1. Torche, Meanderthal
Like an eagle dropping bombs, Torche brings soaring pop hooks to down-tuned heavy metal, heralding beautiful dichotomies that never tire and always, always rock. Finally, someone reinvented guitar rock for the new millennium.
2. Guilty Simpson, Ode to the Ghetto
With a gaggle of the underground’s best producers–Madlib, Black Milk and the late J Dilla–submitting their best work, Detroit MC Guilty Simpson’s head-snapping debut is gangster without being brutal or stupid, and clever without being ponderous.
3. David Karsten Daniels, Fear of Flying
This winning mix of ambient textures, guitar-based songwriting and moving lyrical explorations of mortality was an astounding surprise, and the songs are varied but unified, perfectly crafted.
4. Young Widows, Old Wounds
Old Wounds finds Lousiville’s Young Widows perfecting their lock-and-loaded brand of noise rock, this time using a minimal, measured aesthetic to reach maximum results.
5. The Saturday Knights, Mingle
The first album from the new kings of good-time party rap, Seattle’s Saturday Knights have taken the best parts of Outkast and Pharcyde, among others, and created something entirely catchy–and their own.
6. The Black Keys, Attack and Release
Super-producer Dangermouse was all over the place in 2008, and his touch on blues duo The Black Keys added a much-needed jolt of pop energy to the group’s rollicking sound.
7. Fucked Up, Chemistry of Common Life
Pushing air into the bloated zombie that is punk rock in ’08, Fucked Up goes progressive in a genre that (ironically enough) usually fights change, and the results are powerful.
8. Atmosphere, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
When Atmosphere MC Slug moved on from rapping about himself, and producer Ant moved on to live instrumentation, the outcome was quietly dynamic, the group’s best in years.
9. Helms Alee, Night Terror
Don’t call it grunge, but this Seattle band knows a thing or two about melding heaviosity with catchy songwriting in true Northwest tradition.
10. Made Out of Babies, Ruiner
Lead singer Julie Christmas alternates between a gutter roar and sweet falsetto, grounding this band’s propulsive blend of noise-heavy metal in a swamp of unrelenting terror.