Octopus Overlords

Old high school buddy went through a rather horrific battle with cancer over the past couple years. He wrote and recorded an album through the process, give it a listen. Justin Wilson - "Recovering"

It's outside my usual metal wheelhouse (instrumental guitar rock), but I've really been enjoying it.

I've been revisiting Pearl Jam's discography. I stopped listening to them after Vitalogy in 1994.

I got interested because I'm heavy into my local record shop's live Facebook shows, and when they have some Pearl Jam, it sells out in no time flat. I don't care if it's a live album, studio album, compilation album - it's gone. People freaking love them some Pearl Jam.

I never *not* liked them, I just moved on to other bands, and then grunge was no longer a thing and I somehow missed that they released 8 studio albums since I stopped paying attention to them. It's been fun going back and catching up, and realizing that they stayed *remarkably* consistent throughout that time.

I'm going through their albums ranked from worst to best based on various articles I found, and heck - even their "worst" album Riot Act isn't all that bad.

Holy shit, my volume doesn't go high enough for this....

Graveyard - The Siren

hitbyambulance wrote: ↑Sun Jun 19, 2022 4:03 am not sure if you're familiar with the run of albums Killing Joke have put out since that one, but many are excellent. Youth rejoining the band after Paul Raven's death was good fortune.

Yes! Thank you. Some of them. I seem to recall you recommending them to me on October 20th 2020. Well... I had to perform a search to confirm.

Not sure how many Andrew Bird fans we have around here, but the new album Inside Problems is outstanding. The guy's a freaking musical genius in my book.

Dr. Strings!

YellowKing wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 9:11 pm Not sure how many Andrew Bird fans we have around here, but the new album Inside Problems is outstanding. The guy's a freaking musical genius in my book.

Spoiler:

I dig it. Maybe my buzz digs it. I'm reminded of old days Kinks and Talking Heads.......more Talking Heads. Man I miss David and the gang. He's 70!

So Id posted a video for the song Sports by Viagra Boys a while back because I wasn’t sure if it was good or awful…but it made me laugh. Now that I’ve seen their latest effort, Punk Rock Loser, I’m here to say I love the band. They’re freakin’ hilarious. Like a goofier version of Idles.

HUGE Andrew Bird fan. Will check out.

hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 8:26 pm So Id posted a video for the song Sports by Viagra Boys a while back because I wasn’t sure if it was good or awful…but it made me laugh. Now that I’ve seen their latest effort, Punk Rock Loser, I’m here to say I love the band. They’re freakin’ hilarious. Like a goofier version of Idles.

At first I presumed they were just a joke band, but their first two albums are amazing. I love the jazz influences. I haven't heard post-punk-inspired music this good in a long time. There are so many older styles being invigorated by amazing Swedish acts recently.

On their latest album I'm enjoying Creepy Crawlers, whose unhinged vocals spout conspiracy theories from the perspective of a deranged alt-righter. The song is the soundtrack of the disturbed mind. That's followed by the mournful The Cognitive Trade-Off Hypothesis which laments mankind's ancestors descending from the trees. The chorus is especially catchy. They're both humourous tracks in their way, but they're played completely straight.



"Climbed down from the trees and we learned to speak
We lost our detailed short-term memories
But what's all of this got to do with me?
Is there some sort of connection to my ADD?"

At first I dismissed this as disconnected angst (part of the cognitive trade-off theory is that we lost short-term memory skills as a tradeoff for the development of language skills, etc.), but then I realized it's coming from the perspective of the average modern human who'd read about the decline of mankind's connectedness (as earlier lyrics reference) only to ask, "How does that help me as an individual?

Yeah, I’ve been diving into more of their stuff and the jazz influence took me by surprise. As has the depth of the writing. Definitely more going on there then you’d think at first listen.

They are deliciously cynical and devilishly catchy when they aren't just absurd (and devilishly catchy).

Black Wing - Ominous 80

Kimberly must be the perfect girl.

This popped up on my car audio and I can't get it out of my head.

Woah, this new Strigoi is nasty as hell.

Still not sure why they didn't just keep calling it Vallenfyre, but am glad they're still making tunes.

