which alt-rock/metal albums have crossed over in 2010?

Doesn't necessarily have to be crossed over to the charts, just outwith the scene/genre they came from.

Like the High On Fire crossed over to pitchfork readers , Torche as well.

Basically which metal or alt-rock albums are liked by those who wouldn't normally listen to that kind of thing?

yakuza

nachtmystium

the sword

krallice (was that last year?)

priestess

dillinger escape plan

emperor

the body

opeth live album

neurosis live album

torche

alcest

high on fire

boris + ian astbury

liturgy?

harvey milk

swans? barely counts, shit is heavy tho

sufjan stevens OBVIOUSLY

boris/torche split (was that last yr?)

deftones

skullflower (more noise i guess)

marnie stern (indie/metal?)

pale sketcher?

pelican (last yr i think)

sleigh bells (looool riffs)

lil wayne's rock album

weezer - hurley

actually like 85% of those are serious

melvins' new one

anyone who wants to make joke suggestions, just remember it will make you as bad as him ^

isis/melvins split

markers, isn't there a new Tapes N Tapes album coming out soon?

http://i53.tinypic.com/23kxeky.jpg

Nachtmystium is a good one, they do seem to have got some new fans with this album. Dunno if they will end up losing old fans though.

Yakuza i can see picking up a lot of non-metal fans.

Whiney to thread?

oh well ilxor & markers kill yet another thread

http://i53.tinypic.com/110c0nd.jpg

I didn't kill the thread, I just posted a comprehensive list of every single crossover metal album of 2010.

What else needs to be said?

yeah sufjan is very metal

Wow ilxor you have a really, er, interesting take on "crossing over". But then I just noticed that you listed a band that hasn't released an album in 9 years, so I realized you are just spouting off pure bullshit as usual.

tough day for an ilxor

anyway, yeah, most of those mentioned here haven't really "crossed over" this year, imo. either they're still niche acts, or they broadened their appeal a while back.

i figure the christian mistress album is poised to cross. we'll see.

you listed a band that hasn't released an album in 9 years

Which?

emperor, unless you mean that live thing from last year

i think he got them mixed up with Enslaved

Yup, I meant Enslaved, sorry.

Did I mention Watain? Dude(s) got a review on Pfork this morning, I'd call that "crossing over" a bit...

"cross over" is kind of a loaded term - alt/indie pubs/sites have been embracing metal for about four or five years now, I think pretty much any splash-making metal album is going to get coverage. I mean -- Pitchfork isn't people who "wouldn't normally listen to that kind of thing." They listen to a lot of that kind of thing unless it's death or grind, which for whatever reason (we've discussed this elsewhere) seem largely self-limited genres.

I wonder if a metal bands sales go up much if featured on pitchfork or if their readers just ignore it and buy the xx or salem instead and the only ones who read the reviews are those linked to it from a message board hehe

Did any metal albums ever get that best new music tag? I'm guessing that might boost sales.

That Yakuza record is like Mastadon on ketamine.

I think you have a wrong idea about the people listening to artier metal & the people listening to the xx & salem being different crowds. they're not the exact same crowd, but lol xasthur & marissa nadler y'know

Pitchfork isn't people who "wouldn't normally listen to that kind of thing." They listen to a lot of that kind of thing

Perhaps a few ppl do but not a large portion of their readership. I mean, check the results of the 2009 readers poll and notice the lack of any sort of metal... there's not a big overlap between Pfork readers and metal fans.

01. Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
02. Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
03. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca
04. Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
05. The xx: The xx
06. Girls: Album
07. The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
08. The Antlers: Hospice
09. Fever Ray: Fever Ray
10 tracks - Fever Ray by Fever Ray
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It's Blitz!
11. Passion Pit: Manners
12. Atlas Sound: Logos
13. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
14. St. Vincent: Actor
15. Japandroids: Post-Nothing
16. Sunset Rubdown: Dragonslayer
17. Dan Deacon: Bromst
18. Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport
19. Bat For Lashes: Two Suns
20. Raekwon: Only Built Cuban Linx... Pt. II
21. Dinosaur Jr.: Farm
22. Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
23. Wilco: Wilco (The Album)
24. Wild Beasts: Two Dancers
25. Andrew Bird: Noble Beast
26. The Horrors: Primary Colours
27. Bill Callahan: Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
28. The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love
29. Camera Obscura: My Maudlin Career
30. Various Artists: Dark Was the Night
31. Arctic Monkeys: Humbug
32. Cymbals Eat Guitars: Why There Are Mountains
33. Mastodon: Crack the Skye
34. Neon Indian: Psychic Chasms
35. Antony and the Johnsons: The Crying Light
36. Morrissey: Years of Refusal
37. Mos Def: The Ecstatic
38. Bibio: Ambivalence Avenue
39. jj (Sincerely Yours): jj n° 2
40. Real Estate: Real Estate

Did any metal albums ever get that best new music tag? I'm guessing that might boost sales.

