Soundtracks have always played a big role in my enjoyment of music. Often I find myself paying more attention to the various melodies in the background of whatever film is playing, imagining how the soundtrack’s producers decided to match certain moods with specific frames. I don’t know, it’s just fascinating to me. I watch a lot of indie-romances and stuff that the average guy actively avoids, but one thing that frustrates me is that even in the so-called indie flicks, they always seem to draw from the same pool of hip artists. I guess I was just tired of hearing the same types of scenes matched up with the same types of musicians, every time. It’s like they’re getting lazy; either that or they all just want to emulate successful indie soundtracks of the past without actually attempting to go through the requisite discovery of unknown artists that makes an indie soundtrack worth exploring. I wanted something that would make me feel like Garden State did when I first heard it, before I knew of The Shins, Remy Zero, or Nick Drake — but that was a long time ago, and my musical depth and breadth has more than tripled. I needed outside help to dig a little deeper.
So when I did my brief little rec competition (thanks to everyone who offered a song!), I was trying to fashion a “sputnik indie-flick romantic comedy” type of soundtrack that would (1) turn myself…
Book Of Opeth presents a brief synopsis of the band’s earliest history all the way to present day. While interesting and beautifully crafted, Book Of Opeth rarely gets too in-depth, and leaves some lingering questions in the process.
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Has Opeth really been around for over twenty-five years? It really doesn’t feel like it has been that long. I still remember being a little kid and hearing “Demon of the Fall” on the radio for the first time, and immediately skate boarding down to Lou’s Records to buy the CD. It obviously wasn’t the first time I had ever heard death metal and clean singing on the same song (Fear Factory had been doing it for awhile by 1998), but it was executed so much better and the musicianship was leaps-and-bounds more advanced. Also, acoustic guitars were such a novel idea (at the time) for music so intense. With the radio playing “Demon Of the Fall” fairly regularly, there was a lot of hype around my hometown of San Diego, California — but apparently we were the exception. One of the things I learned while reading this book was the band was totally broke during this era and scrounging money together to pay for canned meat and cigarettes. While kind of a cool little fact, it is unfortunately about as juicy as Book of Opeth gets. That doesn’t mean it’s not…
When Heartwork was released in 1993, it ushered in a new sound that would eventually become known as melodic death metal. At the time, though, people didn’t know what to think of it and they certainly didn’t know how to classify it — they only knew they liked it. Heartwork featured a collection of catchy and grooving riffs, memorable melodic leads, and even strong choruses. These facets combined with a pristine production, surprising accessibility, and the major label support of Columbia Records put Carcass into heavy rotation on national radio and even Mtv’s Headbanger’s Ball. Of course, Heartwork wasn’t the only album released in 1993 to eventually be highlighted as part of melodic death metal’s origin, but it was certainly the highest profile. It was Heartwork that earned the band tour offers with the like of Iron Maiden, and the chance to remix bands as diverse as Die Krupps and Bjork. Unfortunately, this was around the time metal ended up becoming a ‘bad word’ and the band eventually had to move back to their original label, Earache Records. For a brief few years, though, Carcass was backed by a major label with a song that featured regular rotation on Mtv’s Headbanger’s Ball and radio stations across the country — and the album, Heartwork, ended up being one of the original releases of the melodic death metal genre.
In acknowledging I’m most likely the website’s local stan for this guy, and the point that I’m writing such an article solely due to the fact I seriously can’t stop listening to his rather plentiful back catalogue, I’ve come to have certainty in the idea that David Sylvian is quite possibly one of the greatest and most ambitious artists to come from his respective generation. There’s so much I could (and will) say, but considering the scope that his works have offered listeners for the last forty-plus years along with the various artistic overhauls that have accompanied Sylvian’s output — both solo and with others in the band format — it seems quite necessary that I provide somewhat of a guide to the works of someone I hold in high esteem. For the sake of not rambling on longer than I really need to, we shall begin with a quick glimpse of where Sylvian began: in the art rock group Japan. Formed in 1974, Japan had their roots in the glam rock scene and took to their influences quite clearly with their initial outfitting, which would come back to embarrass the group upon their identity shift to new wave/synthpop auteurs that often rejected the New Romantic culture and the following that came with it:
Following two albums’ worth of middling glam worship blended in with some worthwhile tunes, Japan had finally found their sound with their third album, 1979’s Quiet Life; along with this futuristic sound, Sylvian had eschewed the slurred vocal…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of October 13, 2017. 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 art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
St. Vincent: MASSEDUCATION
Genre: Indie-Pop/Indie-Rock// Label: Loma Vista Recordings
Background:
St. Vincent’s fifth full-length LP MASSEDUCATION (pronounced “mass seduction”) marks Annie Clark’s follow-up to her celebrated self-titled 2014 venture into art-pop. Jack Antonoff (of Bleachers) is credited as a co-producer with Clark and there is a range of special guests featured on the album including Kamasi Washington, Jenny Lewis, and Thomas Bartlett.
