Paul Stephenson's Blog, page 4

Sunrise is here

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It’s finally here! It’s finally here! Okay, you might not be quite as excited as I am, but today’s release day, when I finally get to release my word baby out into the world after years of raising it into… wait, this is a weird analogy, isn’t it? Sorry.

Let’s start again, shall we? Today is release day for Sunrise, my brand-new novel. It’s a sci-fi horror set nearly a century in our future (I know, pretty bold of me to assume we have one of those). You can pick up an ebook copy from your friendly local Amazon webstore at the special, one-week-only price of £/$2.99! That price will only be there for one week, so get it before it goes up!

But what’s it all about, you might ask? Fair enough, it’s a reasonable question…

Plague. Murder. Unrest. Humanity’s future looks far from bright.The year is 2107, and Earth is dying. For Wyn, Lois, and Judd, that’s the least of their problems.

Wyn is the pilot on the ISS Minos. It’s mission: a race to the ice moon of Europa to cure the disease destroying humanity’s crops. But she’ll have to overcome dark secrets from her past and darker secrets on the ice to find out which of the crew is trying to stop them. If she doesn’t, humanity is doomed.

Lois is an Interpol agent investigating the world’s biggest company. But when her handler is murdered in the street, the road to justice holds a mystery that could change Earth’s destiny.

Judd is hiding as far away from humanity as he can, working in a cheap tourist attraction on the Moon. But when an old man pries a long-forgotten secret out of his head, he can no longer hide from the truth he’d buried even from himself. Because Judd is a telepath, and a weapon badly wanted by both sides of an unseen war.

Each holds a key to Earth’s cure and humanity’s survival in this first book in The Sunset Chronicles, the new sci-fi horror thrill-ride from Paul Stephenson, author of the bestselling British horror saga, Blood on the Motorway.

You can pick up your copy at Amazon today, and if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited you can pick up your copy completely free as part of that. Not a Kindle reader and don’t fancy sticking the app on your phone? Not to worry, you’ll be able to pick up a copy in just a few months.

So don’t delay, pick up your copy today!

Amazon.com

Amazon UK

Amazon AU

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Sunrise: One week to go!

Last week I gave you an exclusive sneak peek of the cover of Sunrise, the first book in my new Sunset Chronicles series. Today I thought I’d give you a bit more information on what you can expect. Buckle up, because it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

Plague. Murder. Unrest. Humanity’s future looks far from bright.The year is 2107, and Earth is dying. For Wyn, Lois, and Judd, that’s the least of their problems.

Wyn is the pilot on the ISS Minos. It’s mission: a race to the ice moon of Europa to cure the disease destroying humanity’s crops. But she’ll have to overcome dark secrets from her past and darker secrets on the ice to find out which of the crew is trying to stop them. If she doesn’t, humanity is doomed.

Lois is an Interpol agent investigating the world’s biggest company. But when her handler is murdered in the street, the road to justice holds a mystery that could change Earth’s destiny.

Judd is hiding as far away from humanity as he can, working in a cheap tourist attraction on the Moon. But when an old man pries a long-forgotten secret out of his head, he can no longer hide from the truth he’d buried even from himself. Because Judd is a telepath, and a weapon badly wanted by both sides of an unseen war.

Each holds a key to Earth’s cure and humanity’s survival in this first book in The Sunset Chronicles, the new sci-fi horror thrill-ride from Paul Stephenson, author of the bestselling British horror saga, Blood on the Motorway.

Sounds pretty exciting, right? You’ll be able to pick up your copy in just one week! If you don’t want to forget, why not sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll also be sent three exclusive short stories to tide you over while you wait!

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Sunrise: Cover reveal, and some excellent free books

As I mentioned last week, soon you’ll be able to buy my new book, definitely in ebook form but maybe in print, too. These things tend to be slightly tricksy, what with having to get proof copies and all that. But, you may ask, how do you know if this book is something you’d actually like to purchase if you haven’t seen the cover yet?

Well, behold. Here, in all its glory, is the cover for Sunrise:

Isn’t it pretty? It was designed by a very handsome man with an excellent beard exclusively for Hollow Stone Press. By which I mean he designed the cover exclusively, not that he grew the beard exclusively. And by he, I mean me. My beard. My cover.

