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User
Reviews 8
Approval 87%
Soundoffs 102
Album Ratings 2745
Objectivity 84%
Last Active 12-28-22 7:12 pm
Joined 11-17-15
Review Comments 2,018
| Best Albums and Songs of March 2017
Much better month than the past two in terms of overall quality. Not quite as many stinkers and much more great albums. | | 23 |  | Anal Trump
If You Thought Six Million Jews Was A Lot Of Peopl
--BEST SONGS-- | | 22 |  | Earth Rot
Renascentia
10. Funeral Pyre: Although it's humongous breath of fresh air after some pretty boring death metal tracks on the album, this song stands very well on its own. There's a nice riff that mainstays throughout the whole song and the vocals fit it well. Bass is brutal as all hell, too, and there's an interesting little banjo passage at the end of the song. | | 21 |  | Fen
Winter
9. Pathway: Great Agallochcore song, pretty similar to In the Shadow of Our Pale Communion, though not quite as good. The middle passage is what makes this song so essential, though, as a soothing post-rockish riff comes into play. The smooth production also helps make this song give a lot of consistent punch in its intensity. | | 20 |  | Sorority Noise
You're Not As ____ As You Think
8. Second Letter from St. Julien: While the theme of the album seems to be about losing friends and hard lives in general, I don't believe any of the other songs touch on religion quite as much as this one. The extra, momentary screaming in this song adds intensity to the lines that the singer screams about. Excellent lyrics and sound overall; especially impressed with some of the vocal melodies, too. | | 19 |  | Blanck Mass
World Eater
7. Silent Treatment: Exhilarating electronic track with an amazing buildup and a chill drop. There's very interesting “galactic” sounds that are riddled throughout the track that give it a “glittery” feeling that really works here against banging instrumentals and vocal warps. Great for gaming music. | | 18 |  | Mount Eerie
A Crow Looked At Me
6. Swims: None of the tracks on the rest of the album are quite as piano-driven as this one, but it makes for a heart-wrenching sound on this song especially. Phil's vocal notes are hit at the right times just to add extra emotional effect as the guitar strums rather continuously in a somber tone. The lyrics at the end of the song are easily some of the best of the year, and they provide thought-provoking philosophies of life and it's meaning. I still can't set over the lines, “We are always so close to not existing at all except in the confusion of our survived-bys grasping at the echoes”, without getting a major emotional epiphany of some sort. | | 17 |  | Falls of Rauros
Vigilance Perennial
5. Arrow and Kiln: This song's beginning didn't impress me too much at first listen and I was going to instead give this spot to Labyrinth Unfolding Echoes, but this track turned out to be the greatest on the album. The riffs on this song are totally amazing, as they subtly play through most of the blast beats in the first 3 minutes, then the riff just showcases itself into full form. The middle section is quite varied and impressive. Part of it sounds like an older Opeth calm section which then goes into a tribal drum beat with a unique guitar line into a prolonged guitar solo. The fact that this band could place all of this material into a song and have it flow flawlessly is pleasingly impressive. | | 16 |  | Mastodon
Emperor of Sand
4. Jaguar God: Just another reason why Mastodon still have the capabilities to produce some of the best material in modern metal. The song's structure is fantastic; quiet, calm opening with one of Brent Hinds's finest vocal performances to date, easily his best on the album, and, speaking of great vocal performances, Troy Sanders absolutely nails his lines on the heavier sections of the song as this is probably his best since the Leviathan era. The extra tambourine percussion on the crashes in the heavy sections are a smart addition to the subtle foreign sound the song has to offer. Hinds does the best ¡QUé HERMOSO! ¡UN SOLO DE LA GUITARRA DEL MASTODONTE! since The Last Baron. | | 15 |  | Braveyoung
Misery and Pride
3. Oh Love That Will Never Let Me Go: One of the most beautiful songs of the year; it drives off a powerful piano line that drives throughout the whole song, and the many subtle changes made are incredibly impressive. The added violins give more variety without making the song a jumbled mess, instead opting to make it even more focused and relaxed. | | 14 | | Mount Eerie
A Crow Looked At Me
2. My Chasm: This and No. 1 could easily interchange at any point, depending on my current mood, but despite this song not ultimately being number 1, it's probably the most meaningful and important of the year, bringing up a concept that is rarely thought of in music of mourning: its audience. Do they really want to listen to Phil feel miserable about his wife's passing? Do they really want to deal with this sadness on a daily basis? These questions are rightfully never answered. Phil can't possibly think about his possible narcissism in society because his death hurts just that much, and the ones criticizing for centering on this death most likely have never felt its pain. Whether you agree or not about Phil's justified narcissism, this song makes an important statement about death's effects on society in the everyday world, all with the last cracked line: “Death is real”. | | 13 |  | Venenum
Trance of Death
1. Trance of Death 3 - There Are Other Worlds...: This song is an absolute masterpiece in death metal, and is one of the most essential death metal tracks of the decade. The lofty progression, evilly dark production, and spiraling guitars make this song one to watch out for as a classic in the future. The structure here is quite unique. It starts off with a pretty cool, but standard death metal sound. After about three minutes or so, the guitars change tuning into an awesome Death-esque solo. After that, structure basically ends and instrumental chaos ensues. The pure, dark, and intense second half completely blows away the listener with not the slightest chance of boredom in sight. Possibly Song of the Quarter, if I manage to make the Quarter 1 list tomorrow. | | 12 |  | Suicide Silence
Suicide Silence
--BEST ALBUMS-- | | 11 |  | Chicano Batman
Freedom Is Free
10. 7/10 Pretty cool funk album with nice and relaxed guitar tuning throughout. The subtle varieties between songs are pretty nice and, while the lyrics can seem a little unpleasant, they mostly get the job done. | | 10 |  | Stolas
Stolas
9. 7/10 Wank, wank, wank, wank, wank.... oh yeah, let's talk about The Bedlam in Gol – oh, I mean, Stolas's self-titled. I like some good Mars Volta-styled technical wank every once in a while and this band tells me I came to the right place. I've heard constant complaints about the vocalist's inabilities to sing with the band and, while I understand that his mixing is way too far above the instruments and that his vocal note choices are sometimes questionable, they mostly work. Sure, he's no Bixler-Zavala or Claudio Sanchez, but he gets the job done. Also, Anhedonia features the best drumming performance of the year and, so far, it's not close. | | 9 |  | Sleepmakeswaves
Made Of Breath Only
8. 7.5/10 Very good, atmospheric post rock with a lot of Explosions in the Sky influence. While I never particularly cared for that band, this band, for the most part, knows how to be unique in which sound they choose for each song and how to flow those songs together into a consistent and coherent post rock album. They take technical, relaxing, and heavy sounds and they almost seem to assign them to each instrument in certain sections of songs. Sometimes this combination causes the band to unjustifiably keep changing sections for the sake of dragging some songs out, but they know how to put enough emotional and dense power into the sound to keep the listener satisfied. | | 8 |  | King Green
Consumption of Mother Brain Through Parasitic...
