With three previous studio albums already under their belts, Australian death metal giants Psycroptic released their fourth this year on Nuclear Blast Records to a fan base that had a pretty good idea of what to expect from them: extremely high caliber musicianship and a certain captivating energy that set the band apart from many of their less dynamic contemporaries.

I learned about The Knux weeks before their debut CD Remind Me in 3 Days was to be released in October 2008.
 

If you happen to be the type of person that loves both music and short, numerical lists, then boy, do we have something for you!  As part of the move to the Brand New CJLO.com, we've started to bring over all of the older magazine articles, incorporating them into the newness.  Amongst the first to be migrated are the old year-end Staff Picks lists, representing the favrouite music of CJLO DJs past and present.

Check out these lists at http://cjlo.mtset.com/magazine/feature.  We've got 5 up here, from 2004 straight through to 2008.  Can you guess what bands and albums will make the cut for the 2009 Staff Picks?  Challenge issued!

“Hey, let’s do our Top Ten lists and post them on the website”. You figure that would be enough to send everyone scurrying to their keyboards and add to the avalanche of year-end lists that are fail-safe crowd favourites, if not the mark of lazy writing. So what happens when we’re too lazy to even do that? Well lure them with free alcohol.

The thing with lists, especially year-end ones, is that they undercut the obsessive passion of the music lovers. There's no true way around it, as any discussion will eventually boil down to inane nitpicking. That's why CJLO, as a whole, does not have a Top Ten list based on votes or anything remotely objective. Instead, we're throwing together individual staff picks from our motley crew of DJs, not to represent anything else but their true love for this year's music (mostly).