That subject line is actually way more blatant than I intend to be, but it's a subject I wanted to address nonetheless.
As I immerse myself in the sub-culture of music in general, but more lately, in the ideas and attitudes surrounding noise music, I have noticed some prevailing things. Namely, that the noise scene is full of hate-mongering, violent misogyny - and people are okay with it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a crazy right wing conservative, but... I dunno, I figure maybe there's a limit. Music and sentiment aren't always linked, right? Well, I meant to bring up something that challenged my stance on this.
Lately, I stumbled upon the more beat oriented, but still delightfully rage-filled screamings of Passenger of Shit. The name alone should say something about the musical style, and it does. I managed to get my hands on (digitally speaking, of course) what I presume is the second album by this artist (named 2), and... well, let's take a look at the track name that got me thinking about the sentiment of an artist in relation to music in general.
Filling God's Ass With Severed Cocks.
Yeah, that's a little extreme even for me. I know not everyone out there is Christian - actually, that makes me sound horrible, and from what I know, most people I know in my life aren't Christian... I'm not even sure if I am. But for the people that are - what does a song title like that make you think? Is it okay to enjoy the music of someone who makes songs with names like that? Am I indirectly supporting Satan? Okay, that's a bit of a stretch... but still, it is a puzzler, and it's got me a tad... well, puzzled, I guess.
In any case, all that aside - this album is good, and the artist as well. I'd love to root up more stuff if I can. Anyone who thinks they like more aggressive breakcore, or would like a more listenable (yet more agressive and violent screaming kind) of noise music should also check this out. I swear the titles are deceiving. I'd upload a track later, but it's all free at the Noise From The Death Factory upload blog. Check it out, really.
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Monday, February 26, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Music only gets heavier
If anyone has seen any particular trend in music over the past... well, ever since music's inception into popular culture... they'll have noticed a prevailing trend in all the popular music of the decades, from way back when, to the current day.
In short, that trend is that music tends to get heavier, harsher, and more agressive as time goes on. Within genres, least wise - though pop music will all be pop music, and so on with everything else, new genres will continue to exist, and they will continue to get heavier and heavier. This is starkly noticeable in the rock music kind of thing. There are of course fringe groups - in the same way that rock music breeds metal, and metal breeds death metal, and death metal breeds power metal, and so on, rock music will breed things like pop-rock, and indie rock, and everything else in that aisle of musical taste.
When you look at the heaviest music on popular music channels three or so years ago being Linkin Park, it's easy to see how things have changed. I think I may remember seeing some punkish bands, but that's when everyone was sure pop-punk was a real genre. In any case... what things are looking like now... well, there's still a lot of soft, alternative stuff, and their probably always will be, but I think everything is definitely sloping in one direction. In a couple years, stuff like Mudvayne and Alex Is On Fire (not a great example) will be lighter, and we'll have bands like Opeth and Arch Enemy... not them per say, but bands like them... well, they'll be on MTV. And everyone who listened to those older bands will be calling the music of the generations younger than them crap. It's a vicious cycle.
I was thinking about this in relation to noise music, and I realized something... that all music, is polarized into a set of kind of three spectrums, and that every set of music follows a certain subset of rules. If you have your popular music - that's the most treacherous field of any kind of music, because while one day might herald unbridled success, the very next day could bring anonymity and nothingness. When you have popular music concerts, even fans who have only heard the one song will come out to watch the band or artist perform - and a week later, may possibly not even admit they've ever listened to them in the first place. All fans are die-hards within popular music, but can revert to their normal states within days. There are no true hardcore fans.
Then there's your 'popular within unpopularity' scene. Any group in here inevitably has a huge yet underground following... they seem like they would be so popular, and yet your average MTV listener will never have heard of them. This is usually 'progressive', 'post', and 'indie' bands, as far as I can tell. Dream Theater, Rush... those are my two notable examples. Anyone who's heard of those two bands and is a real fan probably holds their idolized band members to God-like status, and yet it is probably true that three out of four people have never heard of the group or the members. I think there are some pretty wicked followings after groups like this. Mostly a metal thing, now that I think about it. Conventional metal is a whole different deal, but that's a sub-set...
Then there's your 'no one has ever heard of this music before, ever' sub-set. Which I think basically consists of a group or artist, and the 100-1000 fans who think they are the greatest thing that has ever hit the planet. Noise music and obsure electronica are really good for this - more often than not, in electronic music, you have a chance to associate with the person, not just the sound, and thusly, stuff like this is bred. Indie works too, I would assume.