7. 7.5/10 Shoutout to AnimalsAsSummit for keeping this stuff up to par. Not technically an album (it's classified as an EP), but it deserves a spot on the list mainly because well it changes styles from Count to Altek without sounding forced or repetitive. The guy seems to really know how to keep his bands at separate distant sounds without making those distinctions overly blatant other than something like “this EP's a little darker than Count to Altek's A Seraphia Entwined”. Keep up the good work! | | 7 | | Mastodon
Emperor of Sand
6. 7.5/10 One of my favorite band's albums is out now and it actually doesn't suck, yayyyy! I didn't care for their last two albums, but this definitely a huge progression from not only those albums, but Mastodon as a whole. Emperor of Sand is unique in the fact that Mastodon used their entire discography's sound (maybe barring Remission) and implemented at least a major element from each of their past album onto either a track on this album or the album as a whole. Most of the songs are kept unique in overall sound, even if for the worst sometimes (“Show Yourself”). Ancient Kingdom is also my favorite Brann Dailor performance since The Last Baron (the double mention of this song should tell you how much I love it lol). | | 6 | | Sorority Noise
You're Not As ____ As You Think
5. 8/10 I don't really care about how standard of an emo album this is; it still is heartfelt, smart, and quite heavy at times. The vocals are very fitting for the instrumentals and can reach pretty impressive ranges. Album has very good consistency, while not veering off into repetitiveness, and nearly all the songs here have a lyrical meaning and instrumental uniqueness. | | 5 | | Falls of Rauros
Vigilance Perennial
4. 8/10 Great black metal album with amazing ambient sections. This album's ambient sections don't just exist for the sake of justifying an “atmospheric black metal” tag, but, rather, they use those sections to add uniqueness in the band's sound style, especially with their guitar playing. The flow between the blast-beat riddled heavy parts and the ambient pieces is well-executed, along with their structures. | | 4 | | Blanck Mass
World Eater
3. 8.5/10 Electronic madness in album forme. The only part I don't like about this album is the pointless opening. Without that, the score would certainly be higher. Every other track has their standout form of wild, and I love it. The combination of styles here is quite impressive, too, between Aphex Twin-ish industrial noises to trip-hop to house to ambient; the impressive aspect is how these styles flow in World Eater's songs: smoothly erratic and cleanly messy. | | 3 | | Venenum
Trance of Death
2. 8.5/10 With this brutal, dense, huge, chaotic, evil, and well-crafted album, this band realizes the cliches it could encounter in making this album, avoids them, and creates this stellar record. Many familiar metal styles are used, but only sparingly as Venenum doesn't tend to stick to a particular metal genre. They instead almost literally explore these genres in their songs, but not in a way of ignorance or misunderstanding of how the fusion of progressive metal, death metal, black metal, and folk are supposed to sound, but the band rather tests their limits of intensity and emotional charge. In fact, my only complaint with this record is how Venenum uses their own style too much in spaces where they should've went with a more common genre style. | | 2 | | Mount Eerie
A Crow Looked At Me
1. 8.5/10 Mr. Phil Elvrum has gone through the terrible, unexpected tragedy of his wife's death, caused by cancer. This leaves Phil with himself, a guitar, and the very, very reserved use of pianos, clicks, and violins. With this aspect, many naysayers claim that the album can't possibly be varied enough musically to qualify as good listening. I wholeheartedly disagree that the overwhelming emphasis on the vocals and guitar is a negative thing, it drives the pure rawness of the album. However there's a point to be made in some of that argument there. This isn't a good listening. This is an aching, pitiful, miserable, depressed, and sad listening. When this album turns out to be such a negative experience, the listener might ask “Why do I listen to this if not for my entertainment or positivity, and, if the whole album's existence is for Phil's emotional outlet, then why bother?” The answer is: “Death is real... Words fail”. The album disqualifies its value as a “relatable experience” | | 1 | | Mount Eerie
A Crow Looked At Me
and instead tells the listener to heed not only to the beginning of death, but the inevitable ending of life. I think only an album as bold as this one could make such an action to disparage itself for the philosophical improvement of the listener. | |
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