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The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute

Frances the Mute is the second studio album by American experimental progressive rock band, The Mars Volta. A fun fact about this band: the "Volta" in the band's name comes from a term in a book by Federico Fellini, which he defines to mean "a changing of scene, or a turnaround". The "Mars" part of the name just came from the band's fascination with science fiction. What does these two words mean together? Who knows. The Mars Volta stands out to me as a band due to the unusually loud, chaotic, and powerful nature of their music. Progressive music is often chaotic, but The Mars Volta takes it to a whole new level. You will be listening to one of their songs, and suddenly BAM! Cement truck of guitars and synths to the face! In addition, the amazing and unique vocals of Cedric Bixler-Zavala bring a lot to the band's music. His voice is extremely powerful and is able to quickly and flawlessly switch between standard rock vocals to s...

Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction

This is an album review that I'm very surprised I am doing. When I do these reviews, I often cover extreme genres, such as black metal or experimental noise, but these are always genres I have a history of enjoying. However, Cattle Decapitation is grindcore, a genre that, in the past, had always eluded me. I went into this album fully expecting to hate it, but I was very surprised to find that not only did I not hate it, I loved it! I went on to listen to several other albums in their discography, and found that I liked pretty much all of them. I guess I'm a fan now. Anyways, now I'm here to share this album with you. As I said above, Cattle Decapitation is grindcore, or more specifically, goregrind a fusion of grindcore and death metal. If you aren't an avid metal fan, you may be asking yourself "What is grindcore?" and "Why should I listen to it?". To answer the second qu...

Big Black - Atomizer

Ok, here's Atomizer by Big Black. Big Black was a very influential band in the 80s, fronted by Steve Albini. This is a very hard band to put in any specific category, but I've seen the band called noise punk or post-hardcore. The band's music is fast, abrasive and tackles politically and culturally loaded topics like murder, rape, arson, child abuse, pedophilia, racism, and misogyny. The lyrics were written by Albini to purposely be controversial, but also to serve as commentary and criticism. These controversial themes were very unusual and shocking for the time, and had a huge influence on the lyrical themes of punk and similar bands of the time. Big black and Steve Albini also hated the rock bands and corporations of the mainstream music industry, and worked to separate themselves from it by playing their unique sound and by keeping complete control over all aspects of the band (refusing to sign contracts, paying for their own records, plann...

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