Now that your whistle is appropriately wettened, I’ll be back over the next few weeks with much more detail about what you can expect from the book, where you’ll be able to pick it up, and much more, but please do let me know what you think of the new cover in the meantime, here in the comments, by email, on Twitter, on Facebook, by carrier pigeon, whatever works for you.

You’ll be able to pick up your copy in just two weeks but to tide you over until then, my collection of short stories, Short Sharp Shocks, is part of an exclusive collection of free science fiction and horror books available completely free for the next week. Head here to check it out, there are some cracking releases on the list. If you pick up Short Sharp Shocks, you’ll also join the esteemed ranks of my reader’s group, getting weekly updates directly into your inbox. Hey, that also means you’ll be among the first in the world to know the moment that Sunrise comes on sale, so how’s that for a win-win?

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Sunrise is coming

Hello, and a very happy New Year to you. I hope you had a good festive period, in whatever form that took. My own was restful and restorative and involved the receipt of many spinning black discs used to fill the air with song, and pages bound in glue to convey stories in linear fashion. These are the best of things, and I’m mighty glad to have more of them. Now I’m back at the coalface with a renewed sense of optimism and excitement.

Why excitement? Well, I’m pleased to announce that my next book, Sunrise, will be out in just a few short weeks, via Hollow Stone Press. That’s right, the wait is finally over, or almost. Barring technical gremlins, you should be able to pick up the ebook at the very least on Wednesday 29th January.

Sunrise is the first book in my new series, The Sunset Chronicles. It’s a dystopian sci-fi horror epic spread across multiple narratives that take in a range of locations, from the ice moon of Europa to a post-flood Britain, from blight-afflicted middle America to rain-soaked Shanghai. There’s going to be nine books in all, an epic tale that takes in alien life, telepaths, and corporations powerful enough to play God.

It’s been fifteen months since I brought the Blood on the Motorway series to an end with A Final Storm, and at the time I genuinely thought Sunrise would be in your hands a few months later. It’s been a longer gestation period than I intended, but that’s all to the benefit of the book itself. I’m very proud of how it turned out, and as I get deeper into the series (I’m hard at work on book three as we speak) I can see it’s going to be quite the wild ride.

I’ll be back with a lot more details over the next few weeks, with a look at the new cover next Wednesday. And if you want to be extra sure that you’ll be able to pick up Sunrise as soon as it comes out, why not sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll also be sent three exclusive short stories to tide you over while you wait?

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

2020, the year that will

If you read my post from last decade (wow) you’ll know that I well and truly blew my goals for 2019, mostly due to the confluence of the year being a gigantic bastard and some other factors like me watching too much telly, apparently. But mainly the bastard thing.

So, when it comes to setting my goals for 2020, it makes sense to pretty much copy and paste the ones I missed into the new year. I fully intend to be right back up on the horse this year, and hopefully, all the groundwork and life stuff I’ve done this year can be a more solid foundation for success. Wow, that sounded properly corporate. Oh well. I guess this kind of exercise is pretty much that. If I keep talking about targets and aspirations maybe the Conservative Party will headhunt me for their Big Team Of Massive Wankers and I can spend the next five years asset-stripping what’s left of the UK economy.

*ahem* Where was I? Oh yes, goals. Drumroll, please.

Writing Goals

1.     Release three books: And yes, these will be the three books I was planning on releasing this year. The good news is that each is significantly further down the production line than when I said that last year. Sunrise should be available to preorder in the next few weeks and will come out a few weeks after that. At this stage I’m just planning the most effective launch possible. Actually, it might even be four books, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

2.     Write one more: This year I’m only scheduled to write one completely new first draft, mainly as a result of the fact I’m going to take the first three months of the year off from writing. Not from the business, per se, but from actually writing. Which leads nicely into the next goal.

3.     Build, build, build: Last year this was about building my audience, but this year I’m looking at it slightly differently. This year is all about building my brand. Hollow Stone Press is at this point very much an idea, but I have plans way beyond just my own writing for it, so I’m going to take some time this year to lay down the foundations for that.

