What would be your death row album and why?
If I am on death row and given an opportunity to listen to one last record the choice would be easy but there are a lot of contenders tied for second place. Let's start with the honorable mentions, I think that is a better title for them than second place and I would hate to get into ranking these.
Merauder's Master Killer all the way through. A pummeling masterpiece that will get me ready to leave my earthly confines for the next plane of existence.
The Earth Crisis song "Smash Or Be Smashed" on repeat for the duration of an album run time. Karl's vocal delivery on this song is on some Conan The Barbarian trip and I channel it often to push through. Seems like it would be a fitting soundtrack to a barbaric and unnatural end.
Metallica's Master Of Puppets, though if I was facing death I would just want to triple up "Battery" and "Damage Incorporated". I feel like those two songs would usher me to a violent end in the appropriate state of mind.
The Machine Head song "Davidian" played once but the breakdown at the end looped seamlessly for a full 60 minutes. After that I imagine I would be ready to fight my way through whatever has come to take me out until it overwhelms me and I sink into death's sweet embrace.
Ok now with the real answer. The number one top contender, the album we cut the shit and get it on with is Roots. I would want to go out doing what I do every day, lifting weights and listening to Sepultura's Roots. Every day I get to the gym and I put that on first, it gets me excited and ready to go and brings all the aggression needed to really get after it. In a perfect world the warden at the facility would see fit to grant my final request and give me access to a weight room and a loud stereo. There I will listen to Roots and get in my final lifting session while meditating on the inevitable.
Ideally this would be in a cage and at the point the song "Dusted" started the guards would surround the cage and bang on the bars with batons adorned in riot gear while I finished my remaining sets. When the song "Born Stubborn" starts the door would be unlocked and the guards would begin to pour in. In this scenario the warden would also decide to honor my request that I be ushered to my final end at the dull side of a barrage of baton strikes. "Born Stubborn" really feels like the best point of exit from this death row scenario.
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Either Einsturzende Neubauten’s “Kollaps”, or SPK’s “Information Overload Unit”. And my executioners will have to listen to it with me, just to make things as uncomfortable and confusing for them as I can as I shuffle off this mortal coil.
Enslaved – Below the Lights. Perfect exit from this hellish realm to something better.
The Way of All Flesh by Gojira for sure.
Would eat an epic last meal of medium rare new york strip, a baked potato with salt, pepper, cheese, sour cream, a dank af salad with blue cheese dressing, and some bomb bread and irish butter, all washed down with a bottle of french cab sav or merlot. then sit back and listen to gojira do their thing.
Integrity’s To Die For. I go back and forth with what my favorite Integ album is, but after getting off work late at night with the strawberry moon over NC, something compelled me to throw this on and go for a late night drive with the windows down and it was really hitting.
Despise You’s Westside Horizons. Bleak as fuck, but somehow reminds me of happier times spent skating around the South Bay.
King Diamond’s Abigail. One of the first real metal albums I heard. Something about this takes me back to a very specific autumn in the Pacific NW when my kid and I were walking around and went to Spirit Halloween, got some amazing pizza and then a bookstore where I found the graphic novel adaptation of this album.
There’s definitely more but those three are the first that came to mind.
Master of puppets of course metallica is my favorite band and that’s my favorite album even the silence between tracks is beautiful to me. That’s why I would have that on loop as my death row album.