So, then there are a bunch of rule benders... I'm not 'punk', so I can't speak largely there, but I don't think punk fans general care what they're listening to as long as it's... well... punk. And even if two people love all the same bands for all the same reasons, there can be one band they're completely opposite on for the stupidest notion. It's just weird.
Then there's your metal, where fans of bands that don't like each other or are slightly different can get into blood feuds and horrible brawls with each other. That's also a bit over the top... I blame this on the fact that metal artists like to propogate this thing on occasion... the notion of a lead singer proclaiming that a band is the best thing out there generally leads to other bands making the same claims getting angry, and then it's just trouble.
As for electronic music - in a popular circle, even one hit wonders never get any fans. The songs are known, not the artists, and that's just sad. Then the artist tries to capitalize, comes out with ten songs that sound exactly the same as the hit, and fade out of existence. Anyone trying to listen to them seriously gets stuck with recursive rip-offs.
That's a bit of a seperate thing from the whole 'future of music', but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Maybe more thoughts on this kind of thing later.
In short, that trend is that music tends to get heavier, harsher, and more agressive as time goes on. Within genres, least wise - though pop music will all be pop music, and so on with everything else, new genres will continue to exist, and they will continue to get heavier and heavier. This is starkly noticeable in the rock music kind of thing. There are of course fringe groups - in the same way that rock music breeds metal, and metal breeds death metal, and death metal breeds power metal, and so on, rock music will breed things like pop-rock, and indie rock, and everything else in that aisle of musical taste.
When you look at the heaviest music on popular music channels three or so years ago being Linkin Park, it's easy to see how things have changed. I think I may remember seeing some punkish bands, but that's when everyone was sure pop-punk was a real genre. In any case... what things are looking like now... well, there's still a lot of soft, alternative stuff, and their probably always will be, but I think everything is definitely sloping in one direction. In a couple years, stuff like Mudvayne and Alex Is On Fire (not a great example) will be lighter, and we'll have bands like Opeth and Arch Enemy... not them per say, but bands like them... well, they'll be on MTV. And everyone who listened to those older bands will be calling the music of the generations younger than them crap. It's a vicious cycle.
I was thinking about this in relation to noise music, and I realized something... that all music, is polarized into a set of kind of three spectrums, and that every set of music follows a certain subset of rules. If you have your popular music - that's the most treacherous field of any kind of music, because while one day might herald unbridled success, the very next day could bring anonymity and nothingness. When you have popular music concerts, even fans who have only heard the one song will come out to watch the band or artist perform - and a week later, may possibly not even admit they've ever listened to them in the first place. All fans are die-hards within popular music, but can revert to their normal states within days. There are no true hardcore fans.
Then there's your 'popular within unpopularity' scene. Any group in here inevitably has a huge yet underground following... they seem like they would be so popular, and yet your average MTV listener will never have heard of them. This is usually 'progressive', 'post', and 'indie' bands, as far as I can tell. Dream Theater, Rush... those are my two notable examples. Anyone who's heard of those two bands and is a real fan probably holds their idolized band members to God-like status, and yet it is probably true that three out of four people have never heard of the group or the members. I think there are some pretty wicked followings after groups like this. Mostly a metal thing, now that I think about it. Conventional metal is a whole different deal, but that's a sub-set...
Then there's your 'no one has ever heard of this music before, ever' sub-set. Which I think basically consists of a group or artist, and the 100-1000 fans who think they are the greatest thing that has ever hit the planet. Noise music and obsure electronica are really good for this - more often than not, in electronic music, you have a chance to associate with the person, not just the sound, and thusly, stuff like this is bred. Indie works too, I would assume.
So, then there are a bunch of rule benders... I'm not 'punk', so I can't speak largely there, but I don't think punk fans general care what they're listening to as long as it's... well... punk. And even if two people love all the same bands for all the same reasons, there can be one band they're completely opposite on for the stupidest notion. It's just weird.
Then there's your metal, where fans of bands that don't like each other or are slightly different can get into blood feuds and horrible brawls with each other. That's also a bit over the top... I blame this on the fact that metal artists like to propogate this thing on occasion... the notion of a lead singer proclaiming that a band is the best thing out there generally leads to other bands making the same claims getting angry, and then it's just trouble.
