This, admittedly is a hard one. Let’s say we take the über-gods out. Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, Hawkwind, bands like that. Even if you’re just getting started on ’70s rock, you already know they were massively influential and you don’t need me to rehash, fun as it is to do on occasion.

The purpose of this list is to give you some more obscure artists to check out and see where the foundation of modern heavy rock (be it stoner, doom, etc.) comes from. I’ll admit to having zero personal expertise on the ’70s. I was born in 1981, so it’s not like I was there. Nonetheless, bear with me and maybe you’ll find something you haven’t yet heard.

Or maybe you know everything about ’70s rock and want to school me in the comments. Hey, I’ll take it. Here’s my list of starting points, no real order:

Captain Beyond, Captain Beyond (1972)

Atomic Rooster, Death Walks Behind You (1970)

Leaf Hound, Growers of Mushroom (1971)

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It’s a rare band that can blend brutality and groove, good times and hard hits, and Clamfight do it so well they couldn’t have been born to do anything else. The New Jersey clan’s first full-length outing, Vol. 1, was years in the making and riffs has hard, rumbles as deep and crashes as loud as anything I’ve heard this year.

Plus, it has the kind of artwork where you might see it in a store, buy it for a kid because it looks adorable and then scar said child for life with “Fuck Bulldozers” or “Viking Funeral.” And, as we all know, any music that induces trauma in the young is a good thing. Childrens could use a kick in the ass.

But even that’s not what ultimately got Clamfight on the TFFH10 list. And it’s not the fact that I know them either. What ultimately did it was a song like “Ghosts I Have Known,” which in addition to being concrete heavy is also a display of the band’s songwriting prowess. Sure, we can all get down with the pummel of “Rabbit,” and that’s a great time, but there’s more to Vol. 1 than that, and it’s right there for anyone willing to hear it.

Because this was an album that I’d waited for, and because it’s one that, even after the review, I’ve gone back to time and again for what I’ve pathetically come to classify as “enjoyment listens,” I’m glad to have Clamfight‘s Vol. 1 on my top five of the first half of 2010.

There are always going to be those people who say, “Oh, there’s nothing good out now and I only like stuff from 1987 blah blah blah,” and those people have usually just missed the point. I think, any way you want to look at it, 2010 has kicked some serious ass so far.

Not only did we finally get a new Solace record, but with albums from High on Fire, Sasquatch, Darkthrone, Cathedral, The Brought Low, Ufomammut, Asteroid, Brant Bjork, Nachtmystium, The Wounded Kings, Karma to Burn, Apostle of Solitude and (apparently) Anathema, but there’s still more to come from the likes of Zoroaster, Firebird and Grand Magus, so it’s no fluke.

Today is June 15, halfway through the sixth of the 12 months, so I figured there wasn’t a better time to start revealing my top five of the first half of 2010. It was rough putting together the list, because there’s a lot of good stuff, but in the end it came down (as always) to what I keep going back to hear over and over.

So, with that said, I hope you enjoy this year’s TFFH. We’ll begin shortly with number five…

Sometimes, when a band has a catalog that seems to go on for miles (or even when they don’t), it’s hard to know where to begin. You want something that best represents the whole, but you want the best too, so you can hear them at their peak. Well, it’s an age-old question, “Where do I start with…?” that I’m hopefully going to help answer for at least a handful of bands.

Below you’ll find just a smattering of recommendations for beginning points for bands you may or may not be curious about. I do a lot of assuming that the people reading this site know this stuff already, but maybe there are some newcomers who aren’t sure which Kyuss record is the way to go.

If you have any to add to this list, please leave a comment. Maybe I’ll finally figure out how to kick off my Robin Trower collection.

Acid King, Busse Woods

Alabama Thunderpussy, River City Revival

Bathory, Twilight of the Gods

Brant Bjork, Jalamanta

Black Sabbath, Just get the first eight, go from there.

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Thinking just now about not listening to Isis made me wonder what else I might have missed this year. So far I haven’t bought the new albums from Behemoth, Nile or a bunch of other metal acts, but I’m planning to before 2009’s over. The list that follows is records I won’t have heard by the time 2010 rolls in. Maybe it’ll inspire me to grab some Buried Treasure fodder. Meantime, list (plus commentary) is after the jump.

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It got mixed reviews and, like its predecessor, flew under the radar of most heads, but Goblin Cock‘s Come with Me if You Want to Live — released in February — has some of the coolest songs I’ve heard in the last six months. What’s best about it is there is no filler. Goblin Cock packs eight minutes’ worth of doom into a three minute song and makes it catchy to boot. Plus, there’s practically nothing serious about it, but it’s not irono-douchebaggery either. The album hits just the right balance of humor and killer riffs.

The hooded and masked project of Pinback/The Ladies/Optiganally Yours (and solo) singer/guitarist Rob Crow, Goblin Cock strikes a rarely achieved balance of dooming out and having fun that appeals, admittedly, to the skinny-pantsed, thick-rimmed post-grad set (Crow‘s pedigree is also a factor), but quality songwriting and a lack of chic posturing makes Come with Me if You Want to Live more than just forgettable hipster metal pablum. As I said in my live review of their show in NYC a while back, the thing about hipster metal is that people make money playing it. One listen and you know there’s no way Goblin Cock are bringing in the cash.

If you haven’t yet, give the record a shot. For your ease in doing so, here’s “Ode to Billy Jack,” one of my favorites from Come with Me if You Want to Live.

Come the end of 2009 there’s going to be all kinds of lists and best-ofs. Not just here, everywhere. All the more since it’s the end of a decade. The 10 Best Dumps I Took in the 2000s, and so forth. Not that this is any less self-inflating than that, but at least I’m willing to say that the top five of the first half of 2009 (TFFH09) list I’ll be unfolding over the next couple days is totally subjective and ultimately meaningless. That said, I hope you dig it.