JohnnyoftheWell
Hugh G. Puddles
Staff

Reviews 368
Soundoffs 76
News Articles 102
Band Edits + Tags 1,289
Album Edits 659

Album Ratings 4410
Objectivity 75%

Last Active 01-01-70 12:00 am
Joined 01-01-70

Review Comments 60,317

 Lists
04.25.24 REC me glitch/downtempo/IDM04.16.24 All Blonde Redhead songs RANKED ♦
03.28.24 OED Japanese imports RANKED (Q1 2024) ♦03.22.24 Sputnik's Sacred Cows
03.14.24 POP ALIGNMENT03.09.24 Discogs that peak on song #1
03.07.24 new staff + contribs RANKED ♦03.03.24 MARCH of JAZŽŻ ♦
02.16.24 G L I T C H genre tag02.01.24 FEBRUARY of ambi2ent (REC me) ♦
01.01.24 well_2023: "YES" albums (2/2) ♦12.31.23 well_2023: "NO" albums (1/2)
12.27.23 (be)rate my LP 'collection'12.03.23 2023 BNM: cringedex ♦
12.01.23 New users :: REVIEWED ♦11.28.23 Your 5s choices reviewed AGAIN ♦
11.15.23 learn from my WORST REVIEWS ♦11.13.23 Tory stooge music
More »

5s on 5s: GHANDHI vs. STORM

it is Storm vs Ghandhi what up
1KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

RECAP

This is the second round of this wild deathmatch sadism series Mort narrowly died against Gyro in the first round okay all caught up

RATIONALE

After the first match I wasn't sure if this series should continue and then people started asking to be featured in it and I realised it definitely should end immediately and then Lordepots made an entire 5slist project guilt-tripping me into featuring him so I thought okay I guess it can go on

For its second run, I decided that this series needs a greater flex of ambition and therefore we are going to take on the only two users on Sputnikmusic whose rating metrics are 100% objective post-taste permanent judgement dictionary mathematics. We are talking about GHANDHILION and STORM IN A TEACUP, wokest of the woke, elitist of the elite. Only they are worthy to stand against the other neither can live while the other survives etc.

They also have basically the same number of 5s (Ghandhi 147 vs Storm 226, but Storm has cleverly inflated his by massrating fake bands like Mimosa and the Beatles to throw me off his scent - nice try! it is the same number). cool.

RULES

I am *still* making the rules up as I go along, and they go as follows:
・We are not doing 147 5-on-5 matches, we are doing 10 individual match-ups
・These will be based on relevant criteria
・I am reusing some of the good criteria from last round and making up some other ones um okay that's all
・Oh yeah actually wait
・The loser incurs a huge amount of shame and has to wrestle a pig naked while singing their favourite MCR song

Let's go!!
2Albert Ayler
Spiritual Unity

ROUND ONE: First 5 on the list

GHANDHI: Ghandhi's first 5 is a legendary free jazz record that shocked the world by demonstrating exactly how free free jazz can be. This isn't your Ornette Coleman harmonies-of-chaos-coming-to-stir-shit-in-a-bar-you-actually-quite-like deal. This is proper floor-is-lava upheaval. Does this tell us about the shape of Ghandhi 5s to come? Does it *want* to tell us about the shape of Ghandhi 5s to come? Maybe. Like most people who know this record including (and possibly exceeding) Ghandhi, I have heard it precisely once and because it is one of the more satisfying things made by humans maybe, once was enough. A strong start for Ghandhi, who knows the game. This album has a metric.
3Alexisonfire
Old Crows / Young Cardinals

ROUND ONE: First 5 on the list

STORM: If Ghandhi's first 5 is the end and rebirth of jazz, Storm's first 5 is the end of high school and of savage dependency on scene-daddy angst as a raison d'etre, but not necessarily the beginning of adulthood. This album tells you that nothing can ever be enough, especially Alexisonfire, but it does not tell you what comes next. It is therefore more of an ending that Spiritual Unity but also somehow less terminal. Fascinating. I want to make fun this record for being the unanimously agreed Worst Thing In The Alexisonfire discography, but - and this from a lifetime post-hardcore fan - the only album of theirs that I have ever made it to the end of is Watch Out, which would have no alphabetical precedence even if Storm had seen fit to 5 it, so touché sir. Storm immediately shows his impartial genius by platforming a commercialised burnout record that even scene kids refuse to touch. Admiration = peaking already.
4KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round One: TIE