4.     Find my tribe: This one is unchanged. I want to form an anarcho-syndicate of amazing indie authors ready to take on the world, change publishing from within, and make all the money in the world in the process. But honestly, I’ll settle for finding a few like-minded writers within easy driving distance of my house. I’m going to go on a few writing away days, attend London Book Fair and the SPF Conference, and I’m possibly going to change up my NaNoWriMo region, too. And it goes without saying that if you’re a writer in the Gloucestershire region or close by and you fancy meeting up to discuss writing and publishing over a pint, you can drop me a line in any number of different places.

Life goals

1.     Get healthy: Okay, this time I’m super serious, guys, galls, and gulls. I’m not going to be talking about it much on here, but I’m hoping to lose quite a bit of weight by making a fairly seismic change in my lifestyle, starting on January 2nd. It’s not just about weight, either. I want to get myself properly healthy.

2.     Buy a house: I’m somewhat cheating here, given that we’re halfway down this road already, but that said, it’s still something that’s going to be a seismic change for us next year, and will mean I get a writing desk once more, which I’m really very excited about.

3.     Love our new home: The truth is that I’ve really not clicked with Gloucestershire as of yet, and perhaps that’s unsurprising given everything that’s happened with work, with the struggles of meeting people when you’re not able to head out to the pub at the drop of a hat, and when everything around you is uncertainty and stress. But we’re here to stay, which means I’m going to have to get used to the place, learn to love it, even. And that shouldn’t be hard – my new home town is a lovely place, the 20th happiest place to live in the UK, according to a recent survey. But forming a connection with a place is a lot more than enjoying the scenery.

And there we have it, seven goals for the first year in a new decade. Hopefully with better results than the last year of the last one.

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Top 50 albums of the decade – Part Five

Part One

Part two

Part Three

Part Four

Here we are at the end of my countdown of the 50 greatest albums of the last decade, spread out as they are over five days in the lead up to Christmas like I’m some kind of a demented cross between an advent calendar and Pitchfork. In case you are wondering, this really has served as an epic way to procrastinate instead of writing the book I’m supposed to be writing right now, so thank you for joining me as I completely avoid doing what I am supposed to be doing. So, without further ado, here are my favourite ten albums of the decade. After that, you’ll find a lovely playlist of one song from each album, because making Spotify playlists is also an excellent way not to write the end of a vampire novel. Enjoy, and a very merry winter festival to you.

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10. Every Time I Die – From Parts Unknown: I never thought ETiD’s good time party hardcore would be anything more than an entertaining-if-empty experience, but I was wrong, as I am about a great many things, I imagine. This takes their established blueprint and focuses it to laser precision, an anthemic masterpiece with a snarling undertone. And in getting Brian Fallon from The Gaslight Anthem to guest on Old Light they hit upon something properly magical.

9. Bossk – Audio Noir: I once had the pleasure of seeing Bossk playing in a tiny pub to me and about seven other people. As good as they were, with their sprawling post-metal opuses, I had no idea that they’d disappear for years and come back with this, an album that transcends both the post-rock and post-metal labels to become something almost totemic in its majesty.

8. Black Mountain – IV: This may be firmly rooted in stone rock, but on this album, Black Mountain became the twenty-first century Fleetwood Mac. Huge melodies are all over this album, and on the excellent Cemetery Breeding, they might have the most goth lyrics to a pop song ever.

7. Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind: Easily the band I listened to most this decade, this album is everything I want in extreme music; brutal, dark, angry, but with light and shade painted over it. Also, it has the saddest song ever about losing your dog.

6. Rolo Tomassi – Time Will Die and Love Will Bury It: An album almost singly emblematic of British metal’s resurgence in the last ten years. Rolo were a band solidly chugging along in the shadow of their infinitely more successful American bands in their field, until this hit. Melding together a kaleidoscope of different genres and ideas, this frankly sounds like nothing on earth, an album that veers between moments so beautiful they catch in your throat to pummelling aggression that hits like a hammer to the spleen. One fifth of this list comes from modern British metal, something I doubt could be said for the decade before, and as someone who stood and watched the likes of earthtone9 play to as many people as they had on stage, it warms my heart to see the place British metal is in right now.

