Leprous

Leprous, “Nighttime Disguise”

Ah Leprous, the perfect band for when you think “dang, I really want to hear a lot of time signatures.”

Cthulhu Rise, “Opus 23”

Cthulhu Rise are an instrumental prog metal/jazz fusion thing. I mean, I suppose you can hear that, huh? This whole album is like this - always moving around, always experimenting, always trying to surprise you, but you know, it also all starts to blend together a fair bit. Not bad as something to pop up randomly like this, though. A track at a time? Sure, that’s fun.

Another month in the books! Still hanging in there on the daily grind, but it’s definitely been a little more wobbly.

Leprous, “Alleviate”

Like clockwork, Leprous puts out a record every other year, and with each passing album, they just get more and more theatrical. Is this even metal any more? I don’t think so! This is some serious theatre kid rock at this point. Doesn’t stop me from buying each of these records, mind you.

Buildings, “Smell the Pool”

I really kind of tend to think of noise rock as mostly a 90s thing, with it kind of falling out of fashion after that point. But, of course, it’s alive and well, and bands like yesterday’s Pile and today’s Buildings are showing that there’s plenty of excellent stuff being made. I miss you, Amphetamine Reptile, but there are plenty of bands keeping the sound alive.

Ghost Bath, “Golden Number”

There’s a continuum in music that relies heavily tremelo picking going from black metal at one end to shoegaze at the other end. The placement of any band on this spectrum kind of comes down to the vocals, the use of dissonance, the melodies (if any), and the production. And bands can move around on the spectrum (Alcest, for instance). Ghost Bath isn’t pure black metal, so they’ve moved along that spectrum some. “Blackgaze” is sometimes used for these sorts of bands, and I can’t decide if that’s a good name or not.

Today!

The Exceptions, “Mean Ole Malley”

I come to you today with an important piece of information: buying records from a band based entirely on a particular comic artist doing the cover art has a pretty shaky track record. NEWS YOU CAN USE. Blah blah books and covers or something. Anyway, Evan Dorkin is really good!

Son Volt, “Windfall”

An underrated aspect of country, whatever the variety, is that it’s often a lot of fun to sing along with. Jay Farrar further has the advantage of being pretty reasonable to keep up with across his bands. I really only know Trace well enough among Son Volt’s work to sing along with, but it’s fun.

Today’s songs.

The English Beat, “I Confess”

We haven’t had very many second wave ska bands around here. That’s mainly because I was around with the third wave was a thing, so I know those bands well. And when I spend time learning about previous scenes, I mostly spend that time on the first wave of bands. The English Beat are one of the few second wave bands that I know reasonably well, with their poppy take on the genre standing in contrast to so many bands that mostly combine it with punk.

Today’s music.

μ-ziq, “Johnny Mastricht”

Electronic artist μ-ziq is the moniker of Michael Paradinas. Designed not for clubs but for headphones, μ-ziq had a great run of really interesting, inventive albums. The prize record is the fantastic Lunatic Harness, but the follow-up Royal Astronomy is great as well. This album, Bilious Paths, is very good but is a little off his peak.

Einstürzende Neubauten, “Mei Ro”

This track is from The Jewels, a compilation of a series of tracks that Neubauten posted on their site. The tracks themselves were the product of a series of formal experiments, with the band participating in games to generate constraints, and the songs were all put together very rapidly, a day or so. The results are interesting but not always super gripping.

I think this is my longest writeup yet. Sorry about that! Here’s the music for today.

Jawbreaker, “Face Down”

During the 90s, there was a gold rush as major labels were suddenly hunting down every underground rock act they could find and trying to sign them to contracts. The major labels figured they could all find the next Nirvana or Green Day, somewhere, and the upside for the major label was obvious. Pop punk, in particular, was a hot sector after Dookie sold a billion records.

If I’m counting this right, this is number 50 for these articles. Not bad! Now then, let’s do some math, that means…250 songs? Except, of course, there are two extra tracks in there due to the Dillinger Four being unpostable on Youtube. So, 252 tracks! NICE ROUND NUMBER. Here’s today’s tunes.

Black Tusk, “Walk Among The Sky”

Out of Savannah, Georgia, Black Tusk play a murky take on stoner metal which isn’t dissimilar from fellow Georgians Baroness. As always with all of this sort of music, it’s all about the riffs, and this record has them in spades.