if you exclusively jam one half of an album you call your favourite from a band, either you're contriving weird af standards or there's something v wrong with the competition
just say that Fake Train side-a might be the best thing Unwound ever made (cold af take) and quit nursing that individuality boner over a handful of sloppy punk throwaways you can't even remember

Album Rating: 4.5

Fake Train packs the biggest punch on first two or three listens but maybe a third of the tracks begin to shed their luster thereafter, I think everything on this only gets better over time



nervous energy into valentine card into kantina is

Album Rating: 4.0

This reminds me of the first Fugazi album? Do you know guys which one I’m thinking of?

Album Rating: 4.5

the post hardcore one

The only reason those tracks are higher is because they’re on my “everything goes” playlist. It’s not like I start listening to the album then cut it off after Honourosis lol. Now, and stay with me here because i know it’s a complex situation, but imagine a world where Side A is indeed the best thing a band has ever recorded and Side B is comparatively tamer, but strong enough that the album in toto is - gasp! - preferable to other albums that are…uh…more consistently good-but-not-AS-good?

Have only jammed the whole thing front to back thrice since 2020, and that sounds about right. Again, didn’t realize there was a minimum threshold needed to form a valid opinion so next time I listen to an artist i’ll just shoutbox you and ask you what i should think about them to avoid ruffling your feathers because you seem to be the only person so heavily invested in disproving some random stranger’s opinion lol

"Fake Train packs the biggest punch on first two or three listens but maybe a third of the tracks begin to shed their luster thereafter, I think everything on this only gets better over time"
thank you person who cares more about discussing this band than spamming their ranking+hot takes for the umpteenth time

Nothing I posted was remotely close to a hot take and since when does a single post = spam? It wasn’t even irrelevant because Demon was contemplating his own ranking in the post prior. My apologies for not typing up a dissertation on each placement, though, tbh i didn’t think an innocuous ranking could cause someone so much discontent. I sincerely hope I didn’t ruin your evening and i’ll be sure future posts are at least 500 word count and run my ratings by you for the rubberstamp before posting them ad hoc and giving you further heartburn. Carry on! 😘

"My apologies for not typing up a dissertation"
that's one thing you don't have to apologise for lol, never seen anyone protest so much over a muh opinion moment
anyway
"This has kinda always been in that “still enjoyable but I cannot place what makes it so special” realm and that tide is now turning it seems. It doesn’t experiment as overtly perhaps but the quiet consistency here is paying off upon revisiting"
consistency is defs key, but the light->dense sequencing scheme here is so satisfying as an overall album exp and the dynamics on Usual Dosage/Arboretum/Abstraktions are just too fking good. this doesn't hit as hard as it did when i felt like my life was a scratched-up slab of concrete and wanted someone to throw it off a pier (short phase not a good phase), but desperate attachments aside it gets better and better each listen

'never seen anyone protest so much over a muh opinion moment'

Likewise never seen anyone get such a raging hard-on over trying to convince someone that their own opinion is incorrect to the extent that they start throwing out borderline-ad hominem and auditing scrobbles as if to prove some sort of point without even attempting to faithfully engage in any level of discussion and then try and act like that person is somehow the sook for having an unfavorable reaction.

Oh wait yes I have, you do this weirdly narcissistic shit to people all the time. 😡

Seriously how many times must one listen to an album front-to-back before their opinion on it is legitimate? Five? Ten? Twenty? Now you've thrown me into an existential crisis about the validity of all my ratings thus far. Have I not listened enough?

don't give me 'borderline' ad hom lol you're forcing an extended discussion about your opinion - of course there is a hominem and it is you
you're welcome to your opinion and i have as much right to point out why it is not one i take at all seriously as you do to incur thread cancer by harping on about it, and boi is the sput constitution smiling upon us both right now *adjusts glasses side-eyes nearest mirror*

Actually on a more serious note, poring over the track list again, I forgot 'Star Spangled Hell' was in the latter half. That's an easy 9/10 track. And looking at the vinyl track list split (which is largely irrelevant here but y'know, pedants gonna pedant), 'Honourosis' is actually on Side B, not Side A. 'Feeling$ Real' is great (though a tad long for what it is, I'll give u that), and I enjoy 'Gravity Slips' for its brevity and its function as the B side's sort of antithetical parallel to 'Lucky Acid' (which is admittedly one of my favorite Unwound tracks).

I concede that 'Pure Pain Sugar' and 'Rat Bite' are the album's weakest moments, but only comparatively so; they are perfectly fine songs imo, nowhere near bad enough to disrupt the flow of the album or otherwise taint the greatness apparent elsewhere. (And the fact that they are both under 3 mins long helps.)