What have you been listening to this week?

After being a fan since buying F♯ A♯ ∞ and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven in high school, I'm disgustingly proud to announce that I am seeing Godspeed You! Black Emperor live tonight for the first time ever, at my neighborhood venue, with my wife and 8- and 12- year old boys. The supporting band is The Album Leaf, a band I started to like in college.

25ish years later, and it's SUCH a gift! Also the boys' first live rock show, so they can have foul bragging rights. :)

Some highlights from the last couple of weeks:
Dimension Zero - Silent Night Fever (melodeath from Sweden, former members of In Flames)
Dungeon Serpent - World of Sorrows (death from Canada, fantastic throwback to the early 90s sound)
Duskmourn - Fallen Kings and Rusted Crowns (melodeath with black influences from the US)
Dusks Embrace - The Twilight Enigma (melodeath from the US, fairly obscure)
Earthside - A Dream in Static (progressive from the US; they bring in vocalists from other bands on the non-instrumental songs. Looking forward to their new album coming out this November.)
Edge of Sanity - Crimson and Crimson II (progressive death from Germany/Sweden. Honestly two of the top death albums I've ever heard. Crimson is a single 40 minute track while Crimson II is 44 tracks, but they all fit into a single story.)

I can't believe it's taken me this long to finally listen to Ohms by Deftones. I was a huge fan of their albums through self-titled but then my listening dropped off. I tried getting into the album before Ohms but just wasn't feeling it. This one feels very much like the self-titled album to me.

I'm loving it. It's the first album in a long time that I've burned through multiple times in one sitting.

I saw Ween live on Tuesday night, so these songs https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/ween/2023/megacorp-pavilion-newport-ky-23a234eb.html

Opeth - ghost reveries https://spotify.link/TG21xFZ47Cb. This is the album that originally got me into Opeth, been enjoying it again this week.

A ton of Johnny Cash - I've been learning several of his songs on guitar, so listening to a lot of his music.

Colter Wall - imaginary Appalachia https://spotify.link/X28ofhb57Cb
I've been on a big country and blue grass kick, so listening to this guy and Billy strings a lot

Also listened through Everblack by The Black Dahlia Murder again, they are one of my favorite bands and remain a common listen for me whenever I'm in the mood for something heavy.

I found this video on youtube about how Jacob Collier got started as a musician. It's a fun cheerful informative video, but it also names many musicians Jacob admires, a lot of whom I had never heard of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERvd5QjupSU

I have « Dombresky - Soul Sacrifice » and « Bellaire - Groovin’ » on repeat since yesterday !

I’ve had four records on repeat for the last month or so:

• God’s Country by Chat Pile
  • Raw, grim, violent, and bleak, almost to the point of being offensive. Draws from industrial and post-punk roots — think Big Black meets Jesus Lizard, and then double the painful nihilism
• Diaspora Problems by Soul Glo
  • This record slipped by me on the first listen. The first track, “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)” starts off as straight up pop punk and if you don’t stick around, it’s fairly dismissible. However, they shift genres left and right, so the patient will hear the punk become much less poppy and drift towards hip-hop inspired sludge metal. The rest of the record runs this gamut as well. Super fun.
• Youth of America by Wipers
  • Okay fine, this has been on repeat since I discovered them in college a decade ago, but it’s always worth plugging. Greg Sage is a genius, and this self-produced record is a bottle of distilled talent. Can’t recommend it enough.
• Snares Like a Haircut by No Age
  • Always have loved No Age, but somehow only just realized this record existed. High-energy post punk with lots of strange interludes, like some tracks were guest written by Pavement or Young Marble Giants. Highly recommend their whole discography.

Been listening to the new dying fetus and tomb mold a lot. Two very different death metal albums but both are a lot of fun.

Some more pop based stuff as pallet cleansers like sigrid and sudan archives.

The latest single from Night Crowned. This is by far the most interesting metal band for me right now. Their beautiful haunting harmonic approach to melodic black metal is mesmerizing combined with unapologetic pure aggression. Can't wait for a new album.

Night Crowned - De Namnlösa

Tool - ænema

I've started taking singing lessons recently and the first song I've chosen to learn is "Hooker with a Penis" from this album, so I started listening mostly to that track, but since I've started listening to CDs again, it just felt natural to listen to the whole thing.

My favorite band The National released a new album called "Laugh Track" today. I am planning to listen to the whole album in peace after work. For those who are unaware, this is an amazing indie rock, alternative rock band producing albums since 2003. Laugh Track is the band's most freewheeling, all-hands-on-deck album in years.

This is my favorite of the album right now: The National - Smoke Detector.