The Red Circle

Today I begin my top 10 songs of the decade, which is included in my SOTD tweets. This was a hard list for me to create. Not only did I have to choose ten great songs that were released within the last decade, I had to choose ten songs that I had not already used as SOTD’s. You also have to remember that I’m doing one song every day for an entire year, and I’m currently only up to 129/365. I still have a lot to go, and didn’t want to waste any precious future tweets. I chose wisely, and feel I really did the 2000’s justice. Although there are plenty of songs that were amazing, I’m sticking to this list. I will be forgoing Christmas, so this list will be comprised over 11 days rather than 10. Here goes:

Songs: Corrosion of Conformity – “Stare Too Long”
Year: 2000
Link: YouTube Link
About: I discovered this song in 2004 while living in Findlay, Ohio. About a year prior, I had really begun to get into COC, noticing that their song writing ability was far superior to other southern metal acts. Pepper Keenan’s voice trembles with sheer brilliance. This is the one ballad-esque song they’ve ever released, which says a lot. When a heavy band decides to release something a bit softer than usual, it takes some finesse in order to get it right. Something that Metallica quite possibly failed to do on 1995’s “Mama Said” from their Load album. Not only did this song speak loudly to me, I have associated it with the death of the amazing Pantera/ Damage Plan guitar player, “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott. I got the news the day he died from my friend Nick. While listening to the voicemail he had left, this song was playing in the background in my truck. It was a rainy day that felt supremely sad. I had always been a fan of Pantera. Oddly enough I had attended the venue in which Darrell was shot just a few weeks prior to see a band called Professional Murder Music. Needless to say, the boys in COC and Pantera were pretty close, so to me it was quite eerie that I was listening to this song when I got the news. That one memory has stuck with me ever since. Beyond that, this song in particular has raw emotion pouring out of it. Enjoy.

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