Back to Swans for a second, I think the musicianship and lyrics have felt pretty fresh despite their age. In many ways, it feels a lot more honest than most death metal I've come across about hardship and struggles.
Doom and black are the genres of metal I think that don't go so over the top about gore and being confrontational seemingly just for the sake of it. Most of all Swans reminded me you don't need level 10 music to be brutal.
"No will to break."The Lonesome Crowded West - Modest Mouse
Personally, I've always found this to be superior to Moon and Antarctica. While M&A has its moments, there's more solid songs on this one (Teeth Like God's Shoeshine, Cowboy Dan, Trailer Trash, Bankrupt on Selling, etc), and I like how the very different tones of the tracks go together well. My only major gripe is that Trucker's Atlas is way too long and that Long Distane Drunk is... uh what. Good album. 4/5.
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"Joy Electric: Workmanship EP, and now I'm listening to Their Variables.
I love Ronnie Martin's discography as a whole, but I think his EP's tend to be stronger than his albums, ironically. With his albums, he thinks they ought to be some grand, cohesive statement, so he overthinks things and trips himself up. Songs that could have been fun and punchy instead get weighed down with weird production choices; weaker tunes pad out the albums because they're thematically necessary or something. But those constraints aren't there on the EP's. There's no pressure to make anything "perfect", no requirements on length, or even a need to worry about whether the songs sound enough alike or not. He just dashes off a bunch of songs and puts out the ones he's happy with.
edited 16th Jan '16 8:01:17 AM by MetaFour
I didn't write any of that.Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence. This is my first listen to any full album of hers. I do like the hazy, opulent vibe of the whole thing, but only a handful of songs stand out to me as being memorable. For whatever reason I find myself enjoying some of her odd, affected vocal mannerisms: For instance, in "West Coast" she suddenly develops a lisp, making the opening lyric sound like "down on the wesh coash, they got a shayin'".
Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.Borknagar - Winter Thrice. New to this band, so can't really compare it to any of their other stuff, but my first impression is that it's pretty good.
Somehow you know that the time is right.Alien Ant Farm - Greatest Hits
Despite the name, this is actually their first album, released independently (that's right, Truant is not their debut). However, it does contain early versions of several songs that would indeed become hits for them, so.... the title fits? In any case, it clearly shows that, even early on, they were very talented. My favorite song, oddly, is one of the few that didn't later become a hit ("Pink Tea"), but it does appear on their actual best-of compilation! Weird, innit?
edited 7th Feb '16 12:47:19 AM by DemonSharkKisame
REM - Automatic For The People
Still overrated. First 3 and last 3 songs are good, but the songs in between are severely lacking.
@darkabomination: I happen to agree, by the by.
OK, recent listens:
- American Football, American Football—Pretty, ambitious emo with some charming instrumental flourishes. The horns, in particular, are a delight.
- Book of Sand, The Face of the Deep—One-man green anarchist black metal band makes gamelan-infused concept album. 'Nough said.
- Franco Leprino, Integrati... Disintegrati—Nothing like two sides of sweeping electronics-splashed '70s progressive instrumental music to put you in a chill mood, although the random baby crying in that one piano interlude is jarring, which I think is intentional. Keeps you on your toes.
- People Like Us, Beware the Whim Reaper—A bit like Negativland, but less on the nose. Good, strange stuff.
- Sissy Spaceknote , Scissors—Encapsulated sonic mania.
edited 19th Feb '16 4:59:23 PM by JHM
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.Andrew Jackson Jihad - Knife Man
8/10. Not as good as People That Can Eat People, but it still has that nice rough sound that I love AJJ for. Now to listen to Christmas Island...
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"- American Football, American Football - Pretty much as above. Allmusic called it a "flukey emo-jazz hybrid" but I wouldn't call it jazz at all.
- Joe Cocker, Joe Cocker! - Good top to bottom album with a few standouts, could use more radio play.
- HAIM. Days Are Gone - Same as above, really, but the album sold pretty well and their hype machine is both great and pushing something pretty good. They'll be fine.
edited 20th Feb '16 8:26:42 AM by MrMatt
It has some definite jazz influences in the guitar playing and chord progressions, but it's nowhere near so jazzy as, say, Saccharine Trust's output.
Anyway...
- The Residents, Mark of the Mole—Hey, kids! Let's talk about mole-people and alien prophecies and THE HORRORS OF RACIAL INEQUALITY. Great album.
- Hunting Lodge, Nomad Souls—Enjoyably aggro and danceable tribal industrial with lots of metal-bashing and drum machines and bass riffs that sound like metal being bashed.
The Pogues - If I Fall From Grace With God.
Probot - Probot. Dave Grohl's metal side project, where the main point was to work with some of his favorite singers in the genre (such as Sepultura's Max Cavelera, Motörhead's Lemmy Kilminster, and King Diamond). I guess I like the idea of this record better than the actual content, but there are some pretty cool tracks and Grohl proves to be skilled at mimicking bands' signature styles (in particular, "Shake Your Blood" is a perfect Motorhead impression). This project apparently wasn't really meant to last beyond the one album, but at very least I'd like to hear Grohl drumming on more metal albums. Side note: I hadn't paid too much attention to the lyrics before, but there's a particularly Painful Rhyme in "Silent Spring" (featuring D.R.I.'s Kurt Brecht), which is a Protest Song about war and pollution: "Then they started to die, but not fast enough / So they shot at each other with bullets and stuff"
ARCHIS - ARCHIS. As a way to discover new music, I've been thinking about downloading something I've never heard from Amazon's 3.99 section about once a month. This is the current project of Dia Frampton, who was apparently runner up on the first season of The Voice, but who I know from collaborating with Lindsey Stirling. Indie-pop with some occasional epic orchestration to it - I found it to be good rainy day listening. Favorite tracks on first listen: "Blood", which has a haunting music video, and "Black Eye", a song about getting revenge on a friend's domestic abuser that's rendered more powerful by its Lyrical Dissonance note .
edited 24th Feb '16 10:12:39 AM by MikeK
Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.High Voltage by AC/DC.
It is my favorite AC/DC album.
Batman Ninja more like Batman's Bizarre AdventureI relistened to Ne-Yo's In My Own Words on a flight last night (it came out a decade ago today). It's such a great album (even better than Year of the Gentleman in my opinion). 9.5/10
edited 28th Feb '16 12:55:36 PM by Spinosegnosaurus77
Peace is the only battle worth waging.For All Kings - Anthrax
Enjoying it. It lacks the sense of fun found in their other works and instead continues the hints of a more serious tone found in Worship Music (even compared to Persistence of Time's "give peace a chance" message). Still, it has enough hooks to get by overall: you can kinda tell which crowds are being chased with the lead singles. I'd say Suzerain is the heaviest track, but not by much; so it ends up being one of their heavier albums in general, because Suzerain is at least a 9
edited 29th Feb '16 12:49:00 AM by Alucard
Aztec Camera - High Land Hard Rain
The last 9 songs don't really stick with me very much yet. But Oblivious is such a great song that I don't really care. 7/10
Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot
As someone who enjoyed SP's first three albums, I expected to also enjoy this 1994 compilation album. However, I found that it wasn't really as enjoyable as some of their other works. First off, it's not a very memorable disc. Sure, there are some songs that I can remember and like, but about two thirds of this album feels a bit hollow. Second, a couple of the tracks seem like weird transitions from Siamese Dream to Mellon Collie.
I did, however, find a couple of the tracks easy to return to. These were Whir, Pissant, their cover of Landslide by Fleetwood Mac, Starla (whose ending I found to be the highlight of the entirety of Pisces Iscariot), La Dolly Vita, and Spaced. Really, though, I found that the most infuriating moment of this compilation to be the fact that as something that was designed to have a studio album-like order, it feels very wonky at points. 6/10.
edited 1st Mar '16 8:02:55 PM by golgothasArisen
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"Hacktivist — Outside the Box
This had been years in the making, though since I discovered them recently I didn't have to go through that excruciating wait. The album is solid, got that nice djent-rap that I love about the band, and the single have been mixed to sound much better than before.
The Dillinger Escape Plan, Option Paralysis
While not a bad album at all, I think this is the overall weakest in their Pusciato-era catalogue...this one's gonna take a few listens to grow on me.
Skrillex - Bangarang
- Narwhalz, The Church of the Pom Wizard—Well, that was very, very silly. I liked it.
- Sonic Youth, Murray Street—I must admit: Earlly '00s Sonic Youth may be best Sonic Youth, or at least slightly behind late '90s Sonic Youth. The two long tracks here are simple perfection.
- Thighpaulsandra, Rape Scene—Nothing like freely improvised experimental electronic/hard rock/jazz fusion music meant to soundtrack really kinky performance art to fall asleep to. Is there something wrong with me? Oh, probably, but what can you do.
- Also: Double Vulgar—On the one hand, I get why people were offended by this album, but on the other... seriously, guys, taking the bait like that is just sad. Solid album, in any case, although none of the tracks impressed me quite so much as the best material on I, Thighpaulsandra or The Golden Communion.
- Uboa, Sometimes Light—The production here was a bit on the dry side and a bit more structural tightness wouldn't hurt, but the fusion of doom metal tropes and the more expansive end of screamo seems like one that should have happened earlier.
The New Pornographers - Brill Bruisers
I really disliked this album when it came out, but it's growing on me. Nice keyboard riffs abound. The words still make no sense ever.