb going off when I was 14 and one shotted my entire personality for the next several years of high school. It’s actually not even an exaggeration to say I wasn’t into music at all before I heard this record. As a kid, I only really ever listened to joke music like weird al or Dr demento. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard this album, I was at summer camp and I had been bunked with several other boys who were into the pop-punk bands that were super popular at the time. The counselor had a CD collection with him and a little boom box, I remember him putting on this record after talking to the other kids, and from the opening guitar riff I was immediately hooked. When I got back to my parents house, I found out my dad had a collection of 70’s punk records, so I quickly found myself getting into The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks, Wire, and etc and over the next several years getting into 80’s American hardcore punk bands, eventually leading to me being in a hardcore band in high school. Hearing this record was really one of those odd moments in your life that sets you down a path, God knows where I would be today if I never got interested in punk and learned how to play guitar.
A lot of 70’s punk doesn’t hold up for me anymore, but the Ramones are always a good time to revisit. Simple songs with catchy melodies and guitar lines stripped to the bare minimum. What the Ramones showed is that you don’t have to be smart, talented, charismatic, attractive, or good people to make good music. The basic Ramones sound for the first few albums is just barre chords the entire time with the bass doubling the root note. It’s about as smart as hitting yourself in the nuts on purpose. Anyone can do this shit. They’re the band that spawned a thousand bands.
Bonus demonstration of complete lack of charisma or talent:
Didn’t read like this at all, loved the passion and the angle of how this encouraged you to make music!
Plus those opening paragraphs are a great mission statement that I really relate to. I was also struck by how many life changing albums I discovered within only a few years when I was young, that set me on the path.
) that it’s 1 album per month to allow us ruminate on laying down the gauntlet on the January feels, vs the February feels etc