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The Top 10 of 2009: Number Four…

This spring, when I envisioned the how the rest of the year was going to play out, right at the forefront of my mind was Mania, the third album from Swedish fuzz rockers Truckfighters. In both my review and interview with the band, I raved about how groundbreaking a record it was, how it was changing the face of modern stoner rock, adding a progressive intelligence to the genre that most bands wouldn’t even be able to conceive, let alone execute.

I feel exactly the same way today.

Mania, released through Fuzzorama, is hands down the best pure stoner rock release of 2009. It built upon the solid foundation of its two excellent predecessors, 2007’s Phi and 2005’s Gravity X, but took a turn in a more fleshed out direction that caught me off guard in how hyper-developed it was. All of a sudden Truckfighters were a mature band, one of the best in Sweden, and with tracks like “Monte Gargano,” “Con of Man” and “Majestic,” they set the bar incredibly high for both themselves and the genre. Not to get all neo-con about it, but I think as history plays out, Mania is a record whose importance will grow with time.

Some albums just feel like a landmark, and Truckfighters‘ third most definitely did. This is a personal list, and there were records I listened to more for myself, but not many (about three, to be exact), and I don’t know if any of them broke the kind of ground Mania did. It was a crowning achievement for the band, put them on a different level entirely, and more than that, left the genre different than it found it.

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