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What have you been listening to this week?
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
I'll start a comment (perhaps a string) of what I'm not listening to (AKA musical pet peeves):
Repeated lyrics - This is the one that's been bugging me the most and meaning to start a conversation about. In my book an artist/band gets to repeat a line a maximum of three times in a row, that's it and even that is pushing it. It's lazy writing, it doesn't drive a point home, it is just annoying. It's one of the reasons I cannot stand Rage Against the Machine as seemingly every one of their songs is just chunks of repeating the same line over and over.
Two of those three songs have regular verses and an only a repetitive chorus. Killing In The Name is extremely repetitive, sure. Though, tbh, it works fine for me. Especially when it comes to stuff like protest music- to me it kinda echoes the chants you'd hear at a protest. I happen to disagree and think it does drive a point home. For RATM, a stylistic choice when it comes to choruses (mostly). The verses in most cases give plenty of detail and variation, and then the choruses are kind of bringing it all home by making a concise statement repeatedly.
That said, I don't know that I'd like it as much in non-protest music.
At the end of the day, though, I think it's just a difference in subjective opinion about songwriting and how it comes across, but I think lots of repetition can be used both effectively and annoyingly (and maybe even the latter can be the point sometimes)
Yeah, I'm one of those people where the repetition in protest music typically works for me. It can be tiresome in some songs, but generally it's something that resonates well. For people who pick up on the repetition and don't need it, I understand how it gets tiresome, but I think Killing the Name uses it in a pretty cool way with the repeated verses building to a crescendo (and in sorta different ways each time). That said, it's hard to hear some of that build up if you haven't cranked up the volume.
I've been listening to RATM all week in between other things. Like with most things in life, it's best cranked to 11.
I haven't stopped listening to Darkthrone - It Beckons Us All. It released in late April and has just been on repeat anytime I listen to music right now. I had it on repeat for 9 hour flight in early May, where I just listened to it and read a book. It's just so good.
It's a little surprising. I very much liked their last album, but I didn't listen to it like I have this one and I'm not entirely sure I can quantify why I like it so much more. There are just some absolute bangers though that don't leave my head; even one of my least favorite songs, I find myself whistling and humming constantly. But the standout for me is The Bird People of Nordland, it's just absolutely killer.
Fantastic album. Darkthrone always deliver.
The new Ulcerate, Árstíðir Lífsins, Fractal Generator, Severe Torture and Black Wound releases. Sprinkled with plenty of Misþyrming from Iceland.
That Árstíðir Lífsins release is so good.
I agree, all their stuff is impressive though.
I'm cheating because I was actually listening to this last week but I missed the thread, so here we are.
I've been listening to the Soundtrack to the Baroque remake. It's way better than it has any right to be, but it's just far enough outside of the genre that I regularly listen to that it's hard to describe it.
(The original is also really good, for very different reasons)
Wow, the number of people who know about Sting/ATLUS's Baroque is pretty small. An even smaller number listen to the OST of those games. Cool!
Somewhere I should still have at least one copy of Baroque on PS2. I always appreciated that ATLUS would publish games like that.
When it comes to roguelike games I have very particular tastes that makes me either hate or love them. Baroque gets love. It’s a PITA to play but it is so damn interesting in its mechanics and presentation that I can’t help but feel enthralled. Playing it makes you wonder if you are on drugs in all the best ways.
This is basically all of Sting’s games to me. They are amazing works of art that I never even come close to finishing.
Favorites from week of June 7, 2024
Non-metal
Pedro The Lion - Santa Cruz
Favorite of the week by a long shot. One of my all-time favorite artists, David Bazan (and co.) does it again with maybe the third and maybe best release yet out of the planned set of five records that serve as a memoir of his life, emotionally and geographically. Inspires me to create and write. A lot of his experiences I instantly interpret as my own when listening. While very different, our lives have these through-lines and commonalities and listening to his causes my memories to rush back into focus. Bittersweet, in a way, and absolutely beautiful. Musically Bazan stays in mostly-familiar territory but branches out more maybe than any prior record of the series, with the arpeggiator on Modesto, some very new vocal inflections in a few songs and great interplay between guitars and synths. It's like a lot of Bazan's history, even musically, all wrapped up into one package.
Joana Serrat - Big Wave
Catalan singer/songerwriter that treads through a very dark, rich sounding landscape of deeply textured, even slightly aggressive synths, reverb, and beautiful dreamy vocals. A melting pot of noise rock and synth pop.
Bloomsday - Heart of the Artichoke
Self-described "soft enby rock" by Iris James Garrison that flirts with country and folk sounds. Beautifully simple, intimate, crisp, and warm.