Check out the music video for “New York” below:
– Full List of Releases: October 13, 2017 –
Altarage: Endinghent
Genre: Death Metal // Label: Season of Mist
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Ancient VVisdom: 33
Genre: Rock // Label: Magic Bullet
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Antisect: The Rising Of The Lights
Genre: Punk // Label: Rise Above
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Beck: Colors
Genre: Folk/Experimental/Alt-Rock // Label: Capitol Records
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Bigfoot: Bigfoot
Genre: Alternative Rock // Label: Frontiers Music
I’ve always kinda liked U2. When I was growing up the songs I most frequently caught on the TV were catchy, distinctly not-classics “Beautiful Day” and “Elevation” (a personal favourite music video for my kiddy mind), along with the likes of Coldplay’s “Yellow” and “The Scientist”. I didn’t grow up in the 80s, but through my parents gradually allowing me to get their CDs I got a quick-and-dirty version of U2’s evolution: immature Cure-loving post-punkers, machine gun punks, soaring stadium rockers and country-fied Cash and Dylan wannabes. It’s a damn impressive evolution, regardless of your feelings on the band overall; the switch-up from Rattle and Hum to Achtung Baby easily ranks up with those of, say, Radiohead (disregarding that nothing else in the universe really sounds like Kid A). It’s the common narrative that U2 went off the rails after Achtung, if you ever thought they were on the rails at all. Allow me to try and set the record straight.
I still love this video, screw you all.
Following on from Zooropa – undeniably an EP’s worth of content stretched out into an album, but a weirdly compelling mess of ambient, soundtrack and electronic rock nonetheless – came Pop. A quite literally unfinished album full of dead ends, empty spaces where additional guitar or keys or noises were probably meant to go. A trashy, shallow, flashy album, as if Bono’s Fly glasses were transmuted into musical form. An album of dance-pop demo cuts, desperate to snatch…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of October 6, 2017. 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 art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
– Full List of Releases: October 6, 2017 –
Alex Lahey: I Love You Like A Brother
Genre: Indie-Rock // Label: Dead Oceans
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Andrew Hung: Realisationship
Genre: Drone/Electronic/Psychedelic // Label: Lex
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Antarktis: Ildlaante
Genre: Post Metal // Label: Agonia Record
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August Burns Red: Phantom Anthem
Genre: Metalcore/Progressive Metal // Label: Fearless
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The Black Dahlia Murder: Nightbringers
Genre: Melodic Death Metal // Label: Metal Blade
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Blue Hawaii: Tenderness
Genre: Indie/Dream-Pop // Label: Arbutus
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Carbon Based Lifeforms: Derelicts
Genre: Ambient/Downtempo/Electronic // Label: Blood Music
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Citizen: As You Please
Genre: Emo/Grunge/Post-Hardcore // Label: Run For Cover
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Courtney Farren: Nothing Like It
Genre: Indie-Pop/Folk // Label: Courtney Farren
After 4.5 years together, I have never dragged my boyfriend to a metal show, despite it being a frequent pass time of my college years with loansonlineusa. The allure of slumming it with my metalhead peers in my usual haunts lost its luster a long time ago, admittedly. Combine this with a 9-to-5 career and a general antipathy towards being in crowds and the show outings slow down to a near halt.
