Hello and welcome to the futureof Sputnik’s recently rebooted, charm offending, hernia cleansing, fool hunting, wokeshopping mania avenue for the brave and brainless. Staff Wars is back! This is where we stick members of the Staff team against the wall and interview them within an inch of their lives. Steel yourself as impossible questions are posed and the Staffers you’d never had the courage to approach before surpass your wildest expectations.
For this interview, we turn to Olympus new blood and bring you an exclusive tell-all from none other than MarsKid. Who is MarsKid? Where did he come from (MARS, idiot!)? What does he bring? How much does he owe you and how much is he owed? What happens if you make it to the final line of any of his reviews? What the sour octopus is post-metalcore? YIKES let’s grill the boy!
Hi Mars! Of all our new crop of staffers, I think you’re the one whose taste and coverage can most easily be summed up as a concrete Niche (although it’s probably inevitable that I’d draw that conclusion after all the intensive profiling I threw at your ratings and reactions for last year’s Build-an-Album competition) – so go on! Sum it up. Preferences and proclivities here please, both practised and conceptual:
So there’s this thing called post-metalcore, not sure if you’ve heard of it but it’s kinda a big deal, y’know. Basically, it asks the all-important question of “What if metalcore could FEEL” although not in the Counterparts “lol I’m gonna die” manner of…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of February 10, 2023. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
–List of Releases: February 10, 2023–
The Academic: Sitting Pretty
Genre: Indie-Rock Label: Universal Music Operations
Amber Arcades: Barefoot on Diamond Road
Genre: Indie-Pop Label: Fire Records
Andy Shauf: Norm
Genre: Alt-Rock/Indie-Folk Label: Anti
Black Belt Eagle Scout: The Land, The Water, The Sky
Genre: Indie-Folk Label: Saddle Creek
The Brian Jonestown Massacre: The Future is Your Past
Genre: Psychedelic/Shoegaze/Indie-Rock Label: ‘a’ recordings
Cadaver Shrine: Benighted Desecration
Genre: Death/Doom Metal Label: Chaos Records
Carnosus: Visions of Infinihility
Genre: Tech Death Label: Independent
Delain: Dark Waters
Genre: Metal/Gothic Label: Napalm
Distant: Heritage
Genre: Metalcore/Death Metal/Deathcore Label: Century Media
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of February 3rd, 2023. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: February 3, 2023 –
All Out War: Celestial Rot
Genre: Black Metal / Hardcore / Thrash Label: Translation Loss
Blackwülf: Thieves and Liars
Genre: Stoner Doom Label: Ripple Music
Coffin Nail: The Hanged Man
Genre: Black Metal / Grindcore Label: Self released
Dewolff: Love, Death and In Between
Genre: Southern Rock / Blues / Psychedelic Label: Mascot Label
Elif: Endlich Tut Es Wieder Weh
Genre: Pop Label: Jive
Fugit: Morphogenetic Fractal Hologram
Genre: Post Black Metal / Blackgaze Label: Self released
FVNERALS: Let the Earth Be Silent
Genre: Doom / Dark Ambient / Post Rock Label: Prophecy Productions
The Go! Team: Get Up Sequences part Two
Genre: Funk Label: Memphies Industries
Godiva: Hubris
Genre: Death Metal Label: Self released
John Frusciante: .I:
Genre: Electronic / Ambient/ Drone Label: Acid Test
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of January 27, 2023. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: January 27, 2023 –
… And Oceans: As in Gardens, So In Tombs
Genre: Black Metal Label: Season of Mist
The Arcs: Electrophonic Chronic
Genre: Indie Rock / Psychedelic Label: Easy Eye Sound
Ashen Horde: Antimony
Genre: Progressive Black/Death Metal Label: Transcending Obscurity
Ava Max: Diamonds & Dancefloors
Genre: Electro Pop Label: Atlantic
Bizarrekult: Den Tapte Krigen
Genre: Post Black Metal Label: Season of Mist
Complete Mountain Almanac: Complete Mountain Almanac
Genre: Folk / Indie Rock Label: Bella Union
Elle King: Come Get Your Wife
Genre: Country / Pop Label: RCA
Emarosa: Sting
Genre: Indie Pop / Electronic Label: Out of Line
Fucked Up: One Day
Genre: Alternative / Folk Label: Merge Records
Hammock: Love in the Void
Genre: Ambient / Post Rock Label: Hammock Music
Kimbra: A Reckoning
Genre: Indie Pop / Soul Label: Kimbra
King Tuff: Smalltown Stardust
Genre: Jam Rock / Psychedelic Label: Sub Pop
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of January 20, 2023. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: January 20, 2023 –
Atrocity: OKKULT III
Genre: Death Metal Label: Massacre