As for electronic music - in a popular circle, even one hit wonders never get any fans. The songs are known, not the artists, and that's just sad. Then the artist tries to capitalize, comes out with ten songs that sound exactly the same as the hit, and fade out of existence. Anyone trying to listen to them seriously gets stuck with recursive rip-offs.
That's a bit of a seperate thing from the whole 'future of music', but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Maybe more thoughts on this kind of thing later.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
On Categorizing Music
First thing, now that I am back. I won't bore anyone with the relations of my tech-problems, but before I get on to pseudo-ranting about stuff I have been musing on, I will get right back to doling out free music.
Today's song of the day (feels good to say that again) is Lawn Wake IV (Black) by The Flashbulb (which I have a tendency to type as 'Flashblub'). I was teetering on the edge as to reccomending anything by this artist, as normally I won't push music without having a whole album, or discog, or something like that. Today, however, singles were in abundance, and after having heard some of the fellows music, I've decided that this is worth sharing. Good luck getting any more songs of his though... I only have 4 as it is. >> Anyway, about the song. I remember when I first discovered Goa-Trance - that's trance music fused with psychedellic guitars, for those who don't know. I was delighted to find that electronic music could have the same sweet riffy, catchy-ness that popular music could. And, then, I discovered just the other day that IDM and Breakcore could use guitars too. Genius! The Flashbulb makes music in a variety of styles, as is usually the case with prolific electronic musicians (who are actually worth listening to). Squarepusher and Venetian Snares, anyone? Right. Well, this song is pretty downright awesome. A very noisy, glitchy start, not nearly as abrasive as that Dev/Null track I reccomended a while back though, and then a sweet breakcore guitar-fest of mind-melting proportions. This song, as well as the other that accompanied it on the limited promotional EP Lawn Funeral, are available for download here. Enjoy.
Now, what do I have to say about categorizing music? Really just a wonderment, actually. As I'm a big advocate of music being freely distributed in the first place, it's easy to see that knowing what I'm getting would be a point of interest for me. What I have more to gripe about, however, is how proper music categorization is almost non-existent today, and indeed, most modern-day technologies and utilities seem to stifle the idea, rather than help it. Let me give you an example...
Say I purchased a CD from my local music retailer. Let's use Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind for the example. I take the CD home, unwrap it from its shiny plastic packaging, and after listening to a while, decide I want to copy the files from the CD onto my computer. A lot of programs allow me to do this - Winamp, Windows Media Player - I think Windows even has a built in utility. But, what do I find when I check the directory I extracted the files to? I can't tell which is which anymore! And so, I have to listen by ear and manually recategorize everything with my CD in hand as I scroll through a proprietary file tagger.
You'd think with all the time in the world to organize, format, and press CDs, a music company would take the needs of the consumer into place, and embed file information into the files on a CD. You'd think that, on the off chance that they do, that the music ripping program would make an effort to read that data.
I know this is an out of place gripe. Most CDs now a days are properly formatted, and with iTunes, there's no limit to the instant categorization! But to extrapolate further on this idea... go on to any random P2P music sharing program. Download a popular song... something by The Beatles. Play it in your music player of choice. No doubt, you will find things such as genre, album, and year are completely blank - and that the title is something like "the beetles_(song name)". No artist, or the artist will be the song name... blah blah blah, it goes on. When someone has the time to group and upload a torrent file of an artists entire discography - or, more to the point, even just that one album, you'd think they could also take the time to properly label it. Not so!
It ends up so that I'm one of the only people I know who has a near even close to properly organized music collection - at 50 gigs and rising, that's no small feat, but even I'm not close to done - and it's taken me literally days of work to get where I am. Even when I transferred over all my old music files, I had to retag them, because WMP tags weren't compatible with Winamp, and Winamp wasn't compatible with iTunes, or some stupid shit like that... it's just ridiculous. This is like a gripe people used to have on KaZaA back in the day - dialup users not sharing files. I disagreed with that one, but I think I'd like to take it to the extreme in a different way...
If you don't have properly categorized and labelled music files, do not share them.
I'm just kidding, really, but it is a huge pet peeve of mine. The fact that there's no 'auto-tagging' system for music these days makes me wonder what the internet is for... For people who actually want to tag their music properly though, look into getting Tag & Rename - it covers all different formats of tags, and all different audio formats as well. Really useful.