5. Baroness – Purple: Just an absolutely barnstorming rock album, so good it hasn’t even been diminished by the turgid awfulness of its immediate successor. Let’s just draw a line in the sand and say this was the culmination of a brilliant run of albums, and pretend this year’s Gold and Grey didn’t happen, eh?

4. All Them Witches – Dying Surfer Meets His Maker: Absolutely my band of the decade, their mix of stone rock with psychedelia, alt country, and big blues riffs has become be go-to music to chill out to, and this album is an almost crystalline example of what they do so well.

3. Cult of Luna – Vertikal: Another slab of post-metal perfection, welding huge riffs and aching melodies onto an industrial soundscape that owes as much to the movie Metropolis as it does to any of metal’s great totems. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a bigger sounding album.

2. Barren Womb – Nique Everything: An apocalyptic concept album made by two drunk Norwegians with a wicked sense of humour and an even wickeder ear for a dirty, dirty riff. This is utter grimy rock filth, and I love it.

1. Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas – Mariner: When humanity is long gone and giant insects are picking through the detritus of our cultural achievements, they’ll come across this album and decide it’s the pinnacle of the whole damn enterprise. A perfect album in every way and I feel extraordinarily lucky to have seen it performed in full in a room with a sticky floor and a thousand or so people nodding their heads along in sage agreement at its majesty.

So there you have it. My top 50 albums of the last ten years. Not necessarily the greatest, but the ones that have brought me through love and heartbreak, good times and bad. The albums that soundtracked the creation of all the books I’ve written so far, and the ones I’ll be writing for many years to come. I look back through this list and keep coming back to the same thought – that music is magic, a gift from somewhere we don’t quite deserve somehow. It’s highly unlikely that any of the people who’ve made these glorious noises will end up reading this, but just on the off chance, thank you.

If you’ve enjoyed reading through this, may I just point out that you might enjoy one of my splendid books, such as the apocalyptic horror trilogy Blood on the Motorway, or the musical misadventure chronicled in Welcome to Discovery Park. Check out more details in the links below, or by clicking on the books tab in the navbar.

Here’s to another decade of magic.

Oh, and hey, I made a playlist with all the albums on, please feel free to have a listen and discover anything you’ve not had a chance to listen to yet

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Top 50 albums of the decade – Part Four

Part One

Part two

Part Three

Hey’ it’s nearly Christmas. And what says the birth of baby Yoda better than listening to a bloke the wrong side of forty waxing lyrical about a half-forgotten Sweet Cobra album like it is itself the second coming?

Let’s crack on, shall we?

DISCLAIMER: These choices are presented as exactly that. I am not claiming this to be the definitive list of the 50 best albums of the decade. Although, you know, they are. If you disagree, please let me know below the line, on one of those social media channels, or go howl into the wind. Thanks.

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20. KEN mode – Success: With a low end that could shatter time, howling feral rage focused on the tyrannies of work and futilities of modernity, KEN mode apparently lost a lot of fans (and picked up some decidedly lukewarm reviews) with this departure from their frenetic hardcore roots. Frankly, all those people are idiots because this is an absolute beast of an album, like a cat scratch down the arm.

19. Blis – No One Loves You: So nineties it’s amazing it doesn’t come with a time machine. A heartrending tale of broken relationships and familial strife scored by grungy emo so tonally perfect that looking at a calendar while listening to it will create cognitive dissonance.

18. Causa Sui – Return To Sky: Far more focused than their sprawling Summer Sessions albums, this continued the more restrained, groove-laden majesty of Euporie Tide. Sun-drenched Danish drugs rock that plays with jazz and psychedelia but never forgets to bring the riffs.

17. Haken – Affinity: Not really much of a prog fan, and the whole djent scene left me colder than the British public’s disdain for the NHS, but for some reason this hit me right in the sweet spot. Marrying technical trickery that makes me laugh out loud with an almost 80’s pop sensibility (and the keys to go with it) this is an album that always takes me right to happy place, which is probably just what I need after being hit in the sweet spot.

16. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Option Paralysis: Sure, Dissociation was an incredible way to cap their two decades of absolute brilliance, but to me Option Paralysis is the absolute high point of the brilliant oddity that was the career of Dillinger. Every genre of music, all at the same time. It should never have worked, but it really, really did.