The Bad Ends: The Power and the Glory
Genre: Rock Label: New West Records
Biig Piig: Bubblegum
Genre: Hip-Hop / R&B Label: Sony Music
The C.I.A.: Surgery Channel
Genre: Indie / Electronic Label: In The Red
Dave Rowntree: Radio Songs
Genre: Indie / Electronic Label: Cooking Vinyl
Designer Disguise: Radio Songs
Genre: Nu Metal / Metalcore Label: InVogue Records
Dryad: The Abyssal Plain
Genre: Death Metal / Black Metal Label: Prosthetic
Guided By Voices: La La Land
Genre: Indie Rock / Lo-Fi Label: GBV Inc
Imperium Dekadenz: Into Sorrow Evermore
Genre: Black Metal / Shoegaze Label: Napalm
John Cale: Mercy
Genre: Experimental Pop / Rock Label: Domino
July Talk: Remember Never Before
Genre: Alternative / Indie Rock Label: Six Shooter Records
Kali Malone: Does Spring Hide Its Joy
Genre: Drone / Classical Label: Secretly Distribution
Katatonia: Sky Void of Stars
Genre: Progressive Metal / Dark
Time has passed. How much – too much! The gang at KILL and KEEP are getting back together, and where better to turn our attention than on Taylor Swift’s never-forgotten recently-reclaimed coming-of-age epic post-teen mess of an album Red.
This was the time! Most of us were dumb teenagers when Red was red-hot off the press and had complicated relationships with everything and anything including this album. How awesome! Now that post-Red history has continued and happened, we have the privilege of parsing it for Taylors past, present and future – for there was a whole lotta Taylor in that melting pot! She was fresh from stabbing the entire republic of Nashville in the front and exporting her domination of teenage bedroomspace to teenage dancefloordom: no more tiptoeing towards pop stardom, this was where Taylor Swift began to stomp (but on whomst’ve?).
Also, Sputnik was down for whatever reason while we were doing this lol. Let’s go!
Rules
The team is DavidYowi, johnnyoftheWell, Sinternet and Steak
Every song must either be KILLed or KEEPed.
The version of the album used is the original because we were invested in the time capsule, and because it is shorter and one of our number was midway through a 24-hour exam window, and Taylor Swift is rich enough as it is.
“It’s not unheard of, but certainly rare when a band 25 years old and eight albums deep into their career create a record that could be in contention as their best, but if there was any group who could it, it would be He Is Legend. And guess what? That’s exactly what they’ve done with Endless Hallway. Tonally, it suggests one of their most divisive efforts since Suck Out the Poison — it’s dark, heavy, sludgy, and one of their most narrative driven releases — but it has all of the finesse of their post-reunion material. Speaking of heavy, Endless Hallway may be their most brutal outing to date, oscillating between near djent riffcapades and slower, churning swamp metal throwdowns — there is no shortage of headbanging moments strewn throughout the record. However, this uptick in viciousness does little to deter Schuylar Croom from crafting some of the most memorable hooks of his career. As always, the frontman has a very distinct sense of melody, writing passages that make use of odd harmonies but are still impossibly catchy. Endless Hallway is somehow He is Legend at their peak, and I can’t see any fan of the band being disappointed with this one.” —Brandon Scott / TheSpirit
It’s hard to write about this album without letting Brandon’s words really describe it. The day Brandon left was a tough one –one that is sure…
Outside of “Blue Monday” being Orgy’s universally acknowledged claim to fame, the band very rarely come up in music discourse. There’s obviously good reason for that; the band fell into the NU-metal whirlpool at the height of the genre’s popularity and were quicky chewed out with the slew of other bands clambering to make a decent name for themselves. Unlike most bands in that scene though, I always lamented the unharnessed potential Orgy wielded in the early noughties. Candyass and Vapour Transmission were really solid albums, and, while far from perfect, demonstrated a competent blend of NU-metal and industrial in a way that gave them an edge over their peers – their own inimitable identity. Unfortunately, the band were never able to make that potential truly flourish, as their third album, Punk Statik Paranoia, sealed their own demise (at least until their return in 2015). It was a record that stripped the band of their fundamental qualities in favour of derivative trend chasing, which ultimately finished the band off in the process.