Each of these records is so sickeningly on brand for its respective contestant that I refuse to believe either is here for any reason that optics. As such, neither is deserving of victory.
5Megadeth
Cryptic Writings

ROUND TWO: Most surprising 5

STORM: okay sorry what the fuck. I thought I'd seen it all with Storm - flick through his 5s and you get your slightly off-brand mallcore, your proggy cutedork, 60s nostalgia, deep southern truck rock, the occasional basic pop pick, the hip-hopper's starter back, discog 5s from bands that of course Storm would discog 5 - and then this? A lone Megadeth album from the late '90s that no-one in their right mind would turn to outside of a discog run and/or discog 5? Why the hell not.

For context, of the 5-6 Megadeth albums Storm has rated, this has the highest rating by an increment of 1 and he has both Risk and Rust in Peace 3'd. Tbh Storm's iconoclastic dedication to metrics of pure reason across his other 5s is sure to anger many. I can see exactly how why this brand of midtempo butt rock would turn thrash crusties away en masse like mosquito repellant - one battle fewer for him to fight. Well played sir.
6Pink Floyd
A Saucerful of Secrets

ROUND TWO: Most surprising 5

GHANDHI: Ghandhi does not believe in coincidence and neither do I. There are no surprises. This is the nearest thing to a surprise I can must, mainly because of all the records on his list, this is the one I was closest to completely forgetting the existence of. And it's a fucking Pink Floyd album.
7KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Two: STORM

Say what you like about Mr. Mustaine and his creative choices throughout the '90s, at least Storm's pick made me remember what gravity can do to a human jaw. Storm's metrics accommodate more chaos than Ghandhi's and are therefore better for the purposes of this round.
8Lou Harrison
La Koro Sutro

ROUND THREE: Most recently 5'd 5

GHANDHI: On the 27th March 2020, Ghandhilion deemed the 1988 recording of this modern choral x gamelan composition by the University Chamber Chorus of Berkeley to be a classic not just of its time but also of ours. Such is the power of modern choral. Was he correct?

Well

as easy as it is to meme on the above info - and make no mistake, if you dear reader have not memed it in at least three different ways within your own private headspace by now, you are not nearly toxic enough for this series log off and change your parental controls immediately - AS EASY AS IT IS, this is beautiful soulful expansive music that makes me feel guilty about consuming it 1) indoors and 2) at night. It is obscure enough that you can tell no-one forced Ghandhi to 5 it. It is legitimate he is pure.
9Theory of a Deadman
Dinosaur

ROUND THREE: Most recently 5'd 5

STORM:

The opener and title-track (same song!) is a somewhat mellow Buckcherry tune that begins with the whispered word (wait for it) "dinosaur" and proceeds into a stirring dino-calypse narrative that touched my kinesthetics and probably sounds exactly like what Reptile sounds like to Periphery fans. This record has a 1.9 average across 19 sputnik ratings (one of which is Storm's 5/5) and I could not for the life of me tell you why.
10KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Three: GHANDHI

Gamelan is one of the few games that Ghandhi can always win
11Leonard Cohen
Songs of Leonard Cohen

ROUND FOUR: 5 I Like Most Actively

Last time around this round was 5 I Dislike Most Actively, but with these two involved I shall be a good host and spurn the path of least resistance. Time for a challenge!

GHANDHI: Not so long ago, this would have been a fairly easy pick but unfortunately Kayo Dot's recent sold out Choirs of the Eye tours gave Ghandhi a cruel wakeup slap as to that band's hitherto masked commercial potential. He dropped them from his list there and then, and so we are left with Leonard Cohen. Tbqh I prefer Spiderland to this record, but I like Leonard Cohen being in Ghandhi's 5s more because he was a real person you could have had a real conversation with him- one glance at the rest of this list is enough to tell me this is a trait Ghandhi actively penalises in his 5mules and, like, fair enough! I don't like it when my video game menus talk to me either. Leonard wins the day - but will he win... ?
12Coheed and Cambria
The Second Stage Turbine Blade

