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...

        Here it is! The long awaited Tool album, finally released after 13 years of waiting. The question on everyone's mind: was it worth the wait? The answer: meh... not really... But is it at least good? Yah, I think so.         I'm getting ahead of myself. There are probably some people reading this who don't even know about the band Tool. Tool is a legendary progressive metal band well known within the metal community for their unique progressive/psychedelic sound, math based rhythms, and pretentious fans. Their best songs have lots of amazing singing from the frontman, Maynard Keenan, are intensely psychedelic, and have weird music videos to go with them. Tool is honestly a really hard band to describe. If you aren't familiar with Tool already, I suggest you just stop reading this review right now, sit down somewhere comfortable, and listen to Ænima and Lateralus, their two best albums in my opinion. ...

        King Crimson is a classic 70s progressive rock band with a unique jazzy sound that makes their music very fun and interesting. If you have heard of King Crimson at all, you probably at least know of their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King , and its popular song, "21st Century Schizoid Man". Although that album is undeniably great, I actually prefer this album, Larks' Tongues in Aspic .          The first song on the album, "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part I", begins with a peaceful soundscape made by the sound of wooden wind chimes. Eventually, this transitions into the sound of frantic fiddles. The tension slowly builds as the fiddles get louder and some guitar and improvisation on what sounds like a found object drum kit is added in. Suddenly, a loud, sludgy guitar riff blasts through, completely taking you off guard. Like a lot of king Crimson songs, this one is full of interesting exp...

        Ahhh... I love reviewing albums by my favorite bands. Melvins is an amazing band of many faces. Their music ranges from slightly bluesy hard rock, to harsh noise, to thick sludge and drone. This particular album is mostly sludge and drone, with some bluesy hard rock mixed in. In addition, the frontman, and singer, of the Melvins is a guy with crazy hair named King Buzzo, so they've also got that going for them. Some quick facts about this album: it was originally called Lysol (as seen here), but the Melvins were sued by the Lysol corporation for using their name, and was forced to change the name. The Melvins opted to just remove the word Lysol from the right side of the album, and make it self titled. Despite this, fans still refer to the album as Lysol . The cover art is a painting of a sculpture named "Appeal to the Great Spirit". This image also appears on the cover of a Beach Boys live album, The Beach Boys in Concert . You may no...

Man, its been a long time since I've posted on this blog. This doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be back to posting regularly, but this is something I've been wanting to do for a while. Pink Floyd is one of my favorite bands, and I've been listening to them a lot recently, so I decided to make the official, definitive list of Pink Floyd albums from best to worst. That's right, if you disagree with me you are wrong. Just kidding, but enough joking around, here it is! One of the few photos of all members of Pink Floyd together. (Left to Right, Top to Bottom) Nick Mason, Syd Barret, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, David Gilmour #1 The Wall Yes, The Wall is my favorite Pink Floyd album, come at me Floyd purists. The Wall is one of those albums that fans like to say is bad/overrated retroactively because it got too popular, also maybe because it has a sound that is much different and more accessible than a lot of their albums. But regardles...