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

Weezer - All My Favorite Songs. In which Weezer go Baroque Pop. So basically Weezer had two albums in the works recently- Despite already having 3 singles released pre-covid, the hard rock/power pop Van Weezer is apparently shelved until they can tour supporting it... but the softer, more acoustic-based OK Human is out in about a week. I quite like this song - the hook is catchy and while the songwriting really isn't that different from the past couple albums, the use of acoustic instruments keeps it fresh. Much as I just want to finally hear Van Weezer, maybe this is a more fitting album for the times. The Van Weezer singles seemed pitched for jumping up and down at an arena rock show, this is more the kind of song you listen to alone in your bedroom.

Edited by MikeK on Jan 21st 2021 at 4:39:01 AM

Daft Punk - Human After All / Human After All (Remixes). So, I'm in the middle of a Daft Punk binge, and I decided I was going all in by including the remix albums. Human After All has a few great tracks, but on first listen it gets repetitive - by no means a bad album but I can kinda tell why it tends to be the lowest rated Daft Punk album. Weirdly, while a bit repetitive in song selection ^note "Technologic" and the title track are remixed 5 times each, meaning 2/3 of the album is variations on the same 2 songs, the remix album is pretty good - maybe because the original songs tended to be somewhat simplistic, the remixers had more room to add their own touches to the songs, giving the remix album more variety (compared to previous remix album Daft Club). My favorites are Peaches' synth-punk cover of "Technologic", and Emperor Machine's remix of "Human After All", which gives it more of a krautrock feel.

Paul Leary - Born Stupid. The second solo album by the Butthole Surfers guitarist. While mostly softer than the Butthole Surfers' usual work, it's definitely no less weird, with the overall feel being demented, weird-vocal-effect-obsessed, often lyrically dissonant country music. There's even a couple of drastically rearranged Butthole Surfers "covers", namely a bouncy organ-led take on "The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave" and a Softer and Slower Cover of "Gary Floyd".

Edited by MikeK on Apr 16th 2021 at 12:56:07 PM

Mötley Crüe - Motley Crue. I'm currently trying to listen to this band's full discography. This album is primarily known as the one where one of the most iconic Hair Metal bands tried to go "grunge" to keep up with the 90's rock scene. The thing is they actually weren't bad at this style, and I like this better than some of the more "in character" albums they have. They come up with some good epic riffs and grooves here, and even some of the ballads fare decently - "Loveshine" successfully blends "alternative" elements into a Power Ballad, with a vibe I'd compare to Chris Cornell's "Seasons" ^note released a couple years earlier on the Cult Soundtrack to Singles. The biggest flaw is it just feels too damn long - this is my second listen to the album, and both times I started out fairly into it and got bored about halfway through. I guess it's something to do with the fact that even though there's only 12 tracks on the standard edition, 8 of those are over 5 minutes, with the longest being nearly 7. I'd say cut at least 2 or 3 tracks and you'd have a solid hard rock/grunge album that had the words "Motley Crue" all over the cover for some reason.

The weirdest thing I've discovered in my Mötley Crüe binge: Skinny Puppy remixed one of the tracks from the above album. Two acts I wouldn't have suspected had anything to do with each other... Maybe someone in the Motley Crue was a fan and that's why their next album had them experimenting with industrial metal style production ^note  other than the more obvious Were Still Relevant Dammit factor, since Nine Inch Nails, Filter, Rob Zombie, etc were all having commercial success with the style. It's actually kind of cool - starts out just like the original with some added effects before gradually getting more disorienting and skuppy-like, before a segue back to the hard rock feel like nothing happened.

Edited by MikeK on Apr 18th 2021 at 5:00:58 AM

I just did a major The B-52s binge that is technically completed, but now I also might be looking into the members' other work. Fred Schneider has two "solo" albums, and more recently a band called The Superions, while Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson each have their own solo albums. Right now I've just listened to the two Fred albums, and I might try the Kate and Cindy albums before anything else, because that's kind of a lot of Fred honestly:

Fred Schneider and Shake Society - self-titled (1984). Kate and Cindy show up on 4 out of 9 tracks (including first single "Monster"), and while it's often a bit "funkier" and synth-oriented than your average B-52's, it can't help but feel like a B-52's album where the other two singers were locked out of the studio most of the time. It's got its fun moments I'd throw in to a "best of" B-52s mix ^note or even use as left-field selections in a Halloween mix: "Monster" is pretty much a sophomorically amusing, campy dick joke ("there's a monster in my pants, and it does a nasty dance..."), while "Summer In Hell" is a take on the A Hell of a Time trope, wherein Fred goes to hell but doesn't mind because all the fun people go there anyway.