These are kind of stupid, but also sort of cool? https://icebergify.com/ (For Spotify. Requires some permissions but you can revoke them immediately afterward, and google suggests the site is legit.)

Apparently I don't listen to enough popular artists to fully populate the first two tiers, so I guess my indie cred is still partially intact.

The Orb feat. David Gilmour - Metallic Spheres [2010]

on my third listening over the past decade+: still not the most amazing thing either the Orb or Gilmour has ever done, but makes for a good background ambience and far more interesting than The Endless River for sure (and there are some cheeky audio references to older Floyd tracks as well).

Critical Defiance - 507 (instrumental)

Here is an amazing cover of Disturbed's amazing cover of Sound of Silence sung for Floor Jansen of Nightwish fame on the reality Dutch singing competition "Beste Zangers" from a few years ago. Henk Poort is just fantastic. I was and am totally blown away by this. (Special thanks to the black hole that is YouTube for sucking away my whole afternoon.)

This track didn't grab me much the first time I heard it, but now I can't get it out of my head. That melodic main riff that comes in at 0:45 is killer. It's pretty stereotypical otherwise, but I love the mixture of black and folk elements.

Wrath of Fenrir - Awaken, the Frost

Was going through some of the bands I hadn’t heard of on the Psycho lineup, and landed on Gost. What an awesome, amazing find that was!

80’s darkwave with a really sinister modern industrial feel. Throw Sisters of Mercy, Mission UK, Clan of Xxymox, Suicide Commando, and Frontline Assembly in a blender, and this is what comes out.

Checked out the brand new Amon Amarth album. It's pretty much what you would expect. I was a little disappointed by is length (only 42 minutes) given their last album is over 3 years old. The track that stood out on the inital listen to me was "Saxons and Vikings". Fun guest vocals from Biff Byford. (Well played Amon...)

Amon Amarth has fallen so far off my radar that I didn't even know they had a new album out today.

Thanks for the reminder...checking it out now.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Fri Aug 05, 2022 11:09 am Amon Amarth has fallen so far off my radar that I didn't even know they had a new album out today.

Thanks for the reminder...checking it out now.

Spun it a couple times. Sounds exactly the same as their last two albums.

Meh.

I really like four of the tracks at first listen, but yeah... it's not very inventive. I'll probably enjoy it after a couple more spins though.

I listened to Jason Becker's Perpetual Burn for the first time, it's pretty amazing. His story is both inspiring and tragic.

Uh... It's Amon Amarth. They play melodic aggressive death metal with lyrics about vikings/norse mythlology. In the early 2000's they basically refined/perfected their sound. They've done this for decades. What do you want them to do, make a prog metal album?

No, but even a death metal band can improve or evolve their sound without sounding like they’re simply re-releasing the same album every few years. Enslaved is a good example of this.

While generally uninspired (imo), the last few albums had one or two catchy songs like “Raise Your Horns” or “Shield Wall”. This one doesn’t even seem to have that…it just all sounds the same.

That said, AA has always been the “AC/DC of death metal”, so it’s pretty much exactly in line with what I was expecting. I wouldn’t skip through a song if it came up on shuffle during a workout, but the album is entirely forgettable as a whole. YMMV

I really like Oden Owns You All, Find a Way or Make One, Dawn of Norsemen, and The Serpent's Trail so far. But I think the AC/DC comparison is apt, at least since their early albums. I think their steadiness is why they have a modicum of mainstream appeal, but I find them a bit shallow. That's OK though... they still have some catchy songs.

AA has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, but I agree with this assessment. They just need to release an album of about 30 songs every few years and be done with it.

They are a great live band as well. Seen them a few times.

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I did get my 2nd best running time ever this morning while listening to AA, so I guess the new album is good for something.

I definitely have some older AA on my running play list

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I have been listening to the new Amon all weekend and think it's fantastic. Much better overall then Berserker. I think the "new" drummer is much better here than on Berserker. I love all the guitar harmonies. Just a kick ass album. I wish Andy Sneap produced all of their albums. (He has produced 3 of them including the new one.) The other two are my 2 favorite AA albums (Deceiver of the Gods and Jomsviking).

OMG, this new Sigh album is going to be bonkers. There is really no one out there that sounds like them.

Can't wait.