#even so many modern songs sound better a little crunchy

[james-stark-the-writer]

Some music just sounds better crunchy, I'm sorry. Like, whatever the actual sound is that you would hear when something gets like a remaster or whatever like a song from like the 50s or something, will never make up for what your brain thought it sounded like when you first heard it and the crunchiness of the music helps your brain fill in the gaps more and that's why some crunchy music is superior.

[tawneybel]

Earlier this week I was supposed to have a horror movie marathon with a friend and tonight I was supposed to go out. And, also thanks to the coronavirus, I’m not sure if I’m going into work for the next week or so. My hands are getting dry from all the washing. Also, I may have to break Lent now, ugh. 

Good things:

Even though one of my friends is home from college because her school closed, we’ll probably get to hang out soon. 

Lady Gaga released Stupid Love. Sometimes all a music video needs is a bunch of people in rad outfits dancing. I want her pink spiky belt. Chromatica comes out next month. 

The Birthday Massacre’s Diamonds comes out this month. Two new albums from my favorite musical artists, yesh. Sadly they’ve had to postpone their American tour, though. 

Yesterday I was down to clown and watched Joker and the first half of It: Chapter Two. The first one was fantastic and tied everything so neatly into Batman. Good job, DC. I already have Birds of Prey on hold at the library. Need more clown fuel. Tonight I’m going to finish It and read The World of It.

After reading the first three volumes of My Hero Academia, I have a crush on the handy guy in need of moisturizer. 

Oracea seems to be working. I’m on my period but I haven’t really broken out. 

Okay, movies I want to talk about!

Orphan

I watch way too many horror movies to get easily scared by most of them. But Orphan was actually terrifying. Esther is a grade-A abuser, which made her a great villain. She did have a good point about euthanizing the bird, though. Her glow-in-the-dark paintings were cool, too. Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book is a great horror trope. 

Kate actually had a good way of telling Max about the stillbirth. One thing I didn’t like was how nobody thought to use a breathalyzer. 

The Blob 1988

The theater scene seemed like it should have had a seizure warning. 

I was surprised that I preferred the 1958 original. (Still a better movie than Ghostbusters II, though.) But the remake is scarier ‘cause the Blob doesn’t just absorb. It visibly digests. I watched this while it was raining. I assumed it wouldn’t like being rained on, but the Blob can swim. 

The characters could have made jewelry from the frozen Blob pieces and given it to people they don’t like. 

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

I’d been wanting to see this for a while. I already know a little about the production history, so I felt bad when Sally was screaming at the dinner table. Leatherface appears thirty-five minutes in. The grandfather was the creepiest character. I like how Bubba looked after him and pat him gently. And tried to help him brain Sally. 

Hm, not really sure what to say about this movie. I’m not the only one who seemed to think this seemed anti-meat industry. XD

Velvet Buzzsaw 

Modern art galleries… so much pretentiousness… Better art online. 

Since Spider-Man: Homecoming I’ve been into Jake Gyllenhaal. I wish Mr. Gyllenhaal would lounge around nud3 in my living room. :( That scene where he goes to see Josephina and learns she hooked up with Damrish was amazing. 

I didn’t recognize Natalia Dyer with glasses.

Hellboy

So much for top Naz/i assasin, eh Karl? He would have been so cool if he wasn’t a Naz/i. Disfigurements, mask, armor… DARN IT. 

Uh… I didn’t really write a lot of notes for this. I like how jealous Hellboy was of John. Some good one liners, like the protagonist’s “prudishness.”

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark 2010

This movie reminded me that I prefer smooth peanut butter. Crunchy makes me feel like I’m eating baby teeth. 

In that atmosphere, if a voice told me to reach down, I simply would not do it. Even if it sounded like it belonged to a really sexy man. Uh… I’m just going to make a bulleted list. 

Teddy bear was nice. 

Sally’s mom taught her to hate gluten, but not stranger danger?

Malevolent fairies! :D 

When I first saw the trailer I was afraid of the dude under the covers. Now that I’m a grown woman, I would give him a disciplinary hug. 

I want that mural. 

Kim gets corrupted off-screen, for anyone who’s into that. 

They made a book. And I also want to watch the original movie. 

Inferno

Suspiria was great and I really liked this a lot, too. Sometimes the plot doesn’t have to be the point of a movie. The lighting! More movies should strive to be this atmospheric. Needs me some more giallo. I’m just going to do another bulleted list. 

I like how Rose doesn’t bother taking her clothes off before submerging herself.

It’s nice to know beauty queens aren’t entirely unblemished.

Poor Carlo. He just kept a scared lady company without flirting.

Them still cat eyes.

Elise is a coward but at least she admits it. 

I wish I had a clowder of attack kittens.

My least favorite character ended up being Kazanian. Too bad the cats couldn’t be saved but at least rats can feast on his corpse.

*queue operatic rock when Mark follows the kitty*

Well, I was expecting Varelli to be the waterlogged corpse at the beginning.

I would probably try to suckle and spit out injected poison too, Mark.

Song of the Day: “Brave New Love” by Alien, from The Blob soundtrack.

[grimelords]

My November playlist is finished and I've done something slightly different by actually ordering the songs into a cohesive playlist rather than leaving them in the order I added them. Listen in for everyone's favourite genre, acoustic guitar instrumentals, followed by old fashioned cowboy country, comedy and ridiculous songs, 80s and modern dance, out-there piano instrumentals, rocks and rolls, oddball rap, christian rock buried where nobody will find it, noise rock of all flavours and Mirror Reaper in full. I guarantee there'll be at least something in four hours of music that you'll like. listen here!