ROUND FOUR: 5 I Like Most Actively

STORM: Picking an album for Storm was not hard. His glory days as the SPUTNIK MUSIC COHEED AND CAMBRIA CHAMPION may be long behind him, but I miss when his sputsona had some sense of destiny to it (even if that destiny turned out to be voluntary retirement from the role of Sputnik Music Coheed And Cambria Champion. Likewise, I miss when just about the maximum scope of anything a band could do imho was whatever the hell happens on The Second Stage Turbine Blade when Claudio but not like the singer Claudio i mean Claudio the character in the story yeah that Claudio's dead older sister who has recently been brutally murdered after a bad date with her boyfriend incongruously named Patrick by their dad because the darth vadar character lied to him and said that his kids were bad or some shit but now Claudio's nascent and/or awakening messianic powers have awakened *her* and she tells him to go while some rando offscreen - in this beautiful fictional planet in a fictional universe, mind you - belts nothing more or less than the scifi-tastic words "F B I!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" - yeah that. That was great. That was the s h i t. This album fucking slaps
13KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Four: GHANDHI

This one is unpleasant and tough, but much as The Second Stage Turbine Blade is the greatest comic book adult Star Wars album ever made, I have to accept that it, along with Storm's plotline, is the past, whereas neither Leonard nor Ghandhi really do time. Hold your applause and don't expect them to remember your fucking birthday.
14Hector Berlioz
Symphonie Fantastique

ROUND FIVE: Oldest 5

As in release date. Simple game, race to the bottom - who goes further back, whose cassette collection is more precious, who has a better grasp on the beginning of music? Let's see...

GHANDHI: Ghandhi's oldest 5 and oldest rating of *known* date (what in the fuck is Semargl?) is Berlioz' Symphonie. It was released in 1830 and hit BNM within a week. This is Ghandhi's first 5.
15Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125

ROUND FIVE: Oldest 5

STORM: Storm's oldest 5 and oldest rating (all are of known date; Storm is the historian of the two) is Beethoven's 9th. Beethoven's 9th came out in 1824. DoofusWainwright published an unpopular soundoff along the lines of "not bad not bad - too bad I'm only ever going to listen to it back-to-back with Beethoven's 6th AMIRITE" which he deleted out of shame at an uncertain point in the Prussian revolution.
16KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Five: STORM. Beethoven's 9th came out in 1824. Symphonie Fantastique came out in 1830. Beethoven's 9th came out 6 years before Symphonie Fantastique. Storm has more depth and he wins.
17Jeremy Soule
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Soundtrack

ROUND SIX: Mirror Move!

Ngl I *really* wanted to reuse the Sex Appeal category here, but a boi does not sow seeds when he has the desert on one side and the salty, salty ocean on the other. This is what unflinching devotion to elitenment looks like, dear readers. Instead, we shall have Mirror Move (aka 5 That Matches The Other User Most) as suggested by upstanding citizen SteakByrnes. Let's see!

STORM: Following the received wisdom that a) Beethoven is too old school for Ghandhi and b) all shared-5 artists (bye Yes, bye Dylan) should be discounted. This leaves us with Jeremy Soule's Skyrim OST, of course.




Well, don't just stand there looking at me! What else was I going to pick? You think Skyrim is for normies? This shit is cracked and full of elitist loopholes. Ghandhi takes to it like an Argonian in your great aunt's feral pigsty (and yes, guess which race he plays as) - the kid's out there any%ing this shit with nothing but a block of cheese and the Kyne's Peace shout. On one since-corrupted save he redownloaded the vanilla version of the Dragonborn DLC just to exploit an early game bug that imparts an infinite supply of bugged Amulets of Mara, usable on any player *or* animal if you successfully chase an adult Netch all the way from Solstheim to Delphine's inn *before* she reveals her identity. He does not wear clothes. Storm fucking knows it.
18Pram
Helium

ROUND SIX: Mirror Move!

GHANDHI: On the other hand, the two one-word titles of Ghandhi's pick can tell you everything you ever needed to know about Storm with nary a synapse scorched.
19KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Six: Ghandhi. Alas.
20Joanna Newsom
Ys

ROUND SEVEN: Satiate A Wine Mum

GHANDHI: This is a rather unfortunate round for Ghandhi, as Songs of Leonard Cohen would satiated even the thirstiest of wine mums but there is a strict one-appearance-per-5 rule at play here so !

