About this Playlist
Apparently somewhere in the early 2010s my taste in heavy music stopped evolving. Even the more recent music on this list is from bands I discovered back then (with the exception of Love Like Fiction, who I only recently discovered but truly LOVE).
I’m perfectly fine with this.
This playlist has a sound the represents a strange epoch for me (how weird was 2010 looking back??), but one that, if nothing else, gave me some truly great music. My early 20s weren’t some of the best for me, but I can listen to the soundtrack to that time safe from the comfort of hindsight.
Some tracks on here are nearly as old as me. Some are from that janky period of time we call high school (in the UK at least). But they’re all a snapshot of a time in life I don’t miss, but can still feel certain nostalgia for. That’s a feeling I think we’ve probably all experienced.
Speaking of which, here’s what you cant expect to experience from this playlist: an odyssey into the fast and heavy, often more one than the other. I forget sometimes just how MASSIVE bands like Strapping Young Lad and Mastodon can go; how lightning fast the likes of The Story So Far and letlive. can be; how spine-shakingly powerful FEVER 333 and Enter Shikari are.
We cover a broad spectrum here. I could have easily added 6 or 7 songs from Cradle Of Filth’s Damnation And A Day; it remains one of my favourite albums of all time, and the production still sounds so clean and crisp despite being old enough to buy a beer (again, in the UK at least). Architects, BMTH and August Burns Red all remain on constant rotation, and it wasn’t easy picking which songs I wanted to represent them on this list (though Dear Diary is truly one of the best songs BMTH have unleashed on us in their entire career).
One thing all of these songs have in common is that they distract me. They’re bristling with an energy that is truly arresting, and they make whatever else you’re doing whilst listening to them feel so… flat. This isn’t a list I’d recommend when you need to focus and get stuff done: we have plenty of other lists for that.
This is a list for when you just want to feel alive.
Photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash
