Artists

It always comes back to Black Sabbath. It really does. In the case of Japanese metal, Sabbath was more or less the spark that catalyzed the genre in the East. In 1970, the Tokyo-based Flower Travellin’ Band—whose gloomy heavy metal merged psychedelic and prog trends—released their first LP, Anywhere, which included a cover of the title track of Sabbath’s self-titled record from the same year. The following year, they released the weighty, howling Satori, a landmark record that sounded like equal parts Sabbath and The Stooges and solidified the genre’s sovereignty in Japan. Since Satori, many bands have fought to live up to its standard. Fortunately, to help sort through almost 50 years of heavy sounds from the Land of the Rising Sun, Loudwire has made their definitive list of The 10 Best Japanese Metal Bands.The list is a decent primer into the country’s history in metal; yet, surprisingly, it does not include Flower Travellin’ Band or other important, early groups like 44 Magnum or Bow Wow. The ‘80s glam-metal band Loudness is represented here, and so is late-’80s/’90s power-metal group X JAPAN, who pioneered “visual kei,” which is basically the Japanese stylistic equivalent of glam and punk rock, in terms of incorporating fashion into the aura of a band.The list does hit solid modern groups like Maximum the Hormone and Dir En Gray, but surprisingly, leaves out Church of Misery. Teenage metal sensations BABYMETAL are on here as well and, whatever your opinion of them may be, it cannot be contested that they’re one of the most popular Japanese bands on the planet. To me, they sound like what would happen if Katy Perry made a metal record, so I’m a little skeptical of their inclusion as one of the greatest Japanese metal bands. But they’re massively successful, so it’s fine.And, of course, doom/drone/extreme-metal masters Boris are here. Alongside BABYMETAL, they’re probably the other dominating force from Japan in the contemporary Western metal scene. Boris, whose 2005 album Pink is considered a contemporary metal landmark, is celebrating their 25th anniversary as a band in 2017 as they prepare to release Dear. Before you explore their latest, turn your back to the sun and delve into our rich history of Japanese metal, which uses Loudwire’s list as the foundation while expanding the scope with some supplementary selections of our own.* Unfortunately, the music of Abigail and Maximum the Hormone is not available on Spotify, but it can be found onYouTube. Abigail, who is self-described as “the most evil band in Japan,” is particularly worth investigating.

The arrival of a new Kendrick Lamar album on April 14 has us thinking about the Compton MCs place in L.A.s storied hip-hop history. To that end, The Dowsers Sam Chennault, Mosi Reeves, and David Turner convened to determine this list of the citys greatest-ever rappers—and compile a playlist of their hottest moments on the mic.5. Vince StaplesTwo decades after Snoop Dogg emerged from Long Beach, another sharp-tongued and witty rapper arrived to lead a new generation. Through a loose Odd Future affiliation, Vince Staples surfaced in 2014 with the harsh screech and wailings that powered his single “Blue Suede.” While hes charming and humorous off the mic, on record Vince holds nothing back, touching upon issues of gang violence, racial injustice, and the burden society places on blackness. That weight might be why, on 2014’s “Fire,” he casually admits, “I’m probably finna go to hell anyway.” — David Turner 4. Earl SweatshirtEarl Sweatshirt’s career has been defined by absence. His 2010 debut mixtape, Earl, matched themes of adolescent obsession, neurosis, and bravado with a preternatural sensitivity to language, resulting in a statement of dysfunction startling for its casual violence, Rubiks Cube rhyme schemes, and childish misogyny. Shortly thereafter, Earl’ parents forced him into exile, banishing him to boarding school in Somoa, and making Early a cause-du-jour for his crew, the zeitgeist-peddling pranksters Odd Future. For a while, the world’s best rapper was a 17-year-old sharing a bunk-bed in a tiny island state in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When Earl re-appeared, releasing 2013’s bleary Doris, he was heralded rap’s prodigal son, but while he lost the problematic rape fantasies, he sounded impossibly fragile. The title of his follow-up, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, underlined this reluctance, and many felt Earl would become hip-hop’s Henry Darger, a talented and idiosyncratic artist content to spin polysyllabic rhymes of post-adolescent ennui in anonymous L.A. basement studios. Hopefully, that won’t be how he’s remembered—he’s only 23, and his story is far from over. — Sam Chennault3. Ice CubeIce Cube was arguably the first great Los Angeles MC to win over New York’s notoriously finicky rap aesthetes. As the Jheri-curled knucklehead capable of both observing and (musically) partaking in the gangsta madness of his native Compton, and then connecting those images to a wider socio-political context, Ice Cube brought a lyrical deftness that still resonates to this day. Case in point: The popular rap blog 2dopeboyz.com recently conducted a poll of the best diss song of all time. The winner? Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline.” — Mosi Reeves2. Snoop DoggIn 1993, Snoop Dogg released his debut album, Doggystyle, which furthered the nihilistic mission statement he introduced the previous year on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. Though he was only 22 years old at the time—and was seemingly concerned only with how much weed he could smoke and how many parties he could throw—Snoop had a prematurely aged, raspy flow that perfectly complemented Dre’s ingenious reworking of 70s and 80s funk and soul. But in the 2000s, Snoops partnership with Pharrell—which yielded the rappers first No. 1 single, "Drop It Like Its Hot"—showed how his cool demeanor could also shine over minimalist Neptunes production. And when Snoop teamed up with Charlie Wilson on “Peaches N Cream” for his 2015 album, Bush, it was a reminder of how his love of funk has guided his entire career. — David Turner 1. Kendrick LamarKendrick Lamar represents the new perspective of L.A. hardcore rap: loyal to the streets, but not defined by them. As an MC, he’s a virtuoso who is capable of speeding up and slowing down a verse’s rhythm, changing the cadence mid-speech, and shifting tones. Lyrically, he writes about the whole of the black experience as it is lived physically and spiritually. His music is conceptually ambitious, almost to a fault—it sounds like a man whose brain is perpetually stuck in high gear. But it’s a burden that he seems happy to accept. — Mosi ReevesHonorable mentions: YGDJ QuikBusdriverAceyaloneKurupt

As cassette tapes and CDs proliferated in the ‘80 and ‘90s, music began to travel to uncharted territories—like small villages in South America. And thanks to the vast reach of MTV and, later the internet, that cultural cross-pollination has only accelerated. One of the more intriguing results of this process has been the rise of Latin American shoegaze: young South American musicians in thrall to U.K. bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride, but putting their own spin on the genre.Latin American Shoegaze can be milky and romantic (see: Robsongs’ “Essa Grande Falta de Você”), touching and spiritual (Sexores’ “Sasebo”), or brisk and spiky (Blancoscuro’s “Figaro”). The lyrics are often completely in Spanish or Portuguese, bringing a unique, authentic tone to the music (particularly in a genre known for obscuring the words). As this playlist shows, shoegaze has permeated the Latin American underground from Sao Paulo to Mexico City to Buenos Aires—have a listen to hear how they do it down south.

As was the case with most 60s-rock survivors, the 1980s were not kind to Paul McCartney. Despite ushering in the decade with a pair of blockbusterduets, by 1986s Press to Play, hed hit a commercial and critical nadir, and an artist who once set the pace for rock n roll innovation was stalled in the middle of road. But McCartney eventually wiggled his way out by reminding himself of a lesson that served him well during his Beatles years: He always does his most inspired work with a foil.For 1989s Flowers in the Dirt, he tapped the songwriting smarts of Elvis Costello. Alas, Costello proved not to be Maccas new Lennon—plans for a full-album collaboration were eventually whittled down to a handful of co-writes. (The trove of stripped-down, Elvis-assisted demos featured on Flowers 2017 reissue reveals the album that couldve been.) But the Costello experiment seemed to open McCartney up to more collaborations that would push him outside his usual comfort zone. The most surprising of these was The Fireman, a union with ex-Killing Joke bassist Youth that began in the early 90s as an anonymous ambient-techno project, but reemerged on 2008s Electric Arguments as a cinematically scaled pop group that imagined an alternate 80s where McCartney started taking notes from U2. But The Fireman wasnt even his most outré detour—that honor belongs to Liverpool Sound Collage, a beat-spliced, found-sound curio created with members of Super Furry Animals. And then theres "Cut Me Slack," a 2012 one-off with the surviving members of Nirvana that pushed McCartney toward his "Helter Skelter" heaviest.Alas, these diversions may have been too sporadic to bolster McCartneys long-standing campaign to reclaim the "cool Beatle" status that has long been conferred to John Lennon. After all, in between these side projects, McCartney continued to release solo records of varying quality that captured him in his familiar modes: the piano balladeer, the farmhouse folkie, the Little Richard-schooled rocker. But even his most forgettable albums from the past three decades—like 1993s Off the Ground—feature displays of his melodic mastery (in that case, the golden, slumberous serenade "Winedark Open Sea"). And occasionally, hes let his eccentric streak bleed into his proper albums, like on the epic Driving Rain blowout "Rinse the Raindrops," or the art-pop oddity "Mr. Bellamy" from Memory Almost Full.It says a lot about McCartneys enduring songcraft and capacity for curveballs that his most popular single ever—judging by the nine-digit Spotify streaming numbers, at least—came more than 50 years into his incomparable career. Sure, having both Rihanna and Kanye West sing on it will help boost the stats. And yet, that unlikely but carefree collaboration perfectly crystallizes the latter-day work of an artist whos still pulling from a bottomless well of pretty tunes, but is always four, five seconds from wilding.

How fitting that James Murphy released his last album in 2010, for LCD Soundsystem lives in a climate-controlled space where college students and post grads, downloading songs onto their new smartphones, got excited about voting for Barack Obama. To say the music is “dated” is redundant—all music sounds like the time in which it was recorded. Also wrong. If anything, the collar-loosening white boy boogie of “Dance Yrself Clean” and “Daft Punk is Playing in My House” predated the ways in which the Silicon Valley ethos of app-ready affluence established itself in the last three to five years: dancing to “I Feel It Coming” after a few pints of the local microbrew. LCD’s 2010 show at the Fillmore presented the act at its best, with Murphy and Nancy Whang trading instruments and losing themselves to the music. He started losing me with the singer-songwriter material that won him praise a decade ago: all that “In My Life” stuff. I included a couple moments anyway because I won’t renounce my past.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the term “LGBT rapper” did not exist. Of course there were lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender rappers out there but, the truth is, they simply were not accepted by the mainstream hip-hop community. As recently as 2012, it was considered somewhat taboo for Jay-Z to come out in support of gay marriage. Around the same time, Odd Future was catching flak for their overuse of a certain anti-gay slur that’s been around rap for decades. In 2017, Jay-Z’s mother came out as lesbian on 4:44 and Tyler, The Creator confirmed on Scum Fuck Flower Boy that he’s maybe, but maybe not, gay or bisexual, like fellow Odd Future members Frank Ocean and Syd.Those are still the most high-profile examples in hip-hop, and, despite Macklemore’s best intentions with “Same Love,” the genre has yet to accept a truly mainstream LGBT artist. But advances have still been made, and the fact that there are enough rappers to fill this playlist (as well as enough bad LGBT rappers that not all of them had to be included) shows how far the genre has come in a relatively short period of time.This playlist begins with the hits, in an attempt to prove that ILoveMakonnen and Young M.A. make songs we all like, regardless of their sexual preferences. Then we get into artists that have become icons of LGBT rap, like Le1f (pictured above), Cakes da Killa, and Big Freedia, as well as younger artists like Kevin Abstract and his Brockhampton group that consider being gay normal and probably wouldn’t even want to be on this list at all.The only non-LGBT artists here (aside from the aforementioned Jay-Z) are Chance the Rapper and Jeremih, who feature on Taylor Bennett’s song “Grown Up Fairy Tales.” They’re included because Taylor Bennett revealed earlier this year that he’s “a bisexual man,” and the fact that Chance—one of the world’s most popular, Christian rappers—is supporting his brother’s sexuality is yet another small but significant testament to the genre’s progress. (Even though Bennett’s other song on this list is called “Straight from the Bottom,” it’s also good.)There are a lot of openly LGBT rappers now, but things will be better when we don’t categorize them in that manner at all. In the meantime, enjoy these songs, all of which are great regardless of their creators’ sexual orientations.

Searching for progenitors, Americans might have stopped at Neneh Cherry’s “Manchild,” in which a lulling, dazed beat refuses to so much as shudder as strings rumble and crack. But it took hearing “Protection” at an Edinburgh pub in the summer of 1997 to start my walk backward. So did an excellent Finsbury Park performance a week later, during which they debuted new material. Tricky (Kid) was another story. By the late nineties Massive Attack were Gap music: “Inertia Creeps” and “Teardrop” accompanying the choosing of V-neck shirts. A delightful wrinkle, for 1998’s Mezzanine contained their thickest music. I missed the samples and Mushroom on 100th Window, Shara Nelson always. Hence, “Unfinished Sympathy” atop my list, first heard by yours truly on the Sliver soundtrack (Heaven 17’s “Penthouse and Pavement” too!).Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

Middlemarch. The Changing Light on Sandover. Get Up On It. When I’m seventy, I’ll be divining their mysteries. Even if D. Boon hadn’t died in a car accident in 1985, The Minutemen suggest plumbless depths. Marrying the terseness of Wire to an adoration of classic rock produced musical haiku whose undulating bass riffs and shouted hooks ultimately owed nothing to no one. I can’t even say I’m a devotee; I’m still figuring out how to listen to them, and it’s a thrill. To realize slop and precision is some kind of feat, hence their CCR and Steely Dan covers (adducing the precision side) and “Bob Dylan Wrote Political Songs” (adducing their sloppy-visionary side)The most amiable of double albums, Double Nickels on the Dime is also among the deepest. I’ve owned it for fifteen years yet I look at the track listing and couldn’t hum a bar of certain songs — and that’s fine. I look at the list below and have trouble recalling certain riffs too. Boon’s furtive tone is, of all people’s, like Dionne Warwick: he’s sharing a conversation which listeners may or may not be able to follow, babbling and crooning as required, wondering if you know the way to San Jose because he wrote the directions down on a scrap of cig pack paper he lost. George Hurley can be as spare as Robert Gotobed or insert a roll as unexpectedly as Keith Moon. Negotiating between Mike Watt’s stentorian bass runs and Boon’s chikka-chikka riffs defined the Minutemen’s tension — see “Mutiny in Jonestown.”I titled this post after a lyric in “The Price of Paradise”; awed by CCR’s “Don’t Look Now,” they wrote their own distillation of what they’d learned about American life under a frightening president, in their case Ronald Reagan, i.e. life is cheap and, to quote the song, you die without dreams. Hi! It’s 2017. 3-Way Tie (For Last), its host album, has a tune called “The Red and the Black,” named after Stendhal’s classic novel about political intrigue in post-Napoleonic France. Imagine if Boon had lived long enough to read about Iran-Contra.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