Honestly, for all the well-deserved shitchat I've seen down below re. Storm's glaring gender imbalance, Ghandhi is hardly any better and the majority of his list is of such a brittle-boned sunlight-starved ascetic mouthwash-prescription disposition that I doubt any self-respecting wine mum would want much to do with them. Savvy to such optics, Ghandhi plays desperate and offers an extremely obvious piece of course-correction courtesy of Joanna Newsom. Will her lauded opus Ys satiate a wine mum? History says yes, several times over, but my suspicions remain.
21Nicole Dollanganger
Married in Mount Airy

ROUND SEVEN: Satiate A Wine Mum

STORM: If Ghandhi's target wine mum has the most generic profile of any wine mum we ever did mull, then Storm's is (for lack of a better word) a fucking waif. Storm's list does not cater to healthy establishment mumdom - its scope is trained either on childish millennial cranks whose maturity peaked and died with Mitski's Puberty 2 (((((i am talking about paramore fans in the year 2023)))) or on whoever the hell listens to this and is also a mum. These mums have not seen their offspring in a long time. They have also likely not seen wine for a long time (that smell you're smelling now is good ol' white spirits). They may be literal phantoms. Well, too bad! Storm is here to charm and soothe, and for all my gripes with this rather dreary album, it does voice a kind of spiritual release that probably goes a long way if you are in desperate need of one. He has good intentions and this album is the moment at which these count.
22KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Seven: STORM. Ghandhi may have satiated more wine mums than Storm, but Storm starts from a far lower baseline and offers more to fewer people. A close round,
23From Autumn to Ashes
Holding A Wolf By The Ears

ROUND EIGHT: First 5 5'd

STORM: The date of this rating actually precedes the date that rating dates were first assigned a date stamp, so it is impossible to say exactly how old it is (very fucking old). It is a beginning. I have also never heard of this band and the the convenient Sput intro "American metalcore band from Long Island" did not exactly get my blood up, but hey it was (probably) 2007 and most of use were maybe doing worse things?

...yeah y'know what? *Much* worse things. This record is the stuff of Sput's late '00s lifeblood, and by that I mean, this site had a huge Warped Tour vampire phase, but this is far from offensive by those standards, perfectly aligned with everything currently known about every incarnation of Storm, and actually occasionally kinda good?
24My Bloody Valentine
Loveless

ROUND EIGHT: First 5 5'd

GHANDHI: When Ghandhi came to Sputnik his first 5.0 was for Loveless, or, for full context

Slint Spiderland 5.0
Kayo Dot Choirs of the Eye 4.5
Death Human 4.0
Radiohead Kid A 3.5
Harmonium Les Cinq Saisons 3.0
Swans Soundtracks for the Blind 4.5
My Bloody Valentine Loveless 5.0
Black Sabbath Master of Reality 4.0
Tool Lateralus

yes indeed Ghandhi was birthed directly from rym none of us needed confirmation of this and it is something of a disappointment to receive it anyway. Who is the evil who should have killed?
25KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Eight: STORM. Not even gonna apologise for this one. Storm 5'ing an above average emo-viable moderately commercially influenced metalcore record is a far more precious part of Sput history than Ghandhi getting on board the Loveless bandwagon as the cheapest public transport available to ferry him on his unimpeachable way to the noxious ghost town of Critical Legitimacy.
26Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
Trout Mask Replica

ROUND NINE: Entertain a Small Child

No cynical readings of the round title please and thank you, anyway

GHANDHI: ALL OF THE CUTE ANIMALS ARE ON THIS RECORD and their combination is underpinned by a logic so perversely broken that only the most childlike of imaginations can accept and/or enjoy it at face value without asking crippling questions of disenfranchisement such as Why Do Grown Men Act Like This yes I do quite like this album lol. It is every pantomime having a lo-fi orgy, which means that if you have not yet learned to recognise either lo-fi or orgies, you are A-okay m'boy!
27Gorillaz
Demon Days

