Don’t worry, kind readers, there will be more music and such up today. I’ve had to get through a bunch of reviews that will be visible at Hardcore Gamer and haven’t had a boatload of time to dedicate here lately. I’ll be posting some ROM reviews (old school IAC lolz) and some music as it feels pertinent when I’m finished this review of NecroVision . I also wanted to let the eight people that read this site know that the serial novel is finally coming to fruition over at And The Sun Stayed Set. The format is going to be as follows; I’ll be adding two or three pages once or twice a week until the story is done. I have a beginning and an end, and most of the major plot elements already finished, but I want to give myself room to move around if I feel like a plotline isn’t really going anywhere so nothing is set in stone. The best way to look at it is that I’m writing a novel, and I’m letting you guys see the creative process in exchange for feedback. For the next month I’m going to be posting elements and images from the story in order to get you SUPER EXCITED about it. Nothing you see is really going to make that much sense out of context, but that is kind of the point.

So go check it out, and come check back here for some postings today.

Rival Schools – United By Fate

When I was like 16, this CD absolutely blew me away. This band probably should have made a million dollars, but they ended up breaking up in 2003. They got back together for a reuinion show last year and it was great despite the cruddy venue it was at, and as is the current trend, reuinion shows usually equal reuinions. 108 did it alright, but Lifetime kind of sucked. I have nothing but confidence that Rival Schools is going to put something amazing out. If you hadn’t heard this cd until now and consider yourself a fan of post-hardcore, indie, or music in general, you are fucking up.

The game was pretty bad ass too.

I’m going to start adding a rating to the albums I post. It is going to be out of 5 because, honestly, I’m not very good at attributing a rating to something as subjective as music. Movies and video games, sure, but rating music just seems like a square peg-round hole kind of thing to me, so take them with a grain of assault. Assault with a deadly weapon for questioning me.

We Are Lions – Eight Arms Made This

This is a pretty interesting album. It has some fairly generic indie rock moments, but it sways more to the post-punk side of the spectrum than the whiney emo side of the spectrum. Sounds a little bit like Minus the Bear, and then ends up sounding a little bit like Boys Night Out. Definitely does enough things interesting to stay out of mediocrity, but probably won’t spend an exorbitant amount of time in your CD player. Or on your mp3 player, because none of you godless heathens pay for music.

Poor Metallica.

Yaphet Kotto – The Killer Was in the Government Blanks

This is one of my favorite releases on Ebullition, which is really saying something. I remember when MTV and the normals who began to sneak their way into hipsterism hijacked the genre “screamo” and made it a buzzword for terrible, unrelated crap like AFI’s last few CDs or whatever band was wearing girl pants and make up and had some “super broootal” breakdowns, one of the first things I thought was “Yaphet Kotto is rolling over in their graves.” This CD is that great blend of screamo, post-hardcore, and post-rock that you almost come to expect from bands now, but “The Killer Was in te Government Blankets” came out ten years ago. The odds are if you are into this genre, you already have this, but maybe, just maybe, I can save one of you girls in your Ed Hardy shirts and leg warmers, or one of you dudes with your fitted hats and your teased hair. Listen to this and step away from the fucking Cobra Starship album.

Gaslight Anthem – The ‘59 Sound

Man, this new Alkaline Trio CD sucks, it sounds like it was recorded and produced in a cave. A cave carved out of the earth by the power of weird New Jersey hipsters and their unwarranted Bruce Springteen worship. What a shitty cave.

Okkervil River – Don’t Fall in Love With Everyone You See

I like a good amount of Okkervil River’s catalog, and I think it this close to being on par with their best release, “Black Sheep Boy”, and definitely much better than anything else they have done. They really nail the best parts of alt-country and folk to the cross their lyrics seem to bear. This album isn’t as dark as “Black Sheep Boy” was, and we all know how much I love dark, but it still has that same level of overthought emotion and really makes you start thinking you should take up drinking whiskey.

