“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
Welcome to our fourth installment for our 2022 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here — or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening, and stay tuned for the cumulative 2022 playlist later this week and the Community’s Top 50 LPs (and Top 10 EPs/Live Albums/Compilations) of 2022 next week!
Tracklist:
16 – “The Floor Wins” Into Dust
The sludge metal veterans returned this year with a brand new, uncanny full length that further explores the misery, deception and sad realities of American life. Centerpiece “The Floor Wins” peeks into the ugly downward spiral of drug addiction that haunts the country right now. The scorching riffs and aggressive vocals create a suffocating atmosphere that works really well with the lyrical content. –Raul Stanciu
The 1975 – “Wintering” Being Funny in a Foreign Language
I’m not exactly a fan of The 1975 in general for plenty of reasons that many of this music site could articulate. “Wintering” doesn’t really set itself apart from all my…
One of my goals in 2022 was to spend more time reading user content, which resulted in the monthly Best User Reviews lists. There is a a lot of talent hidden beneath the “official” ranks of this website, and below is a list containing many of those writers. Consider this a heartfelt thank you to everyone who put time and effort into creating worthwhile content over course of the past year. So without further ado, please join me in congratulating the below users for their efforts!
Category I: User Recognition
Tier 1: These reviewers made one appearance on the monthly “best-of” list for user reviews. We’d love to hear more from you!
On March 2, 2018, the heavy music/core-sphere collectively lost their minds over Rolo Tomassi’s coming-of-age release Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It — an album that purportedly elevated them from cult status to masters of their genre-spanning scene. I say ‘purportedly’ not because there is any doubt in my mind that this is true, but because on that same day, I was re-reviewing Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago for probably the third time, somehow unaware of Rolo Tomassi’s existence — let alone the fact that they were exploding in my backyard. Despite several interventions over the next few years by friends-who-care in an attempt to turn my attention towards this magnificently mathy/metallic/hardcore act, it was somehow 2022’s Where Myth Becomes Memory that marked my first real introduction to the band — and finally, I’d like to join my cohorts in saying: holy fucking shit. In other words, Rolo Tomassi has a new disciple.
Where Myth Becomes Memory represents the ideal intersection between beauty and aggression. Listeners who can rightfully declare themselves fans already know this, but I’m still marvelling at the way the band effortlessly swivels between the shimmering and resplendent (consider “Almost Always”, replete with its breathtaking pianos and rapturous crescendo) and the nakedly aggressive (those blood-curdling shrieks in “Cloaked”). Rolo Tomassi have reached a point in their songwriting where these…
In spite of my overwhelming and undying appreciation for single-paragraph reviews, few things are more stressful than having to explain why an album is good in one sentence. Of course, you could just say: “it’s good”… but that’s boring and, frankly, unconvincing. You could go the opposite route and use fancy words like “enchanting” or “grandiose”, but that’s just…too much. You could, instead, simply repeat the album title: “and in the darkness, hearts aglow”…but that’s…ugh, fine, that’s kind of perfect here. Weyes Blood’s music may be good, enchanting and grandiose, but Natalie Mering’s latest record adds some surprising splashes of darkness to her palette. The album’s themes of loss and loneliness construct a sense of cohesion the slightly subdued theatricality more than welcomes. It’s an experience best experienced more than once, twice or thrice until each note subtly assumes the moment in the spotlight it deserves.
Even though this spotlight may be dim due to the surrounding darkness, “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” and “Twin Flame” present wonderfully memorable choruses that demand attention and repeated listens alike. However, the album’s most impressive cut comes in the form of “God Turn Me Into a Flower”: a subdued number that bathes Mering’s gorgeous voice in equally gorgeous doses of ambience, and takes its time unfolding into a truly magical meditation on loss. While I…
2022! What a year, huh? It feels like the tide has finally washed ashore all those records that were created during that long hibernation period that was the Covid pandemic. Crippled Black Phoenix are no different, and Banefyre‘s one hour and a half running time is good proof that the British squad have done their homework. Now with full-time singer Joel Segerstedt sharing vocal duties with Belinda Kordic instead of featured singers (which was a great idea by the way!), the band struck back this year with a behemoth of an album. Banefyre sounds BIG and mighty, all without losing the Phoenix’s prowess for mesmerizing melodies and suspenseful build-ups that have become the band’s seal. This is, no doubt, an imposing album — but also an incredibly rewarding experience if you have the time and the will to let it flood your senses. And I know you do; otherwise, why would you be reading this list in the first place?! –Dewinged
“Consensus” means that I have to write about my personal album of the year as if it belongs in the 49th spot. Bronco sands down the weirder edges of Orville Peck’s debut album in favor of grandiose songwriting that makes full use of…
Hello and welcome to the first instalment of this year’s maybe-annual JAWs!
Here are your questions:
Who Are You?
I am johnnyoftheWell!
How Are You?
I am well. I am in a cafe procrastinating an essay deadline and stressing about my laptop battery, which is not long for this world. How are you?
How Was 2022 For Music?
2022 was(/is!) pretty awesome for music! There have definitely been a few lulls, but I’ve had an overall great time digging up silly treasures, listening to people’s recs and just following them trends (which has been a good deal more fruitful than in previous years lemme tell ya). 2022 is good!
What The Flying Frick Is A JAW?
One of my best features tbh, but also um, it had a definite phrasing and I forgot it. (This one’s for you, Cimnele:)
It might have been an acronym for something like Johnny Awards Winners or Jackpot Ablutions from the Well, but I think in my head at the moment it’s a syllabic abbreviation from Jotw AWardsor maybe JotAWwww. It is absolutely not an initialism – say Jay Ayy Double-you out loud and I will slap you and eat mx.
tl;dr it’s a nice way to spotlight some year highlights that I think deserve to be spotlit.
I’m not posting a full list from the year or declaring an AOTY at this point because the Cram is still in session…
