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JAN: Lacuna Coil - Dark Adrenaline
FEB: Lanfear - This Harmonic Consonance
MAR: Poets of the Fall - Temple of Thought
APR: Halestorm - The Strange Case Of...
MAY: Kill It Kid - Feet Fall Heavy
JUN: Rush - Clockwork Angels
JUL: Delain - We Are The Others ALBUM OF THE YEAR
AUG: In This Moment - Blood
SEP: Hanging Doll - Sacred and Profane
OCT: ZZ Ward - Til The Casket Drops
NOV: Markize - A Perfect Lie
DEC: Rachel Zeffira - The Deserters

Delain - We Are the Others

So I've decided I'm gonna try and keep a journal of my favorite albums for this year. Since I have fairly decent access to new releases via Zune, I've been listening to at least one track off every album every tuesday. Some weeks I may list a second album that's not necessarily a new release but is new music for me, especially if that album takes over my playlist for the week!

Thanks to social media and the fact that I really like Elysion, I can now count U.N.S.I.N. among my favorite bands. They are currently touring with Elysion and Leaves' Eyes so after seeing their name pop up in Elysion's facebook posts a few times I decided to check them out.

The 0154 EP is a very solid rock album. It's 4 songs are infectious, pun intended, and the balance between guitars and vocals is never overdone. Singer Christina Nikolaidou seems to be channeling both Sharon den Adel and Joan Jett simultaneously and while her voice is more Mezzo-Soprano than I normally enjoy listening to, it is a perfect fit with the music they are playing and only seems strained during a few portions of the fourth song, The Show.

Most importantly, 0154 does what a first EP should do. It leaves me wanting to hear more.

Hands down my favorite album of 2011 was Nemesea's THE QUIET RESISTANCE. If you have yet to hear it, all I can say is...treat yourself!

So I signed up for Zune's Music Pass in September 2011. In the almost 6 months that I've had the service, I've downloaded over 700 albums out of which I've actually bought almost 10% of so that they are DRM-free. Fortunately about half of those albums are just singles, so I really only have about 30 new full-length albums but considering I only owned about 600 cd's prior to signing up for their service, I have already doubled my library in the first six months.

Of the 700 downloaded albums, easily two-thirds of them are a direct result of interacting with last.fm, either through the site's recommendations or more often than not by visiting the pages of my neighbors and/or people who visit my page. More importantly, 8 of my overall top 18 artists (i.e., the first page of my library) are bands I wouldn't even know existed without last.fm.

Needless to say, using Zune in conjunction with last.fm has radically altered the way I listen to and purchase music...and that is not a bad thing!