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User
Reviews 123
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Last Active 12-23-19 9:27 pm
Joined 09-16-14
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| August 2017 resumé
You know the drill: It's the end of the month, thus in comes my short commentary on all the stuff released that I got a chance to hear. If there's a record you loved, but don't see on here, chances are I didn't get to it yet, so stick around and I will write something up about it.
And now a score guide: 10/9 - 5; 8 - 4.5; 7 - 4; 6 - 3.5/3; 5 - 2.5; 4 - 2; 3 - 1.5; 2/1 - 1 | | 41 |  | Nyss
Princesse Terre
This is how I like my Doomy Black Metal, all dismal, depressive and hellish. Then again, the album doesn't exactly present all that much new in terms of music that I haven't heard before. Basically, if you are a seasoned listener, you can skip this album and not miss out, but if you are an enthusiast, it can bring you solid and stable 30 minutes of entertainment. 7/10 | | 40 |  | Chalk Hands
Burrows and Other Hideouts
Bloody monumental! This EP blasts, blisters and bursts. It manages to bring so much raw emotional destruction in just two short tracks and it makes you want to put it on an infinite repeat. Magnetically powerful and crushingly nihilistic it is. 8/10 | | 39 |  | Cormorant
Diaspora
Heavy, dissonant and hellish album, but one that lacks that special punch to make it completely stunning. At /this moment, it's merely a display of good metal music making, but with quality not too far above the average. 7/10 | | 38 |  | Der Weg Einer Freiheit
Finisterre
Man, how long have I not heard the German language? It's so nice to hear it again. I didn't even know I missed it so much. That sweet and tender, yet strict and coarse sound caresses my ears.
Now, to the music. This album is monstrous. Indeed, it doesn't reach much of anywhere outside of the ususal Atmospheric Black Metal norms, but it flows so naturally and freely within the boundaries of the genre. From the opening until the very end, you are treated with collage of masterful instrumentation, demonic vocalism and an enthralling atmosphere that no other genre can ever produce. A beast of a record. 8/10
Aufbruch, Ein letzter Tanz, Finisterre, Neubeginn | | 37 |  | Ghostpoet
Dark Days + Canapés
Ghostpoet delivers a vibrant, somewhat relaxing and utterly mesmerising performance. His mixture of monotone vocals that balance between mumble-rapping and spoken-word, with often atmospheric instrumental arrangement creates some truly unusual vibes. Its beautiful in its own way, while definitely showcasing a great portion of a certain feeling of menace and almost ominous nonchalancy. 8/10
Trouble + Me, (We're) Dominoes, Dopamine If I Do, Live>Leave, Karoshi, Immigrant Boogie | | 36 |  | Third Day
Revival
Blousey, Country-ish and very, very, very Christian... like, ridiculously so. 6/10 | | 35 |  | Gang of Youths
Go Farther In Lightness
So here's a story: I leave Australia for some shitty shit place in Europe and like a day or two afterwards this album comes out. And of course it's available only in Australia and UK (also known as the countries that matter). So I now have to wait for fucking months until it comes out in my neck of the shithole. | | 34 |  | Kutmah
Trobbb!
I mean, if you want to hear a collection of Hip-Hop producer's semi-finishedmusical ideas, however intriguing, give this a shot. It's fine, some tracks are quite decent, but it just doesn't really provide much of anything to hold on to. 6/10
Thoughts Under the Full Moon, Arrival, Strangetown, Cooler of Evidence | | 33 |  | Hell (USA)
Hell
Demoic, devilish, hellish, dismal, abysmal and brooding. Ugly this is. Ugly. 7/10
SubOdin, Mahitikos, Inscriptus, Victus | | 32 |  | Starsailor
All This Life
Hey, for my money? Why the fuck not? 7/10
Listen to Your Heart, Blood, Best of Me, No One Else | | 31 |  | Leprous
Malina
This is odd, the vocals have all the merits to be absolutely excruciating and the music is such a typical melodramatic Prog that it should annoy me. So my question is, why do I like it? I mean, I don't love it, but I really enjoyed it for what it was. Be it its epic songwriting that actually progresses from point A to point B to C and so on, to its instrumental finesse that doesn't feel too mechanical and by-the-numbers, to even the aforementioned vocals that are by all means designed to feel obnoxious to me, but aren't... for the most part. It's a perfectly fine album and I didn't mind listening to it multiple times. I really don't understand how is this possible... with Prog? The world is weird. 7/10
P.S.: Regarding the vocals, I mean, I also periodically enjoy Starsailor's vocals, so the problem might be me...
