Tag Archives: singles

Music of 2024: Update

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Back in April when I posted the first look at early releases, I mentioned that I have been busy and haven’t had a lot of time to really seek out new music (or old music, for that matter, apart from the ‘old’ music I’ve been listening to as research). That situation has not changed much. Over the summer I focused more heavily on writing my book, so I continued to not hear much new music; now I am back at the wage-earning slog and trying to write my book and …yeah. Even less time.

Still, in the months between April and now I have managed to squeeze in some new stuff, and here’s what I got so far. Up for brief comment this time around:

Albums

Airbag: The Century of the Self

Bent Knee: Twenty Pills Without Water

Elephant9: Mythical River

Bill Leeb: Model Kollapse

Loma: How Can I Live Without a Body?

Oceans of Slumber: Where Gods Fear to Speak

Wretchgod: Suffering Upon Suffering

A few singles from:

Body Count, Klone, Front Line Assembly, Kanaan/Meller, Amplifier

In this post I’ll do the singles. It takes longer to review albums and I’m not done yet. This is not a ranking, but alphabetical order.

Amplifier: “Guilty Pleasure”

A single in advance of a new Amplifier album, apparently called Gargantuan, to be released some time this year. Their last album came out in 2023, and I ranked it pretty high for the year, tied with Riverside’s for the top spot, despite a couple of rather messy songs. The rest were lovely.

“Guilty Pleasure” sounds like one of those messy tracks, wherein everything seems to be happening everywhere all at once, which is okay if you like that sort of thing, but I am not overly fond of it. I like a song that has some kind of recognizable direction to it, or at least  not sounding like it is galloping madly off in all directions (hat tip: Stephen Leacock). This single barely holds it together. Which means I have to wait to hear the rest of the album before I decide to buy it.

https://amplifier.bandcamp.com/track/guilty-pleasure-advance

 

Body Count: “Psychopath” and “F*** What You Heard”, released in advance of their new album apparently called Merciless. This is supposed to drop sometime this year, but so far there has been no word on when.

These are both solid offerings, the first reminiscent of tracks like “Carnivore” and “Here I Go Again” from earlier albums, Ice-T rapping about unrestrained predatory violence: it’s not bad but we’ve already heard it. The second though is a rap-metal monster, political and angry, and I swear the duo of Will Dorsey (drums) and Vincent Price (bass) is one of the heaviest, most thunderous rhythm sections in the business.

 

Front Line Assembly feat. Seeming: “Molotov” (remix)

“Molotov” the original comes from the 2018 FLA album Warmech, which is the OST for the video game Airmech Wastelands. Seeming is an indie/post-punk/industrial duo with three albums out so far: in my blog I ranked their Sol: A Self-Banishment Ritual as the best album of 2017.

FLA has released a few remixes of pieces from Warmech, and I noticed “Molotov” because it is one of the best tracks from the original album, and, well, Seeming. It is remixed to dial back the synths and include lyrics, written and sung by Alex Reed, on resistance politics: “Revolution is not a mood/revolution is not a vibe/…revolution is showing up” he declares. It really works: Seeming skillfully redirect the energy in the original piece and create a powerful new song.

 

Kanaan/Meller: “Olympics”

A joint track between Robert Kanaan, a Polish electronica musician, and Riverside’s (and ex-Quidam) guitarist Maciej Meller, celebrating, well, its title. It is a soaring, melodic instrumental piece with lots of synths, nice guitar, and well-worth the few bucks to buy it on Bandcamp.

 

Klone: “Interlaced” and “The Unseen”

These are out in advance of the new album The Unseen, to be released on November 8th—a bit of a surprise, really, since their previous album was released just last year. Anyway, there is no mistaking Klone, with their orchestral, guitar-rich heavy prog and Yann Ligner’s soaring voice. Both these tracks are strong, the first one featuring a couple of jazzy sax solos, the second getting pretty metal with Ligner almost growling. They bode well for the album, but also suggest we aren’t going to get anything radically new from the band in terms of sound or direction. That is, there isn’t a lot to say specifically about the songs because if you know what Klone sounds like, you know what these tracks will sound like.

As noted, I’ll post up comments on the albums when I have time to finish listening/thinking about them. I did in fact sample more than just this, but so far these I’ve listened to enough to have something to say. Who knows… I may be able to add to the list as time goes on. Stay tuned.

The Music of 2022 So Far

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Well, it’s already May, and I haven’t updated the blog for a while.

What is new and exciting so far? There are a few new things to be sure, but not very many have caught my attention. I haven’t really had the time to dig in and listen to stuff, let alone search out new things.

That being said, some singles have hit in anticipation of new albums:

 Porcupine Tree: “Of the New Day”

Steven Wilson and crew follow up the first single from 2021 with this one, much slower and more contemplative, but still managing to sound like a mash-up of earlier Wilson solo albums and Porcupine Tree — which is not to say that it is a bad or derivative song. It is not. Maybe not as instantly compelling as “Harridan”, and a bit more of a grower, but the two singles together suggest the upcoming album may be a pretty good one, whatever the reasons for its release.

 

Killing Joke: Lord of Chaos EP

There are two new tracks on this EP, and a couple of remixes of things from 2015’s Pylon. The new tracks are “Lord of Chaos” and “Total”, and these are worthy follow-ups to the angry melodic industrial post-punk of Pylon. It is, however, not clear whether a full-length album is to follow.

