This is probably the hardest cut to my Top 40 Albums of 2011 list I've had to make thus far. The latest brainchild of masterminds Jon Chang and Takafumi Matsubara is 12 minutes of furious and savage ear-fuckery. Orphan (Hydra Head) is one of those albums you just have to put on when you are seething angry. Let the viciousness of it all flow through you as you attempt to "sing" along. I promise you will feel better afterwards. I took an anger management course once. One exercise we had to do was to bring in a song that characterized "who you are". I brought in a Gridlink song. You should have seen the looks on their faces! The look of incredulity on most of their faces was priceless. More than worth the time I wasted in the class. One guy said to me, "That's not music. There are two types of music. Country and Western." You can see what I was dealing with here. I digress. The counselor asked me why I felt that song embodied me. I told her that was what it was like in my head. (Hence anger management class) Furious. Mile-a-minute. Suffocating. Disjointed. Edge of collapse. Nothing nice to say, or at least, no nice what to say it. Full-on attack mode. Harmony? FUCK.THAT. I'm much better now, but I still very much enjoy the blitzing craziness Gridlink offers up on Orphan. I'm serious. If you are feeling stressed, throw this on, rage the fuck out for 12 minutes, and it'll be good times to follow. If you are wondering why the album didn't make my Top 40 after such a ringing endorsement, it's basically a technicality. It's too short. I want MORE! It doesn't even get me all the way home from work. It helps me stay awake after a night shift. Those last 3-4 minutes when it's over are such a bummer. A longer album would vault it way up the list.
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