Deixa - Toquinho: I love how much happens in this song even before it even kicks off at about a minute in. It cycles through so many different feelings before it really powers up and the drums come on. The rhythm from then on is just mesmerizing, it's just so busy and never dwells on any section for too long, the interplay between the melody, bassline and chord rhythm is amazing. And then at about 2:20 it powers up again! Bossa Nova Strong. Also I'm feeling very disrespected because I just did some research on this song only to find out it was sampled by Nujabes on one of his bad anime youtube hip hop songs.

Just A Closer Walk With Thee - Marisa Anderson: Traditional And Public Domain Songs is Marisa Anderson's weakest album, which is a shame because I love Traditional and Public Domain songs. Her playing is on point as always, but the tremolo and distortion she's using overwhelms the recording more often than not. This song is the best on the album purely because she's playing so quietly that it only shows up when she gets loud so it works perfectly near the end as it crescendos.

The Three Deaths Of Red Spectre - Gwenifer Raymond: Gwenifer Raymond has a new 'non-holiday specific single for a cold climate' in her words and I absolutely love it. The sheer velocity of the middle section is flooring, before it breaks apart totally and reforms into a sort of shanty before metamorphosing again into a heightening mania. I love the constantly shifting structure of this, it barely stops to give you room to breathe all the way through before the very end where it almost feels like it's going to collapse entirely.

Mister Sandman - Chet Atkins: Happy to report that I've had Mr Sandman stuck in my head for three weeks now and still don't really know the words because of tumblr posts. It alternates between 'mr email / e me a mail / make the attachment a pic of a snail' and 'mr sandman / sand me a man / make him the cutest man car door hook hand'.

Do I Ever Cross Your Mind - Chet Atkins & Dolly Parton: I've never gone much on Chet Atkins but my girlfriend showed my this song and it has completely reversed my opinion and it's mostly due to Dolly Parton. She is just so lovely on this it makes me tear up - the song itself is so nice and the playing is perfect but her personality just shines through so brightly it's an absolute delight.

There's A Man Going Around Taking Names - Lead Belly: I've been doing research to try to find out what this song is referring to, or its origin but I cannot find anything concrete. A few people are saying it inspired Johnny Cash for The Man Comes Around, which is plausible and adds a mystic bent to it. It seems incomplete, like it's missing the turn at the end that reveals who exactly he is or what's happening so the whole song just ends up feeling very mysterious and ominous.

When Mussolini Laid His Pistol Down - Merle Travis: This song is from 1943, which is sort of amazing because that means it's not a song about history particularly but rather current events. A great paragraph from wikipedia: "On 24 June Mussolini gave his last important speech as prime minister. It went down in history as the "boot topping" speech, with the Duce promising that the only part of Italy that the Anglo-Americans would be able to occupy (but forever and horizontally, i.e. as corpses) was the shore-line (for which he used a wrong word to define it). For many Italians, that confused and incoherent speech was the final proof that something was wrong with Mussolini." Mussolini, truly history's greatest moron.

The Master's Call - Marty Robbins: As a result of Red Dead 2 and my own natural instincts, I've been having a bigger than usual moment with cowboy music this month which of course includes Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs. In my mind this song is both the true ending and end credits music of Red Dead 2. Arthur sees the face of Christ in a lightning bolt and abandons his life of crime and sin, pleading with the lord to forgive him and then God kills a hundred cows with another lightning bolt just to make damn sure Arthur knows He's serious.

Saga Of The Ponderosa - Lorne Green: I was hanging out with my old housemate a few weeks ago and it turns out we were both having concurrent Marty Robbins cowboy music phases which was great news because then he turned me onto this album by Lorne Green who was on Bonanza and apparently took it upon himself to expand the Bonanaza Cinematic Universe in the 60s with a few albums. This song is apparently an origin story of Bonanza which I have never seen. It's extremely good, very powerful music. Great story of this godlike man striding across the country and overriding his wife's decision by naming his son HOSS.

Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder: I think it's interesting in A Star Is Born that Jackson Maine doesn't seem to be a real life equivalent of any actual musician. He's not obviously an archetype of any real person and so it's hard to place how exactly famous he is in the world of the movie. He's washed up enough to be playing pharmaceutical conferences but still has enough industry respect to be playing a tribute at the Grammys. The closest I could think of was Eddie Vedder oddly enough, and this song from the Into The Wild soundtrack really does sound like a Jackson Maine original.

For Chan - Tim Heideker: I'm having a real thing with comedy music recently and I can't tell if it means I've got a brain parasite or comedy music is good to me now. I think what I like about this song is the bluntness. There's no two ways about these people, and after years of hearing about the alt right as mysterious political genius computer brains it's a nice break to just hear them called greasy fat basement guys like we used to.

That's Right I'm Five - Don't Stop Or We'll Die: More good comedy music! They played this song on Comedy Bang Bang without announcing what it was called first, so the chorus really surprised me and made me laugh a lot. "They're selling the stocks so buy them, launch the torpedoes, tell my wife I love her, and send my son to college, bury me in the desert in my osh kosh b'gosh - that's right I'm five!" might be my favourite lyric of the year.

