Favourite Releases of 2012: METZ - METZ (Sub Pop)

One of my most frequent musical analogies for the hardest rocking music to me is the sound of fighter jets taking off and barreling through soot-filled skies. Nothing I've heard from this year - or ever, really - has sounded quite as turbulent as Toronto's destructive METZ. They play to kill, even if it means taking themselves down with you.

METZ' entire self-titled album bleeds the nihilistic despair of a pilot who knows he's on a collision course with infernal death. Downward spiraling, tailspin guitar opens "Rats," and the plane bursts into a ball of flames as drums and bass simultaneously inject themselves into the wreckage. The sense of panic in "Rats" is so overwhelming, I find myself wanting to radio for help, fully aware of the futility in doing so.

METZ is volatile, every song a ticking time-bomb. Every drumbeat explodes like stepping on a landmine. Bass notes launch like strings of mortars. Engine-roar guitars ring out relentlessly like glass-shattering sonic booms. The only cessation comes as stormy calms before METZ circle around and dive-bomb your ears again, penetrating all the way to your psyche, blanketing you with scalding sheets of corrosive napalm noise.

Though not stripped enough to sound punk in the purest sense, the actually demure Toronto trio delivers their F5 whirlwind of gusty hard rock with such an unmatched sense of urgency and alarm (perhaps nowhere more than on "Sad Pricks") that METZ has become one of my favourite albums of its kind period, let alone of the year.