Random Music Thoughts

[RPS]

Quote

 I think it's fair to say a lot in the mainstream was deservingly derided because of how sterile so much of it sounded.

I don't think "nu metal" sounds sterile, more so that a lot the edges that make metal unique and interesting as a genre are shaved down and swapped out for elements of pop music. One Step Closer is like, in my opinion, the perfect distillation of metal into pop music. 

I personally find the interesting "nu-metal" is the bands that did instead of focusing on crossing over rap and hip hop into their music and instead focused on merging pop melodies and arrangements into their music. It is why I think System of a Down is the best metal band ever. It is for all intents purpose metal music, but with pop melodies and arrangements. 

[MalaCloudy Black]

I think Solitude is low-key one of my favorite Black Sabbath songs. Also, there are some absolutely fucking dynamite covers of it. 

This one in particular I adore, because of how haunting it is.

But yeah, Solitude. Solid song do you see what I did there oh nevermind anyway. I think I would put Master of Reality in my #2 slot on best Ozzy-era Sabbath albums. 

[VerbalPuke]

20 minutes ago, CLDY said:

I think Solitude is low-key one of my favorite Black Sabbath songs. Also, there are some absolutely fucking dynamite covers of it. 

This one in particular I adore, because of how haunting it is.

But yeah, Solitude. Solid song do you see what I did there oh nevermind anyway. I think I would put Master of Reality in my #2 slot on best Ozzy-era Sabbath albums. 

Dude, Master of Reality is so fucking good. It's weird that I'd guess it is probably underrated but also rated properly in its own way ya know? But yeah, I mean you have two powerhouse songs in Sweet Leaf and Children of the Grave, but like the rest of the album is really strong. 

Lord of this World is probably in my top five Black Sabbath songs. That fucking riff man.

[MalaCloudy Black]

It opens and closes with bangers. Tony Iommi brings you in to Sweet Leaf, and you leave on Into the Void, a song so loved and influential that James Hetfield calls it his favorite Sabbath track of all time and there's multiple, multiple, multiple bands named after it (or with names heavily influenced by the song). Then like you said, you have Children of the Grave, Lord of this World.. the whole album is pretty stellar from top to bottom.

I would only rank Vol. 4 higher, personally. I love that it's still the classic kind of sound you expect out of them, but there's this sort-of psychedelic vibe to a lot of the album's songs that I, personally, really really love. 

I think I would go, in order

1. Vol. 4
2. Master of Reality
3. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
4. Paranoid
5. Black Sabbath

And that feels like I'm doing a disservice to 2-5. Really, they're all #1 in my heart. It just depends on where I am during the day I guess, you know?

[MalaCloudy Black]

I had no idea that ZZ Top's guitar tech took over Dusty Hill's spot, as per his wish. 

Quote

Before working with ZZ Top, Francis served as a guitar tech for artists such as Joe Perry, Izzy Stradlin and Gilby Clarke of Guns N' Roses and the Black Crowes' Rich Robinson. "Billy taught me to slow down and play every third note," Francis said when asked what he had learned from working with Gibbons in an interview with Pure Salem Guitars.

Just happened to have a YT video pop up in my sub box today that was a review of a ZZ Top show from this past weekend and started wondering about it. I knew they said they'd carry on but hadn't heard who with. 

[RPS]

@Liam did on the TV and Movie section, but I figured I would pose the question here - what is everyone's favorite album, songs and EPs of the last decade? 

[VerbalPuke]

Umm....good question. 

So off the top of my head probably my favorite album and song is from Human Impact, the song E605 from the self titled debut. 

Idles have some good releases, Joy As An Act of Resistance is a great album with a lot of top notch songs. 

Bob Vylan have had a bunch of good releases, probably best known is We Live Here. 

Here's an obvious one, atleast RPS should appreciate this due to his thread but...Kendrick Lamar to Pimp a Butterfly. I listened in that thread you created and it blew me away. It's still on my Spotify repeat list (well, King Kunta and Blacker the Berry are). 

Speaking of hip hop, Danny Brown's Atrocity Exhibition is amazing. One of my favorites is "Really Doe" off that one, which also features Kendrick Lamar. Love seeing one of Detroit's best pair up with one of the best period. 

