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Молчат Дома - Этажи

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...

Agalloch - The Mantle

"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 ...

The Jesus Lizard - Goat

Since I just reviewed Big Black (see my review of Big Black - Atomizer here ), I thought it would be appropriate to review another highly influential noise rock band, The Jesus Lizard. The Jesus Lizard is strongly influenced by Big Black, especially because Steve Albini, the ex frontman of Big Black, is their recording engineer. I think "recording engineer" is a title Albini made up, but it's basically the same thing as a producer. According to him, the difference is recording engineers solve problems in capturing sound, while letting the artist have complete control; on the other hand producers will often take control and ruin records. The Jesus Lizard's music often features a mix of low rolling guitars and bass, harsh shrieking guitars, slow drums, and weird shouted muffled vocals. It's kind of hard to tell, but the cover of Goat is a naked woman with some image projected on her. To be honest, I'm ...

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