Future Brain - Den Harrow: Den Harrow is very good. He's like a beautiful moron American man that some italian scientists built in a lab in order to conquer America from the inside. Here are some good highlights from his wiki article: "The name Den Harrow was conceived by producers Roberto Turatti and Miki Chieregato, who based it on the Italian word denaro(money)." "After years of fame and popularity, it was revealed by frontman Stefano Zandri and his producers that Zandri did not actually sing the Den Harrow songs; he was essentially a character who lip-synched to vocals recorded by a number of other singers. Furthermore, since they did not consider Zandri's name and origin to be "trendy" enough, the producers R. Turatti and M. Chieregato concealed Zandri's Italian origin, marketing him as having been born Manuel Stefano Carry in Boston. This was done so Polydor Records could market him more easily in the English-speaking world, where Italian-produced music was, at the time, viewed with skepticism"

Love A Girl Right - Little Mix: Check out this rewrite of the Thong Song they did for the new Little Mix album. It's beyond belief. My girlfriend loves Little Mix and she's right to because they're the only girl/boy band that actually takes advantage of the form and does harmonies instead of just having them all sing in turn or all at once. They've got good vocal arrangements but they have the worst fucking songwriters working for them. Songwriters that pitch 'what if the Thong Song had a crunchy nu-metal guitar in it'.

This City Made Us - The Protomen: It's interesting to hear a band change styles - most other Protomen songs are a sort of Springsteen pastiche but this one from their newer single is more like Iron Maiden or Thin Lizzy. Approaching the 80s from a different angle. It's impressive to switch so radically and still have enough of a unifying sound that it feels like the same band. 80s throwback rock is a generally pallid genre populated by freaks who can't move on but Protomen put so much heart into it it's hard to write them off.

Teardrops - Womack & Womack: I love this song because it has two choruses. The drums stay the same throughout, the chords stay the same through the verse and chorus and only change for the second chorus/bridge part ("the music don't feel like it did when I felt it with you"), which just gives the whole song this feeling of beautiful endlessness. It goes and goes and goes and you're always already living in the best part of the song.

Boys Will Be Boys - The Duncan Sisters: Very very good piece of disco with a very nice piece of country picking guitar near the start for some reason. I quit like that the chorus of 'boys, oh boys, will be boys - they can really hurt you!' goes from a lighthearted thing about relationships until the bridge near the end where it sounds more like a dire warning. She's staring straight into your eyes and saying 'they can hurt you. boys can hurt you. they can really hurt you.' while motioning toward the exit with her eyes. 

Ayaya - Bicep: I've been trying to train my ear a bit better so I got a piano app on my phone and I just try to pick out the melodies of songs now when I'm bored. It turns out this is a very satisfying song to play. The melody is very simple, but the constant build and the couple of other melodies that come in around it make you feel like a super genius for just playing the same thing over and over.

The Call - David Mayer: I completely forget how I came across this song but I'm in love with the vocals on it. The effect reminds me of the one on Problem With The Sun by Nicolas Jaar, sort of pitched down and layered over itself. Outside of the vocals it's a pretty straightforward euro house chunk but damn sometimes a song just has a really good sound in it that you can't deny.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: My girlfriend's brother was telling me he was riding his bike the other day and had some kind of mental break where he was riding north in the afternoon but the sun was on his right, in the east - and for some reason his first instinct wasn't that he was wrong or disoriented, it was that there was a problem with the sun and it was in the wrong place. That boy ain't right but this song is good. I love that Nicolas Jaar uses this weird down pitched voice on a few songs and I really wish he'd bring it back, it sounds great and also funny to me.

Ensaslayi - Cecil Taylor: I don't have the brain power to comprehend any of Cecil Taylor's ensemble work that I've heard, free jazz in a band setting is simply too much for me it turns out -but I've really been getting a lot out of this solo album of his called Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!. This song in particular is one of the longer ones on the album, where another is only 53 seconds long and a few last around ten minutes. This is a nice midpoint, where he gives himself so much room to get lost in different directions without losing the thread entirely. I said it last time I was talking about him but I've really never heard anyone play piano like this and I absolutely love it. A lot of reviewers describe it as him playing the piano like it's a drumkit, which I think is accurate to a degree - but I think looking back from here this music makes a lot more sense within the context of black midi and things like that. The extreme edges of what a piano can theoretically do, but with a decisive and beautiful human edge and human brain that's responsible for and making sense of the chaos.

The Homeless Wanderer - Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou: I found out about this album cause Benjamin Booker was posting about her on his instagram story and it's just incredible. The TL;DR of her story is she's an Ethiopian nun that studied music in Switzerland and Cairo and wrote this beautiful piano music based on traditional Ethiopian pentatonic music. I love the rhythm of it, every note in the right hand get swirled around and around before it's settled on while the left hand moves so smoothly and delicately. Unfortunately-ish she's obviously in that genre of Searching For Sugarman secret blog music evidenced by her spotify similar artists being Karen Dalton, Alice Coltrane and Connie Converse. That's not a bad thing exactly, at least people are hearing about her, but her music is unique and amazing enough on its own without needing much mythologizing.

Carnival Of The Animals: No 12 - Fossils - Camille Saint-Saëns: My girlfriend was showing me Saint-Saëns' The Swan and then we were going through the whole rest of the Carnival Of The Animals and I'm happy to report that he not only did he do one for fossils but also centered it around the idea of a bone xylophone. I'm going to write an article for Vulture tracing the origin of the cartoon bone xylophone and my thesis is it starts here.

Perth - Bon Iver: Just thinking about how good Bon Iver is. I love how massive this song can feel, the drums combined with the big brass. It's small and soft on the grand scale, but on an album that gets as quiet and soft as songs like Holocene this song blows up like an atom bomb.

Yet Again - Grizzly Bear: This really is one of the best songs of all time I've decided. It feels like I get into a thing of listening to it on repeat almost every month now. I don't know what it is exactly - I guess it's every part of it. The lyrics are impenetrable (check) the riff is simple and powerful (check) the drums are doing a lot and keeping it simple at the same time. The the way the harmony vocals all intertwine in the prechorus part is amazing. The way the whole song blows up into a big radio static solo at the end. Every part of this song is great, I just love it.

