One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was routinely digging around for new music when I stumbled across “Guilt” in the New Blood section of Spotify. Within the song’s opening seconds, I was hooked. Seeped in a thick, dismal atmosphere, this morose offering hit me in the face like 1,000 hammers. It sounded tough, menacing and, most importantly, fresh. This powerviolence trio from Manchester, UK is called Leeched and they’re out for blood. Formed in 2017, the band have already caused sizeable waves in the underground metal scene with last year’s EP, Nothing Will Grow From the Rotten Ground– an abrasive blend of grind and hardcore. 2018 is set to be an even bigger year for them as they tour with Full of Hell and prepare to unleash hell with their debut album next month. I’ve recently had the pleasure of talking to the band’s frontman and bassist, Laurie, to discuss lyrics, songwriting and what their live shows set out to create.
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Simon: Firstly, thanks for your time. I’ll break the ice by asking the obvious: how did you guys form the band and what were your goals for writing music?
Laurie: Thanks for taking an interest! Tom [drums] and I knew each other from previous bands and we knew Judd [guitar] mutually. We started Leeched as a side project which quickly took over our lives. As for aspirations, our goal was to see…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of July 20, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the artwork (if we remember…) so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
Featured Release
Meg Myers: Take Me to the Disco
Genre: Indie-Pop/Alternative Rock/Indie-Rock
Label: 300 Entertainment
Myers crashed 2015 as one of the best up-and-coming female rockers, jolting listeners to attention with her powerful vocals. Singles such as ‘Sorry’ and ‘Desire’ brought her a great deal of exposure, and now she is looking to capitalize on that early success with Take Me to the Disco. She has a lot to live up to on her sophomore release, and not all of the singles released to-date have convinced eager fans, but it would be unwise to sleep on a record whose creator has such a raw, obvious skill set. Listen to one of Take Me to the Disco‘s singles, ‘Numb’, below:
– List of Releases: July 20, 2018 –
Distorted Harmony: A Way Out
Genre: Progressive Metal/Rock
Label: n/a
Epica: Epica vs. Attack on Titan
Genre: Power Metal/Gothic/Death Metal
Label: Nuclear Blast
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of July 13, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the artwork (if we remember…) so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
The experimental indie group Dirty Projectors are unveiling their 10th proper LP, a more hopeful sounding follow-up to the dejected, self-titled, and essentially solo Dave Longstreth record. For as shattered as he was during that album, Longstreth employed some of his most experimental production ideas to date, en route to possibly the group’s most interesting – even if divisive – release. In stark contrast to forlorn, reflective singles like ‘Keep Your Name’ or ‘Little Bubble’, ‘Break-Thru’ is a bouncy, sunny pop tune that retains the the experimental and R&B qualities of Dirty Projector’s preceding release. If it’s any sign of what is to come, then we can expect Lamp Lit Prose to be another stud in Longstreth’s vastly growing collection of odd but fun indie pop.
– List of Releases: July 13, 2018 –
Amy Shark: Love Monster
Genre: Indie Pop
Label: Wonderlick
Now this is just creepy. There’s such an unsettling vibe to this whole thing, from the band name to the artwork to the massive industrial groove beat that throws me all the way back to The Downward Spiral. Oh, and those shrill, shouted vocals, followed by by the low, distorted Frank the Rabbit (Donnie Darko) spoken passage. Yikes. This thing just feels monumental. I get the feeling from the tracklist that there could be some serious political vibes on this thing as well. The band itself has 25k Facebook likes, so this is very much a fringe “under the radar band” (sure, they don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers)…but they have only released one album (as far as my knowledge and a cursory google search can tell) and it was all the way back in 2010. Apparently, Gate of Grief has been 7 years in the making. I have a feeling it will be well worth the wait, and one of those albums that catches everyone off guard when it comes out of nowhere. Consider me as hyped as I’ve been for anything so far in 2018.
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of July 6, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the artwork (if we remember…) so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more. Also, for those who missed it, our collective staff ranked the Top 10 Songs by The National – just in case you need something to argue about.
– List of Releases: July 6, 2018 –
A Shoreline Dream: Waitout
Genre: Shoegaze/Psychedelic/Alt-Rock
Label: Latenight Weeknight
Asylums: Alien Human Emotions
Genre: Pop/Rock
Label: Cool Thing Records
Sputnikmusic Staff Rankings: The Top 10 National Songs
Preface:
It’s long been the subject of debate around this site: What are the best National songs? Are they even possible to rank? Have they ever even made a bad song? While this list is unlikely to put an end to any longstanding arguments, it does represent the current staff’s carefully curated top 10 tracks for one of modern indie-rock’s most discussed and celebrated artists. So if you are somehow just getting into the National (you’re at least ten years late!), these songs represent an excellent snapshot of the band’s best moments across seven albums and nearly two decades of making music. As for everyone else, feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments section below!
