This is cross-posted from a note I wrote on Facebook. The idea is that one is to choose “15 albums that changed my life,” but that seems like too bold of a claim. The actual description makes more sense than the title: “Write down the first 15 albums you can think of that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.” I don’t know how much these albums actually “changed” anything, but they definitely stood out as worthy soundtracks to my life–sometimes “soundtracks to my escape,” to crib from In Flames–at the time (and many still do).

They appear, more or less, in chronological order.

1. The Cranberries – Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?: I have fond memories of listening to this album early on in high school on cool breezy days in Merced. Dolores O’Riordan’s vocals are kind of wispy-breezy anyway, which adds to these pleasant memories.

2. Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral: I have had a love-hate relationship with this album in the 15 years that is has been out. I love it for so many reasons, mainly because it introduced me to “industrial” music (of course, the album itself is a mix of genres, as Trent has always tended to do). I always loved the sound of the album, but I initially rejected it in my later high school years when I went through a “secular music” purge like many fundamentalist teenagers did in those years. Of course, the album itself is a journey of somebody who rejects society’s mores and embraces everything else like a drug (sex, escapism) only to find the person killing himself in the end. But now, especially in light of the video of the Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt”, the entire album looks much different to me. I still love the sound of the album, it’s heaviness, it’s delicacy, and especially its textures, even more than I did in high school.

3. Alice in Chains – MTV Unplugged: Another high school listen which was introduced to me by a friend who would play the VHS tape of this performance on while hanging out at his house. To this day I still like the Unplugged version of their popular songs better than the original album versions.

4. P.O.D. – Brown: When I went to Spirit West Coast in 1998 I saw P.O.D. play live, and it blew me away. At that time, it was the heaviest music I had ever heard, really (outside of Klank’s Still Suffering album). I was really into “Christian rock” and this was the band, along with Project 86, which opened up the world of heavy music to me. “Full Color” remained my favourite P.O.D. song of all time. Living in San Diego for a while, though, made me grow sick of their music as I ended up seeing them over 10 times. I don’t really listen to this kind of music at all, anymore — rapcore? (yes, their style has changed in the last few years, but I just think they got worse.)

5. Zao – Liberate Te Ex Inferis: This is going to sound weird, but I used to go to sleep to this album with headphones on when I was a sophomore at PLNU (1999-2000). The title means “save yourself from hell,” which was cribbed from the recent (at the time) sci-fi/horror movie Event Horizon, and the album also heavily sampled from sound clips from the movie. This was actually kind of dumb, but as for the actual sound of the album, I still think it is their best. This was also around the time when Christian hardcore and emo bands began wearing eyeliner (and Jesse Smith was skinny at the time, on an Atkins diet I think… wait, why do I even know this?!)

6. Depeche Mode -Exciter: yes, Violator is probably their best album, but Exciter was the album that first got me into their music when I heard “Dream On” on the radio one day. I ended up seeing them in concert in 2001 with my friend Alison. Later, when the DVD came out of the Exciter tour I used to put this on when I would paint from time to time (along with NIN’s Fragility tour DVD).

7. In Reverent Fear – Written in the A.M.: One of the most-listened to albums in my entire collection. This was when IRF was ‘hardcore’. I first started listening to this album heavily in 2002 when I was going through a lot of stuff still latent from the latter part of high school, which the lyrics on this album mirrored in a real, yet hopeful way. I eventually married the guitarist’s sister and even went on to play some trumpet on their follow up album called Stomacher, which eventually stayed in my musical rotation to this day when it came out in 2006. So, in many ways, I am very, very close to the music and lyrics (and band members!) of this band.

8. Apoptygma Berzerk – Harmonizer: I can’t even remember what this kind of music is called (synthpop?), but I used to listen to this album a lot when I was a computer programmer for seven years. The album both has tons of energy as well as lyrically speaks to a lot of my issues in really intimate ways. The song “Unicorn”: listen to it.

9. Cocteau Twins – Victorialand: According to my Last.fm stats, this is the the band I’ve technically listened to the most. Similar (for me) to The Cranberries in their etherial wispiness, I usually put this album on in the late evenings or when it is time to drift off to sleep. I wish this band were still around.

10. Front Line Assembly – Epitath: Probably my favorite of all the FLA albums as far as a honed ‘sound’ and tone. The final track called “Existance” is one of my favourite tracks of all time from any band (the song’s “hidden track” was reworked into the track “Submerged” on Bill Leeb’s side project Noise Unit, on the Voyeur album). I have fond memories of listening to this FLA album on repeat while driving the 400 miles from Merced to San Diego in my Dad’s truck.

11. Mayfairgrin – Equine Noir: An ambient release that probably has more listens than Cocteau Twins’ Victorialand, but I wouldn’t be able to tell because I was listening to this before last.fm came into existence. Written by a friend, this album contains the kind of sounds and textures I absolutely love.

12. Indigo Girls – Swamp Ophelia: A classic Indigo Girls album and contains the best IG song ever written, “The Wood Song.” This was the song performed at our wedding, and, because it was a surprise to me, and because of the emblematic nature of the lyrics as to what we hold to be important for life, I wept during the entire performance. The entire album, which also features “Least Complicated” and “Power of Two”, became one of my favourite albums of all time 10 years after it’s release (I hadn’t heard of the Indigo Girls until college).

13. The Dresden Dolls – Yes, Virginia: I first heard The Dresden Dolls when they opened for Nine Inch Nails in 2005 around NIN’s With Teeth release. The Dresden Dolls completely blew me away, for such a simple yet powerful performance of two people. A couple years later I got to briefly meet Brian and Amanda when they played an in-store show at the now-defunct Tower Records in San Diego. “Modern Moonlight” from Yes, Virginia gets me going, but it is the album’s “Sing” which is profound in too many ways. I put “Sing” in our wedding reception mix, and I’m pretty sure nobody noticed the cussing in the end; even one of my good friends thought I had put on the edited version. Nope!

14. Hammock – Kenotic: Although this album isn’t exactly new, I’ve only recently discovered it, and it’s currently my favourite ambient album, consistently in my rotation. I’m finding it harder and harder these days to read to music with lyrics in it, so Hammock always makes my iPod’s on-the-go playlists (along with Explosions in the Sky, The Album Leaf, Manuok, etc.).

15. Once: Music From the Motion Picture: I hope this isn’t cheating, but this movie’s soundtrack is phenomenal. The movie had such a profound effect on me (I was lucky enough to have watched this movie before hearing anything about it, having now heard that a lot of people think that the movie didn’t live up to the hype, but it’s hard to ‘hype’ up a movie whose subtleties are what makes it so “great”). Because the movie itself is made up of 60% music which tells the story, and because the soundtrack contains the full versions of all those songs, listening to this soundtrack is like experiencing the story all over again.