Fuckin N' Rollin - Phantastic Ferniture: I found out that Julia Jacklin has a side project with a very shit name and they make very good music. I love when people have a whole other band for another side of their self. This is just Julia Jacklin if the lyrics were just first draft whatevers instead of incredibly poignant and beautiful and the music was just rockin and rollin with your friends. It's great!

Soft - Kings Of Leon: Number one best song ever about havin a bad dick!! I'd love to hang out lady but my dick! I'm passed out in your garden, I'm in I can't get off I'm so soft! I'd pop myself in you body, I'd come into your party but I'm soft!

Soft Serve - Soul Coughing: I played this while I was driving with my girlfriend and she said 'what the fuck is this' and she's right, as usual. It's Soul Coughing baby! The 90s 'slacker jazz' band! They sound dated as fuck, a real product of their time but I think they've still got a lot to offer. I had the chorus of this stuck in my head for a couple days which made me listen to this album more than usual when I mostly prefer their first one Ruby Vroom. Irresistible Bliss might have the worst album cover of all time though, so it's got that going for it. Google it.

Ya Mama - Wuf Ticket: There wiki article for this band says they had two songs in 1982 and that was it. Then it has a section titled Greaseman and then the article ends. Here's the Greaseman section in its entirety: "Wuf Ticket's “Ya Mama” achieved its greatest notoriety, and airplay, as a music bed for bits by shock jock The Greaseman on WWDC-FM in Washington, D.C. and later his nationally syndicated radio show where Greaseman would argue with a surly service industry worker." Anyway this is more of that very good early hip hop shit where everyone assumed songs should go for 8 minutes. It's just extremely weak sauce Ya Mama jokes for a very long time before they change tack completely and start talking about how Every Woman Is An Angel And Without Mothers We Would Never Have Been Born So Think About That Next Time.

Gon Be Okay - Lil B: I had the part of this song where he sings 'things are never gonna be the same again' along with the piano in my head the other day and spent fully an hour googling to try to find what song it was from before giving up. I woke up the next morning and suddenly remembered it was this song but was very shocked to find out that he actually never sings that line along with the piano melody, he says it once at the start and that's it. What's going on with my brain. Anyway in my searching I found out that the piano is sampled from the Spirited Away soundtrack so once more in my life I've been led to ruin by anime.

2 Minute Drills - Allblack & Kenny Beats: This whole EP is great. More sports themed rap please. Allblack is ferocious and Kenny's production throughout is great, the perfect mix of simple straighforward beats that still have a lot of space and energy in them, plus 'Woah Kenny!' has my award for Best New Producer Watermark.

Don't Gas Me - Dizzee Rascal: I don't know how he keeps doing it but somehow Dizzee Rascal continues to make extremely fun bangers without ever slowing down. The best line in this is when he says "no I don't drink Appletiser" (the sparkling apple juice) which is an extremely weird flex if there ever was one.

Acid King - Malibu Ken: It feels insane that a Tobacco and Aesop Rock collab sounds as good as this. I love that there's no drums the entire time he's rapping and I completely love the Mort Garson vibes in the instrumental which turns out to be a perfect soundtrack to the Ricky Kasso satan worship LSD murder story that Aesop's telling. Also in reading about Kasso I just discovered the very good stoner doom band also named Acid King, so expect to see them in next month's list.

Pirate Blues - As Cities Burn: As Cities Burn have reformed and put out a new single so I've been thinking about them a bit. On paper they don't sound good, over three albums they morphed from a christian metalcore band to a christian alt-rock band, and while they never reinvented the wheel I think they're a remarkable band who took a lot of risks in their own way and made a lot of rock solid music. They've got a lot of great songs but I think this is my favourite from their third album when it finally felt like they'd settled into a steady alt rock sound informed by their much heavier past.

This Is It, This Is It - As Cities Burn: The thing I like about As Cities Burn is that as much as they're a christian band (yuck) they're more of a band of guys who are christians (slightly less yuck) and the difference is huge. Rather than evangelising or preaching, their songs are about their own personal struggles with their faith (still slightly yuck). I like this song especially because the lyric feels close to gospel, 'we're all singing for our sins, unless grace be the wind' but with the added twist of being furious that you're trapped by the sin of your physical body.

Timothy - As Cities Burn: I think this song is just incredible. The lyrics are so strong and direct and heartbreaking, the vocal performance especially is amazing and it may be the only time in history that a 6 minute guitar solo has seemed good and necessary.

Face Tat - Zach Hill: There's an incredible video of the recording of this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGi9SOFX5rc that really looks exactly how it sounds and has a very similar energy to that video of 80 guys singing the halo theme in the boys bathroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRG9KwvbVhk . This is what it sounds like when the boys are left alone. The biggest draw to Zach Hill's drumming is the intense primordial immediacy of it. He is just pounding away like a possessed animal and it's really on show here, especially combined with the occasional punctuating shout. Carson McWhirter's guitar is incredible too, the tone he's got where it sounds like three at once playing these incredible twisting riffs that turn on a dime. I think what I like most about this song is just how in sync they are - for such a chaotic, noisy song it sounds so rehearsed, somehow every single note is perfectly in time in the storm.

Betty's Worry Or The Slab - Hunters And Collectors: This is maybe the sweatiest song I've ever heard. It's a disgusting song about being incredibly sweaty and horny and I love the weird squeaky noise he makes after he says 'say it! say it!'. The bass sound in this is so fantastically meaty too, and combined with the brass at the end it's just great.

Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull (live) - Refused: I cannot believe just how absolutely ferocious live Refused is. Insanely powerful without ever missing a beat in a song like this that requires incredible timing throughout. For some reason I've always thought Refused were an only ok live band after watching Refused Are Fucking Dead because all I remember of it is a clip where the guitarist accidentally hits the singer in the face with his headstock and they have to stop the show.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: I got to see Bell Witch live a couple of weeks ago and it's one of the best shows I've ever seen. I can't really describe it other than it feels like the closest thing to a legitimate summoning ritual that I've ever seen. An invocation and an expelling of raw power and emotion between two people, it was really something. Also the best part was about two minutes in when they were really setting the scene with the sort of ambient beginning of Mirror Reaper and the whole crowd was dead silent and entranced as they built this mystic atmosphere and set the vibe a guy behind me said loudly to his friend 'hm pretty good so far!'

What's You Gonna Do When The World's On Fire - Lead Belly & Anne Graham: This is in my opinion the best genre of gospel song where they they just roast you for not being saved yet.​ 

listen here

[happymetalgirl]

Demon Hunter - War & Peace

I don’t remember exactly where it was, but I have seen the sentiment echoed on the online metal discussion sphere (and I’m possibly also thinking of my own thoughts as well), that Demon Hunter are basically just the Christian Five Finger Death Punch, at least lately. And I don’t know why, but I do feel the need to address/debunk this before talking about their double release here this year, mainly because it was when Five Finger Death Punch tried their hand at a two-volume album release that I felt them really starting to go south.

Anyway, first-off, like I said, I have had this cursory comparison enter my mind, so I understand the reasoning behind it. Five Finger Death Punch has been for the past few years, unfortunately, probably the biggest (in terms of success) representative of modern groove metal and alternative metal, even if it’s just in name only at this point. Demon Hunter play a similar style of groovy, melodic metalcore and alternative metal to what got Five Finger Death Punch on the map (though Demon Hunter predate Five Finger Death Punch by five years and three full-length studio albums), and of all the “Christian bands” doing it, they’re definitely the biggest right now, and have been for a good few years as well. Ivan Moody’s and Ryan Clark’s aggressive mid-treble growls and melodic vocal deliveries are pretty similar, and they could both easily sing for the other’s band. And both bands are not shy to give one or a couple power or acoustic ballads a shot per album, which Demon Hunter definitely have a better track record with (see “My Heartstrings Come Undone”, “Carry Me Down”, the acoustic version of “The Tide Began to Rise”, “One Thousand Apologies”, and “Driving Nails”). And perhaps the most unnerving aspect, both bands are definitely not making their best work right now with Demon Hunter peaking at The World Is a Thorn and Five Finger Death Punch continuing to nosedive since War Is the Answer. At least Demon Hunter had a period of relatively consistently good output and more than one and a half really good albums under their belt. But that’s really where the similarities end: their similar genre styles and their respective successes.

What makes being compared to Five Finger Death Punch such a hypothetically inauspicious sign for a band, such as Demon Hunter, doesn’t really apply to Demon Hunter. Yes, while they’ve struggled for form for the past few years, it’s nothing compared to the absolute trash fire Five Finger Death Punch have made of their career only worse as time goes on from an artistic standpoint. Last year’s And Justice for None was undoubtedly the most corporately managed and phoned-in sellout project ever from them. And while I thought Demon Hunter’s Outlive in 2017 was below their potential, it didn’t make my bottom ten like And Justice for None did the next year. But what really makes Five Finger Death Punch such a despised name has a lot to do with the attitude. Ivan Moody behind the microphone and on the lyric sheet is juvenile and cringe-worthy to put it nicely, and his ugly enough prima donna antics on-stage and behind-the-scenes have leaked into the band’s music as of late to provide an utterly unattractive attitude to the band’s sound, a problem Ryan Clark and Demon Hunter definitely do not have to a degree even close to being worth mentioning. For them it’s just putting in the honest compositional work they always have, and singing semi-ambiguously about their Christian faith. Demon Hunter have also not terminally infected their sound with radio pandering and butchered production to nearly the same degree that Five Finger Death Punch have. On a very superficial level, yes, there are some similarities between the two, but where it really matters, Demon Hunter is not nearly the rotten eggs Five Finger Death Punch are to their respective spheres of metal.

Okay, that took way too long, but with it out of the way, on to the matter at hand: War and Peace (the two Demon Hunter albums, not the famously massive Leo Tolstoy novel). The pair of albums are intended to explore the band’s self-attributed stylistic poles on their own respectively, with War focusing on their groove metal and metalcore roots and Peace focusing on the more alternative hard rock forays they often go off on. Yes, while the prospect of ninety-eight minutes’ worth of music spread across two albums from a band in much less than optimal shape as of late certainly wasn’t a great sign going into these albums, the results were much better than I expected and not quite as watered down as so many projects of this type tend to get. Both these albums bring about a surprising upturn in Demon Hunter’s compositional form.

Of the two, I think Peace is actually a little more solid, only because I think the band better represented that side of themselves than they did their heavier side on War. War isn’t quite the stark contrast to Peace it really could have been if the band tapped deep into the creative well that produced their fastest, thrashiest, and most punishing songs like “The World Is a Thorn”, “LifeWar”, “Storm the Gates of Hell”, “Not I”, and “Beheaded”. Demon Hunter do indeed tap into their metalcore style pretty well, but for my personal preference, I think I would have liked to hear the band less reliant on melodic choruses and melodic vocal sections in general throughout, especially since Peace, meanwhile, finds the band more easily and naturally channeling their less overtly aggressive side. Though War does have a good few highlights worth noting. “Cut to Fit” opens the album with sufficient direct melodic metalcore force comparable to what the band have built their name on. The shortest and fastest track on the album, “Ash”, captures the direct-thrash-assault approach that makes so many of the band’s short title tracks on past albums such bangers. The band do showcase some respectable versatility as well as the song “The Negative” captures a harsh, revolting metalcore feel with Ryan Clark’s scratchy hardcore snarls backed by lone snare battering and its menacing bridge, while “Lesser Gods” finds Clark channeling Randy Blythe a bit during the more grandiose-minded song’s heavy choruses. The closing track, “Gunfight”, is perhaps one of the band’s most directly furious, yet phenomenally ambitiously structured metalcore thrashers. Songs like “Close Enough” and (to a lesser extent) “Unbound”, however, that base their core on basic rock drum beats and typical structuring do indeed (after all my arguing to the contrary) remind a little too much for comfort of Five Finger Death Punch, and mar the album unnecessarily.