(10) The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness
from the album Sleep Well Beast
“The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” could serve as one of the best introductions for newcomers to The National. The song navigates a wide variety of terrain and functions almost too well as an accessible track on an album noted for more experimental leanings overall. There’s even a guitar solo, a rarity for the band, as they let loose and truly surprise listeners more used to their downtrodden side. Matt Berninger releases his frustrations in the soaring chorus alongside female vocals and subtle orchestral arrangements, making for a truly special and cathartic moment…
Hello fellow football fans, and welcome to a post that will assign numbers to your footy feelings. On the eve of the 2018 World Cup, I noticed that no one had made a “World Cup Thread”-type list, so I decided to start one. At some point, I realized that I could leverage the comments people were making into some sweet, sweet content. Specifically, I sought to measure the sentiment of each comment (positive or negative) which I could then summarize by World Cup team and by user.
Recently, I was googling sentiment analysis and came upon this post. The post describes and has code for a model that uses the words of tweets to predict the sentiment of each tweet (a sentiment of 1 being positive, 0 negative). The post is from about a year ago, uses tweets as training data not sputnik comments, so it may not exactly match the vocabulary and sincerity level of our own sputnik soccer commenters. Regardless, I fit the sentiment model from the code in that post, scraped the comments from the World Cup 2018 list following the conclusion of the group stages, and then fit the sentiment model to each comment. The model assigns each comment a value between 0 and 1, 1 being positive, and 0 being negative. Most comments lie somewhere in the middle, ~ 75% of comments are between .25 and .75 and ~ 92% are between .1 and .9.
So, after classifying every comment with that model, I searched the…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of June 29, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the artwork (if we remember…) so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
Featured Release
Florence + The Machine: High As Hope
Genre: Indie-Pop/Alternative Rock
Label: Republic
Few artists have as recognizable of a voice as Florence Welch, one of the most respected frontwomen in alternative rock. While Lungs and Ceremonials launched her career to stardom, wielding hits such as ‘Dog Days Are Over’ and ‘Shake It Off’, the more understated How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful still managed to keep the magic alive with prevalent acoustics and a slightly more uptempo atmosphere. While no one is certain as to what tricks – if any – that High As Hope holds up its sleeve, you can count on Welch delivering another vocal masterpiece. That alone makes High As Hope worth investigating, regardless of whether this album treads the same lighter path as its predecessor or returns to the booming, anthemic way of Lungs.
– List of Releases: June 29, 2018 –
Bells Atlas: Be Brave
Genre: Indie-Pop/Soul
Label: None Records
Allegory and Self was a watershed moment in Psychic TV’s timeline (as much as a band that morphs, dissembles and fledges chronically can cultivate a cogent turning point). It had taken everything that came before them, everything that was happening around them and threw in a few instants of prescience, and unceremoniously flung it forth. Folk, psych, new-wave, art punk, industrial squeals, noise, minimalism, ambient and a dozen of other sub-sub-genres came together in decidedly ungraceful fashion to make something vilely pretty. “Thee Dweller”, better than any other track on the LP stands for it all – difficult and punishing, it stomps on, amid howls, muttered mantras, noisy outbursts and a synthetic backdrop. A good song to open a night of no sleep.
Bristol post-punk antiheroes The Pop Group recorded their dub-punk freakouts to mixed acclaim. I don’t know if they understood at the time that they were making one of the most important albums of its time. Dance music for the infirm, “Thief of Fire” permeates the cranium the way sickness does – against a tide of instinct and protection, to forge something eerier and better.
When Pete Doherty sang about Albion as some dreamy ultra-tolerant place where the subversive felt normal, I doubt many fans knew that he’d pilfered the concept from Ted Milton – poet, marionette despot and rotten saxophonist. Blurt, his art rock outfit, were driven by a rough-edged garage band propping up Milton’s manic recitals and saxophone shrieks.…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of June 22, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the artwork (if we remember…) so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
Featured Release
Kamasi Washington: Heaven And Earth
Genre: Jazz/Soul
Label: Young Turks
Washington made a huge splash in 2015 with The Epic – a three volume, three hour masterpiece that brought soul and jazz fusion back into the spotlight of modern music. By comparison, Heaven And Earth is merely two parts, and closer to two-and-a-half hours long. Either way, we get it – the man is capable of writing towering, lengthily intimidating albums. But the thing is, Washington’s records never feel that long. Boasting impeccable flow and nary any filler, Kamasi’s works draw you in while keeping you engaged. If The Epic was any indicator, we may be in for an album of the year candidate right here.
Listen to the below song samples for ‘Fists of Fury’ and ‘Space Travelers Lullaby’:
– List of Releases: June 22, 2018 –
5 Seconds of Summer: Youngblood
Genre: Pop
Label: Capitol
Hasaan Ibn Ali (born William Henry Langford Jr.) had played with every bop heavy throughout his life, from young impresarios like Clifford Brown all the way down to Miles Davis at his creative peak. He’d lead his own ensembles, figured as a key aspect in several iconic live sessions, and his layered, intricate and highly pliant playing style has long since been considered to be the main inspiration behind Coltrane’s sheets of sounds recording approach. The sole studio recording the legendary pianist has ever figured on however was a collaborative session with the Max Roach Quintet. The opening piece off the album is a thrilling show of his prowess on the keys, loose and unafraid to go into odd corners and the perfect way to kick off the first installment of this little jukebox.
