Briefly review something you heard recently (or are listening to now)

Scala & Kolacny Brothers - Dream On. They're best known for that cover of "Creep" that was in The Social Network trailer, and if you've heard that, that's basically the formula for the whole album: An all-woman choir backed by piano performing pop/rock covers ^note The one exception is "Go Where I Send Thee", which is a traditional spiritual and is done entirely a capella. The results are usually either eerie or heartwarming depending on the tone of the song - In particular, I have a "Fake Movie Soundtrack" playlist for songs I think have certain cinematic qualities, and their versions of 'Engel' and 'Underneath it All' were added there for a certain Ominous Latin Chanting-esque effect. Other than those, one of my favorites is "I Touch Myself", because, given the subject matter of the song, it's kind of hilarious to hear it performed in a way that makes it sound like a joyous religious hymn - since their "Creep" cover retains the Precision F-Strike, I have to assume at least someone knew exactly what they were doing there. Side note: I was fooled by a couple of simialrly named songs in the track-listing: I assumed the title track was going to be Aerosmith, not Depeche Mode, and similarly thought of No Doubt's "Underneath It All" before NIN's - I sort of would like to hear them do a version of the other "Dream On".

Hatsune Miku Project Diva F soundtrack: Now that I have all the songs on the game, I went through and gave them all a listen. There's quite a few good ones, and ones that aren't so great, but the whole game's soundtrack is stellar. (If only I could say the same for F 2nd...)

F's songlist is great for Vocaloid fans, as it covers a lot of song types and no two songs sound like the other (which is important in a ~40 song game.)

Specific songs to check out: Odds&Ends, ACUTE, Glasses, World's End Dancehall, Tengaku, Dream-Eating Monochrome Baku and Unhappy Refrain.

edited 15th Jan '15 6:10:05 PM by VolatileRaven

Various Artists - Nativity In Black and Nativity In Black, Vol. 2. Two Black Sabbath tribute albums released 5 years apart. Nowadays, they both kind of feel like time capsules of popular Heavy Metal / Hard Rock subgenres of their release - Just look at the track-lists of both and you may get an idea of why. I'm more partial to the first one, but I think that's partially because it came out just slightly before I was getting into newer metal, whereas the second one came out exactly when I was getting a bit disillusioned with it. For better or worse, the second one gets some credit for artists more willing to take creative liberties with the originals: On the first one, the greatest departure from the original was Type O Negative's even-slower-than-the-original goth metal version of "Black Sabbath" - elsewhere, everyone generally stuck to the arrangements of the originals while still adding just enough of their own flavor to proceedings. On the second one, we have, in order of quality: Static-X making an inhumanly fast Industrial Metal song out of the slow "Behind The Wall Of Sleep", System Of A Down turning "Snowblind" into something that could have fit in perfectly on Toxicity, Busta Rhymes turning "Iron Man" into an otherwise unrelated Rap Metal song that happens to sample the original and feature new Ozzy Osbourne vocals ^note And to be fair, I don't think this was originally meant for the tribute album, as it also appeared on a Busta Rhymes album one year earlier and Hed PE turning "Sabbra Cadabra" into frankly terrible, er, funk punk dub-reggae rap metal.

edited 7th Feb '15 2:49:53 PM by MikeK

Goddamn Draculas (aka The Drax) - The Drax. Alright, so there's some minor band name confusion going on here: As of their first full-length album, this band are apparently going by the Officially Shortened Title of The Drax, and "Goddamn Draculas" doesn't appear anywhere on the packaging, other than in their namesake song. It's a censorship thing, I guess? ^note  if so, it's a little odd that the radio edit of "Goddamn Draculas", included as a bonus track, doesn't censor the "god damn" part of the title drop... I am going to keep calling them Goddamn Draculas because I like that name better, god damn it. Anyway, I've seen them a few times, and this album does a pretty good job of capturing the energy of their live shows. For being a pretty straightforward rock band, their sound is a tiny bit hard to pin down in words - a mix of retro Hard Rock, Punk Rock, Power Pop, and a bit of Glam Rock I guess? There's even a surprisingly un-ironic Power Ballad (complete with Truck Driver's Gear Change) in "Considerate Lover".

edited 8th Feb '15 11:57:49 AM by MikeK

Prong - Cleansing. This came out a year before Deftones' debut, and I can definitely see it being an influence on their early material - though Terry Date's presence also adds to this. There's something very mid-90's about this album, but their sound is still unique enough to stand out from other Alternative Metal bands of the time - Industrial Metal and Groove Metal have been mixed before, but then there are also undercurrents of Post-Punk (mainly because of the contributions of Paul Raven) and even Hardcore Punk (mainly because of Tommy Victor's very gruff, heavily New-York-accented vocals). Bonus points for an unexpectedly hilarious liner notes gag: See, sometimes when you buy old records, inside the sleeve there will be a catalog of other albums by popular artists on the same label, usually including a few other albums by whatever band's record it's contained in... So Prong took what looks to be an actual Sony album insert circa 1970 or so, and replaced a few of the albums with their own back catalog, and it's pretty funny to see Prong album covers alongside the likes of Neil Diamond, Bobby Vinton, and REO Speedwagon.

Helmet - Aftertaste. Notably, the last album to include the original rhythm section, being John Stanier (drums) and Henry Bogdan (bass) - Afterwards, they became more of an I Am the Band sort of thing. This can be kind of pegged as their version of an Alternative Metal album - Or maybe it comes off that way just because on the whole, it's neither as heavy as Meantime (or the earlier material), nor as as experimental as Betty. Basically, the approach is applying typically heavy, "Helmet-y" arrangement to more straightforward, melodic vocal parts. Sometimes this approach does yield something interesting - "Renovation" is one of my favorite tracks for somehow combining Noise Rock and Power Pop in a non-jarring manner. "Like I Care" is a similarly paradoxical, er, heavy ballad - not a Power Ballad, mind you, just a song with the tempo and melody of a ballad, but played with the volume and intensity of a hard rock song. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, the rest of the album just doesn't have a lot to differentiate it from other alternative rock of the same period.

Taylor Swift - Red. Alright, so a few years ago, someone I know had "Stay Stay Stay" as a particularly unlikely selection for his "best of the year" mix, and I grew to like it as a simple but earwormy Silly Love Song. The local library happens to have a lot of her albums on cd, so I finally caved in and gave one a listen. Based off this album, I'm willing to at least call her a guilty pleasure, because there are some really good melodies beyond the singles.

Freezepop - Covers EP. Not a proper release, but a free, download-only compilation of previously released Cover Versions they gave to fans in exchange for joining their mailing list. It's a fun listen, particularly because it's arranged in rough chronological order, so you get to hear them change from deliberately minimal Synth-Pop to a more complex but still retraux sound. My favorite tracks are a particularly silly version of the Jem theme song, and a lovely synth-ballad-ized version of "Sweater Weather" by fellow Massachusetts band Parks. They actually so thoroughly synth-pop-ized the latter that, not knowing the original, I was convinced they were covering some obscure eighties ballad - turns out the original is a semi-recent, uptempo indie pop song.

edited 20th Mar '15 8:51:53 AM by MikeK

I just listened to the last two Dragonforce albums (The Power Within and Maximum Overload) and I have to say theyre much more enjoyable than the ultra-fast blur of the previous albums. While its pretty much standard power metal (though there are speedy tracks like Die By The Sword), its still enjoyable and memorable, and at least they didnt try to cash in on the symphonic power metal trend (outside of Blind Guardian and Luca Turrili i've gotten REALLY burnt out on that subgenre).

The Wonder Years - The Greatest Generation

A masterpiece. Holy shit, I'm just gonna say "this album hits like a freight train of feels" and leave it at that.

I always hear great things about The Wonder Years, and I want to try getting into them, but I gave the first few songs on their album Suburbia a listen and, I have to say, the sound grated on me really fast. They're competent and all, but the production choice of making it impossible to hear the vocals under the music bugged the hell out of me, especially when a) the lyrics are supposedly the main focus in their music, and b) musically, the songs are pretty bog-standard pop punk that doesn't really sound too distinct from anything else I've heard before.