Since their return in 2015, the band have followed suit in a way that feels as though they never really left or learned from their previous shortcomings – that glaring wound of unfettered, untouched potential staring back at me as they bleed generic dance beats and vapid pop melodies into my ears. This new single, “Empty”, stays the course in this vein, vomiting autotune and scintillatingly optimistic electronics with the only consistent thing…
If The Loser proved Gospel wanted to go proggier, MVDM proves they really are a prog band that just couldn’t do without infusing some mid-’90s screamo into their Yes worship. Having gone through the perilous (but succeeded) step of coming back, nothing holds the band back from showing what nerds they are — look at that goofy-ass title — a good reminder that prog was never cool. So crafting a sprawling tune whose shtick is to build tension through retrofuturistic synth and keyboards was ultimately Gospel’s ipseity — it just took them 15 years to figure out how to properly forge that version of themselves. Maybe that’s why they never showed signs of existence during that period: Gospel could only be MVDM. –Erwann S. / dedex
They say not to judge a book by its cover, but from the instant I saw the album cover for Bleed the Dream, I knew exactly what I was in for. The depiction of blood on a music box is a perfect metaphor for this EP. Aggressive music expresses an abrasively gorgeous duality; there is beauty in the breakdown. Bleed the Dream is a brutally raw and urgent collection of songs recalling early-2000s metalcore that is
The overall takeaway from multiple 2020 releases was this overbearing sense of isolation. Across the globe, seclusion was imposed to alleviate a growing pandemic, and its sudden necessity caused a mass dissolution of social connections and relationships. Perhaps, as a response, 2021’s cycle had a bevy of familiar faces delivering solid, safe records, offering comfort that had previously been dismantled. Toss that all out the window — it is 2022, two years removed from when life shut down and power systems demonstrated their profound weaknesses when addressing it. Ashenspire’s purpose on Hostile Architecture is to survey the damage; their scathing social critique takes aim at calculated oppression, malignant government bodies, and the widening divide between the haves and have-nots, firing with such precision that it’s impossible to not envision burgeoning crowds stocked to the brim with pitchforks and torches aplenty. It came out of left field, but the Scots’ sophomore release was certainly something that the new decade’s omnipresent uncertainty was craving.
Given the subject matter at hand, Hostile Architecture is appropriately claustrophobic, erecting shadowy soundscapes that echo about crumbling cities, ringing in the alleyways and reverberating in shelters as frustration bubbles to a boiling point. The band’s grab-bag of influences and contributing elements that they use to portray this hauntingly real dystopia possesses incredible depth. Dissodeath and black metal forge a mesmerizing foundation, while touches of post-punk…
CMAT resides in the soft, pillowy safety of a thought bubble, in the sunset hues of daydream and if-only. Hers is a particular longing, and who can blame her, for the tropes born of country denizens Dolly Parton and Glen Campbell — she wants the tall boots with spurs, the rodeos, and the heartbreak that birthed all those lovelorn Foghorn Leghorn country classics. She wants a slice of the adulation reserved only for pop megastars the ilk of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey. She wants not to be tangled up in the humdrum of abject normality.
