Who knew that accordion would be so good in black metal? Путь, translated to Path or Pathway in English, is a Russian black metal band. Earlier, I reviewed another Russian band called Молчат Дома ( check out my review of Молчат Дома - Этажи here ) and, I'm not sure if it's a quality of all Russian music or just these two bands but, they both have this distant, detached feeling in their music that can only be described as "cold". This "coldness" can be easily felt on the album's first track "Эпитафия" or "Epitaph". The song starts with a slow plucked guitar melody, reminiscent of Молчат Дома. It slowly builds up till it suddenly stops and an overwhelming wall of guitars and drums sweeps in. The blast-beat is somewhat faded into the background, to give the song a smoother, more sullen sound, and cascades of toms are played in the foreground, resulting in this exciting, and almost mystical sound. In the last 20 seconds, the song brea...

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 ...

  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...

Jinx is the first, and only, full length album by the band Crumb. It caught my eye, or rather ear, late last year while I was searching for music on YouTube. What makes this album appeal to me so much is its unique blend of trip-hop and neo-psychedelia. Trip-hop is a genre of music, popularized by the band Portishead, that is the gloomy goth child of hip-hop and electronica. It is basically what you get when you take a hip-hop beat, add spooky singing, and add filters and sound effects to make it sound uncanny and retro. Neo-psychedalia, as the name suggests, is a modernized version of psychedelic rock. Electronic and dance elements are often added added, along with falsetto vocals and a more dreamy sound. Some examples of neo-psychedellic bands are The Flaming Lips, MGMT, and Tame Impala. The result of combining these two genres is this laid back, spooky, spiritual sound. It's like you just died and are a ghost in a graveyard, but you are kinda okay with it, and are ...

From just looking at the cover, this album might not seem like much. I mean, just look at it! It looks like some kind of lazy bootleg, or the cover to some official document. However, despite its looks, this is one of the most important albums ever made. This is because this is the debut album of the first ever industrial band, Throbbing Gristle. Without this album or band, more famous industrial bands and groups such as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Marilyn Manson, and Death Grips would never of been created! Old photo in front of TG's lightning bolt logo When you first look at the track list of this album, the first thing you might notice is that there are a lot of repeated songs. In fact, out of the 9 tracks on the album, there are 3 tracks called Slug Bait and 4 called Maggot Death. This is because almost all of these repeated tracks are live recordings from different shows. Despite this, all of the repeated tracks sound ...

  What would you say if I told you that I know this electronica band called Fartbarf with band members that wear monkey masks and songs that feature vocals so distorted that it sounds like a robot is singing? You'd probably say that sounds terrible; it sounds like it's going to be another terrible joke band that relies on some dumb shtick to get sales. That's where you'd be wrong. Not only is Fartbarf a real band that takes their music seriously, their music, for the most part, is really good! According to an interview with LA Weekly , the band chose their weird name, and their personas as "space-neanderthals" not only to attract a larger audience, but also to show that they "could take themselves seriously and try to make a name for themselves" despite it. Their music its self takes inspiration from metal, synth punk, and EDM. One of the band members described it as a combination of Hot Chip, Devo, and Slayer. I'm not exactly sure if I would com...

  Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted on this blog, mostly because of a lack of motivation on my part. However, I really want to start posting more, and writing the blog for Pvrth has brought me some newfound motivation ( read the blog I'm writing for Pvrth here! ). Therefore, I'm going to try to post at least once a month. Anyway, I'd like to introduce you to a fantastic band that I've been listening to recently, Boris! Boris is an experimental noise/ drone metal band from Japan. I can't understand what they're saying, but that doesn't take away from the spiritual experience that is listening to one of their albums. Boris is also named after a song of the same name by one of my favorite bands, the Melvins. You may remember my review of the album Lysol by the Melvins ( if not, read my Melvins - Lysol review here ). Lysol's first two tracks "Hung Bunny" and "Roman Dog Bird" are slow and powerful drone tracks which rely...

        In my recent review of Cattle Decapitation - The Anthropocene Extinction, I mentioned how I was surprised how much I liked that band, despite previously not being a fan of the genre. Well here I am again, and this time I'm even more surprised. A while ago, looking to expand my musical horizons, I talked to some of my friends about wanting to try to find some hip-hop that I liked, and knowing my music taste, one of them recommended that I checked out Death Grips. When I first listened to their most popular album, The Money Store, I was skeptical, but their unique blend of hip-hop, industrial, and noise spoke to me. Over the next few weeks I started listening to their other releases. Now, call me Anthony Fantano because I'm a fan of Death Grips. Now, enough about me, lets talk about the band.         Death Grips is an experimental industrial hip hop band from California, consisting of Zach Hill, Andy ...

        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...

        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...