I first started the Album Of The Year page on my ‘TurnToDust86’ Def Leppard bootleg trading site and concert history on Codexed in 2012. I chose and wrote up my favorite album of each year since I was born in 1986. Many were easy/obvious, others weren’t.
Most of those choices remain the same was what I wrote back then, other than a little extra that I may have added when building this new version of the site after Codexed closed up shop.
However, one of the stipulations of the Album Of The Year is:
Awards can be revoked at any time… Just ask Trapt & Breaking Benjamin. Unqualified Honorable Mentions will consist of live albums, EPs, deluxe editions, and other releases of that type.
For Volume One of Revoked!, I’ll provide a brief description of the two albums that were given the award when I first wrote the site but then lost out to other artists. Unfortunately I didn’t save the original material that I wrote when I built the page.
2005
Trapt – Someone In Control
Release Date: September 13, 2005
Running Time: 41:00
Tracklist:
- Disconnected (Out Of Touch)
- Waiting
- Victim
- Stand Up
- Lost Realist
- Skin Deep
- Influence
- Repeat Offender
- Bleed Like Me
- Use Me To Use You
- Product Of My Own Design
I got into Trapt during my junior year of high school, as their debut album had multiple songs in regular rotation on rock radio. I was really exploring a lot of what was out there at the time, and it was really connected with my teenage angst. My junior year was the worst year of my life, so it was no surprise that I began connecting with angry, heavier music than what I had primarily listened to before then.
Trapt released their sophomore album, Someone In Control, in late 2005. By that point, I had graduated from high school and moved onto college. The album quickly became my most-played new album of that year thanks to singles “Stand Up,” “Waiting,” and my favorite song on the album, “Disconnected (Out Of Touch).” It also features many solid album cuts, such as “Skin Deep,” “Repeat Offender,” “Bleed Like Me,” and “Use Me To Use You.”
On the strength of their first two albums, I drove all the way to Chicago in the dead of winter to see the band live at the House Of Blues. It was actually a really good show that also featured Thousand Foot Krutch as the openers.
Trapt released their third album, Only Through The Pain, in August of 2008. By that point, I had left my teenage angst behind and was in my early twenties. And while that was still a difficult time in my life, I didn’t connect with that style music any more. I had left the vast majority of what I listened to my junior year behind, and that included Trapt. I purchased the third album, but never got into it and even today, only two songs from it remain on my iPod. I haven’t purchased any albums or even listened to much of anything since then, but Trapt continues to release albums today. They just released their seventh studio album in the fall of 2016, though the band has gone through countless lineup changes over the last decade.
I can still listen to most of the first two albums through nostalgic ears, but they wouldn’t hold up well without the nostalgia. In fact, it was the nostalgia that led to me awarding Someone In Control the 2005 Album Of The Year Award in the first place.
But as time passed, it stuck out from the rest of the albums on the list and I decided I wanted something with a more long-standing quality to be the recipient of the award. After careful consideration, I revoked the award from Someone In Control and instead gave it to Foo Fighters’ In Your Honor.
2009
Breaking Benjamin – Dear Agony
Release Date: September 29, 2009
Running Time: 41:55
Tracklist:
- Fade Away
- I Will Not Bow
- Crawl
- Give Me A Sign
- Hopeless
- What Lies Beneath
- Anthem Of The Angels
- Lights Out
- Dear Agony
- Into The Nothing
- Without You
Breaking Benjamin was another band I discovered during my junior year in high school. The first two albums, 2002’s Saturate and 2004’s We Are Not Alone, continued to feed into my teenage angst. However, they displayed a growth from album to album and became ‘the’ post-grunge band from the early 2000’s that stuck with me. They grew as I grew, and as a result, I never stopped listening to them and only became more of a fan with each album they released.
2009’s Dear Agony was my favorite yet to that point… I felt like the band had really reached a new peak with that album, as it had enough of the sound from their first two albums and built on the maturity of their third album, 2006 Album Of The Year winner Phobia.
All three singles (“I Will Not Bow,” “Give Me A Sign,” and “Lights Out”) were as good as anything they’d released to radio before, but the songs I enjoyed the most were album cuts. “Crawl” is one of the heaviest and best songs the band has ever written and recorded. The title track is a moody, anthemic ballad. Other highlights include “Fade Away,” “What Lies Beneath,” “Anthem Of The Angels,” and “Into The Nothing.”
The first time I saw the band was on their 2009 tour in support of Dear Agony, but unfortunately it was essentially a festival show in St. Louis. As a result, the set was fairly short and didn’t feature near enough songs from this album.
After the tour for this album wrapped, shit hit the fan for the band and they split. It would be years before lead singer Benjamin Burnley assembled a new group of guys to play shows and release another studio album (2015’s excellent Dark Before Dawn).
While it was extremely difficult for me to revoke the 2009 Album Of The Year Award from them, with this being my favorite album of theirs, they had two things working against them… Going on indefinite hiatus resulted in a decrease in interest from me, as I tend to focus more on active bands than inactive ones. One of the active bands I had discovered in 2011 was Steel Panther, and their 2009 debut album Feel The Steel is a rock masterpiece.
After careful consideration (including ranking every song on iTunes and then running the average score for each of the albums), I made the decision to revoke the award from Breaking Benjamin and give it to Steel Panther. But that doesn’t mean Dear Agony isn’t a great album, as it is very likely still my favorite of theirs to this day.
TurnToDust86 