Unsane has had two releases this decade, Wreck and Sterilize. I mean, Unsane is one of my favorite bands of all-time but I wont pretend either of these albums is a suddenly new and ground breaking thing ya know? They're kind of like the Motorhead of Noise Rock right? They don't change their sound much but you also know they're not the fucking band to be changing their sound, they should just do what they do best and enjoy the ride. Wreck in particular though is among their best albums, their cover of Flipper's Ha Ha Ha is such a wonderful meeting of two of my favorites. 

Just sneaking in is another noise band similar to Unsane called Pigs. They only have one release titled "You Ruin Everything" but if you like fuzz, heavy sludge, and those distorted angry vocals with really hooky rhythms this is for you. Outburst Calendar is the standout on an albums with plenty of standouts. 

Lost Innocent World by Gogol Bordello is an absolute tune. 

Amy and the Sniffers with some raw ass Aussie punk with tunes like Some Mutts Can't be Muzzled, I'm Not a Loser, and I got You. 

Speaking of raw punk, Surfbort. They kick fucking ass, I got a posted of them on my basement wall. I like the song Hideaway, actually the EP Bort to Death is great. Good shit. 

This band Gothic Tropic released an EP in 2011 called Awesome Problems and it was fucking awesome. The stuff after that wasn't very good unfortunately. Not my thing at all. But this EP lives on. 

Guantanamo Baywatch is probably one of the better surf bands you'll hear. I think they capture the really drippy reverb well, they sound really polished and tight, and yet still manage to also feel like a garage band. They're really fucking good, definitely a band where I appreciate all three musicians equally due to talent/tone/style whatever. I'd recommend Barbacoa, first song off of their debut album. 

Mr. Elevator. Well it looks like they shortened their name from Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel to just Mr. Elevator, and well they're fucking really cool man. If you like psychedelic rock and fuzzed guitars than I suggest them. I personally like & Her Psychedelic Subconscious as one of my favorites. Feels right at home as a drugged out acid trip song for a bad hippie movie in the 60s. 

Honestly...there are probably too fucking many for me to list. I may just make a long rambling list but I'll leave these here. 

And also, this is a fun exercise to realize 'Oh hey, I do like modern music'.

[METALMAN]

On 01/10/2021 at 15:26, RPS said:

@Liam did on the TV and Movie section, but I figured I would pose the question here - what is everyone's favorite album, songs and EPs of the last decade? 

let me think about this and I'll get back to you!

[Schlitzbrille]

Song: No clear frontrunner, so

I was like hmm, then ohmigod Nergal has a killer clean singing voice.

Honorable mentions:
O Father O Satan O Sun! - Behemoth
In Hell I'll Be In Good Company - The Dead South
Twofer on Jinjer: Pisces/On the Top
Wolf Totem - The HU

EP of the decade? No idea. Sole one I bought was from 2008.

Album? I mostly don't buy by album but by individual song. Almost by default, I'll put the soundtrack for the final season of Game of Thrones. Yes the not bad ending was rushed to all hell but the soundtrack was a high point.

Honorable mentions were BABYMETAL's debut, Cannibal Corpse's Violence Unimagined, and(back to single song) Me and That Man's Songs of Love and Death (in that they were the only albums that qualified)

[DFF]

On 01/10/2021 at 15:26, RPS said:

@Liam did on the TV and Movie section, but I figured I would pose the question here - what is everyone's favorite album, songs and EPs of the last decade? 

 

Albums

 

Aephanemer - Prokpton

All Them Witches - Dying Surfer Meets His Maker

Boss Keloid - Melted on the Inch

Deltanaut - Part I

Devin Townsend - Empath

Ghost Toast - Shape Without Form 

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Nonagon Infinity 

Morild - Nordic Landscapes

Oded Tzur - Here Be Dragons

Soen - Lotus 

Voyager - Ghost Mile

Wilderun - Veil of Imagination

Work Money Death - The Space in Which the Uncontrollable Unknown Resides, Can be the Place from Which Creation Arises

 

EPs

Ghost - Seven Inches of Satanic Panic 

Unto Others - Don't Waste Your Time II

 

Songs

Dirty Loops - Work Shit Out

Ghost - Dance Macabre

King Gizzard & The Lizawrd Wizard - Crumbling Castle 

While Heaven Wept - Icarus and I / Ardor

 

 

[Gorka]

On 01/10/2021 at 15:26, RPS said:

@Liam did on the TV and Movie section, but I figured I would pose the question here - what is everyone's favorite album, songs and EPs of the last decade? 