Overall though, War is actually a significant upswing from the past two or three releases, and even if it could have gone heavier, it was great to hear Demon Hunter really centrally focusing on the heavy side of their sound that got them where they are. Its weaknesses are minor, if not only fleeting, and the band show that they still have plenty of gas in the tank to keep their fire going. 

Peace, on the other hand, the rockier album of the two, if you will, isn’t completely neutered at all, just more of a rock-focused album with some alternative metal tinges still held around to spice things up. Ryan Clark’s clinical melodic clean singing takes center stage of the songs on here. This is not to say the rest of the band don’t shine; they do lay back and maintain the vibe of the songs for a greater portion of this album than War, but Peace certainly has its unexpectedly adventurous and even heavy moments.

The opening track “More Than Bones” keeps the allegro pace and the metallic guitar distortion dialed in from the previous album. It’s really the most classic-rock the band get for the entire album, and it might have served better somewhere in the middle to break up the rest of the hard-rocking material. But its placement is only a minor potential gripe. The hardness with which the rest of Peace rocks is kind of surprising, with “Bet My Life” even featuring a downtuned nu metal guitar breakdown of sorts near its closing moments. The song “Time Only Takes” also rocks pretty thoroughly hard through some slow, but crunchy, palm-muted guitar grooves. The similarly crunchy metallic verses on the song “Loneliness” sound like some old-school, actually cool, Five Finger Death Punch, while the more subdued acoustic choruses provide an unexpectedly hair-raising juxtaposition.

“Rescue Myself” sees the band directing themselves toward making one of those famous power ballads of theirs, with some ethereal choir vocal backing being one of the primary highlights of the song, which isn’t much to write home about compositionally. The results are decent, but the song “Peace” is perhaps the most fully realized upbeat somber ballad the band have ever made, and its sheer soulfulness and sing-along infectiousness is unrivaled on the rest of the album. The stripped back piano balladry of “Fear Is Not My Guide” comes pretty close, though. It’s a nice breather track for sure, but I think I still would have liked to hear some kind of extra instrumental or compositional ambition of some sort on it.

Like I said, I think Peace is just the slightly more consistent of the two, if only for its fewer moments of actual Five Finger Death Punch reminiscence. It’s by no means a take on the band’s “soft side”, but rather a focused exhibit of the band’s other main style of song-writing, which they do well to spice up regularly enough on here to keep it interesting.

After sitting with it after a several good listens though, still enjoying it, I have to say this was a risky move that paid off with what will likely be a sleeper hit for the band. I wouldn’t have put money on them bouncing back a bit with more material so soon, but the centrifuging of their styles seems to have helped bring the best out of them for both sides of their sound, and that’s great. I think being able to commit fully to one approach and one focus one one project and commit fully to another focus and approach on another project both helped the respective albums flow more smoothly and helped the band not worry so much about the balancing act they’ve had to maintain between the two throughout their career. Of course, the question is where to go from here. Do Demon Hunter do split-up or double releases for the rest of the foreseeable future with this style? Probably not; it sure must be exhausting for the band, and even as well as this one came out, I don’t think I’d bet on a repeat being similarly palatable in the near future. I don’t know, most bands that have tried this kind of double album thing usually don’t do it twice in a row unless long, winding compositions make their albums long as hell to begin with (i.e. Swans, Sunn O))), Prurient). Opeth just did Ghost Reveries after Deliverance and Damnation. Periphery did their third eponymous album after the Juggernaut double album. And Five Finger Death Punch shat the bed even worse with Got Your Six after their double album snooze party. So I guess it’s more likely they go for a more traditional single LP next, which will mean probably recombining everything that did so well split up on these albums. Hopefully the time apart the styles got here and the vitality the band found in their approach keeps the upward momentum going for their next album. For now, I’m rather pleased with how this came out. Definitely the best offering of alternative metal I’ve heard all year.

Good job Demon Hunter, my review is as annoyingly long as the book you named your albums after/10

[soulofevil]

Tagged by @colaismywater and @whistlingwindtree

Rules: tag 10 mutuals you’d like to get to know better

Name: i mostly use Ise online

Star sign: Sagittarius

Height: 5′3

Put your iTunes or spotify on shuffle. what are the first 4 songs that popped up?

Undefeatable by Young Rising Sons

 Color by Finish Ticket

Call My Name by The Unlikely Candidates

The Sky is a Neighborhood by the Foo Fighters

Have you ever had a poem or song written about you?

Nope! Closest I come to that is silly poems written ICly for my RP characters

When was the last time you played the guitar?

*shrug* never? i don’t know how to play it and never had any interest but i’m sure at some point i’ve been around one and plucked the strings

Who is your celebrity crush?

I’ll go with Gabriel Luna and Eiza González. Gabe is great and Eiza makes me wish i RPed ladies more often so I would have an excuse to use her face since she’s so pretty.

Antonio Banderas’s voice is also up there. 

What’s a sound you hate and a sound you love?