Fred Schneider - Just Fred (1996). I picked this up cheap in a used cd store a while ago just out of curiosity. Unlike his previous solo work, this does not sound much like B-52s: Fred got together in the studio with a few different rock bands ^note Six Finger Satellite, Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet, and Deadly Cupcake, an ensemble put together especially for the album that includes members of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Didjits and Tar over the course of a few weeks with Steve Albini producing, and made a punk/alternative rock album. It's generally pretty cool actually, with hints of some of the more raucous, punk and surf guitar rock influenced bits of B52s, but also early Pixies and Dead Kennedys - I feel like I could play someone "Sugar In My Hog" and convince them it was a rare unreleased DK track where Jello was making fun of some angry macho biker type he met once.

Edited by MikeK on Aug 25th 2022 at 6:28:07 AM

I'm trying to listen to the whole Metallica discography, but I think I'm giving myself a break this weekend - an informal rule I'm giving myself is that every time I hit a live album I can stop for a couple days. Right now I've just finished S & M - the intentionally awkwardly titled live collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, said to stand for "Symphony and Metallica". It's a cool idea, though the results are kind of mixed - when it works the effect can be awesome (the opening pairing of "The Ecstasy of Gold" and "The Call of Ktulu" is pretty great), when it doesn't it can almost feel like you're trying to listen to a Metallica album while someone in the room next to you is blaring a movie soundtrack or something. The two new songs, "No Leaf Clover" and "- Human" are surprisingly good and kinda harken back to the Black Album - kind of makes me wonder what it would have been like if they did a whole album along the lines of those songs and "I Disappear" instead the infamous St. Anger.

The Dee Gees - Hail Satin. So, truthfully, the full album is five studio covers of The Bee Gees and five live performances of songs from the last Foo Fighters album - I was only interested in the covers and skipped the live part entirely, so that's the only part I'm going to talk about. I can't really see wanting to listen to this more than a couple times, but it's fun - there's an ounce of self-awareness about the silliness of an Alternative Rock / Post-Grunge band playing Disco, but you can tell they must really unironically appreciate these songs, because other than using heavier guitar tones, they've copied the arrangements almost perfectly. Dave Grohl even uses his falsetto most of the time, which means outside of a few seconds on certain songs, his singing is almost fully unrecognizable. But the thing is, they've actually come so close to the originals that once the novelty wears off you might as well just listen to the original. I can see myself listening to this maybe 2 or 3 more times total - the third would probably just putting it on around a friend and seeing how surprised they are when I show them it's the new Foo Fighters.

On the Metallica thing, I've finally gotten up to the infamous St. Anger, and followed it up by watching Some Kind Of Monster, the rockumentary about making the album. The movie made me appreciate why the album is what it is - in particular, I think it's Bob Rock who says something about the early sessions being like a band jamming in a garage for the first time, but that band is Metallica. And the album does sound like that, but in a bad way - even aside from the overly harsh mix and that infamous snare sound, songs with just a few different sections go on for 7-8 minutes when you could edit them down to half the length without missing anything.

The Wrong Place by Hooverphonic is not bad. The meaning ain't too ambigus, and the melody is pretty good.

Is This Thing Cursed? - Alkaline Trio.

It pinpoints my troubles and melancholy with and due to Rarijack almost excactly. The lyrics ain't ambigous at all, this song is about melancholy and misery. The background music is also really good, catchy and nice-sounding.

Shakira - Grandes Exitos. I'm learning Spanish with Duolingo and I thought it would be fun to go to the local library, try to find an album in Spanish, and look up translations of lyrics as I listen to it - Grandes Exitos means Greatest Hits, and it features songs from two Spanish language albums as well as Spanish versions of a couple songs from her first English album. I actually like this more musically than I thought it I would, perhaps because it's more guitar-oriented than the kind of music I normally associate this artist with. I feel like, if something like "Que me Quedes Tu" got an English translation and was promoted in America, you'd hear it on the "adult alternative" format, not pop radio.