Just from the top of my head (...or checking Spotify), album-wise: 

• Arcade Fire, "The Suburbs" (2010) - alternative/indie rock
• Girl Band, "The Talkies" (2019) - noise rock
• IDLES, "Brutalism" (2017) - punk rock
• Sons of Kemet, "Your Queen is a Reptile" (2018) - jazz/afrobeat
• Slowdive, "Slowdive" (2018) - dreampop/alternative rock
• Beach House, "Depression Cherry" (2015) - dreampop
• Tame Impala, "Currents" (2015) - psychedelic pop
• Japanese Breakfast, "Psychopomp" (2016) - indie pop
• SOPHIE, "OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES" (2018) - electronic
• BROCKHAMPTON, "Saturation II" (2018) - hip hop
• Public Service Broadcasting, "Every Valley" (2017) - art rock.
• Insecure Men, "Insecure Men" (2018) - idk sleaze indie rock?

Songs:

• Janelle Monae, "Make Me Feel"
• Thundercat, "Them Changes"
• MGMT, "Little Dark Age"
• Injury Reserve, "Jailbreak the Tesla"
• Danny Brown, "Ain't It Funny?"
• Fat White Family, "Tastes Good with the Money"
• Viagra Boys, "Sports"
• Gwenno, "Hi a Skoellyas LIV a Dhangrow"
• Snapped Ankles, "Rechargeable" 
• Anderson. Paak, "Bubblin'"

[DFF]

Have you heard the new PBS album @Gorka? Really enjoying that. 

[MalaCloudy Black]

I love that music video for "Ain't It Funny". 

[Gorka]

8 hours ago, DFF said:

Have you heard the new PBS album @Gorka? Really enjoying that. 

Yeah, I quite liked it too! It's a bit of a departure from their usual stuff but still a fan of it.

[RPS]

I'll answer my question a few days late, because my work has been hell. 