Bonneville, From the Flame, Captive, Malina, Coma | | 30 |  | together PANGEA
Bulls & Roosters
A rapid, fun, lightweight and relaxed Indie Rock. You won't find any worldly distress or despair in here. Think the Maccabees, the Vaccines and all the Indie bands such as these with their life-loving, youthful and down-to-earth truthfulness. It's fun is what I'm saying. 7/10
The Cold, Kenmore Ave., Money On It, Southern Comfort, Is It Real? | | 29 |  | Liars
TFCF
Liars have left that obscure electronic phase and entered an even more obscure, but largely instrumental one. But this just sounds like that LCD Soundsystem album, but much cockier and full of strange bitterness... also awful musicianship every now and then. 6/10
P.S.: The album cover is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen this month.
No Help Pamphlet, No Tree No Branch, Crying Fountain | | 28 |  | Mogwai
Every Country's Sun
Mogwai make another album of tracks that you'll hear every time there's an inspiring and breathtaking moment in a National Geographic documentary... And the ones with vocals are okay enough to be in an overpriced car commercial or something. 6/10 | | 27 |  | AJJ
Back in the Jazz Coffin
AJJ pulled off a bunch of, what I assume are B-Sides. It's as goofy and strangely dramatic, as their usual stuff, but way shorter. I mean, it's a 9 minutes long EP, it's fine. 7/10
Blood, Hatred, Money and Rage 2, My Crooked Leg, Fuckboi | | 26 |  | LCD Soundsystem
American Dream
This is definitely an album worthy of a listen, but I can hardly see what all the fuss is about. Surely enough, the off-the-wall production with all of its robotic strangeness, together with the irregular and obscure songwriting, create a certain atmosphere of a futuristic discotheque-swirling odd-world. But that is also the album's biggest wrongdoing. It's extremely hard to get into. Individual songs maybe, and even then only with a severe amount of effort. The rest, as it went over my head the first time I heard it, still doesn't near the distance. 6/10
I Used To, How Do You Sleep?, Tonite | | 25 |  | Mermaidens
Perfect Body
A Psych-infused Pop album with some ominous atmosphere, but unfortunately, a lot of the times it just sort of lingers on uneventfully. And even when some overwhelmingly great moment does come up, it tends to shut it off quite quickly with that quieter subdued sound it usually impliments. Kind of sad, had it had more hard-hitting moments, I would have really enjyed it. Still, the menacing atmosphere and the slightly dizzying instrumentation and production are quite noteworthy. 6/10
Sunstone, Satsuma, Give It Up | | 24 | | Drudkh / Paysage d'Hiver
Somewhere Sadness Wanders
You can only guess how hard my dick was, when I found out this was a thing. Now, Drudkh have never been exactly on a piedestal of Black Metal for me, but they were doing fine. Oddly enough, their most solid material was always on splits (see last years split with Grift). Talking about the cult classic status of Paysage d'Hiver is probably pointless at this point. And on this split you get pretty much what you'd expect. It's an overwhelming blast of atmosphere from Drudkh and a distorted trackful of cold, wintery hell from Paysage d'hiver (y'know, as their title suggests). 7/10 | | 23 |  | Masterplan
PumpKings
What a day this has been. I first listened to Attic, then Accept, then Masterplan... and that was the day I thought I'll revisit Avantasia's discography, but after all of that I just couldn't. Too much cheese and silly Power Metal and Heavy Metal clichés. 5/10 | | 22 |  | Accept
The Rise of Chaos
Did you think you can forget that the 80s happened? Accept remembers and they are determined to remind you too with this shebang of samey and often overly-generic Heavy Metal in its most cliché style album. 5/10
Hole in the Head, What's Done Is Done, Worlds Colliding | | 21 |  | Attic
Sanctimonious
The vocals on here reach from fantastic to ridiculous. They are high pitched and obscure, but the heights they reach might put some people off. I didn't find them to be particularly obnoxious, but thatis probably because they are not as loud as the heavy and devilish music surrounding them. 7/10
Sanctimonious, The Hound of Heaven, On Choir Stalls | | 20 |  | Sannhet
So Numb
Listen, one one hand, it's your typical Post-Rock/Post-Metal stuff, so if you enjoy that kind of music already, you might as well enjoy this all throughout. However, even though instrumentally this album does display a certain level of finesse, it has little to no actually outstanding moments to it. I went away from it not remembering a single thing, not even any particularly distinct sound. 5/10 | | 19 |  | Hammock
Mysterium
Hammock are back with another portion of tiring echoes and ambient stretches...but hey, at least it has a certain digestible atmosphere now. 6/10
Hammock, I Would Give My Breath Away, Remember Our Bewildered Son, Elegy, This Is Not Enough (Epilogue) | | 18 |  | Turnover
Good Nature
Funny thing, huh? I rec'd Peripheral Vision in a competition here on Sputnik and it got straight 5s from the judges... and now we have this. 4/10 | | 17 |  | The War on Drugs
A Deeper Understanding
How many people are gonna hate me for this? A lot... I predict a lot... 5/10
Strangest Thing, In Chains | | 16 |  | Queens of the Stone Age
Villains
I used to have one of those 100$ turntables back in the day, it made every record sound like this. I couldn't have imagined that it would be considered 'artistic' today. 5/10
Fortress | | 15 |  | Count to Altek
Penile Pesharim
Ehm...what? What is this? I feel like someone 3D-printed two screwdrivers straight into my ears. 6/10 | | 14 |  | Milo
Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?!