And that is all I have to say about that. Until tomorrow.
Today's song of the day (feels good to say that again) is Lawn Wake IV (Black) by The Flashbulb (which I have a tendency to type as 'Flashblub'). I was teetering on the edge as to reccomending anything by this artist, as normally I won't push music without having a whole album, or discog, or something like that. Today, however, singles were in abundance, and after having heard some of the fellows music, I've decided that this is worth sharing. Good luck getting any more songs of his though... I only have 4 as it is. >> Anyway, about the song. I remember when I first discovered Goa-Trance - that's trance music fused with psychedellic guitars, for those who don't know. I was delighted to find that electronic music could have the same sweet riffy, catchy-ness that popular music could. And, then, I discovered just the other day that IDM and Breakcore could use guitars too. Genius! The Flashbulb makes music in a variety of styles, as is usually the case with prolific electronic musicians (who are actually worth listening to). Squarepusher and Venetian Snares, anyone? Right. Well, this song is pretty downright awesome. A very noisy, glitchy start, not nearly as abrasive as that Dev/Null track I reccomended a while back though, and then a sweet breakcore guitar-fest of mind-melting proportions. This song, as well as the other that accompanied it on the limited promotional EP Lawn Funeral, are available for download here. Enjoy.
Now, what do I have to say about categorizing music? Really just a wonderment, actually. As I'm a big advocate of music being freely distributed in the first place, it's easy to see that knowing what I'm getting would be a point of interest for me. What I have more to gripe about, however, is how proper music categorization is almost non-existent today, and indeed, most modern-day technologies and utilities seem to stifle the idea, rather than help it. Let me give you an example...
Say I purchased a CD from my local music retailer. Let's use Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind for the example. I take the CD home, unwrap it from its shiny plastic packaging, and after listening to a while, decide I want to copy the files from the CD onto my computer. A lot of programs allow me to do this - Winamp, Windows Media Player - I think Windows even has a built in utility. But, what do I find when I check the directory I extracted the files to? I can't tell which is which anymore! And so, I have to listen by ear and manually recategorize everything with my CD in hand as I scroll through a proprietary file tagger.
You'd think with all the time in the world to organize, format, and press CDs, a music company would take the needs of the consumer into place, and embed file information into the files on a CD. You'd think that, on the off chance that they do, that the music ripping program would make an effort to read that data.
I know this is an out of place gripe. Most CDs now a days are properly formatted, and with iTunes, there's no limit to the instant categorization! But to extrapolate further on this idea... go on to any random P2P music sharing program. Download a popular song... something by The Beatles. Play it in your music player of choice. No doubt, you will find things such as genre, album, and year are completely blank - and that the title is something like "the beetles_(song name)". No artist, or the artist will be the song name... blah blah blah, it goes on. When someone has the time to group and upload a torrent file of an artists entire discography - or, more to the point, even just that one album, you'd think they could also take the time to properly label it. Not so!
It ends up so that I'm one of the only people I know who has a near even close to properly organized music collection - at 50 gigs and rising, that's no small feat, but even I'm not close to done - and it's taken me literally days of work to get where I am. Even when I transferred over all my old music files, I had to retag them, because WMP tags weren't compatible with Winamp, and Winamp wasn't compatible with iTunes, or some stupid shit like that... it's just ridiculous. This is like a gripe people used to have on KaZaA back in the day - dialup users not sharing files. I disagreed with that one, but I think I'd like to take it to the extreme in a different way...
If you don't have properly categorized and labelled music files, do not share them.
I'm just kidding, really, but it is a huge pet peeve of mine. The fact that there's no 'auto-tagging' system for music these days makes me wonder what the internet is for... For people who actually want to tag their music properly though, look into getting Tag & Rename - it covers all different formats of tags, and all different audio formats as well. Really useful.
And that is all I have to say about that. Until tomorrow.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Many days, and no business comes to my hut...
Today's track of the day is Nevermind by The Birthday Massacre. For those of you who haven't heard of TBM (Another band by that abbreviation is The Black Mages, who earnestly are quite a bit better. That TBM is a Japanese power-metal band organized by the acclaimed composer of most of the music for the epic Final Fantasy video game franchise, Nobuo Uematsu. They play mostly covers of FF songs, and are really good - I highly reccomend checking them out)... um, I was talking about The Birthday Massacre? Right. They're a bit hard to describe - not genre defying by any means, just... different. They're post-retro industrial tinged synth featuring metal. They're not very dark... they have quite a light-hearted, yet emotional and sometimes morbid quality. Really, they should be every teenager's dream band, as they sound like their lyrics are just for them.