• SOPHIE - OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES (2018): A masterpiece. SOPHIE mastered the art of music - make something that sounds interesting, that is incredibly poppy but also challenges you every step along the way. Each song escapes genre and description. The middle of the album challenges you more than entertains you. The almost 6 minute Pretending at times is just ambient noise and abstract screaming. It all comes to a head with the greatest 1-2 punch in music ever. SOPHIE has sung the entire album about her internal and external struggles. And the song Immaterial hits - a song that starts with SOPHIE singing "I could be anything I want" and it is 4 minutes of pure ecstasy in a song, singing about her acceptance after transitioning. It is the most beautiful song I have ever listened too. And one would assume the album would end there - SOPHIE truly accepting her new self. However, the world comes crashing down with Whole New World/Pretend WOrld - which is pure frenzied chaotic. A voice singing/shouting Whole New World over increasingly abstract sounds and ideas. It sounds like the whole album is falling apart. By the end of the album, it is no longer even pop melodies, just abstract chaos.
• Frank Ocean - Blonde (2016): I have listened to Blonde hundreds of times. I know the album front to back. In 2016, I was in a negative headspace and filled with self doubt. Frank Ocean's anxiety and uncertainty was comforting. On Channel Orange, Frank Ocean wanted to tell obvious narratives from front to back. On Blonde, Frank Ocean is not interested in telling a narrative about somebody else, but letting you have a brief look into his mind. Lyrically, the songs feel incomplete. You leave each song understanding something about Frank, but wanting to know more. Who are the subjects of these songs? 
• Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (2010): Everyone needs to listen to this album once in their life. It is 45 minutes of frenetic, chaotic energy that cannot be stopped. If this album were a car, you would feel like several times the car was traveling at such a fast and chaotic speed that the car will crash at any point. But suddenly the music stops and travels in a completely different direction. 
• Beyonce - Beyonce (2013): What a great pop album. Others liked Lemonade better, but Beyonce's self titled ablum is dark, grittier and sexier. Whereas as Lemonade feels as though it is trying to obtain critical accliam, her self titled album feels like Beyonce made the album she wanted to make. 
• SOPHIE - PRODUCT (2015): In 2015, SOPHIE released 8 singles that were later brought together and called PRODUCT. PRODUCT is 26 minutes long of pure pop sugar. Unlike her LP, which is decidely personal, PRODUCT keeps it's distance. Lyrics are appear to be superflous, repeated over and over again and merely a distraction from the insane musical landscapes SOPHIE creates. That is until the stunning finale of "Just Like We Never Said Goodbye". Despite being released in 2015, it feels rather ominous given her sudden death. 
• David Bowie - BLACKSTAR (2016): I have cooled to this album over time, but I still love it. It is both bleak and uplifting. David Bowie set out to create one last piece of art for his fans and he did it. It dabbles in trends of 2016 - the influence of jazz seems right out of Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly. But it also relates back to his youth and Bowie's early fascinating with jazz. 
• Sufjan Stevens - Carrie and Lowell (2015): I do not believe that Sufjan Stevens will ever top this album. Singing about the death of his mother who died, it is a complicated look at loss. Steven's mother suffered from schizophrenia and clearly was a complicated figured in Sufjan Steven's life. Despite this being the best albums of the last decade, I cannot listen to it. My father-in-law suffered from schizophrenia and died a year after this album was released. The stories and experiences my partner had growing up mirrored the songs contained on the album. We would lie in bed in the months following his death, grieving his loss and listening to this album. I distinctly remember this all culminating in us watching a live concert of Sufjan Stevens performing the songs live, which later became a live LP. There are times in our lives that we are done with a piece of art because it liberated us. It felt when I saw Sufjan Stevens perform that album live that the grief I felt for my partner and his father was over and I saw no purpose for the album anymore. 
• Billie Eilish - When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019) - I feel old at times, but I do try to keep current with music. I follow trends, try to listen to new albums here or there and the like. There is rarely a time that an album surprises me.  But hearing Billie Eilish shocked me. It is juvenile lyrically, but the song writing is still compelling and the production outstanding. Of all the albums on this list, this is the most likely to be removed and changed at times. 
• Sleater-Kinney - No Cities To Love (2015) - I still do like rock music, even though the vast majority of this list is electronic/pop/R&B. But probably around 2014-2015 I did not listen to a lot of rock music, or the music I did was older music. Listening to No Cities To Love brought me back to rock music. Does the album reinvent the wheel? No, but I would not be listening to the new rock artists of the 2010s without Sleater-Kinney. 

 

That was long. 

[METALMAN]

On 08/10/2021 at 18:32, RPS said:

In 2016, I was in a negative headspace and filled with self doubt.

Was this because I was banned from EWB in 2016?

[RPS]

5 hours ago, METALMAN said:

Was this because I was banned from EWB in 2016?

It's all I ever think about. 

[RPS]

How am I just hearing Rina Sawayama now? She is great. Her debut album sounds like Mariah Carey meets Korn with little flourishes of present day electronic music. 

[Skummy]

On 01/10/2021 at 15:26, RPS said:

@Liam did on the TV and Movie section, but I figured I would pose the question here - what is everyone's favorite album, songs and EPs of the last decade? 

I've not listened to nearly enough new music in the last decade, with the exception of this year trying to get back on top of things. 

Off the top of my head (and it's pretty clear that I spent 2016 working jobs where we had a radio on, as that year is massively over-represented);

• Beyonce - Lemonade
• David Bowie - Blackstar
• Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker
• Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly
• Kamasi Washington - Heaven and Earth
• Eliza Carthy - Neptune
• Sage Francis - Copper Gone
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree

Probably some real obvious ones I'm forgetting.

I'll maybe post actual thoughts on them later/tomorrow.

[MalaCloudy Black]

21 hours ago, RPS said:

How am I just hearing Rina Sawayama now? She is great. Her debut album sounds like Mariah Carey meets Korn with little flourishes of present day electronic music. 

I'll have to check more of her stuff out, she does a really good cover of "Enter Sandman" that's on the Blacklist album that came out last month. Kept meaning to look her up and never got around to it.

FAKE EDIT: I figured wtf else am I doing right now so I clicked on the first video of hers that came up on YouTube.

I really dig it.