Hi everyone! This is a post that I started in 2018, but never finished, so you might notice some differences in writing style in the first few paragraphs (although I edited them quite a bit).   I have a large amount of draft posts that I started, but for whatever reason, never got around to finishing. This is one that had a lot done, so I figured I should finish it.  Operation: Mindcrime is an awesome concept album by the progressive metal band, Queensrÿche. It tells the story of a heroin addict named Nikki in a future dystopian society. The story is told by Nikki after the fact, as he is remembering it while laying in a bed at a mental institution. He is recruited by a revolutionary group run by a mysterious man named Dr. X, and brainwashed into becoming a hitman for the cause. What becomes of him? You'll have to keep reading (or listen to the album) to find out! The cover of this album is very unusual, and it looks suspiciously like the cover of Napalm Death's cornerstone a

  Giant Drag was one of those bands I absolutely loved in middle and highschool, but no one else seemed to have heard of.  At the time, Giant Drag only had one full length album (which I listened to religiously): Hearts and Unicorns. Giant Drag is an indie grunge band formed in 2003 by singer/songwriter/front man (front woman?) Annie Hardy and drummer Micah Calabrese.  Giant Drag stands out from other bands in the genre due to Annie's vocals, and the band's unique dreamlike sound which takes inspiration from shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine ( Check out my review of My Bloody Valentine - Loveless here! ). Giant Drag is also known for their humorous song names such as "Kevin is Gay", "My Dick Sux", "High Friends in Places", and "YFLMD" (You Fuck Like My Dad). The first song on the album is "Kevin is Gay". The title of this track has a funny story behind it; in Annie's own words, "Kevin is just a guy though, the

"A celebration for the death of man..." "...and the great cold death of the Earth" The names of the first and eighth tracks come together to create a perfect description for the mood of this album: It's harrowing, it's dreary, it's the soundtrack to the world slowly dying. The Mantle is the second studio album by the American blackened post metal band, Agalloch. If you want to know what blackened post metal sounds like, imagine black metal, way slowed down, and with some doomer guitars thrown in. Agalloch is especially good at throwing doomer guitars, and as a result has created some of the best music in the genre. The band created five great albums, but their  pièce de résistance  is The Mantle. The songs on The Mantle sound desolate and mournful in a way that feels almost terrifyingly relatable. Chilling song titles such as "A celebration for the death of man...", "In the Shadow of our Pale Companion", "You Were but a Ghost in

It's been a while since I reviewed a straight up metal band, and considering this blog has "metal" in the name, I figured I better do it. That being said, I haven't been listening to a lot of metal recently, so I figured I'd pick something fun to review to make it easy on myself. Example of a Belzebubs comic (Click to enlarge) Just like Gorillaz, Belzebubs is a cartoon band, but unlike Gorillaz, Belzebubs is a black metal band and is based off of a comic strip. I think Gorillaz has a comic too, but I believe that their comic didn't exist before the band itself. The Belzebubs comic was very popular in the metal community for a while before the band was formed, and is a comedic mockumentary style slice-of-life strip about the members of a black metal band and their families. It was pretty good, I even bought a physical copy of the book! (Check out their website here , and their tumbler here for the merch store and comic strip). When I first checked out the band

As much as it pains me, I decided to censor this album cover because I realized it might not be a good idea to have the original image featured on my social media ( view the uncensored version here ) I thought it might be interesting to review another foreign band this week. You might remember that I reviewed the Russian band, Молчат Дома, last week (be sure to check out that post if you haven't yet). This week, I am reviewing an album by a German band, Einstürzende Neubauten.  Einstürzende Neubauten (translates to "Collapsing New Builds") is a industrial band from West Berlin, formed in 1980. Industrial was really big in Germany, and Einstürzende Neubauten was one of the bands at the front of the scene, even playing concerts with Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle fame at ICA London ( check out my review of Throbbing Gristle - The Second Annual Report here ). Unlike Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten doesn't stick to pure experimentation and noise in their

You may be wondering, 'Is the band Молчат Дома, who created the album, Этажи, a foreign band?' and 'Are they going to be singing some non-english language, perhaps Russian?' The answer to both of these questions is yes. I can't remember how I found this album originally, but one day it came up in my YouTube recommended, I instantly recognized the cover, and decided to give it a listen. It was really good. It reminded of me listening to Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures for the first time. Note: In this review, I italicize Russian words written in the Roman alphabet, put "quotation marks" around English translations, and do nothing to Russian words written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Молчат Дома or Molchat Doma (roughly translates to "The Houses are Silent") is a 'cold wave' band. This is a genre of music that I don't know too much about, but from what I understand the genre is close to goth, except more detached and minimalistic. Si