This song is off their 2005 album Violet, which I haven't listened to extensively - a couple tracks stick out as decent picks. This song is nothing that will blow your mind, but it felt so uplifting and yet bittersweet at the same time, I thought it deserved a spot. This group really has something going for them - besides that, they did a really nice remix of MSI's Straight To Video, which is my favorite off that remix album... I looked into them from that, actually, and while they're a tad too... light-hearted for me to normally consider, they are actually mellow in a decently fun way. I'd go see one of their shows for sure. In any case, this song tells a story that doesn't make great sense, but is kind of poetic, and again, very mellow yet fun. Megaupload link is
here. Also, "Nevermind" is one of my favorite words to hear in song since the album of the same name by Nirvana. Yes, I like them, big deal.
One of the things I will never understand about music is the genres... and more in that, why certain genres are so much more elitist than others. If you listen to metal or rock, or punk or country or pop, you never really get into fighting about genres... unless you are a hard-core metal head, in which case, that is a whole different story. One of the worst genres for in-fighting, however is industrial, and I find it just stupid. Any given site on the subject will have ten different opinions on what 'real' industrial is, and every other poster will get flamed for liking a 'pussy' band that isn't 'real' industrial. I understand that there are limits to what a style is and isn't, but I do not get why it is cool to be so picky about divergences within genres. Looking at it this way, Black Sabbath, Opeth, and Rhapsody of Fire are all metal, and sound completely different, and while people will come up with different words to describe all those kinds of metal, they are still that; metal. Now, when people say something like "Oh man I love Opeth they are good death metal" and some wanker comes in and says "YOU FAG OPETH ARE PROGRESSIVE DEATH METAL OMFG STFU GHEY"... well, I think I've already ranted about this before.
Arguing aside though, it amazes me how divergent genres can be. The above of metal is a good example. Industrial also serves to be further... looking comparitively at Skinny Puppy and the more danceable EBM influenced industrial sounds of Frontline Assembly and such like that, it's crazy how two of the 'classic' groups of industrial sound so different. Also, if I get anyone commenting about how FLA isn't real industrial, the world will explode from the irony.
Trying to keep the track buffer going. Haven't listened to near all of my music, but am moving up slowly to the B's. Still no traffic... enjoy the songs though.
This song is off their 2005 album Violet, which I haven't listened to extensively - a couple tracks stick out as decent picks. This song is nothing that will blow your mind, but it felt so uplifting and yet bittersweet at the same time, I thought it deserved a spot. This group really has something going for them - besides that, they did a really nice remix of MSI's Straight To Video, which is my favorite off that remix album... I looked into them from that, actually, and while they're a tad too... light-hearted for me to normally consider, they are actually mellow in a decently fun way. I'd go see one of their shows for sure. In any case, this song tells a story that doesn't make great sense, but is kind of poetic, and again, very mellow yet fun. Megaupload link is
here. Also, "Nevermind" is one of my favorite words to hear in song since the album of the same name by Nirvana. Yes, I like them, big deal.
One of the things I will never understand about music is the genres... and more in that, why certain genres are so much more elitist than others. If you listen to metal or rock, or punk or country or pop, you never really get into fighting about genres... unless you are a hard-core metal head, in which case, that is a whole different story. One of the worst genres for in-fighting, however is industrial, and I find it just stupid. Any given site on the subject will have ten different opinions on what 'real' industrial is, and every other poster will get flamed for liking a 'pussy' band that isn't 'real' industrial. I understand that there are limits to what a style is and isn't, but I do not get why it is cool to be so picky about divergences within genres. Looking at it this way, Black Sabbath, Opeth, and Rhapsody of Fire are all metal, and sound completely different, and while people will come up with different words to describe all those kinds of metal, they are still that; metal. Now, when people say something like "Oh man I love Opeth they are good death metal" and some wanker comes in and says "YOU FAG OPETH ARE PROGRESSIVE DEATH METAL OMFG STFU GHEY"... well, I think I've already ranted about this before.