15. Royal Thunder – Wick: I adore Mlny Parsonz’s voice. It’s like someone took Janis Joplin and stuck her in a stone rock band, which as ideas go is definitely not the worst. Over the two albums and one EP leading up to this Royal Thunder showed a lot of potential, but it was on Wick that they realised it. Just a damn fine rock album.

14. Sweet Cobra – Earth: Morphing from a decent mid-tier sludge band with a grungy edge to a full-on alt-rock band after three albums is a bold move but it paid off hugely here (if maybe not in financial terms, this seemed to sink without a trace and the band haven’t been heard of since). An album that would absolutely stand up against any of the mid-90’s Seattle lot if it had come at the right time, it certainly has enough about it to stand up next to the likes of Torche and Helms Alee. I really hope they come back with another one, because I loved this.

13. Blacklisted – When People Grow, People Go: Sometimes you just need some pummelling hardcore in your life, and Blacklisted do that better than anyone else around, in my humble opinion. This is an absolute barnstormer from start to finish.

12. Norma Jean – Wrongdoers: Muscular melodic metalcore from a band so consistently brilliant I’m willing to overlook the Christian gubbins in their lyrics, which is not an easy ask who hates the Jesus as much as I do. Just kidding, I don’t hate him, I just want… do you know what, that’s not the point of this review. Sorry. Listen to Norma Jean.

11. The Black Queen – Fever Daydream: If you’d have told me Dillinger Escape Plan’s insanely dextrous vocalist Greg Puciato would form a side project of goth-tinged 80’s electro-pop with some of the NIN chaps, I honestly wouldn’t have batted a solitary eyelid. If you’d have also told me that I would have fallen head over heels in love with it, I’d have been somewhat more shocked. But fall in love I did, so much so that it had me re-evaluating my entire dismissal of 80’s pop. That was pretty shot lived, though, most of it is as guff as I remember.

Hey, look, we’re nearly there. Come back tomorrow as we finish this really weird advent calendar.

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Top 50 albums of the decade – Part Three

Part One

Part Two

Every day between now and Xmas I’m running down my top 50 albums of the decade, for nobody’s amusement but my own. However, please enjoy watching me pleasure myself.

No, wait! Not like that!

DISCLAIMER: These choices are presented as exactly that. I am not claiming this to be the definitive list of the 50 best albums of the decade. Although, you know, they are. If you disagree, please let me know below the line, on one of those social media channels, or go howl into the wind. Thanks.

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30. Fu Manchu – Clone of the Universe: At this point, Fu Manchu could have hung up their spurs and retired to some Californian Stone Rock Nursing Home. But no, they’re still releasing new albums, still kicking the arses of all the young pretenders, and somehow, having not changed their sound one iota in a quarter of a century, releasing albums every bit as good as when they began. Incredible.

29. Idles – Joy as an Act of Resistance: It’s quite typical to see a lot of snobbery in the British scene about the success of Idles, a band now able to command huge crowds and TV coverage at Glastonbury and on Jools Holland. When you look across the pond ant the embrace they get from the likes of Converge and ETiD, you see none of that, and I fall well into that camp. Ridiculously catchy modern punk with a social conscience. The lyrics may be more yeets than Yeats, but who gives a fuck? It’s punk. As fuck.

28. Black Peaks – All That Divides: It’s been a very long time since Britain produced a really good metal band capable of breaking out of the underground to the biggest stages of all, but in Black Peaks they might finally have just that. They’ve got the proggy excellence of Mastodon, the precision and clean lines of Muse, and melodies that would drink the Nu Metal crowd under the table and stand on it, belting out a hearty tune. Seems like singer Will Gardner has been having a few issues with illness recently, we can only hope he comes back strong, because Black Peaks could be the biggest thing to happen to British metal in over a decade.

27. Conjurer – Mire: Yet another incredible modern British metal masterpiece, Conjurer bring together the best of black, death, and post-metal, throwing bits of grind in there for good measure. If you haven’t yet, check out their Audiotree session to marvel at how ridiculously good they are and how ludicrously young they are at the same time.