Mouse Rat - The Awesome Album. I enjoyed Parks and Recreation, and I enjoy a good Fake Band gimmick: Mouse Rat are resident Cloud Cuckoolander Andy Dwyer's band, with his actor Chris Pratt doing the singing and guitar playing. Putting aside six covers of pop standards ^note taken from a subplot where they had to play a Valentine's Day party at a senior center and two bonus tracks by other fake bands from the show, there's two kinds of songs here: Ones that are more obviously over-the-top jokes ("5,000 Candles In The Wind", "Sex Hair") and ones that could pass for a "real" band that's overly influenced by all the Post-Grunge and Jangle Pop that was prominent in the mid-90s. The former had the initial appeal for me, but the latter are kinda growing on me already - neither are usually the style of rock I'm into, but these songs are frequently short and catchy.

Last time I checked in here during a full discography binge, it was Metallica, now it's Slayer. Maybe I'll eventually get to Anthrax and Megadeth and have a full set of the "big four":

Undisputed Attitude. Slayer's Hardcore Punk Cover Album... For the most part anyway: there's also one cover/parody of Proto Punk act The Stooges, two "covers" of Jeff Hanneman's unreleased punk side project Pap Smear, and one true Slayer original that doesn't sound anything like the rest of the album. This is fairly fun when it's on, and it gave me a couple of more obscure hardcore bands to check out sometime (e.g. Verbal Abuse, who I've otherwise never heard of, performed three of these songs originally)... But not a lot of replay value, and the Pap Smear tracks are the ones that fare the best, kinda making me wish they actually tried to write an original, hardcore-influenced album instead.

Slayer - Diabolus In Musica. Slayer's Groove Metal album. While still recognizable as Slayer, this album features a production style that focuses on the low-end a bit more, and most songs have at least one section more focused on groove than pure speed. Mark Prindle even calls "Love To Hate" a rap metal song in his review, which I can kinda see - the verses, which are the more "groovin'" part, have vocals that, if not exactly "rapped", then are at least "rhythmically barked on one note". For the most part it works, and they usually manage to fit their signature elements into a more "modern" heavy album without embarrassing themselves.

Edited by MikeK on Dec 8th 2021 at 5:12:17 AM

Taylor Swift - Red (Taylor's Version). As of now I've just gotten to disc 1, which is a track-by-track re-record of the standard edition of the original 2012 album. The least "sonically cohesive" of her albums still sounds good - it was my entry point to her music, and it might be an even better starting point for someone just deciding to start listening to her now, because in retrospect it has a little bit of almost every style of music she's tried so far in her career: you've got hints of dance pop ("22", "I Knew You Were Trouble", "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"), maybe a couple songs that are just vaguely "country" enough that they could have fit in on previous albums ("Stay Stay Stay"), and some songs that even predict the "indie folk" of folklore (2020) and evermore (2020) - I think the allmusicguide review of the original Red even compared "Sad Beautiful Tragic" to Mazzy Star. One thing that's a little weird/interesting to me is that a couple of songs had Studio Chatter on the original album, and the new recordings replicate those bits in order to be as faithful to the original release as possible.

Edited by MikeK on Jan 20th 2022 at 9:30:08 AM

I finally listened to MBV’s self-titled and it was decent. There’s a lot of stuff I enjoyed here; In Another Way is energetic and fun as hell, while If I Am has this abstract sound kinda reminiscent of an Isn’t Anything cut. She Found Now and Is This And Yes are also cool experiments into this ambient-ish sound and synth-based stuff respectively. Only Tomorrow is cool too, though I don’t really know what to say about it.

Also, the idea of putting together drum n’ bass and shoegaze is really something I can get behind. And it works for the most part, even if I feel it’s something that could have been executed better.

There were a few stinkers here, though, all of which honestly got worse as they went along. Who Sees You just feels like a worse rehash of Only Shallow from Loveless, and New You is an alright dance tune that feels really bare. Nothing Is is just really repetitive, literally the same riff repeated over and over that just gets louder (at least Glider had more guitar screeching added). And the less we say about Wonder 2, better.

