Obits

High on Fire, “Spewn From the Earth”

Matt Pike had a big 2018. In addition to Sleep emerging from a fifteen year, uh, slumber to produce the very good The Sciences, he also put out a High on Fire record, Electric Messiah. High on Fire is one of the more consistent bands around, and so it is with this record: you’re going to get a Lemmy-esque bark, you’re going to get those big stoner riffs, and you’re going to get some solos. Just a crunchy good time.

Prince Paul, “Psycho Linguistics (Convergent Thought)”

Before his masterpiece, A Prince Among Thieves, Prince Paul released an uneven first solo record, Psychoanalysis: What Is It?. There are some good tunes on it, but a lot of kind of self-indulgent meandering, so it’s probably not worth pursuing too much unless you’re very curious.

Thantifaxath, “Eternally Falling”

Thantifaxath have only made one album, Sacred White Noise, but it’s a banger. It’s black metal, but it uses a ton of atmosphere to generate a consistently creepy tone without just relying on howling fury. The ability to dial it back manages to throw the chaotic moments into greater contrast. Mastery of dynamics is such an important thing for all bands, but especially extreme metal bands. Keeping everything on 11 all the time just results in fatigue.

Built to Spill, “The Plan”

Built to Spill’s three album run culminating in Keep It Like A Secret is one my very favorite peaks of any band, ever. Doug Martsch’s songs were all incredible, there was heart, catchiness, tons of surprises, it’s just incredible stuff. Not only that, but they were able to pull off tight pop songs and epic tunes with equal aplomb. My favorite is actually the middle record, Perfect From Now On, which is…uh, perfect. But they’re all tremendous records.

Obits, “Spun Out”

Who is making music with this kind of reverbed out surf guitar these days? Honest question, I have no idea, and I like it a lot. Comment down below! Or don’t! I’m not the boss of you.

People Under The Stairs, “Montego Slay”

This song is actually assembled out of a bunch of micro samples of music from commercials for Jamaican tourism, which is pretty impressive given how coherent it all sounds. This sort of careful, detailed assembling is something that always impresses the hell out of me.

Obits, “I Want Results”

There’s an interesting comparison to make between Obits and Rocket from the Crypt. We know what John Reis and Rick Froberg sound like when they’re writing songs and performing together (great!). But their bands apart give a window into what they sound like on their own, and what they bring to the combined work. Outside of his distinctive yelp, it turns out that Froberg sounds like a more traditional blues and psych influenced rock band than anything else. It’s very well-done, of course, but it’s interesting to observe that the punk energy seems to be coming more from Reis.

Future Of The Left, “Chin Music”

The bass tone for Future of the Left always sounds like a million bucks. And they wisely make sure that it stays up front plenty so we can all enjoy the hell out of it.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, “Bells of Creation”

This album, The Century of Self, marked the point where I kind of lost track of Trail of Dead. Not because I stopped liking the music - they’re still their normal bombastic selves here, making huge, emotional tunes - but just because sometimes we just fall off of bands. I think that maybe I wasn’t hearing a lot of evolution in the band, and I kind of had heard what they had to say. That’s maybe unfair, but there’s not a lot separating this from the previous three records.

Just a quick entry today, but some fun songs.

Big Black, “Seth”

An early song from Big Black, this was on the EP Bulldozer, the first one that featured Santiago Durango and so is really the first real recording from them. This song was later found on The Hammer Party, which collected the first couple (or three, on CD) EPs. It’s an interesting document of a band that is kind of finding their sound, and there are some strong songs on the collection.

Punk, punk, “punk”, ex-punk, “punk”.

Buzzkill, “Soft Insides”

More forgotten hardcore from Buzzkill. The instrumental section after the first verse is just delightful.

Sicko, “Ya Ya”

I don’t think I’ve taken a run at ranking Sicko’s albums, have I? (checks the previouslys) Nope, I haven’t! Here we go:

…this is really hard. Fundamentally, all their albums are very good, but here goes:

• You’re Not The Boss Of Me
• You Can Feel The Love In This Room
• Chef Boy R U Dum
• Laugh While You Can Monkey Boy

Green Day, “Church on Sunday”

This is from Warning, which seems to get pretty overlooked in their discography. Everybody knows about Dookie, and it seems like American Idiot gets talked about a lot, but I actually like Warning the best out of their post-Dookie albums.