If My Wife New I’d Be Dead plays out like a self-exposing fantasy, a simulation as far removed from reality as possible. It’s full of biting humour aimed very much inward — album standout “No More Virgos” frames her failing relationships as being astrologically determined, denying any possibility of her own shortcomings and pithy demands. On “Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)”, a bittersweet romp on the subject of over-imbibing in the face of the absence of romance, she geo-locates herself as being very far away from Nashville indeed with a reference to the Gaelic Athletic Association: “Honky tonk girl of the G.A.A., with about the same glamour and half the game.” But ultimately, CMAT’s reality is right in front of us. There’s no character work…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of January 13, 2023. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: January 13, 2023 –
Ahab: The Coral Tombs
Genre: Doom Metal Label: Napalm
Ashen: Ritual of Ash
Genre: Death Metal Label: Bitter Loss
BabyTron: Bin Reaper 3: Nеw Testament
Genre: Hip-Hop Label: N/A
Belle and Sebastian: Late Developers Genre: Baroque Pop / Indie Rock Label: Matador Records
Beyond the Black: Beyond the Black
Genre: Power Metal/Classical Label: Nuclear Blast
Billy Nomates: CACTI
Genre: Folk-Punk/Post-Punk Label: Invada
Circa Waves: Never Going Under
Genre: Indie-Pop/Rock Label: Lower Third
Cursed Excruciation: Arcane Diabolism
Genre: Black/Death Metal Label: Iron Bonehead Productions
Declaime & Madlib: In The Beginning (Vol. 3)
Genre: Hip-Hop Label: SomeOthaShip Connect/Fat Beats
Defy the Curse: Horrors of Human Sacrifice
Genre: Death Metal/Sludge Metal/Punk Label: Hammerheart
Gabrielle Aplin: Phosphorescent
Genre: Folk/Pop Label: Never Fade
Since the turn of the decade, we’ve amassed 389 staff-selected songs for our ever-growing playlist, which equates to just under 30 hours of music. Here you can find all of our favorite songs from 2022 (for previous years, follow the links above) — from metal to indie to hip-hop to whatever obscure genre you can think of, it’s most likely represented here. We’re a proudly eclectic website, so if your aim is to broaden your musical horizons, then you’ve arrived at the perfect spot!
The playlist below encompasses all 143 songs that our staff hand-picked from the past year. Please join us on a retrospective journey through 2022: listen in order for the chronological Q1 –> Q4 experience, or shuffle the playlist for more of an even flow. Spotify’s embedded playlist only shows the first 100 songs, so be sure to launch the spotify app or web browser to listen in full. From our administration and staff to you, we hope you had a safe and wonderful holiday season. Happy listening!
a short list of projects that probably would have had a good chance of being on this list if I had ever gotten around to listening to them:
Honestly, Nevermind
Midnights
Dirt Femme
Being Funny In A Foreign Language
Harry’s House
SOS
life
Blue Rev
The Long Count
quinn
almost certainly a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting
projects I didn’t like as much as I hoped I would
CRASH
This one’s almost great. I wrote a whole review explaining my feelings, but it basically sums up to this being hit or miss and a great idea in theory despite the various dumb people saying she shouldn’t make pop music. Check it out, just skip “Lightning” and any songs that don’t grab you in the first 30 seconds.
Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2
This doesn’t have anything as good as “Slide” but that was a once-in-a-lifetime song. Other than that, it’s basically exactly as good as the last one, so it’s OK. It’s got some really fun songs and some very boring songs. And it has the best Halsey feature since “Closer.”
Renaissance
To be clear, I like this album! I like Beyonce’s music, I just think she can do better than this. It’s cool that each song here flows into the next – but imagine how much better it’d be if she didn’t need to sell it on LPs or whatever and just made it into one more cohesive…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of January 6th, 2023. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: January 6, 2023 –
Anathematise: Bizarre Tales from the Past and the Future
Genre: Death Metal Label: Awakening
Beatriz Ferreyra: Senderos de luz y sombras
Genre: Electronic / Modern Classical Label: Recollection GRM
Cicada: 棲居在溪源之上 Seeking the Sources of Streams
Genre: Post Rock / Modern Classical Label: flau
Charaxes: Color’s Tease
Genre: Electronic Label: Self released
Confined: Eternal Fury of the Disillusioned Ones
Genre: OSDM Label: Vargheist
Despicable: Meditations
Genre: Experimental Hip Hop Label: Self released
Devouring Famine: Haunting Echoes
Genre: Black Metal Label: Self released
Earth: Even Hell Has Its Heroes (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Genre: Drone Label: Thrones and Dominions
Fireworks: Higher Lonely Power
Genre: Indie Rock / Post Rock / Punk Label: Funeral Plant Collective