Honestly, even the tracks I like feel kinda forgettable. Aside from In Another Way and She Found Now, a lot of it just doesn’t feel as interesting, especially compared to Loveless; there’s nothing here like Only Shallow or Loomer’s crushing guitar tones, the ethereal droning of To Here Knows When, Soon’s danceable rhythms, not even the WTFness of Touched.

Again, it's decent, but as a follow-up to a landmark album like Loveless it just feels really disappointing.

7/10 overall.

1. Loveless (1991)
2. Isn’t Anything (1989)
3. MBV (2013)

Edited by Routeferret on Mar 5th 2022 at 10:23:34 AM

I love You’re The One by S+C+A+R+R. It’s catchy AND cozy, so you will really like having it stuck in yer head.

Anthony Head and George Sarah - Music For Elevators. I wanted to like this more than I did - the singing is very good throughout, and I give it points for ambition: See, this was released in 2002, when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was still airing, it has vocal cameos by Buffy cast members and a song composed by Joss Whedon, and his first "The Cast Showoff" moment on that show had him singing "Behind Blue Eyes", so one might expect an acoustic album including "Behind Blue Eyes" and a couple other cover songs ^note I haven't listened to it, but apparently that's more like what his eventual followup Staring at The Sun is like. Instead, this is a collaboration with electronic musician George Sarah that leans towards electro-acoustic trip hop, and while there is one "classic rock" cover, The Beatles' "We Can Work It Out", that too is performed as a jazzy trip hop song. The thing is while there are some memorable tracks, it does start to blend together stylistically after a while. Maybe I'll give it another try sometime - it seems like it's kind of a "rainy day" album.

Edited by MikeK on Jul 26th 2022 at 8:24:41 AM

Lindsey Stirling - Ice Storm

The next album is going to be her second "Christmas Album", but because Christmas is still pretty far away, the first single isn't that Christmassy - we've got an Animated Music Video about a deer escaping a wolf pack in a winter storm, some general "wintry" vibes, and a "classical metal" arrangement that's supposed to remind one of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but nothing you couldn't put on the jukebox in late August without someone looking at you funny for playing Christmas music already. Actually, the very fact that this is an original instrumental has me more invested in another Christmas album than I would be otherwise - all the Warmer In The Winter originals had vocals, so this is a sign that she's trying to make this album distinct from the last one.

Edited by MikeK on Aug 25th 2022 at 6:48:24 AM

Elf - Elf. So, Elf were Ronnie James Dio's first project that even approached the heavy metal he's associated with today... but even then there's some minor Early-Installment Weirdness - they were moderately heavy by 1972 standards but they were primarily blues-influenced, as evidenced by song titles like "Hoochie Koochie Lady" and "Gambler, Gambler". I also never expected to hear so much Little Richard / Jerry Lee Lewis style rock and roll piano on a Dio-related album. Only "Never More" points the way to future Dio-ness, and that's a power ballad (which still has just a little piano boogie to it). Overall it's a fun listen but it kind of feels like it could be any better than average bar band of the time.

gangpol & mit - the hopelessly sad story of the hideous end of the world - glitch pop, progressive pop, sequence and tracker

thanks, youtube recommendations!

this is a concept album about the 24 hours before, what else, the end of the world. the story itself is a bit disjointed, but it essentially goes over the event from a range of perspectives; a "lonely gamer" (overture), musicians (only sure thing about luck/don't forget the art), wildlife (holy dance of the spirits in the forest), etc.

the best i can describe this album is "experimental music for children"; it has all these dark themes, glitchy textures, complex writing, but all of it's applied to bright, hooky picopop. plus there's mit's art direction, which looks like it came straight out of some mid/late-2000s kids show a la yo gabba gabba. this was honestly the main draw for me, these two sides play off each other really well and its perfectly foreboding while remaining happy and innocent on surface level.

as for my personal highlights, "the story of william wire" essentially sums up the album's sound and themes in a snappy 3-and-a-half minutes; "don't forget the art" is a sombre, slower number that breaks up the rest of the album really well; "chinese slavery" skitters along, introducing an endless number of memorable motifs; and "when everything is gonna end" is a slow, dreamy shuffle that closes the album perfectly.