Actually, Pfork tends to rate the year's top metal albums highly, but avoid giving most the Best New Music stamp. Good examples from last year are the Converge and Baroness albums, which both scored 8.4-8.5 or so, but no BNM. I think they gave it to Sunn O))), which is "arty" enough to be NOT JUST ANOTHER METAL RECORD LOL. And therefore BNM for a wider Pfork readership.

I only heard Salem for the 1st time yesterday and they made the xx almost look genius. Im still not reading that thread though, it remains unopened.

xps

that real estate album is great!

seems a bit strange to give an album marks as high as that but not give a BNM. I guess they think it wont crossover to their readership then?

But the xx are genius!

And I think they did give the Isis album BNM though, if I recall.

which one?

this would have been a really fun thread to contribute to

r.i.p.

which part put you off?

i'd actually be really curious to hear your thoughts on this whiney

Whiney G. Weingarten, putting the "whine" in Whiney...

Just contribute!

I thought Whiney would be the one guy who knew what had crossed over this year.

was relying on him answering tbh

waiting for whine-o

I think that Enslaved album has totally crossed over, the other day at an indie music store it was at a listening station that was like "stuff you'd be surprised you'd like."

Similar situation with the new Opeth - Live at the Royal Albert Hall, it was up front by the register.

Would love to know how many albums these bands sell.

Opeth's been "crossed over" for a while though, right?

well, lj has liked them for a while.

here's the answer: as far as metal's concerned, there's no equivalent to Crack the Skye or Blue Album this year, as far as I can tell

not even torche or kylesa?

Kylesa are a candidate for this I think- new Baroness or Mastodon IMO.

the new Kylesa album hasn't come out yet, and I just feel like the Torche hasn't gotten as much traction, but maybe that's just because I got on the metal train really late last year and I was catching up a lot on last year's stuff early this year, so a lot of 2009 stuff was already "canonized" by that point

the crying eagle will never forget that day

but will the swan?

it will drown in the tears

I'm guessing nothing crossed over this year!

certainly not for me. but then i don't listen to 1000 albums a year like Whiny does.

Avenged Sevenfold seems to be the answer over on that other thread for big rock selling album of 2010 with 160,000 sales in its first week. Need to look at EOY lists more carefully to see if anything has crossed over to the non-metal critics lists (im guessing little has this year) Wasn't there 5 or 6 metal albums in the P&J top 50 last year? Wonder if that was a fluke.

There were three in the top 25 - Mastodon, Baroness, Converge. (Which isn't just a fluke; it's unprecedented. Dead Weather, if they count, also made the Top 40, and Sun O)))) just missed. Closest precedent, I think, would be Guns N Roses/Jane's Addiction/Living Colour/Metallica all in the Top 40 in 1988.)

Was there more metal journalists voting last year than usual? Or did it just crossover into the more general critics lists? And do you think it will happen this year (or even again?)

Or is metal just being taken more seriously than previously?

Not only do I wish whiney would post here, but I think Tim F and Jordan S are a good barometer of what has crossed over and would like to see their thoughts on big rock bands/albums in 2010.

Metal definitely is being taken more seriously by critics than it used to be; it gets taken more and more seriously as time goes on -- it even gets reviewed by jazz critics these days! In the New York Times even! That sure didn't happen back in Twisted Sister-and-Ratt days. Anyway, I don't run the poll anymore, so I'm not sure, but I get the idea that there are more metal-critic specialists in general in the U.S. now, and more voting actually in the poll too, so I suppose it's possible it could happen again. (I haven't checked last year's ballots, though -- maybe more generalist critics are including a token metal album than used to, too.

Yeah, metal is being taken more serious. the converge/baronness/mastodon thing was just general rock critics being all latepass.gif to three narratives that had been going on for a decade. Just like with rap album, sometimes a good/visible story outweighs the fact that dudes made their best record 6 or 7 years ago

i cant really think of three "crossover" metal albums as big as mastodon, baroness, converge in 2010 -- high on fire, kylesa, something else... maybe? can't see either of those going top 25 in P&J, though

thing is, besides maybe Swans and Kylesa, there's not a lot of stories like that in 2010

Pfork has been trying to make "The Body" happen and i'm glad that never took off

Metal's being taken seriously because the kids who liked metal in the 80s are now adults. And some of them have commissioning positions in the media, or are critics, or whatever, and they're happy to give house room to metal. Either way, that's what's made metal critically acceptable, especially the bands who actually were huge when they were kids - Van Halen, AC/DC etc - and current bands get more of a look in critically than they would have 30 years ago. Happens generation after generation across different art forms - the kids who grew up on Howard Hawks, at the time a genre hack, revered him as a great director when they grew up, for example. Tron:Legacy is the result of the original film - panned at the time - being a favourite of kids who now have power in the film industry. And so on and so forth.

In 10 years' time, Limp Bizkit will be critically acceptable. Bet you.

I like The Body album a lot! It's certainly a popular album on the rolling metal thread.

high on fire, kylesa, something else... maybe?

The Sword?? (I could be way off, though; I didn't keep very close tabs on what critics were loving this year. And yeah, I'd be surprised if any of these finished Top 20 P&J. Then again, I was surprised by all three last year, too.)