ROUND NINE: Entertain a Small Child

STORM: From my rosy '00s upbringing, I have a flood of memories of being entertained as a small child in contexts where Demon Days was playing and therefore you cannot convince me that countless small children around the world(?) have not been entertained by this album. Does it work? Kinda definitely yes, but it sounds worse as a teenager and a fair bit better as an adult, so I'll chalk it up as a character development yardstick. This sounds dangerously close to Educational Device for my liking.
28KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Eight: GHANDHI

Ghandhi had a natural advantage in this round; Storm's aura may be grounded for firmly in the past, but only insofar as it has deadlocked itself out of every phase of development that isn't strictly pubescent. Ghandhi's taste has alienated itself from humanity and other institutions of profit and commerce to the extent that it has no issue infiltrating any given increment of maturity either side of the few years of the human lifespan where we actually experience emotions (ty Storm). Small children can rejoice as such.
29Paramore
This Is Why

ROUND TEN: This Shouldn't Be Here

This is the endgame and will decide the winner it is the endgame. It is a showdown between albums that make my guts squirm. ROUND TWO already covered surprises, so this round is exclusively for unflattering picks that represent the contestant in question for predictable reasons. Okay!

STORM: Maybe this carries a recency bias, but there's a cohesion of sorts to the various taste crimes the rest of this list commits and I can respect its ungainly overgrown emo perma-perspirant '00s time capsule for sheer continuity and mild nostalgia. Whatever bizarre standards Storm's list sets for itself, it rarely errs from them. Occasional hiccups such as Cryptic Writings, positing Come Clarity as In Flames' sole 5able achievement, and a random Lil Wayne spree largely add to the charm. If I went to bat for hip-hop, I would probably have a seizure about Illmatic being put on par with I Am... but I'll leave that to the crowd. But anyway - tl;dr this list does not demand to be taken seriously and endears itself quite easily to anyone who views it a somewhat erratic patchwork of whimsy and nostalgia.

To which end, Paramore's latest is a hideous blot even by Storm's uneven standards. Too recent to be consigned to a youthful misjudgement, too gratingly self-serious to complement his goofball aura, too beloved by the insufferable NPC would-be-tastemakers that haunt the corners of aggregate sites in underage droves to sit in healthy alignment with Storm's otherwise galactic anti-elitist Chill. It is an error. The "it's just girl doing pop catchy rock" card is immediately shredded in the face of Storm's ongoing dearth of [catchy music performed by] female vocalists. The "keeping up with the kids" card is indelicate and ugly given that Storm has probably been on sputnik longer than most of this record's target audience has been alive. It's a rare album that contravenes both established songwriting wisdom and the extremely lenient parameters of Storm's own precedents enough to straight-up warrant a "do better" slapdown, but here we have found one. Up your game.
30Nico
The Marble Index

ROUND TEN: This Shouldn't Be Here

GHANDHI: On the one hand, you could argue that the sheer heights of charmlessness in Nico's suite of avant-chamber-folk artfart are precisely the reason that it *does* belong on this list, but I am impartial and consider this an overly cynical take. As such, it's an unfortunate record that highlights everything insufferable and stuffy about the rest of Ghandhi's list, and its amputation would bring him one vital step closer to denying us that lens and adopting a far more favourable spin on the [s]novelty[/s] personality showcased across the whole package. "But Nico's personality is-" away with you, talking lion king puppet, if Nico's Nico-shaped morbid study of eccentricity upheld in that stead is Ghandhi's defence against the terrifyingly meticulous rigour with which he has perpetuated shadow-consensus guidelines, then turn me into a fucking machine and oil me perniciously. The show cannot go on.
31KILLING JOKE
KILLING JOKE

Winner of Round Ten: The winner is...











































STORM

Hayley Williams might be an offensively awful lyricist, but she ain't no anti-Semite. This is a principled tournament.

STORM wins the contest ig jfc what a wash this was hope the next contestants do better. The fact that Nico vs. Paramore was even conceivable as a showdown here is a disgrace to everyone involved and bestows a shame that overrides any honourable mentions or concessions that may have been eked at any point. Storm's victory is pyrrhic this transmission is angry
Show/Add Comments (185)

STAFF & CONTRIBUTORS // CONTACT US

Bands: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Site Copyright 2005-2023 Sputnikmusic.com
All Album Reviews Displayed With Permission of Authors | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy