Last Christmas, I was talking over the songs in the Pitchfork 500 book with my brother-in-law Michael. We went back to Michael's home recording studio and he played me Refused's "New Noise"--which I'd never heard before--out of his perfect studio speakers. The tight noise of the main riff of that song when it hit at 1:07 brought out the familiar feel of excitement that comes with volume.

Refused, "New Noise" (1998)

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About halfway through the song, my eight-year-old nephew wandered back into studio and listened with us. It was a great sight: he seemed almost scared of this awesome noise, but the excitement was there, too. There was a look in his eyes that was familar: awe that music could sound so powerful. I don't know if this will be a defining moment for him or something he won't remember. His dad is a power pop enthusiast with a home studio, so this kid's been familiar with distorted guitars since the day he was born. But I swear that I saw that boyish instinct to loud music come out at that moment, visceral and pure.

There's that part of me that's always desperately wanted volume and excitement. The problem is that so few artists are capable of delivering the goods. Most metal is surprisingly uptight and compressed, the lyrics are pretentious and everything from the band names to the album covers hammer home DEATH BLACK ROTTING DECAY DEATH. Okay. We get it.

Even when you try to turn to reviews of metal, it leads you up the same dead ends. Every metal review uses the same adjectives, only swapping out band names. There's no real description of the music or what makes it stand out, just a bunch of violent adjectives that tell you nothing about what you're in for. It's pounding, slashing, thunderous, wrenching and murderous. In other words, it's metal.

Punk and hardcore are a little more thoughtful, but way too much of it is just spastic and sloppy and nothing more. Sometimes you get to the intersection where thought meets primal emotion, and there you find Fugazi or Refused, but too often it speeds away and you're left behind and figure maybe if no one's going to give you the loud stuff right, you may as well look for something else.

Which is why it's been so exciting to get songs like "New Noise" that I never paid attention to when they were first around because I had dismissed anything tagged "loud" as someone else's music. It's no surprise that it's in a list like the Pitchfork 500, where these songs are alongside indiepop and hip-hop as songs that are just plain great: genres need not apply.

Mclusky, "To Hell With Good Intentions" (2002)

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This song is about as pure loud as it gets, and yet it's still all about the feel, that freeing feel of a shower of volume, of unrestrained thrill. It's joking around with friends and screaming to feel alive, not to pretentiously welcome death. It has a small but sharp hook--sing it!--but it's not a pop hook; it's a hook that's there only because it feels good and right. It's perfect.