Released in August 1997, Be Here Now was Oasis very own Titanic—a too-big-to-fail colossus that ultimately turned Britpops leading light into a sinking ship (one that was no doubt weighed down by nine laborious minutes of "All Around the World"). Granted, eight million copies sold worldwide hardly constitutes a disaster, and the band would continue to fill arenas and headline festivals worldwide until their 2009 dissolution. But after the world-beating triumphalism of 1994s Definitely Maybe and 1995s Whats the Story Morning Glory?, the infamously coke-bloated Be Here Now marked the moment when Oasis ceased to be a dominant pop-cultural force, precipitating a decade-long slide through a series of increasingly formulaic, interchangeable albums. Seemingly bereft of any inspiration beyond Abbey Road, the band spent their last decade cloning their old warhorses into inbred offspring ("Stop Crying Your Heart Out" is essentially "Slide Away" given the "Wonderwall" treatment), and at a certain point, it seemed like they couldnt even be arsed to come up with fresh song titles (Ill see your "Roll With It" and raise you a "Roll It Over"). Unlike their one-time peers in Radiohead and Blur, there was never a concerted attempt at reinvention, never an embrace of outré influences that could steer them into a new creative phase. Oasis were arguably the first massive, generation-defining rock band to become an oldies act by their third record.But while songwriter Noel Gallagher effectively played all his chips on the bands first two albums (and their equally top-notch B-sides) like a Vegas gambler who thought his luck would never run out, the bands post-Morning Glory catalog still yielded a handful of keepers in between all the lugubrious power ballads, bloozy filler, and Beatles Rock Band karaoke tracks. And rarely were these songs the lead singles—for all its overwrought, helicopter-powered bombast, "DYou Know What I Mean?" coasts on a repetitious, undercooked chorus that wouldnt passed muster on their first two albums, while on perfunctory would-be anthems like "Go Let It Out," "The Hindu Times" and "Lyla," Oasis sound like theyre content to just hit the first 30 rows of Wembley rather than the bleachers. Instead, this playlist focusses on those rare tracks where Oasis still exuded the hunger and swagger of a band that anointed themselves rock n roll stars on the first song on their first record ("I Hope I Think I Know," "The Shock of the Lightning"); the simple acoustic sing-alongs that stripped away all the ego and excess ("Songbird," "She Is Love"); and the tentative toe-dips into experimental psychedelia ("The Turning," "To Be Where Theres Life") that they sadly didnt pursue any further.On one of Be Here Nows superior tracks, Liam Gallagher declares, "Its getting better, man!"—and, unfortunately, as their post-1997 discography proves, it really didnt. But even if Oasis last five albums didnt yield nearly as many classics as their first two, there are definitely, maybe enough quality choons here to inspire a spritzer supernova.

We weren’t prepared for the dissolution of Sonic Youth in 2011. An alternative-rock institution for three decades, the band’s last few records were of such high quality, fans were entitled to question whether they’d sold their souls to an ungodly demon to achieve the kind of perpetual, everlasting prime that was suggested by their band name. (The final record was, funny enough, called The Eternal.) No, nothing lasts forever, but with seemingly so much creative juice left in the tank, it’s no shock that each member has continued to thrive post-Youth.Lee Ranaldo’s songwriting contributions usually came out to just one or two tracks per album, so it always seemed likely that his creative dam would burst outside of the group. Tracks like “Xtina As I Knew Her” and “New Thing” are classic Ranaldo—melodic cuts with textural guitar licks and slightly sardonic vocals. The latter track closes his fine 2017 album Electric Trim, which sees the guitarist testing the borders of his sound, working with north African grooves and electro-tinted folk.Thurston Moore seems the most interested in continuity. With an emphasis on gentle melodies and lengthy, spacious guitar sections, tracks like “Speak to the Wild” and “Smoke of Dreams” sound like first cousins of latter-day Sonic Youth cuts. However, his collaboration with Yoko Ono and former bandmate Kim Gordon on the challenging avant-garde record YOKOKIMTHURSTON allowed Moore to indulge his experimental inclinations.Connecting the work of Ranaldo and Moore has been drummer Steve Shelley, who has continued to back his ex-Sonic Youth comrades, as well as Admiral Freebee and Sun Kil Moon, among others. Meanwhile, Jim O’Rourke, a member from 1999 to 2005, has built a fine solo catalogue (mostly unavailable on Spotify) without losing the producer/session-musician spirit that has seen him orbit the alt-rock scene for years. Recent team-ups has included work with Vova Zen.But among all of Sonic Youth’s alumni, Gordon has been the most free-ranging. She’s released just one track under her own name, but what a track! The bass-heavy, blood-thirsty “Murdered Out” is a thunderous rocker: “You get lost, murdered out of my heart,” she asserts with a fierce punch. Elsewhere, the Wild Style Lion team-up “Lovewasinme” runs as barbed as a subway train wrapped in razor wire, while the rumbling, tuneless “Last Mistress”—released with guitarist Bill Nace under the name Body/Head—offers a freaky bedrock for her breathy vocals, forever one of indie rock’s most cutting instruments.This playlist isn’t an attempt to piece together a kind of lost Sonic Youth album, as though pulling together tracks could forge a singular, cohesive record that never was. (Besides, latter-day bassist Mark Ibold, who has kept a low-profile of late, isn’t here at all). Instead, it acts as a sampler of the fine music the band’s former members continue to create—songs that honour their history without stifling the ambition that powered their peerless oeuvre.