There are certain genres of music that were never meant to ever be associated with each other, and, without a doubt, black metal and house are two of those. Despite this, The Soft Pink Truth decided to sell their souls to Satan and birth the unholy creation that is Why Do the Heathen Rage? In this album, The Soft Pink Truth (TSPT) covers several black metal classics (and some others) as experimental blackened house songs, and somehow, kind of makes it work (by the way, I added links to the originals where it says "[band] cover" so you can listen to both versions and compare them).         I keep saying "house," but I'm sure most people reading this blog don't know what that is, so here you go. House is a style of 80s techno club music, produced by DJs, which features drum machines, 4/4 beats, and off beat hi-hats; somewhat similar to disco. Despite this, house is much more electronic and minimalist than disco, and often has a mechanical, repetitive rhythm

Behemoth is one of my favorite extreme metal bands. I would classify them as blackened death metal, although they are more death than black, at least in their more later albums. Their lyrics have satanic and occult themes, which are common in these styles of music, but also often have deeper, more thought provoking lyrics. Behemoth's early albums, such as Seventh (Storming Near the Baltic) and Grom had a much more traditional black metal sound reminiscent of early Mayhem and Emperor. This changed in 1999 when Behemoth released Satanica , which featured a slightly more accessible blackened death metal sound, which personally, I liked better. This sound further developed until Behemoth released one of their best albums, Demigod , in 2004. Behemoth's sound now distinguished its self with impressive guttural vocals and surprisingly good guitar harmonies and riffs which work well with the rest of the song. The two albums following Demigod weren't quite as good, but Behemoth&#

        Ahhh... there's nothing more refreshing than listening to some good punk after a hard week! Here is No Control by Bad Religion. Bad Religion is an extremely influential punk band, and one of the best-selling punk bands of all time. As their name suggests, Bad Religion is very anti-religion, which is reflected in a lot of their songs. Bad Religion also covers many other topics common to punk music including racism, politics, drugs, equal-rights, and society in general. Something I always found really cool about Bad Religion is that the front runner of the band, Greg Graffin, is a professor of life science and paleontology at the University of California, and a professor of evolution at Cornell University. There are some that might say that "Bad Religion is too mainstream," or "not anarchist enough," or even "aren't real punk because they know how to sing and play their instruments." Obviously all of these people are wrong, but Bad Religion i

        Emperor is a highly influential black metal band, and one on the original Norwegian black metal bands along with others such as Mayhem and Darkthrone. Emperor's music features beating drums, breathy growled vocals, and fast almost symphonic melodies. One interesting thing about the songs is that most of them have very loud instruments that overpower the vocals. This results in almost dreamlike songs, which are heavily focused on the instruments rather than the vocals, and remind me of shoegaze (I won't explain shoegaze now, but I will in the future, when I review a shoegaze album). It is possible that Emperor and their style of black metal inspired or was inspired by shoegaze since both black metal and shoegaze originated in the late 80s, although I don't know if this is true. The sound of Emperor's music gives me a feeling similar to laying face up in the rain at night during a thunderstorm: harsh and dark, but also surprisingly calming.          This cover i