Here's a great band: Muse. Muse is one of my favorite prog/ alt rock bands. They often have catchy, melodic, symphonic songs and dramatically sang vocals that remind me of opera. Their music is always unique and interesting, with each track being a new experience and each album a new journey. Their song styles range from electronic, disco esque, songs to dramatic ballads, to head banging hard rock tracks.         This is one of my favorite Muse album covers because there is a lot to wonder about when you look at it. We can see the shadows of people who are flying overhead with some kind of divine or paranormal power and a man who is looking up at them in wonder/terror. There are a lot of ways to interpret what is happening here. Maybe this is the rapture and the "true" Christians are flying to heaven as the apocalypse is beginning, maybe some ancient power has been unleashed and has given humans the power of flight; They seem to be flying symmetrically, similar to b

Testament is one of those classic thrash metal bands from around the same time as Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth. Testament is not considered one of the big four thrash bands, but I feel like they could replace Anthrax; which, in my opinion, is the weakest of the four. Testament has a sound that is like a cross between Metallica and Slayer, with a sharp cut guitar sound, somewhat complicated and fast riffs, rapid beating drums, and sweet solos.         To be honest, I don't really like this cover, it is kind of ugly. The colors yellow and purple are complementary, and don't really work together. The coolest part of this cover is the weird skull, although it is placed strangely, kind of hovering there. Also, what is that thing next to it? Is that some kind of animal tail or a smoking rope or something? I don't know why they decided to include that. Also, even though the skull is the coolest part of this cover, I feel like it would almost be better if they removed

Have you ever listened to psychedelic rock an thought "man, this isn't trippy enough, I wish there was some kind of super psychedelic genre"? Well now you have it with the shoegaze album Loveless by My Bloody Valentine! Shoegaze (also called shoegazing) sounds like psychedelic, stoned and on acid. The genre features loud distorted guitars with a blurry dreamlike sound and softer, muffled vocals in the background. The hazy wall of sound created by shoegaze is purposely there to try to overwhelm the listener. Whenever I listen to shoegaze I feel like I am floating through space in a dream, which is a result of the calming effects of the music. Shoegaze is called as such because of British newspapers who criticized the new genre by saying all the musicians did was gaze at their shoes during live performances. These same newspapers also coined the term "shoegazing," which eventually stuck. The reason why they always looked at their feet, is shoegaze bands heavily u

I feel like in order to be a real music enthusiast, you have to enjoy browsing the local record shop, looking for new albums to listen to. This is how I got Enter the Arena ; the cool cover art attracted me to it, and after listening to a track, I decided to buy it. Warbeast is an somewhat underground thrash metal band which formed in 2006 as Texas Metal Alliance. Really, what kind of name is Texas Metal Alliance? It sounds like the name of some kind of metal program started by the chamber of commerce. It's not really surprising that they changed their name to Warbeast in 2008, a much cooler name. The singer of Warbeast was also the singer of Rigor Mortis, a much more well known speed thrash band. Warbeast has a sound heavily influenced by Pantera, which is not surprising considering both bands formed in Arlington, Texas. Both bands have hard hitting tough guy vocals, although Warbeast is more thrashy. Warbeast also has some Anthrax influences, occasionally doing the talk-singing