Inevitably, as we get to the new year, the desire for introspection will take hold, but for me the year has been far too much of a stinker for all that, so I shall try to avoid doing so. 2006 has ‘rocked’ though in one regard, and that has been in the world of, well, rock.

There’s been some ace albums this year, almost uniformly from bands who have been around for aeons. Album of the year for me though, is Mastodon’s absolutely staggering Blood Mountain, a ridiculously pompous re-writing of the metal rulebook.

Also worth a note though are Tool’s 10,000 days, an album that rewards the listeners patience with untold layers of meaning and subtlety; Converge’s No Heroes, which contains little in the way of subtlety, but has honesty and brutality in spades, Pearl Jam’s eponymous return to the mainstream and The Mars Volta’s Amputechture, which admittedly took me a while to get into, but is well worth the wait.

Gig of the year has to be Tool and Mastodon, although the Download Festival had a tremendous amount of highlights, not least of which was the return of Alice In Chains.

Anyway, enough of all that, I’m gonna go get drunk at the Xmas party.