[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlRAJErqK4A[/youtube]
1) Shining – “Fisheye”
Up until Blackjazz welcomed in 2010 with a relentlessly unique blast of metal, Norway’s Shining was viewed by most as a jazz band, albeit a progressive rock-leaning one that toured and collaborated with Enslaved in 2008. The moment that Shining officially descended into madness, however, came with the debut of Blackjazz’s first single, “Fisheye,” in October 2009 on Norwegian radio. Still a jazz band in theory, Shining sounded utterly corrupted by metal, and that was a big part of why Blackjazz went on to find an audience far outside of metal and top several year-end critic’s polls. Not yet exposed to the metal world in earnest by his lengthy contributions to Ihsahn’s After, Jorgen Munkeby’s guitar-dueling saxophone work (start at 3:13) still sounds subversive, in part because it sounds so alien and yet hits too many disturbing notes to come off as anything other than serious.