 

Decapitated: “Cancer Culture” and “Hello Death”

Technical death metal from Poland, beat-and-riff-heavy, relentlessly energetic, reminiscent of beloved early albums. “Hello Death” stands out because of guest vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk (Jinjer) who adds a whole level of richness with her soaring clean vocals, in opposition to Rafał Piotrowski’s angry growls.

 

Kellermensch: “6705”

The angst-ridden Danes are back after several years, with a new album in the works, due to be released on May 27th. The single is very much in the vein of songs from 2017’s Goliath: darkly melodic and orchestral, dealing with loneliness and broken relationships. Christian Sindermann’s plaintive voice may be an acquired taste, but it does fit the mood of the songs.

 

Shearwater: “Xenarthran” and “Aqaba”

Jonathan Meiburg has been busy: he released his first book last year (the very excellent A Most Remarkable Creature — a book that has nothing at all to do with music) and is still promoting it; and he also managed to finish the latest Shearwater album (The Great Awakening) which will be released in June. The album was released to crowdfunders early this year, so I have been listening to it for quite some time now.

 The singles give a taste of what the album is like. Slow, contemplative, rather more acoustic than the previous album, and it can sound deceptively sparse, but it isn’t really. It hearkens back to earlier albums: in fact, “Aqaba” has very much the feel of “The Snow Leopard” from Rook, and if you know that song, you know that is not a bad thing at all.

 

Mariusz Duda: “News From the World”

 This song does not presage a new album, but winds up the Lockdown trilogy of albums that Duda composed and released over the past two years. And it is an interesting song to end with; rather than being more of the sparse, jittery electronica of the Trilogy, it is dense and analog, with the three-part structure common to Duda’s best Riverside or Lunatic Soul tracks. It is certainly full of electronic washes and soundscapes, and it even begins in a deceptively Lockdown-ish way, but soon a slightly jazzy bass riff and actual drums take over. Piano dominates the middle third, before heavy rolling bass-and-drum riffs return. There are bits reminiscent of Lunatic Soul, and Eye of the Soundscape; it is by far the strongest track of the entire Trilogy, probably because this is where Duda’s strengths lie. I could stand a whole album like this.

Albums

At this point most of the albums I’m interested in are in the future. I’ve only picked up three new ones to date:

 Author and Punisher: Krüller

 Author and Punisher is the nom de plume of one Tristan Shone, industrial musician who takes the genre descriptor literally: he builds machines that make industrial music. No guitars or drums on his stage, just huge metal contraptions that he works with hands, feet, and voice, to produce enormous swathes of massive sound. He came to my attention a few years ago via the Spotify algorithm, back when it seemed to actually work — for some reason it suggested I might like this stuff.

It was not wrong. Author and Punisher makes brutal, dense, angry electronic noises, at least at his best. I’m not sure, alas, that Krüller is his best: this album sees his material somewhat more melodic, and less brutal, and somehow less effective. For me, only “Centurion” really stands out as indicative of what he can do, perhaps followed by the title track.

 

Amorphis: Halo

 The Finnish folk metal masters have released an album that is very reminiscent of Under the Red Sky, and that is fine with me, because I liked that album very much. These guys present deeply melodic and heavy folk metal, full of catchy riffs, and really the best part of these songs is how well Tomi Joutsen switches between growl vocals and a rich clean tenor voice throughout the songs. He’s one of the best in the business at that. This is a nice and easy album to listen to, head-banging all the way.

 

Marillion: An Hour Before It’s Dark

Marillion, the long-standing neo-prog outfit, is a band that never did much for me. The level of adoration from many of my friends does lead me to occasionally try out yet another Marillion track, just to see if something has changed — and since I tend to find Fish and Hogarth both annoyingly mannered vocalists, it shouldn’t really matter what album I pick. Pretty much every attempt has resulted in a bemused “meh”.

So yeah, I was rather surprised (as were most of the people I know when I mentioned it) when I actually took to the new album. I can’t remember why I listened to it — I think I just liked the cover — and somehow, despite Hogarth’s nasal whine, the album itself works. Now it is not one that is ever going to make my all-time best list by any means — it doesn’t have that kind of depth or thoughtfulness or originality — but it is certainly accomplished, smooth, with some pretty lush moments. It is a good album to put on and just play.

And no, I won’t be attending any Marillion weekends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 2020: The State of the Music

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 A couple of years ago I gathered up my pile of ticket stubs, most of which I had saved from the beginning of my gig-going career, and began to organize them. The physical stubs are in an ever-expanding catalogue, and dates, bands, and venues are recorded in a document. It’s a long and interesting history, although there is a large gap in the middle, but all that is probably a topic for another post. What is relevant here is the second gap: The Year of No Gigs, the enforced global pause.

 I have two shows listed under 2020: The Musical Box in January, and then the Katatonia live stream that happened in May. I decided to list it because I paid for a ticket to watch it, and it was better than many gigs I’ve seen in person, not just by Katatonia themselves, but other bands as well…once you got past the eerie silence at the end of each song.

 Everything else has been cancelled, or postponed. There were some shreds of hope in the early days of the lockdown, that maybe by June there would be a return to normalcy or something close to it, but as the weeks went by it became depressingly clear that no such thing was going to happen. Tours were cancelled, postponed gigs were jettisoned, and even the gigs shifted from March to August are looking unlikely. It is probably safe to say that concerts, at least in any meaningful sense, are going to be the last things to return.

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