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...