26. Ufomammut – Oro: This isn’t just low-end rupturing Italian space doom, this is Ufomammut. Sounding quite unlike any other band in the history of anything, this three-piece make the most spaced-out psychedelic soundscapes and then smother them in the dirtiest, bassiest sound in existence. Every one of the four albums they’ve released this decade probably earns a place on this list, but this gets the nod because it’s actually two albums in one, and it makes the earth shudder if you play it loud enough.

25. Neurosis – Honor Found in Decay: Neurosis may be a band whose greatness seems to diminish with every passing album like a bear taking constant arrow fire as it takes down an encampment, but, like the bear, they’ve still got a mean southpaw on them. This is the pick of their output from this decade, where their briefly rekindle their powers enough to land them on this list.

24. 65daysofstatic – We Were Exploding Anyway: I hated this on first listen, too poppy, too dancy, too far away from the 65dos I’d loved over their earlier albums. But in the intervening years, this has really grown on me, and in the excellent Robert Smith-guesting Come To Me it holds one of my absolute favourite songs of all time.

23. Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell: Limiting myself to one album per artist (except for collaborations) was really tough in this case, not just because I love this and The Age of Adz both so much, but because they sound like almost completely different artists, and choosing between them is almost too much. A kind of futile device, if you will. I ended up going for the stripped-down, minimalist heartbreak of Carrie and Lowell, because I think this list would be incomplete without the fragile beauty contained within.

22. Giles Corey – Giles Corey: This might just be the saddest album ever recorded, an exploration of death, suicide, and depression howled through a cloth hood over a minimalist dirge. It’s also utterly compelling, as with all of Dan Barrett’s work. A difficult but essential listen.

21. Black Wing – …is doomed: Which puts it very much at odds with Barrett’s Black Wing project, which goes so far as to almost sound upbeat at times. Well, that might be a stretch, but it’s certainly not the tough listen of Giles Corey or even Have A Nice Life. Leaning more on electronics than anything else, this is the sound of Barrett cutting loose and having something that vaguely approaches a bit of fun, and the end result is a bleakly understated pop gem.

Back tomorrow, when we’re into the top 20!

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Top 50 albums of the decade – Part Two

Do you know what’s a really good way of procrastinating? Turns out, making a list of your top 50 albums of the last decade. Yesterday we had 50-41, so let’s crack on, shall we?

DISCLAIMER: These choices are presented as exactly that. I am not claiming this to be the definitive list of the 50 best albums of the decade. Although, you know, they are. If you disagree, please let me know below the line, on one of those social media channels, or go howl into the wind. Thanks.

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40. Oathbreaker – Rheia: Even being a fan of their earlier work couldn’t prepare me for the first time I heard Rheia. All the ingredients were there, from the pummelling blackened post-metal hybrid sounds to Caro Tanghe’s strangled vocals. What I wasn’t expecting was the absolutely harrowing howl the album was, like an open wound, all exposed sinew and bone. Caro’s clean vocals are like a dagger to the heart, but when she opens up, by Christ it doesn’t sound like anything else. Possibly the vocal performance of the decade, up there with Julie Christmas’s work with Cult of Luna.

39. Touché Amoré – Stage Four: Post Hardcore can be a homogenous beast sometimes, with plenty of bands making great albums, most of which sound roughly in the same wheelhouse as each other. Not so Touché Amoré, who sound like nobody but themselves, their music closer to the raucous college indie scene than hardcore, possessed of a deft touch with melody and grandiose themes, all pulled together under Jeremy Bolm’s caustic, abrasive howl. This album deals with the death of Bolm’s mother but transcends the grief of that event to be an album of insightful brilliance.

38. Boss Keloid – Melted on the Inch: One of the reasons I believe British metal has stepped out of the shadow of its more confident American counterparts in recent years is that it stopped giving a damn about sounding like the Americans do. In the case of Boss Keloid, they’ve gone a step further and gone with not sounding like anything else of God’s green earth. I mean, it’s clearly a sludgy doom album, but it’s also prog as. But then it’s also almost operatic. It bludgeons, but then it makes you laugh out loud with its audacious tricksyness. It’s been out a year and a half now, and I still don’t know what to make of it, except that I bloody love it.