I love that crunchy/squeaky sound that snow makes make you’re walking in it

I hate the sound of my bf’s sister’s voice when she’s been drinking. The tone, pitch, and volume she gets just grates on my nerves.

Do you believe in ghosts?

Naw. I’ve even stayed at the Stanley Hotel but never got any ghostly vibe there

How about aliens?

yep but if they’re smart they’d stay away!

Do you drive?

yeah but i don’t really enjoy it

What was the last book you read?

Uhh good question. a trade of some comic i’m sure. next one will probably be Daredevil’s Born Again trade since I just finished s3 of that

What’s the worst injury you’ve had?

Back injury from work so nothing exciting. otherwise i’ve really only fractured my big toe when i was little

Do you have any obsessions right now?

after 20 years superheroes are not an obsession but a lifestyle choice!

I have been and continued to be obsessed with Quakerider, Robbie Reyes, and Gabriel Luna.

oh i’ve also been obsessed with the Night Riot’s Work It because it planted a scene in my head that will help me out with some WtWoF stuff

Do you try to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?

Hahaha yeaaaah. I try to let stuff go, and a lot of the times I can manage to tolerate the person who has wronged me but man, am I still a bitter bitch about shit that I know is pointless after so many years.

In a relationship?

yes i am

Tagging @criticalabuse @thoughtsbubble @miranda-gilastorm @nausiwindstrider @wooshmagic @marvelthismarvelthat @modern-victoria annnd anyone else who wants to do it! sorry for any multiple tags!

[chorusfm]

Dawes – Passwords

Passwords is Dawes’ fifth record of the 2010s—and their fifth great one. It’s also the first time that they haven’t taken a substantial leap forward in terms of sound or approach. Ever since their 2011 breakthrough, Nothing Is Wrong, Dawes have been switching producers with every record, always searching for that new groove. Nothing Is Wrong was a wash of gorgeous 70s-influenced Laurel Canyon folk, earning the band almost as many comparisons to Jackson Browne as Brian Fallon got to Bruce Springsteen. 2013’s Stories Don’t End had flickers of a 90s folk rock record, modernizing and streamlining the band’s songs with a more studio-driven approach. 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands went in the opposite direction, embracing the band’s live, jam-oriented roots for a record full of loose guitar solos and spontaneous energy. And 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die brought in mad scientist producer Blake Mills (Alabama Shakes, Perfume Genius, John Legend) for a bold, expectation-shattering disc—a career left-turn that prompted at least a few comparisons to U2’s Achtung Baby. Passwords has a less distinct musical identity than its four predecessors on initial listens, though it does carve out its own niche from a lyrical standpoint. Part of the reason is the band’s decision to reunite with producer Jonathan Wilson, who manned the boards for both Nothing Is Wrong and Dawes’ 2009 debut, North Hills. Wilson has a lighter touch as a producer than Mills, which means this record is considerably less audacious than We’re All Gonna Die. For all the fans who dismissed that album as a “jump the shark” moment for Dawes—and there were a few—Passwords will probably scan as an appreciated return-to-form. But for those who dug We’re All Gonna Die and the way it tore down any remaining boundaries for the band’s music career, the slight retreat on Passwords might feel a little disappointing. Passwords is also more of a slow burn than past Dawes records. This band has always excelled at ballads and mid-tempo numbers, to the point where almost all their best songs (from “Peace in the Valley” to “A Little Bit of Everything” to “All Your Favorite Bands”) rest in this vein. Still, having a rocker here or there—like “One of Us,” the propulsive opener from We’re All Gonna Die, or “From the Right Angle,” a road warrior anthem from Stories Don’t End—always kept past Dawes records lively and well-paced. Passwords is almost exclusively mid-tempo. There are a few change-ups to give the album some pep: the Fleetwood Mac pastiche “Feed the Fire” and the War on Drugs-flavored “Mistakes We Should Have Made,” namely. Still, the record’s mid-section does drag a bit at first, pulling together three of the slowest and longest songs (“My Greatest Invention,” “Telescope,” and “I Can’t Love”) into a lengthy 18-minute break between livelier tracks. It’s a head-scratching sequencing choice that threatens to derail the entire album. It’s only the band’s unbelievable level of musical skill and frontman Taylor Goldsmith’s stunning lyrical work that keeps Passwords from drifting into “sleepy” territory. Luckily, these three songs are growers—especially “Telescope,” which scans as a meandering, minimalist jam on first listen, but is actually a haunting, deeply-felt story song about being a child of divorce and abandonment. Nevertheless, it’s the opening and closing salvos of Passwords that put it on the level of the band’s past work. The record’s first act is the “topical” segment, featuring the most overtly political music they’ve ever made. Opener “Living in the Future” flits from crunchy guitar-driven verses (written in 7/8 time) to an anthemic, reach-for-the-rafters chorus. Lyrics like “If you won’t sing the anthem/They’ll go find someone else who will” feel all too timely at this particular moment in history. “Crack the Case,” meanwhile, is a plea for understanding in a world where political differences, miscommunication, and twisted words consistently pull us apart from one another. Sandwiched between those two tracks is “Stay Down,” a sunny, serene folk jam about what we probably all want to do right now: unplug, sign off, and disengage. Or maybe it’s just a song about getting over breakup. The genius in Goldsmith’s writing, sometimes, is that it can mean many things at once. The closing act of Passwords, meanwhile, is where Goldsmith allows himself to get personal. Goldsmith got engaged to actress Mandy Moore last year, and on this record, she’s inspired the loveliest and most earnest love songs Dawes have ever recorded. The first of those—and the album’s best song—is called “Never Say Goodbye.” It takes apart flawed, youthful masculinity (“I never could admit when I was wrong then/Even when I felt it in my bones/I always thought it meant I was a strong man/I wondered why I was alone”) and discusses, in wide-eyed wonder, how falling in love can change your entire perspective on the world (“My dark days showed me how to ask, ‘Why me?’/She’s taught me how to ask, ‘Why not?”). Every line of the song is a beauty—to the point where it’s tough to imagine it not becoming a “First Dance” wedding staple. It’s the rare love song that fully embrace sentimentality while also dodging cliché. The album’s closing number, the understated “Time Flies Either Way,” is almost as good. Over a lovely bed of acoustic guitars, pianos, and soft-rock-worthy saxophones, Goldsmith weaves another tale of a sad and lonely wanderer, made whole again by finding the right person to share his life. “Finding out that all my proudest moments/Will be spent trying to put a smile on your face/And I’m letting that fact answer all of my questions/’Cause I know now that the time flies either way,” he sings in the last verse. It’s the perfect conclusion to the record—an album that, despite the darkness that shrouds its first half, finds life-affirming meaning in its final two songs. We’re All Gonna Die, as the title suggested, often languished in pessimism. There were songs about divorce, mid-life crisis, quitting, failure, toxic masculinity, nihilism, and mortality. While Passwords is coming along at an even darker time, it feels significantly more hopeful, like maybe we can get through the darkness if we put our faith in each other, trust in our relationships, and try a little empathy. Like Goldsmith sings in the opener: “It may not make it any better/I’m just hoping that it might.” --- Please consider supporting us so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/review/dawes-passwords/