Dreamy and poignant. Levitating and trippy. Wordy and nonchalant. Milo is back with an album of some really interesting tunes, but ones that I have to be in a specific mood in to enjoy. 7/10
Landscaping, The Young Man Has a Point (Nurture), Sorcerer, Take Advantage of the Naysayer, Ornette's Swan Song | | 13 |  | Uncommon Nasa
Written at Night
This is one of those conscious-rappers that knows how to write decent lyrics, has a fine flow and a well put-together production, but this album just doesn't hold up in the long run. The songs are decent enough, but I had a hard time getting through it. Maybe it's because of my own lack of experience in the genre, but hearing samey songs one after another was a little tedious. Still, some really good tracks on here. HOWEVER, THE FUCKING SPACE ART SAMPLE ON GOD'S AIM, MAN, THEY SAMPLED SPACE ART. THIS IS THE BEST SONG EVAH!!! 6/10
Compass (It's 1 AM), God's Aim, The Patient | | 12 |  | The Cribs
24-7 Rock Star Shit
Dissonant and angry, but nearly always a couple of steps behind on the enthusiasm-evoking factor, this album just demonstrates that The Cribs is a band capable of creating a good album, if only they knew what kind of song structures and hooks to coat their brand of Punk. 6/10
In Your Palace, Rainbow Ridge, Broken Arrow | | 11 |  | Mystery Skulls
One Of Us
An overproduced Dance Pop with not a lot of memorable songwriting or even interesting music. It's just sort of dragging on being all bloated and obnoxious. 4/10
Losing My Mind, One of Us | | 10 |  | Guided by Voices
How Do You Spell Heaven
After a streak of generally subpar records, released year by year and seemingly with no actual artistic interest that started in the late 90s (with occasional exceptions) to this day, Guided by Voices have finally hit gold again (well, more like silver or bronze, but still, bullseye). This album is vibrant and colourful and has a certain retro vibe to it that pleases my ears. It's by no means an outstanding record, but still an attentionworthy output. 7/10
King 007, Steppenwolf Mausoleum, Diver Dan, Paper Cutz, Just to Show You | | 9 |  | Oh Sees
Orc
Thee Oh Sees dropped the Thee from their title and also left all the bliss and lightheartedness out of their music. This album might be their most hellish and demonic offering yet. It's a heavy, dissonant, insane and rapidfire album filled with raw and visceral instrumentation, as well as some evil-sounding vocals. It is devilish, as I said. However, the album has way too many unnecessary and tedious slow-downs, something taht bugged me the most about their previous output An Odd Entrances. It sure sounds obscure and dizzying, but ultimately goes nowhere and provides nothing. 6/10
The Static God, Nite Expo, Ray Optics | | 8 |  | Deep Sands
Intended Dream
A vibrant and colourful Hard-Psych album with some strong Stoner influences that kept me intrigued all those months the band was dropping one song after another, until they finalised their release in the middle of August. It seemed like a massive improvement over their last year's EP, which I found to be fine, but lacking some distinct sound. On the Intended Dream, Deep Sands attempt to finally find their own path and come through with five ear-piercing, heavy and muddy tracks that just kept on bringing more to the table, while not exactly having one particular focus, which might be my biggest gripe with the EP. The band's attempts at finding new musical solutions led them to lack a certain cohesion in the songs. While by themselves, the tracks do sound great, together they don't really flow into one another that well. But that's about all the flaws this EP, or mini-album, if you will, has. | | 7 | | Deep Sands
Intended Dream
Sure, some might say that it is a somewhat standard Hard-Psych output, but at least it's one that id enjoyable and easy to get through all throughout. 7/10
I Am Lost and Golden, Without You Lately | | 6 |  | Everything Everything
A Fever Dream