37. Allfather – And All Will Be Desolation: Allfather, on the other hand, sit at the other end of the spectrum. They do one thing, and they do it really bloody well. In the great tradition of Iron Monkey, Orange Goblin, and Raging Speedhorn, all they’re really interested in is beating you to death with the sheer weight of their riffs. It might be only one trick, but it’s the absolute Granddad of tricks, which is why this has become my all-time go-to album for when I just want someone to kick my face off with riffs.

36. Deftones – Gore: Easily the strongest album the Radiohead of Metal released in this decade, it’s yet another chapter in a career where every chapter turns out to be a different book in a different genre, possibly with a different author. Gore somehow manages to discard all my favourite elements of early Deftones albums but manages to remain every bit as brilliant as most of them.

35. Chelsea Wolfe – Hiss Spun: I once saw Chelsea Wolfe described as Lana Del Ray for metalheads and couldn’t agree more, but this is a cracking album of gloomy pop, bolstered by the random appearance of Aaron Turner’s ferocious bellow midway through the hushed whispered vocals for no apparent reason.

34. City of Ships – Ultraliminal: If you’re in the market for some great post-hardcore tinged with grunge vocals and a bit of a Deep Elm emo vibe, you’d do a lot worse than this excellent album, which seemingly appeared and disappeared from everyone’s radar a few years back. A real shame, because this is great.

33. Defeater – Letters Home: I’ve put Letters Home as the selection because it’s arguably the best in their run of excellent albums, but in reality, their entire output this decade – each a new chapter in the ongoing saga of a family torn apart in the wake of war – deserves special mention. Not many bands have the guts to attempt not just a concept album but a concept career, but the fact that Defeater not just attempt it but pull it off is nothing short of a miracle. But it’s not just the lyrical content that impresses, their blue-collar Springsteen-tinged melodic hardcore is absolutely sensational.

32. Elder – Lore: Doom meets prog. I know the two of them have met before, met well, and met elsewhere, but if you say ‘doom meets prog’ to me I will shout ‘Elder!’ back at you with such ferocity that you’ll regret doing so. I absolutely adore this album, it’s absolutely MASSIVE.

31. Dead Meadow – The Nothing They Need: They may have the sleepiest sound of any stoner band in existence, but they’re damn hard workers, with this their seventh album of the decade, and the best. Drawing extensively from the roots of stone rock like Blue Cheer and Mountain, as well as tinges of the druggy blissed-out sound of Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane, they’re one of the many reasons the stone rock scene continues to be in such good shape.

There you go, twenty down, thirty to go. Come back tomorrow for more hot list action.

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?

Top 50 albums of the decade – Part One

I do love a list. If you gave me a choice between making a million pounds through toiling away at a novel or a million pounds to sit around all day making playlists and best of lists, I’m sorry but chances are you’d never read another book from me ever again. Well, maybe. But it might take a while.

This High Fidelity-esque love of lists is deeply ingrained in me, so much so that when I launched a music website a decade ago with a few friends, the first thing we ever published was a multi-sourced bit of nonsense that somewhat inexplicably picked Andrew WK’s I Get Wet as the best album of the decade before (over my somewhat overlaboured objections).

It was while writing for that website that I began my idiotic quest to go through another list, Rolling Stone Magazine’s Top 500 albums of all time, offering bite-sized opinions on that bloated corpse of overrated nonsense. That journey became my first non-fiction book, Welcome to Discovery Park. As of this moment, it remains my only one, but every now and again I get the urge to do something equally idiotic again. Don’t worry, I haven’t. Not yet.

However, since we all find ourselves standing around at the end of another decade, scuffing our trainers on the floor and trying not to look directly into the eyes of our new and nightmarish government in case they try to shove some chlorinated chicken down our throats, I thought I might as well throw together something to listen to. I got to wondering what my favourite albums of the last decade would be, and before you could say ‘whoops we voted the fascists in’ I had a solid list of my top 50 albums of the last ten years. Let’s check it out!