Yet sometimes it’s still nice to get out and go to a show. Generally on Saturdays my boyfriend and I tend to do ‘whatever,’ with this day in particular being filled with fall outings and zip-lining. I’m not on Facebook so when my boyfriend skimmed his suggestions on what to do he noticed a show starting in a couple of hours.”Have you heard of these bands?” he asked. “Um, yeah, absolutely” I replied. When I showed some excitement at the prospect of seeing Imperial Triumphant and Pyrrhon, he decided he wanted to be cool and take me (which was cool, of course).
“It’s going to be pretty intense,” I warned, “they’re fairly heavy.” I know he can hang, he’s been to a fair share of punk shows in the past, and his penchant for 90s and alternative music like the Pixies, Pavement, Husker Du, and Sonic Youth mean that he’s got good taste. I mean, the first song we danced to was “Venus As A Boy” (at his request), so again, he can hang.
If the first half of Brand New’s career is what brought them into the public eye, then it was the second half that elevated them into the conversation of of being one of indie-rock’s greatest new millennium bands. While Your Favorite Weapon and Deja Entendu saw them master the art of pop-punk/pop-rock, it wasn’t until 2006 that many began to view them as serious innovators. For as large of a maturity leap as Deja represented on the heels of its relatively juvenile predecessor, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me marked an even more colossal evolution. Gone were the cheap feeling pop-punk chords and tongue-in-cheek self awareness, replaced with long, winding song progressions that culminated in and seething, searing riffs and lyrics that represented both an existential crisis and a total loss of innocence. It was the band properly coming into its own; the logical if unanticipated destination of Your Favorite Weapon‘s anger and Deja‘s biting cynicism.
The trials that the band endured during the recording process only fueled the record’s overarching sense of anger and depression: from a multitude of deaths and illnesses that befell band members’ friends and families to the leaking of a good portion of the album’s material midway through, it was probably the most difficult record that Brand New recorded. The album title itself came from a conversation Lacey had with a friend regarding Daniel Johnston, a musician who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Lacey and the rest of the band felt…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of September 29, 2017. 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 art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die: Always Foreign
Genre: Post-Rock/Emo/Indie // Label: Epitaph
Background:
With a warm blend of post-rock, emo, and indie stylings, The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die return with their third full-length LP, and their follow-up to 2015’s Harmlessness. Early singles seem to indicate that their genre trajectory will continue down the indie-laden path of its predecessor, but with the lush moments of beauty and the intricate guitar work displayed on that effort, few will likely find fault with that decision.
Check out the 7-minute single “Marine Tigers” below:
I had to ask myself yesterday: ‘Why?’ I was curious; stood inch deep in the quagmire, sniffling, giggling, losing my hair, losing my mind, and damn near losing my patience with the gurning bastard stood next to me, pestering me for a piece of Wrigley’s so he didn’t get lockjaw, I could not understand who might possibly enjoy this, and if they could enjoy it, how many pills I would have to have taken to do so. Granted, it was springtime, and I’d stand on human shit just to see Future, but the point remains; ‘Why?’
You see, in Australia- or at least Perth- we like to have our festivals in the summertime, when it doesn’t rain and it is generally more conducive to standing outside for hours at a time. It wasn’t until a cursory Internet search that I discovered and realized that the rest of the world isn’t quite as hard, fast, or as hung up on all of that bother as we are. Apparently, there’s mud at Glastonbury. And apparently, this is something people will pay £238 for; better yet, something they will endure across 5 days so they can watch Ed Sheeran, Halsey, and Clean Bandit. Apparently, that’s entertainment.