Arguing aside though, it amazes me how divergent genres can be. The above of metal is a good example. Industrial also serves to be further... looking comparitively at Skinny Puppy and the more danceable EBM influenced industrial sounds of Frontline Assembly and such like that, it's crazy how two of the 'classic' groups of industrial sound so different. Also, if I get anyone commenting about how FLA isn't real industrial, the world will explode from the irony.
Trying to keep the track buffer going. Haven't listened to near all of my music, but am moving up slowly to the B's. Still no traffic... enjoy the songs though.
Friday, January 5, 2007
I almost covered this once
Track of the day: Mouths Like Sidewinder Missiles by The Fall of Troy. I tried to think of something I hadn't been obsessed with for a while, but I decided a couple of my buffered tracks were better left waiting.
I got into The Fall of Troy a while back... maybe half a year ago. I think I remember being linked to them off HORSE the Band. That was using Last.fm for those who haven't checked it out before. That's an amazing site... probably responsible for half my musical taste right now. Anyway. From what I can gather, this band used to be a lot more unpolished. I've mostly just listened to their latest release, Doppleganger, and there's not really anything I don't like. This track is just my own personal favorite from the album, in the hopes that conventional mainstream peeps won't pick up on what a great song it is until it's too late. The reason I like post-hardcore, is because herein we have crazy screaming, more so, screaming that you can actually understand - along with a very intoxicating brand of soft vocals, as well as crazy song structures, and awesome solos! The frontman of this band sings all that crazy stuff, as well as plays the guitar - and that's some talent, because the guitar in The Fall of Troy songs is pretty complex. There's just something about the little ascending/descending pattern in this song that I love, so I'm saying it's well worth a listen. Megaupload link is here. Note that there is an earlier version of this song, and this one is the re-record for their latest album. I must admit that the earlier one has a certain unpolished charm to it - I would reccomend checking out this artist's earlier stuff before the album I posted, actually - but there are things happening in this re-master that just weren't in the original. It was a tough call, and I made it. I'm sure torrenting these discogs won't be hard to find though.
So I got flamed on my last.fm profile today - some scene (when did that become the retarded new adjective for kids trying to look cool?) kid no doubt, bitching at me about calling Alex Is On Fire (hahaha) screamo in one of my early posts. He failed to note that I later went on to credit them as helping post-hardcore into the mainstream... but apparently it's still cool to argue when you're uneducated and, furthermore, a wank. His point of contention that one of the bands I embellish on (Enter Shikari) is tagged as screamo on the site. Excuse me, when did I let other people decide the genre for what I was listening to? I could tag The Beatles as gaycore wrestle-metal (I heard that actually is a genre, kind of scary), but that doesn't make it right. Furthermore, I bet I have more extensive musical knowledge than some kid who can't even spell post-hardcore. I really shouldn't let people like this get under my skin, but stupidity itches like a disease, or something. The bad kind, with a really long name, like, five syllables.
Got a couple contenders for album of the week coming up. I'm wondering if it has to be something I've nominated a track from, or can it be completely random? I don't think I should be taking the album one lightly... a track is just a track, but an album... well, I don't have to finish that statement for the gist to pass across. I'm going to try to fill my track buffer with more things I've not listened to prior... always about exposing myself to new things.
I won't give away contenders for tomorrow, but I've mentioned one of them in the past, in one of my more complex and wordy posts... and the second contender (which I'm hesistant to post only because of its length and subject matter - if it were longer I would post in a second, I love it) is a cover of one of the artists on my 'essential artists' list. Not like anyone couldn't wait until tomorrow anyway.
I got into The Fall of Troy a while back... maybe half a year ago. I think I remember being linked to them off HORSE the Band. That was using Last.fm for those who haven't checked it out before. That's an amazing site... probably responsible for half my musical taste right now. Anyway. From what I can gather, this band used to be a lot more unpolished. I've mostly just listened to their latest release, Doppleganger, and there's not really anything I don't like. This track is just my own personal favorite from the album, in the hopes that conventional mainstream peeps won't pick up on what a great song it is until it's too late. The reason I like post-hardcore, is because herein we have crazy screaming, more so, screaming that you can actually understand - along with a very intoxicating brand of soft vocals, as well as crazy song structures, and awesome solos! The frontman of this band sings all that crazy stuff, as well as plays the guitar - and that's some talent, because the guitar in The Fall of Troy songs is pretty complex. There's just something about the little ascending/descending pattern in this song that I love, so I'm saying it's well worth a listen. Megaupload link is here. Note that there is an earlier version of this song, and this one is the re-record for their latest album. I must admit that the earlier one has a certain unpolished charm to it - I would reccomend checking out this artist's earlier stuff before the album I posted, actually - but there are things happening in this re-master that just weren't in the original. It was a tough call, and I made it. I'm sure torrenting these discogs won't be hard to find though.
