Don Xml's Grok This

The folks over at IMHOTEP have gathered together THE BEST OF 2006 ACCORDING TO 155 MUSICIANS.  The musicians are mostly metal and hard rock, but there are some real oddballs thrown in there too.  One thing you can gather from that list is that there isn't one or two clear winners this year.  Iron Maiden's A Matter Of Life And Death and Tool's 10,000 Days are listed a couple of times but other than those 2, not much in the way of repeat votes.

Here's a parital list of CDs released in 2006 that I bought.  I know this is the complete list, but it should be close.  There are a few CDs released in 2005 that I didn't get until 2006 but I will not list them here.

• Between the Buried and Me - The Anatomy Of
• Black Label Society - Shot To Hell
• Bowling For Soup - The Great Burrito Extortion Case
• Buckcherry - 15
• Butch Walker - The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Let's-Go-Out-Tonites
• Children Of Bodom - Chaos Ridden Years: Stockholm Knockout Live
• Def Leppard - Yeah!
• Edguy - Rocket Ride
• Eighteen Visions - Eighteen Visions
• Iron Maiden - A Matter Of Life and Death
• The Matches - Decomposer
• Pink Spiders - Teenage Graffiti
• Plain White T's - Every Second Counts
• Protest The Hero - Kezia
• Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime II
• Seemless - What We Have Become
• Sugarcult - Lights Out
• Warrant - Born Again

My favorite CD from this is Buckcherry's 15, wih Def Leppard's Yeah! coming in second.  The Buckcherry CD is for all the people waiting for Axl Rose to get off his backside and release Chinese Democracy, and 15 is probably better than what Axl will eventually release.  Anyone that enjoys the dirty hard blues styled rock (a la G-n-R or Aerosmith) should pick up Buckcherry's 15.  As for the Def Leppard CD, it is a cover CD, with their versions of their favorite British AOR from the 70's.  I don't think I have a CD from any of the bands that they covered, but I grew up listening to most of the same songs on the local New York City radio (mostly WNEW-FM), and I forget how much that stuff infulenced me. 

My favorite metal CD from that list has to be Children of Bodom's live CD, with Iron Maiden's new CD coming in second.  Eighteen Visions isn't really metal, more like a hair metal version of Metalcore, but I really like what they are trying to do.  The Def Leppard gang vocal stuff can be a little overwhelming, but it is a great sounding metal/hard rock CD.

The CDs I was most disappointed in was by far The Matches Decomposer, with Queensryche coming in second.  I had high hopes on The Matches, as the CD E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals is a great CD, but the follow up is nothing like E. Von Dahl, and not something that I can listen to.  Queensryche trying to relive the glory years and make something as great as the first Operation Mindcrime, well we all knew that couldn't happen, so why bother to try?