Aurora - What Happened To The Heart?
A rather popular pop artist that I've been enamored with ever since I took the time to listen to some of her work. This latest release definitely goes a solemn and synthwave direction in influence. It still has its dance moments, especially during choruses, as she likes to do, but it definitely feels just as sharp and existential as it has at any point in her discography. While I find it difficult to find peers that share my enthusiasm for Aurora, I recommend you give her music a try, especially if you've simply been avoiding it because "pop" or because "popular". Sometimes popular artists are more genuine and talented than our assumptions tell us.
Metal (clean-sung or metal-adjacent genres)
Fanged Imp - Glintstone Sorcery
Elden Ring themed lo-fi dungeon synth. Dark, moody, minimal, and ambient. Instrumental as is expected for the genre.
Extreme Metal
Gorgon Vomit - Skeng Down Jah
Raw, bestial death metal from the UK, featuring a vocalist with a Jamaican background- as one can tell with the lyrics and titles which sometimes involve Jamaican Patois language, such as the album title which roughly translates to "Strike Down God". Satanic, heavy, and noisy.
Noroth - Sacrificial Solace
Filthy death/doom with varied vocals from deep growls to yells, with plenty of "bleghs" to go around. Classic stompy and low-tuned riffs.
Umbra Vitae - Light of Death
Boston metalcore that has some grindcore and death metal influence. A bit difficult to nail down a genre for this one exactly, but it works for me.
Severe Torture - Torn from the Jaws of Death
Straight-forward, drum-heavy death metal that has moments that range from things like Deicide to Suffocation. Definite brutal influence but stays away from too much of the genre tropes, keeping it more in death metal territory. A bit heavy-handed on the production, especially with the drum mix, but overall I find it enjoyable.
Incipient Chaos - Selftitled
Occult and tense black metal with fast riffing and quickly changing tempos and chord progressions. Aggressive and blasting throughout the entire listen. The kind of black metal ear candy I love.
The Severe Torture release is pretty damn solid.
Found these guys this week, called Shepherds Reign. They're Maori folk metal, out from New Zealand.
And I had helped out with a local music festival that had allowed me to listen to other music other than metal/rock. One of the groups was a jazz band from South Carolina, and the other group was a string quartet.
Kany Garcia, singing in Spanish. Mundo inventado makes me want to cry. But she has a beautiful voice generally
Sonic Demon just rereleased a compilation of their first two EPs,
which I'm thrilled about because these albums are fantastic but had basically only been available on YouTube. You might like if this sounds appealing: highly distorted doom/stoner/fuzz metal, with a heavy emphasis on drugs, bikes and sacrilege. 🔥
Peggy Gou - I hear you. Amazing album that I heard about on NPR All Songs Considered. Sounds like 90s euro and 90s/00s house.
Revisiting Chat Pile's "God's Country", and a few different midwest emo revivalists in Empire! Empire!, Marietta, and my all time favorite, You Blew It!. Plan on taking a hard turn into mainstream pop with Charlie XCX's "Brat" and Billie Eilish's "Hit Me Hard and Soft" in the near future.
The latest entries in my massive Trance playlist on Spotify along with Sleep Token. The guy's vocals are something else and the sound they have is so refreshing.
Houle - Ciel Cendre et Misère Noire
Top quality black metal from France with some strong melody and an interesting nautical vibe that's been going a decent ways towards filling the Anorexia Nervosa shaped hole in my heart (sans the bombastic symphonics).
I've just been listening to K-pop as usual, along with some older electronic music.
Stumbled across this song by accident and have just had it on repeat ever since. The group "One Top" is a project from a Korean variety show called "Hangout with Yoo" and mainly just consists of cast members of the show. The group also has two pretty well known singers, YoungK from Day6 and Kim Jong-Min from Koyote. I know nothing about singing but honestly, all 6 members killed it. Definitely recommend giving it a listen.
This was another song I accidentally stumbled upon. A clip of the opening scene of the music video (which I've linked above) just looked so absurd to me that I checked it out. I never listened to Ateez before so I've been checking out their other discography and they've got some good stuff, also recommend giving this song a listen.
AdhesiveWombat is an artist I used to listen to frequently in the early 20-teens. I was constantly listening to other songs of theirs like 8-bit Adventure, Funky Sundays, Downforce and Symphony of a Forgotten Sprite. This song suddenly popped up again in my YouTube Music Supermix, I guess as a result of YouTube being able to pull data from my listening/watching habits from 11 years ago. If you're into chiptune-style music, AdhesiveWombat has some good stuff.