I make the exception for wet weather festivals because Splendour in the Grass, a pilgrimage, rite-of-passage, and waste-of-money for self-described ‘elite’ sandstone university students countrywide almost always transpires as the ground turns to mud and the sky goes grey. It’s a miserable experience all up,…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of September 22, 2017. 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 art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
–Featured Release: Godspeed You! Black Emperor: “Luciferian Towers”
The fathers of post-rock are back at it. Two years removed from ‘Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress’, an album that for all intents and purposes reinvented Godspeed’s core philosophy (drone/ambient, shorter overall length), the band finds itself trudging further down that path while adding precious few wrinkles in the process. It’s once again shorter than some of their gargantuan efforts of the past, and it opts for emotive string sections and concise, calculated progressions over the sprawling, free-form drone passages of this album’s predecessor. Interjecting their fair share of political imagery, GY!BE ultimately prove that amid the minor tweaks this is still the same embittered, eccentric band that conceptualized the end of the world in 1997’s F♯ A♯ ∞. As our very own contributing reviewer LandDiving surmised in his review, “although previous Godspeed releases have spun sprawling post-apocalyptic narratives imbued with pathos, this new record engenders a last-ditch effort to prevent the end of the world from occurring, as if it plays out before both F#A# and…
Although it will inevitably frustrate non-fans of Brand New, especially in the midst of incessant discussion surrounding the group’s finale Science Fiction, there is no better time to reflect back upon one of the most important indie-rock bands of the new millennium. I say it not as a hyperbolic exaggeration designed to garner interest, but just for what it is at this point – a pretty indisputable fact. If Science Fiction reaching Billboard’s #1 chart spot isn’t an indicator of the cult following that Brand New has accumulated, then I’m not quite sure what would serve as evidence of their far-reaching influence. This pair of articles will likely end up reading as a eulogy, although that isn’t really my intention. I’d prefer that it be taken as a retrospective – a look back at the band’s noteworthy accomplishments, defining moments, and an overall distillation of what it all meant. The band has made it clear that 2018 marks the resolution of this almost two-decade long run, and as dramatic as it sounds, it’s a void that a lot of listeners won’t know how to fill.
As far as I’m concerned, Brand New’s existence can be separated into two distinct eras. Certainly, their progression was more intricate and fluid than that, but in terms of splitting up their anthology, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me was the clear divider. I’m not going to talk much about that record here though, because it resides on the other side of the line. Before Brand New…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of September 15, 2017. 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 art work so that you can read about the release, see how we scored it, and more.
–Featured Release: Foo Fighters: “Concrete And Gold”
Genre: Rock/Grunge // Label: RCA Records
Background:
Foo Fighters are one of the few traditional 90’s rock/grunge bands whose relevance and longevity has extended all the way into 2017. That alone speaks volumes about the quality of their product, as they’ve remained the best and most consistent mainstream rock band around for well over two decades. Never groundbreaking yet almost always impressive, Dave Grohl and company return with their ninth LP – and for those who have taken a long vacation from Foo Fighters, this may mark a good point to start listening again. Easily their most enthralling and adventurous record in years, it is more Wasting Light than it is Sonic Highways, and there’s an exquisite balance between their trademark rock roots and a more sonically explorative curiosity. There’s a long list of reasons why these guys sit atop the throne of contemporary rock n’ roll, but Concrete and Gold is more than just another bullet-point; it’s a highlight.
September 2017 is a time of great change and uncertainty for me. Life-long friendships have dissolved, I’ve potentially been at the heart of intense pain for more than a few, and my own state of existence is being called into a flickering, wavering contention between worth and worthlessness. And, I suppose, most evidently out of this maelstrom of misjudgment and mistakes leaves the question that lingers at the edge of my mind every single night as I struggle to sleep: where will I live in three weeks’ time?
I have to keep myself living by a mantra that has defined the past few years of my life: “Take things one day at a time.”
This mantra often leaves the future in a constant blur that I reject the existence of, and while this blur helps shelter the fragility of anxiety that lures me into the oncoming traffic of sentience, it also allows me to make poor judgments and decisions — often in the heat of the moment — so as to not shatter the illusion that I have no idea what or where I’ll be one or three years from now.
In the aftermath of poor decisions, that illusion is usually shattered regardless, as the immediate nature and repercussions of my decisions don’t allow me to disregard thought beyond today. And when life begins to crumble over the poorly structured fail-safe I devise to keep myself going, I usually turn…
![Masseduction [Explicit]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41on99Y3BzL._SS500.jpg)
![Colors [Explicit]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/416JKsKKpQL._SS500.jpg)
![Realisationship [Explicit]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61IzYzuqjjL._SS500.jpg)
![Pinewood Smile (Deluxe) [Explicit]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61masRu38lL._SS500.jpg)
![Concrete and Gold [Explicit]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51WmOGprqnL._SS500.jpg)