So I got flamed on my last.fm profile today - some scene (when did that become the retarded new adjective for kids trying to look cool?) kid no doubt, bitching at me about calling Alex Is On Fire (hahaha) screamo in one of my early posts. He failed to note that I later went on to credit them as helping post-hardcore into the mainstream... but apparently it's still cool to argue when you're uneducated and, furthermore, a wank. His point of contention that one of the bands I embellish on (Enter Shikari) is tagged as screamo on the site. Excuse me, when did I let other people decide the genre for what I was listening to? I could tag The Beatles as gaycore wrestle-metal (I heard that actually is a genre, kind of scary), but that doesn't make it right. Furthermore, I bet I have more extensive musical knowledge than some kid who can't even spell post-hardcore. I really shouldn't let people like this get under my skin, but stupidity itches like a disease, or something. The bad kind, with a really long name, like, five syllables.
Got a couple contenders for album of the week coming up. I'm wondering if it has to be something I've nominated a track from, or can it be completely random? I don't think I should be taking the album one lightly... a track is just a track, but an album... well, I don't have to finish that statement for the gist to pass across. I'm going to try to fill my track buffer with more things I've not listened to prior... always about exposing myself to new things.
I won't give away contenders for tomorrow, but I've mentioned one of them in the past, in one of my more complex and wordy posts... and the second contender (which I'm hesistant to post only because of its length and subject matter - if it were longer I would post in a second, I love it) is a cover of one of the artists on my 'essential artists' list. Not like anyone couldn't wait until tomorrow anyway.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Call-out
I don't make it a point of hating one single artist or genre (hip-hop now withstanding), but I must make a point of ranting at Panic! At the Disco. For one, that exclamation point in the middle of their name is ludicrous. To properly pronounce it, one must say it as "Panic! At the Disco." There is a full stop after an exclamation point. Apparently they did not realize this when thinking of their band's name. This is also a point of contention I have with Godspeed You! Black Emperor. An exclamation mark is a full stop, damnit.
Secondly, the main point of frustration I have with Panic! is sourced in the following quote. From their frontman Brendon Urie (which makes me think of urine, and then makes me think of Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence, an infinitely better band - I will tell the story of that concert some day) - "'I Write Sins Not Tragedies' isn't the only song we've written."
You know why everyone acts like it is? Because it's the only half-decent song they've ever written. I got their debut (and to date, only full length) release, because I thought I liked their 'hit' song. Honestly, yes, it is catchy, but I'm more than sick of it by now. Like artists before them that are known as one-hit wonders, however, I didn't want them to die without me listening to their other stuff. So I did - and I regret it to this day. Well, not really, because if I hadn't, I couldn't make pretentious comments like this.
Seriously. Even their other 'singles' I found intollerably bad. I don't understand how people like Panic! for anything other than their super-hit song - they're like a lamer, electronic influenced version of Fall Out Boy - and there's nothing too great about them either.
So I guess what I'm saying is, electronic-indie-emo-power-pop-punk is the worst genre ever and should go die.
Note: I posted Megaupload links to all songs of the day, and will continue to do so in the future, at least for a little while, unless people start downloading them. Then nothing will stop me.
Secondly, the main point of frustration I have with Panic! is sourced in the following quote. From their frontman Brendon Urie (which makes me think of urine, and then makes me think of Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence, an infinitely better band - I will tell the story of that concert some day) - "'I Write Sins Not Tragedies' isn't the only song we've written."
You know why everyone acts like it is? Because it's the only half-decent song they've ever written. I got their debut (and to date, only full length) release, because I thought I liked their 'hit' song. Honestly, yes, it is catchy, but I'm more than sick of it by now. Like artists before them that are known as one-hit wonders, however, I didn't want them to die without me listening to their other stuff. So I did - and I regret it to this day. Well, not really, because if I hadn't, I couldn't make pretentious comments like this.
Seriously. Even their other 'singles' I found intollerably bad. I don't understand how people like Panic! for anything other than their super-hit song - they're like a lamer, electronic influenced version of Fall Out Boy - and there's nothing too great about them either.