The British obscurist-outburst-Pop extraordinaires are back with a much more straight-forward record than before. Sort of taking all the good elements of their first two albums and adding all the acquired experience and knowledge in songwriting to make an althroughout worthwhile output. It's much more dense and compressed album than any before and also one with some strong cosmic atmosphere, while still maintaining their usual progressive instrumental spectacle; a sound much foreshadowed on that out-of-album single I Believe It Now they dropped last year. It's like listening to some kind of flamboyant space journey soundtrack. However, with all of that instrumental and atmospheric dreaminess, the album falls falt on the songwriting side a lot of the times. | | 5 | | Everything Everything
A Fever Dream
It starts off incredibly strong with three bangers one after the other, but right after that it pretty much dissolves into a collection of unrecognisable and often just tedious tracks that don't pick up the pace until about the last three tracks of the whole album. The entire middle part is just a forgettable mess a lot of the time. 2017: A Flamboyant Odyssey. 6/10
Night of the Long Knives, Can't Do, Desire, Ivory Tower, New Deep, White Whale | | 4 |  | Kesha
Rainbow
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she matured, is a better singer, songwriter, lyricist and all that, whatever, all I care about are the Eagles of the fucking Death Metal. Why are they here? 6/10
Let 'Em Talk, Praying, Rainbow | | 3 |  | Grizzly Bear
Painted Ruins
Every single song has a certain dreamlike and hallucnogenic atmosphere to them and their structure and execution is often somewhat patterned with a profound musical progression and gradually rising excitement from even the most drab and seemingly aimless tune into an enthralling and marvellous musical wonder. But the issue I have with this album is rather a paradox. You see, it just works from time to time. It goes from being absolutely engulfing to just kind of okay, even though, as I said, the style is vastly the same. It's strange, but I guess that kind of music requires a very specific kind of songwriting. But the good moments and the absolutely mesmerising atmosphere completely make up for it; it's just that sometimes the songs sound a little too campy. 7/10
Four Cypresses, Three Rings, Aquarian, Cut-out | | 2 |  | Brand New
Science Fiction
The album's shit, but if you want to see my grand embarrasing moment AKA butthurt rant, check out the anti-review I made. 4/10
In the Water, 451 | | 1 |  | King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard
Sketches of Brunswick East (w/ Mild High Club)
...also this. 6/10
Tezeta, A Journey To (S)Hell, Rolling Stoned | |
Papa Universe
09.01.17 | No Converge coverage as of yet, cause I'm waiting for the album, then we'll talk. | Papa Universe
09.01.17 | A bunch of records I've been meaning to check out, but didn't get the time yet:
Ghostpoet - Dark Days + Canapés (DONE)
Madeline Kenney - Night Night at the First Landing
Thy Art is Murder - Dear Desolaton
Cormorant - Diaspora (DONE)
Der Weg Einer Freiheit - Finisterre (DONE)
Akercocke - Renaissance in Extremis
Young Lions - Mr. Spaceman
Khmer - Larga Sombra
And don't you fuckers rec me Black Ken. | Dewinged
09.01.17 | You covered some good ground Uni, good list. That Ghost Poet and Cormorant albums are cool, give them a shot. Also Tera Melos, because, why nat... | Papa Universe
09.01.17 | Tera Melos, puttin' it on the playlist. | klap
09.01.17 | check out blood cultures - happy birthday | bgillesp
09.01.17 | I won't be caught up on 2017 for a month since I didn't check anything over the summer. Looks like a great list though and I'll come back to compare when I get through some of these | trackbytrackreviews
09.01.17 | no PVRIS huh | Papa Universe
09.01.17 | Not quite yet. I heard a single and wasn't very impressed, which kind of discouraged me from any further listening. | AnimalsAsSummit
09.01.17 | thanks for jamming n rating 15 unique, 9 looks intriguing | Papa Universe
09.01.17 | Animals: 9 has its moments, but you'll have to be a patient listener for it, I guess. | AnimalsAsSummit
09.01.17 | about half way into it rn, the production is stellar | Papa Universe
09.02.17 | Okay, Ghostpoet was fire. Thanks, Dewinged. | Papa Universe
10.02.17 | Just noticed that the description for Starsailor is actually for Leprous. |
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