No Doubt - Rock Steady. I've been using my local library's CD collection as an opportunity to check out 1) genres outside my normal listening habits (e.g. blues, jazz), and 2) things I would have dismissed as "too mainstream" or whatever when they first came out. Anyway, this is only the second No Doubt album I've ever heard, the other one being of course Tragic Kingdom: It's one of those "multiple producers" albums and very much feels like it, but at the same time it can mainly be broken up into reggae (or dancehall) songs and dance/New Wave songs. Despite their roots in Ska Punk, the reggae-indebted songs tend to feel kind of awkward and belabored to me, whereas the new wave tracks are generally pretty catchy and fun. My favorite track on first listen is "Don't Let Me Down" - It's one of two tracks Ric Ocasek produced and co-wrote, and it has a total Heartbeat City feel to it.

edited 4th Sep '15 8:40:16 AM by MikeK

Iron Maiden - "The Book Of Souls": This has got to be the best thing Maiden has put out in 25 years. It's like they took everything that worked about their modern output - the dark, complex melodies and progressive compositions - and merged those elements with the intricate riffing and driving intensity of their classic work. The first two tracks are merely very good, but starting with "The Red and the Black," a 13 minute piece that one might expect to find closing out any of their earlier albums, they expertly blend the anthemic shout-along choruses and progressive passages that usually end up seeming at odds with each other. Special mention must go to "Empire of the Clouds," the 18 minute epic that ends the album. This song is their best closer since "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and takes you on an incredible journey that marks some of Maiden's most beloved work. They've absolutely knocked this one out of the park.

They Might Be Giants - Mink Car. Not my favorite TMBG album, but it's got a handful of tracks I'd put on my personal "best of", and there's some definite personal attachment involved: My first time seeing them at an actual rock club ^note I previously had seen them at a free outdoor show was on the tour supporting this album, I was involved in a now-abandoned fan community at the time so I remember the excitement building up to it, my girlfriend at the time was also a fan so I'm pretty sure we listened to it together at some point... and on a less positive note, it happened to come out on September 11, 2001 - that fan-produced FDNY benefit cover album kind of cemented that last association, but in a weirdly uplifting way: It just feels good to listen to a catchy, somewhat silly album on a date that's attached to sad memories.

edited 17th Sep '15 7:29:29 PM by MikeK

Aw, Mink Car has always been my favorite album of theirs. I feel like it's overall their most consistently strong, as most of their albums I feel like there are always a few tracks that kind of drag the experience down.

On that listen I decided it's better than I give it credit for. The initial things I didn't like about it were 1) a handful of songs were recycled from non-album releases when we could have had more truly "new" songs ("Older", "She Thinks She's Edith Head", "Working Undercover For The Man"), and 2) a few songs that I just decided were "too goofy" for their own good ("Wicked Little Critta", "Mr. Xcitement", and "I've Got A Fang"). Nowadays the repeated songs aren't a big deal at all to me and I don't see those other songs as being any more "goofy" than some of their earlier material.

Toadies - Rubberneck. Kind of another nostalgia-based listen, this time spurred on by finding a short documentary that gets into the recording of the album and the inspirations behind all of the songs. I listened to this album a lot as a teenager because I happened to buy it when I only had a handful of other CDs. It's a very mid-90's album, but it holds up well because of tight musicianship, Vaden Todd Lewis' unique vocal style, and a certain unplaceable swampy, ominous vibe. Most amusing fact I discovered via that documentary: I always found it particularly weird/creepy that the very first thing the Stalker with a Crush narrator of "Tyler" does after breaking into his crush's house is grab a beer out of her refrigerator... It turns out that line is just there because Vaden Todd Lewis was having trouble coming up with the next lyric, then grabbed a beer out of the studio fridge and decided that's what the character in the song should do next too.

Eric B. & Rakim - Paid in Full. On first listen, the Seinfeld Is Unfunny effect is in play, but in a way that actually makes things more interesting: See, part of the reason they were considered innovative was Rakim using internal rhyme and a smooth, sedate vocal delivery, both of which are pretty common in hip-hop today... But the overall effect is that the vocals feel more "modern" than the music does - I feel like you could play some of these songs to someone today and they'd guess they were hearing a modern rapper who was paying homage to eighties rap rather than something actually from the eighties.

edited 17th Sep '15 8:27:52 PM by MikeK

Mayhem - Chimera: A stylistic return to form after Grand Declaration of War, this album has some shockingly clean production values, something definitely not heard often in the realm of black metal. Somehow quite underrated, as there are quite a few great songs on here ("My Death" and "You Must Fall" are particular favorites of mine). Honestly, more black metal could use production like this album has, it might help.

Various - The X Files Fight The Future soundtrack. Like Songs In The Key Of X, this doesn't have a lot of music actually heard in the source material, but does mostly consist of previously unreleased songs. This is a bit more hit or miss when it comes to fitting the overall feel of the show, but has some really good tracks. A couple of songs surprised me by being much better than I anticipated: I tend to find Sarah McLachlan's music pretty boring, but the remix of "Black" included here is suitably eerie, and then there's Noel Gallagher doing something completely different from his main project of the time, namely a piano-based Trip Hop instrumental titled "Teotihuacan".

