Sound Obsession

Darkest Hour, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 7/14/17 Havok, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 7/14/17 Skepta, The Fillmore, Silver Spring, MD - 6/5/17 Iron Maiden, Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow, VA - 6/3/17 Iron Maiden, Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow, VA - 6/3/17 Pallbearer, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 6/1/17 Mastodon, The Fillmore, Silver Spring, MD - 5/2/17 Mastodon, The Fillmore, Silver Spring, MD - 5/2/17 Baroness, 9:30 Club, Washington DC - 4/12/17 Baroness, 9:30 Club, Washington DC - 4/12/17 Baroness, 9:30 Club, Washington DC - 4/12/17 Toxic Holocaust, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 3/19/17 Toxic Holocaust, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 3/19/17 Toxic Holocaust, Rock & Roll Hotel, Washington DC - 3/19/17 Sunn O))), 9:30 Club, Washington DC - 3/12/17

In recent years I've had trouble coming up with ten albums I really liked.  This year I had trouble paring down about thirty albums.  Suffice it to say, 2013 was a great year for music.  The following are my honorable mentions - ten albums that I really enjoyed, but didn't quite make my final "top ten."  Some came very close, but I had to make some tough decisions.  This is basically my runners-up list - not ranked, but ordered alphabetically.* Enjoy. . . . ASG: Blood Drive (6.5/10) 6. I hadn't heard of Wilmington, North Carolina, stoner/sludge rockers ASG until earlier this summer.  Turns out Blood Drive is their fifth album and it sounds like a lost gem from 1992.  All the hallmarks of that era are preserved and resurrected brilliantly here as if Creed and Nickleback never existed to piss all over them - the angst, the beauty, and the riffs.  Vocalist Jason Shi displays uncanny range, emulating both Perry Farrell's nasal rasp a...