Wednesday, November 11, 2015

That's The Spirit



As a huge CYB, SS, TIAH and Sempiternal fan, I wasn't excited going into this album. But I don't know, something really caught me about this album. There is a lot of emotion that went into it. There are still heavy guitar tones in there, they are just spaced out by more mid paced, slower intricate guitar. Oli still screams a little, yells a good deal, but he does mostly sing. It's certainly different. I didn't really even think I'd like it, but I don't know, something really clicked with me. I keep thinking back to how Oli says that "screaming couldn't capture what emotions he was trying to convey" and I keep thinking that is more true with every listen. When he does scream a bit, it makes it so much more impactful.

It's worth noting that every song is around the 3:30-4 minute mark. On Suicide Season, the songs were all longer. I kinda think the longer songs allowed for more complex songs and structures, but each second of this album feels like it has more going on. Each second is more thought over, and honed, and perfected.

I wouldn't even say I loved any song on first listen either. But they grew on me. I started realizing how much I was singing Throne to myself, or the stupid catchy "true friends stab you in the front".

Suicide Season and There is a Hell will always hold a special place in my heart. They are phenomenal albums that radically altered the metalcore scene. But now that BMTH is done with that genre, we just have to look to other, younger bands to do so. People grow up, people mature, they mellow out. The party-ers of "Diamonds are Forever" are gone, as they should be. You can't stay young forever. I think SS came out of a youthful energy that they just don't have anymore. That makes me sad, but letting yourself wallow in the past diminishes the present. I just tell myself to more forward as well.

Favorite Songs: Doomed, Throne, Avalanche, Drown, Blashpemy

Monday, May 11, 2015

The Story So Far

The boys have done it again. Top notch.

Monday, April 13, 2015

2015 is Insane So Far

Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
Action Bronson - Mr Wonderful
Dance Gavin Dance - Instant Gratification
Earl Sweatshirt- I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside
Tyler the Creator- Cherry Bomb

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Chief Keef; In a New Light

Chief Keef - Nobody

Found on Rap Genius:

"Following up on the proto-Nietzschian approach first propagated in Hold My Liquor, Nobody finds Keef building on the feelings of emptiness and materialism. The auto-tuned vocals remove the sense of emotion from Keef’s singing, while at the same time adding a layer of vulnerability that speaks to the nihilistic undercurrent that informs Keef’s lyrics. West’s auto-tuned backing vocals only serve to embellish this paradoxical dichotomy, at once glorifying the accumulation of wealth, while at the same time bemoaning a lack of moral direction.

Nobody represents Keef in an existential crisis, torn between two worlds. From a post-modernist perspective, Keefs lyrics and singing exemplify a young man stripped of his values, a de-structured world without meaning and guidance. Nobody understands keef, just as nobody knew the real him in Hold my Liquor. Keef is at once emotionally defenseless, compensating with visceral, tangible shows of force. Covered in a facade of brutality, Nobody really represents a stripped down version of keef, a hollow core masked only by a thin, malleable shell. Nobody isn’t a song, that’s why people are confused; it’s simply an extremely pleasurable audio experience, vibrating at the same frequency of peace & happiness while juxtaposing the ideas of loneliness & depression, ‘nobody’. 

The hum is a basic instinct of expression and desire that any human can do, and at the core level is the basis of music made from within. The autotune represents the reverse of that while still maintaining the similarity of making something sound pleasant, it is a futuristic practice opposed to the hum that began from early human development. the combination of all these factors and more are not unlike the cells which make the organs forming an organism. Nobody is a powerful few minutes of bliss, & often those who are angry by themselves reflect back on positiveness with a negative light." Source