Blue Angel - Blue Angel. Before making her name as a solo artist, Cyndi Lauper was the vocalist for this short-lived band, who only produced one album. The other wiki calls them Rockabilly^note PS: Somehow I'm amused that when you type "rockabilly" in the tv tropes search bar, you get the Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly trope as the first result, with the rockabilly genre second, but to my ears only four out of the twelve songs fit into that genre, with the rest emulating other popular music styles of the same era (such as r and b, doo wop, and the original girl groups). I'm not all that much of a Cyndi Lauper fan, but this turned up on a Livejournal music community I follow, and I was curious - It's a pretty fun album, and her voice is a surprisingly good fit for this style of music.

No Trend - Teen Love. My friend has a college radio show and played the title song to this EP on his show, and I was intrigued. The obvious comparison point is Flipper - In fact, when first hearing "Teen Love" itself, I decided it was sort of as though Flipper had done their own detached, nihilistic take on the Teenage Death Songs trope. Sometimes they're if anything less musical than Flipper though, as in "Mass Sterilization Caused By Venereal Disease", which I'm oddly tempted to do an all acapella cover of sometime.

edited 25th Sep '15 8:24:53 PM by MikeK

Various - The Last Of The Garage Punk Unknowns, Volumes 1 and 2. Like the title suggests, this compiles songs from little-known Garage Rock bands. It's not an absolute must, but it's pretty fun if you're into the genre. On first listen there's a few good, original melodies surrounded by songs where the main appeal is attitude, Three Chords and the Truth, and/or similarity to other 60's songs. The liner notes mention a lot of these groups getting their starts as cover bands, so I think the suspiciously similar songs grew out of that: Maybe you're working on original material and you've noticed live audiences really like your version of "Louie Louie", so your first inclination is to write something just different enough from that, or your jam on "96 Tears" goes off-key and gives you a song idea.

Halestorm - Into The Wild Life. First original album I've heard of theirs. It gets a little more pop/aor than I'd like at times, but I like the more rocking half of the album - even the most aggressive songs have glossy, pop-ish production, but that kind of works because they're partially evoking the heavier side of Hair Metal.

edited 13th Oct '15 5:56:43 PM by MikeK

Will Butler - Policy. There are some small signs that this is a solo album by an Arcade Fire member, but the whole point seems to be to explore influences outside of his better-known band. He cites Violent Femmes as one of his influences on this album, which I can see. There are moments when he's kind of imitating Gordon Gano's distinctive yelp, but otherwise the Femmes influence is more general: (Mostly) uptempo songs with a certain loose feel to them, an overall short run-time (28 minutes), and a tendency to mix serious and irreverent lyrics within the same song. My favorite example of the latter is from "Take My Side": "I'd tell you why / But I'm having problems with my words / and if I could fly / you know I'd beat the shit out of some birds".

edited 5th Nov '15 9:59:25 AM by MikeK

Sonic Youth - Teenage Riot

This is the only Sonic Youth song I've ever really gotten the urge to listen to, the rest of Daydream Nation hasn't clicked for me. But this song makes me wish it did. I'm not a big fan of the kinda mellow opening with Kim Gordon vocals, but once Thurston Moore begins singing, it's awesome. I love that vocal melody.

It took a while, but I've come to like the Kim Gordon-led portion of that song - to me, the riff to the main part just wouldn't feel as epic without some buildup to it.

of Montreal - Aureate Gloom. This is going to take a few listens to get a handle on, like most Of Montreal I've heard, but it's an intriguing direction for them. Admittedly, the last album of theirs I heard is nearly a decade old now (Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? from 2007), but I haven't heard an Of Montreal album this heavy on distorted guitars before: It's still as eclectic and restless-sounding as a typical Of Montreal album, but the guitar sound tends to add the artier side of 70's punk (e.g. Television, early Talking Heads, Richard Hell And The Voidoids, possibly even The Stranglers) to the usual mix of glam, funk, and psychedelic rock.

edited 1st Dec '15 9:53:53 AM by MikeK

So, a little time ago I found out there was going to be a new Sunless Rise album shortly, six years after their first EP. Needless to say, I was gladly shocked they didn't simply disband.

