8
votes
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.
Ah, I've been on an Eurodance streak as well, Come on let it be has been my favourite one this week, but there are a few ones from the list that I think are worth a listen:
Favorites of this past week (and a bonus)
Non-metal
smush - if you were here i'd be home now
Canadian shoegaze/indie with beautiful vocals and melodies mixed with some gritty, fuzzy, crackling guitar distortion that gives it a heavy vibe.
Metal (clean-sung or metal-adjacent genres)
Crypt Sermon - The Stygian Rose
PA dark, epic heavy metal. Thematically grittier and grungier than earlier releases but keeping with their signature style. Brooks' singing sounds as good as ever with some extra grunge edge this time around.
Lucifer's Hammer - Be and Exist
Catchy old school anthemic 70s/80s heavy metal, with an underground feel.
Vendel - Out in the Fields
Russian epic heavy/doom metal. Wonderful vocals and harmonies. Not the only band this week evoking Candlemass and similar acts. Solid week for the genre.
Extreme Metal
Le'Vampyric - Vladislavs Dracvla, Wallachiæ Weywoden
Raw Indonesian black metal with a lo-fi but majestic/melodic feel overall. Dungeon synth intros, vampiric themes, this checks a lot of niche-subgenre black metal boxes.
Torturer's Lobby - Deadened Nerves
A more traditional-heavy-metal feeling black/death/thrash outfit from Florida. Quite varied in its genre exploration, even within a single song. Gritty production, searing guitar tones, and an OSDM-style vocal.
Celestial Sanctuary - Visions of Stagnant Blood
Latest release (EP) from these top notch UK death-metallers. This 3-song, 18-minute moves from fast, blasting tracks to slower explorations and sounds great. They're definitely exploring new territory here.
Bonus Record (any time, any genre, any reason
Crystalline Thunderbolts Pierce The Sacred Mountain - Shine Like The Suicidal Madness Of The Sacred Amethyst
This week's bonus I'm mentioning just because of how weird it is. It is truly an outlier that I have trouble describing. It's like if you mixed black metal, wildly fast drum machines with very robotic sound choices, dungeon synth, and techno/dance music and tried to play Castlevania while listening to it. I don't even know that I like it, but it exists and is fun to share with others. If you're used to the very avant-garde stuff you get out of music labels like I, Voidhanger (this release isn't on that label) imagine that this could be their techno release...
Crystalline Thunderbolts is completely bonkers and yet weirdly addictive - thanks for the rec! I'm actually feeling some Susumu Hirasawa vibes in there too, mostly coming through in the more synth-driven parts. The spirit of Igorrr is strong aswell.
Even if I can't tell if I truly fully enjoy it, it's mesmerizing in a way that makes me not want to stop listening. Or I suppose I should say- I enjoy it, but not exactly in the same way that I enjoy most other music? Even though this is far more accessible than something like harsh noise / power electronics / etc - it's right at that similar edge of being so wild that my brain has difficulty dissecting it, but in a good way. Where the difficulty of listening actually contributes to enjoyment. It also balances that with moments that sound a bit more expected, then goes right back to the wild parts.
It feels like I'm listening to Mysticum through an avant-garde rave filter or something, lol
I'll have to check out Hirazawa. I'm only marginally familiar with Igorrr but I can see what you mean.
Very well put! It's a fascinating listen even when the wild mix of elements threatens to overwhelm - it's this kind of feeling that really brought Igorrr to mind; though they pull from a more disparate array of influences they also have that ability to mash everything together into near sensory overload. The Hirasawa thing is a little harder to pinpoint - may be due to recent listening bias - but some of his soundtrack work (e.g., Berserk, Detonator Orgun) can get into quite a dark (though comparatively less chaotic) place