fav tracks: don't forget the art, the story of william wire, overture

9/10

Edited by Routeferret on Oct 24th 2022 at 12:24:14 PM

/f - laugh crou (copied from rym)

this is...an interesting album. it's very chaotic and abstract, sounds like importing some sort of weird specialized file as "raw data" in audacity or something. it gives me Gantz Graf vibes.

track 1, "love just socketed" jumps right into the chaos, not even giving a second of rest before diving straight into the sonic mass of glitched-out data. a couple of parts in it sound a bit like really demented neuro-basses, angrily growling for a few seconds before drowning in the constant wave of glitched quasi-rhythms. this track is pretty good overall, except for that annoying high-pitched tinnitus-like noise that appears at around 19 minutes in

track 2, "the jazz banner" is slightly more unremarkable (as in, i have less to write about it) but still very good. the mainly abstract nature of the album breaks off slightly here, with the occasional piano note interrupting the stream of broken file before skipping right back to it. there's also a xylophone-ish synth thing that apprears at around 6 minutes in to the track as well. it seems to build up a rhythm occasionally, before abandoning it as quickly as it adopted it to switch to the pure chaos the album is known for.

overall, this album is pretty weird, but god damn is it interesting. definitely check it out if you can, even if it's just to see what it's possible to do with the sounds of mechanical malfunction.

rating given: high 9/10

Weezer - Winter (2022). This is the last of their "seasons" series, short releases meant to reflect the four seasons ala Vivaldi. All of these have been a mixed bag to some degree, but I feel like this is a pretty strong finish to the project. While there's some of the acoustic melancholy vibe the band were talking about (even making Elliott Smith comparisons), sections of it are surprisingly rocking.

Imagene Peise (Aka Flaming Lips) - Atlas Eets Christmas (2014). Flaming Lips go under a pseudonym to bring you avant garde psychedelic easy listening Christmas music. Christmas seems to be an Author Appeal thing for this band, from their 1995 song "Christmas at the Zoo" to creating and starring in a 2008 arthouse/sci-fi movie called Christmas On Mars. Anyway, better than it sounds? It's nostalgic and a little unsettling at the same time, because there's all these familiar holiday melodies but they're presented in this warped, sometimes very unfamiliar way - a nice touch is that there's often this kind of audible crackling effect in the background, which I think is supposed to make you think of both a fireplace and music played off an old dusty record.

Edited by MikeK on Dec 21st 2022 at 6:13:59 AM

I've been listening to Jhariah's The Great Tale of How I Ruined It All (2018) a lot lately. There's a great story running throughout; the protagonist is the only person with free will in a story set After the End, and hides in the one safe place remaining. Survivor Guilt begins to set in, but he eventually goes to try saving everyone for the good of the world... and the Spoiler Title should give away just how well that goes. The lyrics are hardcore and powerful, the emotional arc is great and well-communicated, and there's a good amount of foreshadowing and recurring themes that make it very rewarding to revisit. My favorite tracks here are "Promises", "These 4 Walls", and "The Great Tale of How I Ruined It All".

If there's one thing I didn't like, it's that the sound quality is a bit low. I realize it might be intentional, but it's a bit jarring to go from the crisp quality of A Beginner's Guide to Faking Your Death to the slightly muffled tracks here. I slightly prefer Great Tale over Beginner's Guide, mainly due to the latter's less original material and shorter length, but they're both amazing overall.

I decided Queen is the next artist I will binge on (all the proper studio albums, jury's out whether I'm going to include "Queen + Paul Rodgers"), starting with:

Queen (1973). Some minor Early-Installment Weirdness: This is primarily a Hard Rock / Progressive Rock album, and while both of those genres would show up throughout their career, they would become much more eclectic. It is a pretty good album in that vein, Freddie Mercury is already a very charismatic vocalist at this point, and some of Brian May's guitar leads do have the epic, orchestral qualities I associate with the band. On the downside, the more Epic Rocking length tracks can be a bit incoherent (especially "Liar"), and it feels like it could use a few more poppy tracks to break things up - maybe it doesn't help that it feels like they "front-loaded" the album with the two poppiest songs, "Keep Yourself Alive" and "Doing Alright".