Now the album, called Unrevealed, is released, I'm glad to say it's the best melodic death metal I heard in quite a good while. It expands on the EP (re-recording the four songs it had, adding six others) and does very well in also expanding the overall feel of the whole thing, with those new additions sounding quite different from the older songs, but not feeling out of place. The end result is an album full of energy, melody and atmosphere. The singing might make purists twitch their eyebrows, but it's surprisingly easy to get used to.

One nice thing is the lyrics (or what you can make out of it); they're also an expansion on the EP. It tells an awesome story about a man who ended up erasing humanity with global warming and entered a spiritual journey to find out about himself and the humanity he doomed. Too bad it's impossible to know that without actually reading the lyrics, since, in addition to screams and guturals, the whole thing is full of Engrish. The music itself follows the lyrics quite well, getting more intense as the story gets darker, and more melodic with words of peace; this is obvious in "Recovering the Truth" and the two following songs.

You can listen to the whole thing at their Bandcamp page if you want.

Run The Jewels - Meow The Jewels. Run The Jewels 2 was one of my favorite albums last year, but I kept away from this remix album 'til now - Basically, they originally proposed the idea of remixing the album with cat samples as a joke, but the fans ran with it and convinced them to actually do it. I don't think I'm ever listening to this again, but to be fair, I don't think it's designed to be listened to more than once: I think you're just meant to put it on, be baffled that it exists for 40 minutes, then put it away. I will say that the producers they hired managed to make some interesting, even melodic hip-hop beats out of meows and purrs, just not enough to make a whole listenable album. It's also mildly amusing that a few of the songs happened to already include the word "pussy", which is of course gets a new context with cat samples in the background. My favorite example is "Good pussy, good marijuana / that be my medicine", which now gives me the adorable mental image of Killer Mike relieving stress by getting high and playing with cats.

edited 13th Jan '16 9:32:41 AM by MikeK

Kesha - Animal. I did not think I would ever find myself willingly consuming a full Kesha album; As I mentioned in another thread, it had to do with reading a book about the making of contemporary pop music called The Song Factory, where Kesha and Katy Perry (who I'll be listening to later) got their own chapters. I ended up liking this more than I thought I would, which means I like maybe 2/3 of it. First of all, listening to it now years after it's height of popularity, I've just remembered how "Tiktok" was a relatively strange hit: I mean here's this girl rapping in a deliberately irritating valley girl accent over almost-chiptune sounding synths, then breaking into a europop chorus. I'd say about half of the album loosely follows the "Tiktok" formula, but with enough variation that it stays fairly fresh. There are also some ballads that to me don't quite work (or maybe it's just that, despite being handled by the same producers they don't quite match with the surrounding material), though I'd call the title track one of said ballads, and that's sort of the best song on the album thanks to a really good power ballad style chorus. Other highlights: "D.I.N.O.S.A.U.R." ^note I like the super-minimal eighties production, which kind of splits the difference between new wave and something like "Girls" by The Beastie Boys, "Party At A Rich Dude's House" ^note the use of electric guitar kind of brings a bubblegum Hair Metal flavor to the proceedings, which fits the subject matter pretty well. This is at least something I see myself breaking out again as a Guilty Pleasure, and I kind of want to check out Warrior, since that's the one with guest appearances by The Strokes and Iggy Pop of all people.

edited 27th Jan '16 10:43:14 PM by MikeK

Paranoid by Black Sabbath: I am surprised I never heard this album before. Now, I'm very familiar with the major hits of this album, namely War Pigs, Iron Man, and the title track. I've always believed the first two are some of the best tracks heavy metal can offer. Paranoid, meanwhile... It's a bit overrated, in my opinion. It's a bit too quick and it doesn't really have much of the dark and brooding lyrics that Black Sabbath is known for.

The album itself is absolutely wonderful. While some tracks (Paranoid and Hand of Doom) don't have much staying power, there are some unsung gems here. For example, Planet Caravan is a marvelous space rock track with Ozzy Osbourne using a strange and warped singing voice. It's also a weird pick for the album, being about a couple traveling through space.

One of the best moments of the entire album is the seventh track Rat Salad, a song that focuses on simple guitar riffs matched with complex drumming courtesy of Bill Ward. It's definitely a huge challenge for drummers, which just shows how great Ward is. All in all, it's an awe-inspiring metal record that deserves almost all of the praise it gets. 9.5/10.