G'day,

Like most people I suspect, when I'm working I love having music on in the background.

One of my go-tos is Tool (and A Perfect Circle) because it offers the perfect mix of "wall of sound", great clear vocals, sharp interesting drumming, and guitar work that slaps and moves around instead of playing the same sound over and over again (also I am not a musician so I have no idea what the proper technical terms are for these things).

I stick YouTube Music on a Tool Mix and it's a pretty bad selection with a heap of stuff I really don't enjoy (I dislike growly or screamy voices, sad muddy instruments, or where the "wall of sound" is basically just feedback that drones on and on, etc).

I've tried going with "prog metal" and "prog rock" and "alt metal" as genres but that seems to cover a LOT of variation. No matter how many thumbs down I give there's always the screamy dudes and high pitched guitar whining popping back up.

Are there any bands that are Tool-like I can seed my selection with? The big focus being if there's vocals you can actually hear and understand them, distinct instruments that are actually playing a tune, and drumming that does something more than just maintain a beat in the background.

Some other bands I enjoy that I feel are similar enough are My Sleeping Karma, Kadavar, Witchcraft, Smote, and Riverside.

Yesterday the family was driving home from dinner and ...Ready for it? came up in the playlist:

In the middle of the night, in my dreams, you should see the things we do

So in the vein of A Speculative List of Jay-Z's 99 Problems, and other than the boring, obvious answer, what do you suppose they get up to in her dreams?

I was really taken by the sound of Laufey’s Madwoman and am looking for the older music which inspired her.

The internet, however, has not been helpful. Between citing “The Great American Soundbook”¹ as her inspiration, or declaring its “clearly” bossa nova², i’m really lost. One person said “60s lounge,” which seemed promising³ but searching that brings a ton of AI-generated slop-and-slop-byproducts.

Is there a better term for what she’s referencing? Specific artists? Specific regions even?

1. which doesn’t sound the same to me at all
2. which no the fuck it is not, i, a brazilian, say
3. another person said “70s lounge”

For me, the biggest is definitely Modern Baseball.

To set the scene, it's 2016, I was in high school, and a girl I was friends with told me about this band Modern Baseball. I liked them a lot, but I wasn't quite at my peak emo phase (that would come about a year later during my freshman year in college lol), so I didn't get super into them or anything. Anyways, a few months after that, MoBo came through our city on tour and that girl and one of our other friends literally offered to pay for my ticket to the concert if I DDed for them... and I said no.

Fast forward like 7 months and Modern Baseball goes on hiatus in early 2017, a hiatus that continues to this day, though they played a few one-off shows throughout 2017. Anyways, fall 2017 comes around and I listened to Modern Baseball more and realized I really liked them... but they're on hiatus and I missed my chance to see them!

Anyways, I mostly made this thread because the fact that I turned down going to that concert is something I still think about from time-to-time and I wish I went, but I'd love to hear if anyone else has similar stories or just stories of bands you wish you could have seen.