Edited by MikeK on Mar 14th 2023 at 4:26:50 AM

sing to god by cardiacs

it's undeniably great and incredibly-written but also, to me at least, very draining; not just because of the length (22 tracks adding up to an hour and 22 minutes) but also the sheer amount of stuff going on in each track (on my first listen i genuinely got overstimulated and shut the album off partway through the first side). light 8/10 nonetheless, also "manhoo", "wireless", "dirty boy", and "nurses whispering verses" are near-perfect.

Edited by Routeferret on May 17th 2023 at 8:11:18 PM

I am now long done with the Queen stuff and into music from 1999:

Ministry - The Dark Side of the Spoon. This one has actually grown on me since last time I tried to listen- on the surface very similar to the previous album Filth Pig but simultaneously a little bit more experimental and a little bit more humorous. For the arty factor there's unconventional use of banjos in "Nursing Home" and two different songs with free jazz saxophone juxtaposed with the usual industrial metal sludge. The humor is mainly "Step", a sarcastic song about the kind of self-aggrandizing press releases put out by celebrities entering rehab, but I'm also now convinced that "Eureka Pile" is a deliberate self parody of their angsty image, due to lyrics like "I always wake up angry 'cause I always wake up me" and the fact that Al chooses to sing the whole song in a strange, whiny "southern old man" accent he's never used for anything else..

The Fall (Band) - The Marshall Suite. A couple catchy but misleadingly punk/garage rock style numbers, followed by what turns out to be one of their more electronica influenced albums. Apparently a concept album that chronicles the life of a character called "The Crying Marshal", not that you can tell most of the time.

Grip Inc. - Solidify. I decided to listen to this because Dave Lombardo was in the band. Most sources call them Groove Metal but I don't really see it in this album. If anything it comes off more as heavy post punk, like if Killing Joke were just slightly more metal. Cool style though.

Fountains of Wayne - Utopia Parkway. Almost a concept album in that most songs are kind of character studies about different types of people living in a suburban area, ranging from a sympathetic portrayal of an alcoholic housewife to a comical portrait of teens who are probably way too excited about a planetarium laser show.

Dr. Dre - 2001. I decided I wanted something appropriate for 4/20. The production is great but it's kinda brought down any time someone other than Dre, Snoop Dogg or Eminem takes the mic, as none of the other featured M Cs have enough distinct character.

Edited by MikeK on May 3rd 2024 at 9:31:21 AM

Paul McCartney - Run Devil Run and Working Classical. I'm still on the 1999 thing, and also on Mother's Day I like to listen to Paul because he makes me think of my late mom, so I looked up whether Paul did anything in '99 so I could do both - he had two albums that year, though neither were fully new, original material - Run Devil Run is a 50s rock and roll Cover Album (with three originals) and Working Classical is a mix of original classical compositions and classical-style rearrangements of his solo songs and Wings material. I don't think I'm likely to revisit either, but both sounded good when they were on - Run Devil Run kind of has the vibe of those early Beatles cover songs, Working Classical made for pleasant background music if nothing else.

The 69 Eyes - Wasting The Dawn. "Gothic" acts from the era I'd heard of but never really given a listen part one. Evidently they started as purely a glam metal band before gradually adding more Goth Rock elements and, well... how can I say that this kinda sounds like a glam metal band's idea of a goth rock album and make it clear that I mean that as a compliment? I guess I mean you've got the loud sleaziness of glam metal plus the over the top theatricality of goth - which means it's a lot of fun and feels like something a gang of vampire bikers would listen to in a cheesy horror movie. I especially like the title track as an over-the-top gothic anthem. Apparently the band put a lot of stock in that being a standout track, because not only did they name the album after it, the Hidden Track is just one more round of the song's chorus - ordinarily I'd find that kind of cheesy, but it is a really strong chorus so it ends things on a strong note. To continue the movie analogy, it's like if a licensed song was featured in an iconic scene in a movie, then a shortened version played out over the credits before segueing into an orchestral medley.

Switchblade Symphony - The Three Calamities. "Gothic" acts from the era I'd heard of but never really given a listen part two ^note also used to get this band mixed up with Strawberry Switchblade, because switchblades, alliteration, and ties to the goth scene. Another band I now want to check out more of - old school goth atmosphere and melodies (I'm reminded of Siouxsie and early Cocteau Twins) combined with 90's trip hop and electronica with a bit of dark classical thrown in.