So I guess what I'm saying is, electronic-indie-emo-power-pop-punk is the worst genre ever and should go die.
Note: I posted Megaupload links to all songs of the day, and will continue to do so in the future, at least for a little while, unless people start downloading them. Then nothing will stop me.
Monday, January 1, 2007
Why people are like this is beyond me.
I stole this from a forum I frequent - yes, I posted it. Note - I am a genre snob. I am not an elitist. I try to be polite and help people learn. I hate flaming lamers.
"I just came out of a subforum on the music forum where someone started a post with "Please don't flame me". The person was pleading this because they didn't know what genre certain pieces of music were, and they didn't want to get raged at by the community of the sub-forum - who evidently possess God-like, infallible knowledge of music and its genres.
I'm just wondering - why is it that people are forced into situations like this? If someone doesn't know what genre a piece of music is, shouldn't they be allowed to learn without fear or being reprimanded for their lack of knowledge? That's like killing younger people - because they don't know some things older people do, and they shouldn't be given a chance to learn. Damn kids.
Seriously though, when was it the new 'thing' to be such a snob about music genres, or the music one listens to? I swear that fifty percent of threads in a lot of these subforums are ones that mention a band - and then some 'regular' of the forum decides to post "OMG are you a retard with no arms and legs who also has no brain and his gay and eats shoe polish? (insert band) is /not/ (insert genre)!" despite the fact that genres are open to interpretation, definition, and many genres are related.
note that there is a big difference between the following exchange: "OMG, I love Slayer, they are my favorite pop-rock band!" "Um, actually, Slayer are Thrash Metal..."
and...
"I was listening to Darude the other day, and I got to wondering what genre they were? Techno, Electronica...?" "OMG, Darude are (specific subgenre) of trance, you stupid flaming faggot, I can't believe how dumb you are, kill yourself."
Why is that the attitude people insist on having?
Music is a great way to share creativity and one's emotions - wouldn't it make sense that, when someone wants to learn more about music, shouldn't we give them a chance to do so, instead of shooting them down so that they never learn new things?
This is partly a rant, but it's really something that's been bothering me. What's more ironic is that /this/ post will probably get flamed too. Oh, crazy world. "
I just don't get people. Especially with lesser known genres, music can use all the friends it can get - so why scare away interested new-comers? Maybe because they think that the more people that listen to an artist, the worst they will sound, and the less cool they will be for liking them? People are morons.
"I just came out of a subforum on the music forum where someone started a post with "Please don't flame me". The person was pleading this because they didn't know what genre certain pieces of music were, and they didn't want to get raged at by the community of the sub-forum - who evidently possess God-like, infallible knowledge of music and its genres.
I'm just wondering - why is it that people are forced into situations like this? If someone doesn't know what genre a piece of music is, shouldn't they be allowed to learn without fear or being reprimanded for their lack of knowledge? That's like killing younger people - because they don't know some things older people do, and they shouldn't be given a chance to learn. Damn kids.
Seriously though, when was it the new 'thing' to be such a snob about music genres, or the music one listens to? I swear that fifty percent of threads in a lot of these subforums are ones that mention a band - and then some 'regular' of the forum decides to post "OMG are you a retard with no arms and legs who also has no brain and his gay and eats shoe polish? (insert band) is /not/ (insert genre)!" despite the fact that genres are open to interpretation, definition, and many genres are related.
note that there is a big difference between the following exchange: "OMG, I love Slayer, they are my favorite pop-rock band!" "Um, actually, Slayer are Thrash Metal..."
and...
"I was listening to Darude the other day, and I got to wondering what genre they were? Techno, Electronica...?" "OMG, Darude are (specific subgenre) of trance, you stupid flaming faggot, I can't believe how dumb you are, kill yourself."
Why is that the attitude people insist on having?
Music is a great way to share creativity and one's emotions - wouldn't it make sense that, when someone wants to learn more about music, shouldn't we give them a chance to do so, instead of shooting them down so that they never learn new things?
This is partly a rant, but it's really something that's been bothering me. What's more ironic is that /this/ post will probably get flamed too. Oh, crazy world. "
I just don't get people. Especially with lesser known genres, music can use all the friends it can get - so why scare away interested new-comers? Maybe because they think that the more people that listen to an artist, the worst they will sound, and the less cool they will be for liking them? People are morons.
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