The Assistant – Self Titled

I figured since I posted a crappy band from Jersey in the Gaslight Anthem, I could remedy that by posting an absolutely awesome band from Jersey in The Assistant. Absolutely chaotic screamy stuff, think a harder version of Hot Cross with a little bit of Off Minor for good measure. They don’t go to the well too much with the sparse slow stuff this genre craves, although there is a bit of that in there and it is all great, and that leads to an album that feels a little bit more frenetic and a little bit more enjoyable than most. Some really phenomenal guitar parts and a much better grasp of pop aesthetic than this genre is used to. Nine years later, though, and I still don’t understand what Five Year Old Mentality is doing on this CD.

I listen to “Amateurs and Professionals” more often than almost any album I own. Penfold were trancendingly awesome. I’d put them up there with any indie or emo or what have you band of any era no matter what. I would literally chop off God’s head, dooming society, humanity, and the universe as a whole just for another reunion show. Hell, I would do it just to see them play “M” one more time.

Words do no justice. You should have these already, but just in case you don’t, just shut up and listen.

Penfold – Our First Taste of Escape

Penfold – Amateurs and Professionals

Here it is again, a few albums from my collection for you to derisively mock. As usual, in the same vein as the random ROM reviews I do, I’m just posting whatever shuffle spits out. I take requests, if I have something you want and can’t find elsewhere. If you want to check what I have to offer, go here for an ever updating list of every album I have between my physical collection and my mp3 collection, hosted on the ever helpful for this sort of thing website, rateyourmusic.com. I suggest you get one, especially if you find making lists an interesting way to spend some time.

Enter Shikari – Take to the Skies

This one is probably going to get me a lot of shit, but I figure since these guys are huge in England maybe I can post this without too much damage to my already tarnished image. It is pretty much metalcore with dancey little synth parts. Calling them a super pop oriented HORSE the band wouldn’t be a terrible comparison, but it doesn’t really fit. It is super catchy and infectious, but still retains a good dose of metalcore and a better dose of it than most mainstream bands trying to blur that line. If you can get past the corny image and lyrics, there really is something listenable here.

Nervous Light of Sunday – Jakusinkoukei

Pretty awesome Japanese band with a name regretably ganked from Circle Takes the Square. There seem to be a lot more great bands with terrible names now a days, maybe they really have run out. Nervous Light of Sunday sounds like what the melodic metalcore genre would have sounded like if it never got stail. You hear a lot of Shai Hulud in this, a little Poison the Well, and I’ve heard people compare them to the criminally underrated foredirelifesake and With Resistance, and I can’t help but agree. Frenzied sing a long vocals in the middle of incredibly soaring melodic breakdowns. They seriously sound like they were transported from the mid to late 90s to today. Now, obviously, if you weren’t into any of this, or you just pretend you weren’t because that is the kind of thing you do, this won’t appeal to you, but to everyone else that wished Poison the Well “just released another Opposite of December, dude” this will probably stick around in your stereo for a while.

From a Second Story Window – Not One Word Has Been Omitted

These guys aren’t very well recieved either. The last full length left something to be desired, but this was the kind of EP that made “brutal” into an annyong buzzword. Really just technical and evil. I guess people call it deathcore now. Everything is real harsh but the songs stay varied and chaotic, expect lots of epic changes. You could probably fight orcs to this kind of music… or at least some kind of androgynous anime character. This is definitely the pinacle of From a Second Story Window’s catalog, so if you don’t like this, don’t bother with anything else from this band, your ovaries are way too big for it.

Eluveite – Slania

Alright, let me frame you a pretty picture; they play folk metal, and have a hurdy gurdyer. Hurdy gurdyest? Jesus, I don’t even know. All I know is that they have some lyrics in gaulish. You sold yet? Look, I know the whole folk metal and viking metal thing is pretty corny, but a lot of it is pretty entertaining. This thing just exhudes vikings, or I guess more geographically logical, bards and fucking magic. Yeah. Wait, the celts had magic back then right? I’m pretty sure I saw that on the History channel. Either way, if they did have magic, they were casting it while some badass warrior bards were jamming out to Eluveite. Hopefully I’ll eventually get around to posting Spirit, their previous and better release. The only negative is there are definitely a couple songs where it seems like they are going to kick in with some absolutely over the top and ridiculously epic celtic metal bit and it just doesn’t get there. Kind of leaves you blue balling for some hurdy gurdy solos.