DISCLAIMER: These choices are presented as exactly that. I am not claiming this to be the definitive list of the 50 best albums of the decade. Although, you know, they are. If you disagree, please let me know below the line, on one of those social media channels, or go howl into the wind. Thanks.

50-41

50. Can’t Swim – Fail You Again: Emo’s not dead, it just grew up. A wonderful pop album with bite and swagger, the constant hit after hit after hit just washes over you until you can’t help but submit.

49. Blood Command – Cult Drugs: A neon dayglo joy of an album. Blood Command may be Norwegian but there’s more than a touch of the J-pop about them. Misfit pop played at a million volts and the volume cranked up to eleven, this is proper dance-around-your-kitchen music, so I’d like to apologise to my neighbours for subjecting them to the sight of an overweight forty-year-old pogoing around the place.

48. Pijn and Conjurer – Curse These Metal Hands: Given that this was a bit of a pisstake, recorded half in jest by two bands who frankly have enough going on, it’s startling how well this piece of Baroness worship works, especially when you put against the dreadful effort that Baroness themselves put out this same year. Huge, anthemic, and as heavy as a herd of tanks.

47. DVNE – Asheran: Seemingly encompassing every end of the spectrum of doom and all the points in between, this is by turns crushingly heavy and gloriously epic, often within the same minute of each other. Completely epic, and endlessly enjoyable. Riffs absolutely everywhere.

46. Employed To Serve – The Warmth of a Dying Sun: Absolutely bruising modern post-hardcore that doesn’t so much ape its influences as chew them up and spit them out as something defiantly and pointedly new. For a sound so indebted to its American progenitors, it also manages to sound unwaveringly British. There are also more killer riffs in here than you’ll find in a killer riff factory.

45. Wear Your Wounds – WYW: When I first heard that Jacob Bannon, a man who’s never played an instrument on a single Converge album as far as I know and whose singing voice could most charitably be described as so bad it could be a review of the new Cats movie, I can’t say I held out much hope. But WYW is a wonderful, haunting piece, retaining some of the crunch of his main band but mostly packed with songs of aching sadness. Sure, he still can’t sing, but it works, somehow.

44. Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 2: Somehow, even though I got back into hip hop in a big way this decade, only two hip hop albums grace this list, and they couldn’t be more different. This is one extreme, a punchy, infantile, glorious pop rap album. It’s big, definitely not clever, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since I first heard it.

43. 40 Watt Sun – Wider than the Sky: Apparently a much heavier band in their earlier incarnations, this is – much like Wear Your Wounds – a beautiful album, its haunting melodies stretched out beyond reason. So much sadness, and sometimes sadness is exactly what you need.

42. clipping. – Splendor & Misery: This is an album that practically defies explanation, but let’s give it a go anyway. An Afrofuturist sci-fi opera that sounds nothing like that description, a sparse soundscape of barely musical noise that is also incredibly and throbbingly melodic. A work of satire presented entirely straight-faced. It’s impossible to pin down, there’s nothing else that sounds like it, and it’s utterly brilliant.

41 Emma Ruth Rundle – Some Heavy Ocean: If there’s a theme running through this list, apparently, it’s sadness. Back when I was a kid I used to make endless compilations of songs taped off the radio and off my cd and tape collection. I used to number them in order of creation and the sixth one I made I labelled as Mix 6. It had everything from Suede to Metallica to Nirvana to Portishead, but it was universally a place to stick anything that you’d want to stick on while feeling endlessly sad, preferably while staring out a rain-soaked window at an ashen grey sky. From then on, any time I would make a sad music mix I’d call it Mix 6, perhaps out of some nostalgia for that first tape and the feelings it provoked in me. If I was going to make one today, almost every song on this album would be in contention for a Mix 6 placement. The melodies are so gripping, so wistful, so achingly wonderful.

Back tomorrow with more!

Paul Stephenson is an author and blogger. His first series, the post-apocalyptic thriller trilogy Blood on the Motorway, is available now in ebook and print from Amazon, and free to read for Kindle Unlimited members. Get Short Sharp Shocks, a collection of three exclusive free short stories when you join the reader’s group. Subscribe to the blog to get a weekly roundup of all posts sent directly to your inbox. Also you can share using the buttons below, or why not buy Paul a coffee?