This is, of course, an all-time jam. Also, it makes me remember this (sadly deleted) tweet, which is also nice.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: this image was lost during a changeover on the blog. At some point. Sorry to anybody reading this in the future. It was a screenshot of the “I’m sorry Miss Jackson / ooh / I am four eels / never meant to make your daughter cry / I am several fish and not a guy” tweet. IYKYK.]
[Read More]Once More Around The Sun is definitely a Mastodon album, what with all their stylistic tics being present. But for the most part, it’s all packaged in a much more accessible way. Much of this song, for example, really is just a half-step away from something like Soundgarden. I, of course, prefer the denser and more elaborate songs of their earlier albums, but this is still a decent listen.
[Read More]All four of the songs on the debut album from Wolves in the Throne Room go over 12 minutes. Although it’s very black metal, even from the beginning there were a lot of non-standard moves. The clean vocals on this track, for instance, not to mention the pastoral interlude. Metal has always played around with folk, and there have been other bands that have merged the sounds, but Wolves in the Throne room do a better job of that sort of thing than most.
[Read More]This is what counts for an interstitial track for Wolves in the Throne Room. Only 1:54!
Meanwhile, Gino Parks cranks out an entire song with an actual structure in a tidy 1:51. It’s actually kind of funny to think about how far music has gone from 1960, and to think that you can actually draw a lineage between these two songs without much backtracking on the family tree.
[Read More]Wolves in the Throne Room are one of the biggest bands in black metal, by showing a path that could take the aesthetics of the music but apply a different frame. They merge an ecological consciousness and an atmospheric approach at times that is not just pure fury. It’s hacky to say that their music evokes the distant, misty forests of the Pacific Northwest, so I definitely will not do that.
[Read More]New year, same old flaky schedule! My apologies, we here at Five Songs were on the road intending on keeping the rock going, even lugging our laptop all over the place. But, alas, Plexasaurus Rex back home decided to die, and needed a reboot, and nobody was around to push the button. So, a bit of a break. We’re back! We’re ready to rumble! HIT IT, PLEXASAURUS REX!
I was playing Rock Band with the kids the other day, and a couple of Green Day tracks popped up. The kids declared that all Green Day songs sounded the same, and I’ll be honest, I thought I had a couple more years before they started roasting my taste in music. Disheartening! I grounded them for a decade.
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