Bad Religion – New Maps of Hell

It is the newest Bad Religion CD, you probably already made your opinion on it by now. The last few releases from this band follow a formula that starts off kicking some ass, but a few tracks later its down to slower songs that are more alternative than they are punk. Whether or not you like that part of Bad Religion will dictate whether or not this gets more than a cursory listen from you. It doesn’t really matter though. Bad Religion can put out a shitty album and it not even register on their catalog. Just ignore it and liste to “Against the Grain” or something.

What the hell is this? A post from beyond the grave? No, your plucky website is not a blog thirsty zombie, back from the dead to feast upon you in the night. I just decided since I was still paying for hosting, I may as well use it. I have a writing project I will be putting up soon, and I figure I may as well use this as my personal blog to keep that one to just bid’nis.

So, eh, here are some albums chosen at random from my mp3 collection, old and new. I expect to be lambasted thoroughly, good sirs.

Robotosaurus – Sayra Bahk Volume 1 (The Last Refuge Of The Exiled Man)

Robotosaurus has a name that probably gets them written off, but seriously, don’t let that stop you. They are so good I couldn’t just pick one album to post, I had to post all of them, but since I like you guys I will only count this as one. This is some of the hardest, darkest sounding anything-core bands in existence. I have a hard time giving you a good comparison for what this band sounds like. Converge during a horror movie festival? Or maybe Ed Gein. No, I don’t mean the band, I mean the actual fucking Serial Killer. Seriously, if you doubt how evil and Converge-like this band sounds, listen to the first two tracks on this album straight through. Ok, I’ll give you a second to do that…

…

Yeah, see? I hear that in my head when I play Clocktower.

Robotosaurus – Sayra Bahk Volume 2 (Trifornais)

A little more Neurosis in this one than the last one, but still just as ridiculous.

Robotosaurus – Maneater

While nowhere near as good as either of the EPs, it is still enough to satiate your sick bloodlust. The outro to Vision is one of the hardest things I have heard in a very, very long time.

Daft Punk – Alive (2007)

One of the only live albums worth owning, by one of the greatest live acts in any genre of music ever. I wasn’t going to post this one when it popped up on the “shuffle” setting because, honestly, you should probably have this. Even if you don’t like it, I’m sure you have had a party or two that was or should have been enhanced by a playthrough of this. That might sound a little more Brodin than one would expect from me, but that is honestly how good this is. I still probably wouldn’t dance to it though.

Cradle of the Filth – Cruelty and the Beast

What are you looking at me like that for? You probably loved this in high school and now you pretend you never even listened to them, but you just know you hate them, I mean, look at these dudes, what tools right! Then you sit down and stare out your window into the night, thinking about when you were chasing around that goth girl who believed in magic and just loved Siouxsie so much…

Then you probably listen to some Deerhunter because you are a pretentious fuck now.

Julia – Julia

Honestly, one of the more underrated screamo bands of the wonderful mid-90s. That era of music being my favorite isn’t really a secret, I may listen to some weird and puzzling stuff (I’m looking at you, cybergrind bands) but that mid-90s screamo sound and its current day imitators are where I will always end up when it comes to music. Julia did it better than a lot of them, and still even holds up today against what a lot of bands are doing. Impressive indeed.

Ultraviolet Makes Me Sick – No Freeway, No Plan, No Trees, No Ghosts

Well, its post-rock from Italy. There seem to be so many decent to good post-rock bands and releases that all of them just blend together, but none of them are really all that bad. They just don’t stand out. This is one of those. It is dreamy and a little psychadelic. The non-instrumental songs are the weak points of the album, as they kind of descent into the murky waters of boring indie-pop. Everything else is passable though, pretty good for rainy days.

But then again, what post-rock band isn’t made for introspective rainy days and driving through tunnels when leaving somewhere. Where?

Anywhere, man. Anywhere.