Was there any metal in previous 00s P&J?

nah, this year was swans' first album of the new decade

j/k -- i think torche placed kinda highly the year before?

2008: torche at 31, metallica 37, that's it!

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2008

Delete whichever ones don't qualify: Queens Of The Stone Age, At The Drive In, System Of A Down (twice), Andrew WK, the Darkness, Mars Volta, Black Keys, My Chemical Romance, Dungen, Raconteurs, Against Me!, Torche, Metallica all went Top 40 P&J between 2000 and 2008.

And yeah, lots of those are obviously really stretching it. No other year was anywhere near as metal-heavy as 2009's poll was.

Seriously ilxor, every time you bring up the Swans in any metal-related thread, you inch ever closer to being your own mini version of the deej/whiney feud. In other words, drop it.

kinda funny that you're taking it so seriously! herman knows i'm not bitter, and just messing w/ him -- do you?

I know that, but you're still annoying others with it.

I'm not taking it seriously, I'm not offended, its just tiresome that you bring it up in so many different threads.

The Swans always sounded totally heavy metal to me, fwiw (mentioned them in a metal book chapter I wrote way back in 1984 -- light years ahead of my time, or what?), but what do I know. (Thing is, they got less metal as the '80s went on, right? But they also seemingly influenced plenty of metal bands years later. And I still haven't heard the new album myself.)

i rest my case ;)

& with that, i will not bring up swans again in a metal thread (unless someone else does first)

After last year, I wouldn't be surprised if no metal makes it this year in P&J. A lot of this years best albums aren't really by well established bands, apart from electric wizard, and I always assumed they got ignored in the USA because they were british (not that they get much/any Kerrang coverage either)

doesn't help that e-wizzy hasn't gotten an official stateside release yet!

xp Also, new Electric Wizard album doesn't technically come out in the States until January 2011, does it? (That's what a press release I got emailed to me said, anyway.)

Kinda proves to me that the usa aren't that interested in them if the label cant even release it at the same time.

Which is a shame, as the new album is every bit as great as the last one. It's a pity people only ever think of Dopethrone and don't want anything else but a rehash (hah) of Dopethrone every album.

I beleive Rise Above switched US distributors which may have caused the delay in the Electric Wizard release. Last one (Witchcult) I believe hit both shores the same week.

Ahh ok. Pity it will cause it to get ignored. My other top metal album of 2010 is Agalloch and I really dont think P&J would get that in their top 50.

Slough Feg is the one thing that should break out but you know never will, which is a shame.

i ordered the slough feg album last night! my first!

you know a metal album has crossed over when ilxor buys it, amirite?

No, you just know it's hip ;)

but im sure you will want to buy all their albums now.

Slough Feg might break out, but not with Animal Spirits. At least I didn't think it was a particularly strong effort from them, in comparison to some of their previous awesomeness.

I thought it was very strong, I just don't think this kind of metal is ready to breakout and crossover to "indie" fans.

i liked the ape uprising album better me.

Which was better than the previous one.

Tim F,if you see this, what big rock albums have you heard this year?

pazz & jop results are probably a decent indication of what truly "crossed over" this year:

48 Agalloch, Marrow of the Spirit
Profound Lore Points: 225
Mentions: 16

86 Kylesa, Spiral Shadow
Season of Mist Points: 134
Mentions: 14

121 Kvelertak, Kvelertak
Indie Points: 94
Mentions: 7

125 Deftones, Diamond Eyes
Reprise Points: 94
Mentions: 9

138 Ludicra, The Tenant
Profound Lore Points: 85
Mentions: 9

151 Triptykon, Eparistera Daimones
Century Media/Prowling Death Points: 80
Mentions: 6

162 High on Fire, Snakes for the Divine
E1 Points: 76
Mentions: 7

165 Nachtmystium, Addicts: Black Meddle, Part II
Century Media Points: 75
Mentions: 8

173 Alcest, Écailles de Lune
Prophecy Points: 69
Mentions: 6

177 The Sword, Warp Riders
Kemado Points: 67
Mentions: 8

198 Dillinger Escape Plan, Option Paralysis
Season of Mist Points: 60
Mentions: 6

206 Black Breath, Heavy Breathing
Southern Lord Points: 58
Mentions: 6

218 Harvey Milk, A Small Turn of Human Kindness
Hydra Head Points: 54
Mentions: 6

257 Ghost, Opus Eponymous
Rise Above Points: 45
Mentions: 3

276 Iron Maiden, The Final Frontier
Sony Legacy/Universal Points: 42
Mentions: 4

given the # of mentions, i'd draw the line after kylesa this year -- so, agalloch and kylesa crossed over in 2010. some of the bands below obv already had high profiles outside metal circles this year, though, and may have "crossed over" in previous years (ex. high on fire, deftones)

Kvelertak did really well considering they have no US distributor.

Metal still does badly at P&J... Were there 47 (non-metal) albums better than the Agalloch?