5 for 20: YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN

When you’re an influential musician, people tend to ask you what you’ve been listening to lately. Here at 5 for 20, we’re just as keen to find out what records loom large in our favourite artists’ memory banks. So, we’re asking folks for their top five records of the last 20 years.

One of the most surprising additions to the 2012 Polaris Music Prize short list is the self-titled effort by Montreal's YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN. Anyone who's seen the theatrical, heart-pounding, doom metal-ish band live would admit they're an utterly unique musical force. And what's not to love about a band that self-identifies as an "Asian diasporic psychedelic noh-wave opera group fusing noise, metal, pop and folk music into a multidisciplinary hyper-orientalist cesspool of 'eastern' culture in giant monochrome paper sets." Seriously, what's not to love about that?

But still, they're something of a secret phenomenon and it's unclear whether an unsuspecting world is yet ready for their power and cult status to grow, as it undoubtedly will thanks to their Polaris association. We'll all see soon enough.

For their part, YT//ST are performing at Sappyfest in Sackville, N.B., between Aug. 3 to 5, and percussionist Alaska B took time to share her top five albums of the past 20 years.

None So Vile by Cryptopsy

The greatest of all extreme metal records. Along with Gorguts, Quebec's most brutal exports gave death metal a different, and almost experimental flavour. Almost every complex riff has its own tempo, thanks to the incredible Flo Mounier on drums, while Phobophile force feeds you gothic piano cheese before blasting my favourite anthemic bassline.

I was lucky to see this entire album performed when Lord Worm rejoined, and it was one of the first gigs I attended when I moved to Montreal. Lord Worm was actually carried in a coffin through the crowd. Powerful stuff.

Flood by Boris

It was hard to pick my favourite Boris album, but ultimately this one is always stuck in my head. I played it to death on a roadtrip across the American southwest and West Coast years back. The heavy drop after 20-plus minutes is like a majestic tsunami.

Infidel Art by Sigh

Years later, this remains my favourite '90s black metal record. Sigh always had a way of doing black thrash well and then tossing copious amounts of orchestral goth WTF on top. Saw them in Montreal a while back, their demonic female singer also blows fire, plays free jazz saxophone, records naked and moonlights as a physicist in Florida.

Gamelan into the Mink Supernatural by the Psychic Paramount (2005)

There was a year I went totally nuts in my early 20s and this album was the soundtrack. I would get lost to it in the middle of my floor, blaring it 'til my elderly neighbours were likely to vomit. The guitars sound like an electrical storm looks. And don't even get me started on the drums.

SoniCRIME Therapy by G.I.S.M. (1995)

The heaviest and most absurd G.I.S.M. album is definitely the best. Retaining the sloppy hardcore core of their early '80s releases, but now blending in grindcore alongside the hair metal solos and occult military noise. The mixing is so in the red that the music threatens to destroy the very ground you're standing on.

Catch YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN at Sappyfest in Sackville, N.B., this weekend.