Swedish new-wavers with a propensity to slide into prolonged dub dirges, Commando M. Pigg merged post-punk, krautrock and deep dark dense bass into the sort of extended thickly-atmospheric dance numbers that immediately start pulsing off in your temples when you take molly in a dimly-lit pub.
Sexily melancholic, this patient slow dance tune by The Raincoats is packed with so many brilliant little touches (trumpet squeaks, throaty ululating, penny whistles, Caribbean percussion). It all comes together into a busy ecosystem that sways you into oblivion. Available on Rough Trade re-issues of Moving, the band’s third full-length.
The first things which interest me on every play of this album are the parallels between Kids See Ghosts and Pusha T’s DAYTONA. Both albums begin with a slow, surgical verse from Pusha delivered nearly a cappella; both move to a foot-stomping Track 2 built around vintage-sounding guitars with a hint of psychedelia; both repurpose soundbites with positive intentions and turn them to their own twisted ends. (To that last point, “Come Back Baby”‘s flip of Mighty Hannibal’s anti-drug “The Truth Shall Make You Free” as an intro to, uh, a drug song is one of Kanye’s best black comedy moments, while “4th Dimension”’s creepy sample is where the album veers closest to its surreal cover art). This isn’t a direct one-to-one comparison, though, and it’s the divergences between the albums which colour them as much as their similarities. While DAYTONA doubles down on Pusha’s ice-cold raps in its second half, Kids See Ghosts starts to resemble a more complete ye in its emotionally vulnerable second half, when the two rappers begin an unexpected, touching reckoning with their insecurities and mistakes.
This is why a moment which many have justifiably rolled eyes at, namely Cudi’s extended repetition of the chorus at the end of “Reborn”, is to me the most important on the album. This more than anything is music of reclamation – “Freeee” reclaims a line 070 Shake introduced to the project as an ode to emotional numbness and turns it to joyous proclamation, “Cudi Montage” reclaims Cudi’s…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of June 15, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the artwork (if we remember…) so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
– List of Releases: June 15, 2018 –
Aryn Van Dyke: I Do Not Not Love You
Genre: Pop
Label: 871140 Records
Ben Captain: Old Stock
Genre: Folk/Blues
Label: Under Control Entertainment
Chaouche: Safe
Genre: Indie Pop
Label: Night Time Stories
Christina Aguilera: Liberation
Genre: Pop
Label: RCA Records
Chromeo: Head Over Heels
Genre: Electro-Pop
Label: Big Beat Records/Atlantic
Crossing Eternity: The Rising World
Genre: Symphonic Metal
Label: Rockshots Records
Frayle: The White Witch
Genre: Doom/Stoner Rock
Label: Independent
Funeral Horse: Psalms For The Mourning Genre: Doom/Stoner/Punk
Label: Artificial Head
Gretchen’s Wheel: Black Box Theory
Genre: Indie/Singer/Songwriter
Label: Futureman Records
JessLee: Strong
Genre: Country
Label: JessLee
John Parish: Bird Dog Dante
Genre: Indie Folk
Label: Thrill Jockey
Johnny Marr: Call the Comet
Genre: Alternative/Britpop
Label: New Voodoo Records
Leon Vynehall: Nothing Is Still
Genre: House/Electronic
Label: Ninja Tune
Lizzy Borden: My Midnight Things
Genre: Heavy Metal
Label: Metal Blade Records
Madball: For The Cause
Genre: Punk/Hardcore
Label: Nuclear Blast…
It hasn’t been a full year since Manchester Orchestra dropped the gorgeous and moving A Black Mile to the Surface, but the band is already offering us new music. Of course, new is a relative term when you consider the process of writing, recording, and releasing – per frontman Andy Hull, “I Know How To Speak” is a song that originated several years ago. It would have made the final cut for Black Mile had it reached the full, finished form that Hull and his bandmates had envisioned back in the summer of 2017; but because that time did not arrive until now, we have what amounts to a rather impressive b-side on our hands.
“I Know How To Speak” is centered around resplendent acoustic guitars, delicate piano notes, and “the impending weight of the future” – a lyrical topic made all the more relevant by the birth of Hull’s son on the horizon. At six minutes in length, the track has ample time to change its pace and direction, but opts for more of a direct and soft-spoken approach. It works its way in slowly, but it’s a comforting kind of predictability – like waves on the shore of a lake splashing up against the rocky shoreline. It’s not really until the final minute-and-a-half that it ramps up the intensity, allowing for fiery electric riffs to rain down on the unassuming classical pianos, which continue unbothered by the mayhem swirling…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of June 08, 2018. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors. As our staff post reviews of these albums, links will appear below the artwork (if we remember…) so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
– List of Releases: June 08, 2018 –
Dead Sara: Temporary Things Taking Up Space
Genre: Alternative Rock
Label: Atlantic Records
Dierks Bentley: The Mountain
Genre: Country
Label: Capitol Nashville
Flasher: Constant Image
Genre: Pop Punk/Indie Rock
Label: Domino Recording Co.
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