[themomsandthecity]

Why Screen Time Is Actually Really Important For Kids (and Moms!)

I am not a crunchy, hippy mom: I only breastfed my son for six months, the minimum recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. I put him in his crib on the very first night he came home. I could never figure out how to wrap him to my body in yards of stretchy jersey, and I have never been bothered about my son getting a little screen time. While other moms might bristle at the thought of giving a toddler a tablet, I am all for it - in moderation, of course. At almost 2 years old, my son will get between an hour and two hours of screen time a day. This is only slightly more than the allowable amount, according to the aforementioned American Academy of Pediatrics. Although he loves playing with books, puzzles, and that colorful sliding toy that is in every doctor's office, he also enjoys a little technology in his day, and I don't think that's a bad thing. Screen time in our house takes on many different shapes. For starters, there's the scheduled biweekly FaceTime meetings with his aunts. Due to the fact that our homes are in different cities and they lead very busy lives, we don't get to see each other that often, usually only a couple times a year. If I was overly concerned with how much screen time my son was getting, I might not have gotten to experience the joy of watching him blowing kisses to his aunts 800 miles away. He knows them because of those phone calls, which makes the time when we are all together even more special because we're not having to negotiate stranger danger. Related: Children Are Competing With Devices For Uninterrupted Time With Their Parents There are thousands of apps designed for toddlers, and while I obviously cannot speak to all of them, the few that I have downloaded have been great. My personal favorite is a game of flashcards of various animals and the sounds they make. We play together, "flipping" the cards over to hear cat go "meow" or the pig go "oink" as I tell him the names of the animals. This is very similar to the old See 'n Say toy of our youth; it's just modernized for young digital minds, and a lot more portable. Then of course there is the dreaded TV. I get why it makes a lot of parents uneasy. It's so easy to slip into the habit of letting your kid become a zombie who stares at the screen, mouth agape and eyes barely blinking. That's clearly not the kind of television I'm talking about, though I will admit that there have been moments like this as I scramble to make dinner. Around my son's 12-month checkup, his doctor and I had a conversation about screens, and her reasoning as to why so many are against television is because while the children are watching TV they aren't doing something else which could be better for them. It's kind of like eating dessert: while I'm eating this doughnut, I'm clearly not going to shove a carrot in my mouth. It's kind of like eating dessert: while I'm eating this doughnut, I'm clearly not going to shove a carrot in my mouth. With this in mind, when our son watches his beloved Sesame Street, we encourage him to do other things at the same time. He'll stack blocks, color, and play with his stuffed Sesame Street characters. During this time, he is establishing connections between the television and real world. The characters on the screen and the ones he's holding are the connection. He also is beginning to develop a little personality, one who has favorite characters, who laughs at mostly appropriate moments, and has started to sing along with the songs. I'd be lying if I said that we never used TV as a distraction. There are times that we just need to get stuff done. It's a lot easier to shower when you're not concerned that the silence in the other room is leading to something disastrous. I know that I can trust my son to stay in his playroom, build with blocks, and watch TV in the time that it takes me to get clean. Having kids can be hard at times, and anything within reason to give you momentary lapses of ease is fine by me. Looking ahead to when he is in school, I don't think he's going to be behind the other kids because of his affection for technology. On the contrary, considering our love of STEM education and a real movement toward paperless classrooms, I think it will benefit him in the long run. A lot of STEM-based instruction is designed around giving children the opportunity to explore and learn through inquiry. Many apps and TV shows support this approach, thus further strengthening a child's STEM literacy later in life. Related: 23 Toys For Kids That Will Sharpen Their STEM Skills at Any Age In talking with early childhood specialists, they were quick to point out that preschool readiness isn't just about playing with others and knowing your colors. Being prepared for school also requires that young students are able to stay on task independently. Books, toys, apps, and yes, even television are all tools that parents can use to instill autonomy in their children. I enjoy the times where my son and I interact and play together, but it's also important for him to have time to himself, doing something that he loves. I love my son. I want him to be prepared for the world when he's ready for it, but I also want him to be happy. Right now one of the things that makes him ecstatic to the point of shaking is Sesame Street, and I'm OK with that. If you could see his smile, I think you would be too. http://bit.ly/2lijVtD