Pitbull - Don't Stop The Party

Happy New Years Eve!

I know today would usually be Jeff's day to post, but since the end of the year can only be party music (and he really doesn't listen to that really) he went yesterday and I shall post as usual today.

The thing I like about Pitbull is that he's a really simple writer.  Like, really though.  Allow me to give you a list like I did with Godsmack.

• Announce that you are "Mister Worldwide"
• Begin repetitive music
• Sing the hook
• Sing the hook in Spanish
• (repeat)
• Sing the verse with some Spanish and some English
• Hit that hook again in English and Spanish
• Maybe another verse of the same type
• And now that hook again

I know this may seem like I'm over simplifying, but come on guys, look at his songs and tell me I'm wrong.  Also it's fun to strip an artist down to their stereotypes.

Honestly I still hate the fact that I really enjoy this music sometimes, but it's stuff that other people actually sometimes like, so that's nice, right?

MGK - D3MONS

I first head about MGK when I learned that his song "Wild Boy" was banned cause the night crew played it and broke the no swearing in work music rule.  After that I obviously had to check that song out after that and I liked it enough that I bought the album.

Listening to the album I realized that it really had a lot of good songs on it.  It even had my favorite rapper, Tech N9ne on it.  The best part though was when I found this song, cause it introduced me to DMX.  I really don't know too much about him, but I have enjoyed the songs I've heard and I like his voice a lot.

MGK on the other hand sounds like he's trying to me Eminem, which he actually does really well, so I'm looking forward to hearing what he ends up doing with his career.

Soilwork

Jeff here, back again.
Soilwork  are a Gothenburg Melodic Death Metal act who've released 9 studio albums since 1998, and are in the works for another one to come out soon.
As is typical for a band with so many releases, their sound has changed quite a bit since their first, "Steelbath Suicide", in '98.  That's why I'm giving you 3 songs today, to illustrate that change.

We're starting with Bastard Chain from "A Predator's Portrait" (2001).
It's more fast-paced, and much more focused on the "Death" than the "Melodic".

Next up, the title track of "Figure Number Five" (2003)
This album was obviously different, parts of it are strongly focused on the aggression, others more on the groove (See Overload for more of the groove).This is probably the most aggressive track, it also has one of my favorite guitar solos ever.

From "Stabbing The Drama" (2005) we have Nerve.
You can see now that they have built a very different musical identity for themselves than they had had at first, being far more melodically inclined, still with the aggressive riffing, but that aspect of their sound is applied very differently.

Three links is probably enough for now, so I'll leave it here, but if you want to check out "The Living Infinite" (2013) I would definitely recommend it if you like the more melodic side of their sound.

Metallica - Fuel

Metallica was one of my first metal bands I ever got into, followed quickly by Iron Maiden.  While I really don't enjoy any of their new stuff post Black album (which is a little hypocritical cause of this being off of Reload), the album they put out called S&M is without a doubt in my top 10 albums.

Basically the album is them playing a concert with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  It may seem like an unoriginal idea since a lot of bands seem to be doing things like that, but it's seriously amazing to listen to.  Enter Sandman and Battery wrap up the show and they are seriously jaw dropping.

I picked Fuel for this because if you're familiar with the original you'll know that this is a purely enhanced version.  I feel like there is literally nothing wrong with this track.

Caravan Palace - Suzy

Caravan Palace is a group from France that my dad introduced me to over the course of this last week.  It's not often you find new swing acts, but when you combine swing with EDM it makes a really good combination for sure.

I've included a clip from their live show and a studio track so you can hear the difference in the sound they have, it's really interesting.

Live:
              

Studio:
                                

These songs aren't as different as some of the other ones I've heard, but it's all pretty good, wouldn't you say?

Rob Scallon - Anchor

Happy day after Christmas!  I hope all of you had a great time with friends and family and that in general the day was peaceful.

I figured that since it's kind of a slower day we'd start out with a nice quite song to play in the background while you recover and clean up.

This is a guy you may or may not have heard of before.  A little while ago he had some song covers hit it really big.  Some ukulele metal songs and a Slayer song on banjo.  Believe it or not there is more to this guy than just Ukulele/Banjo covers.

Rob Scallon is a YouTube musician who's been making some pretty quality music for a few years now.  With unorthodox things like playing Funk on an 8 stringed guitar, Metal Madlibs, and many other things of equal creativity.

This is one of his "older" songs he released a while ago and it's really pretty sounding.  I don't really know what else to say, because he's still evolving as an artist.  He did release an EP very recently though, and that's really cool!  You can check him out on Patreon if you want to.  For a small donation per video or a monthly limit you get all of his songs for free!  I like that a lot personally.

He's really fun to watch too.  Look at his funk solo video for the best "guitar faces" you've ever seen.

Dean Martin - Rudoph The Red Nosed Reindeer

Let's think for just a second about how messed up this song is.  This poor reindeer with a deformed mutant nose is ostracized from his peers because of a situation beyond his control.  While this is actually something that would happen in real life, we're gonna be horrified, ok?

After a while, they find his deformity is useful, so they act like he's a hero and welcome him with open arms.  Wow, bipolar hypocrites much?

You know what though, it's Christmas day and now is not the time to be talking about a facially handicapped mammal.  This is a time to spend with your friends and family, so get off of this blog and go enjoy each other's company!

Zach Knight - Oh Holy Night

Happy Christmas Eve everybody!  I hope you all have had a great day so far and a great week.

This is a song being performed by a friend of mine, Zach.  Also the other guy in the video is my Friend Caleb, and the place they're filming is my church.  It's pretty cool, don't you agree?

Zach is a Pop Acoustic artist and has some pretty catchy tunes.  It's not stuff that I like usually, but for the style I feel like it's pretty good.  Unfortunately I only just met Zach this summer so I can't tell you too much about him other than this.  Still, check out his Facebook page!



Just a link to his Facebook and Soundcloud pages.

Michael Bublé - White Christmas

So while Michael Bublé may not be my favorite singer ever, I can't deny that he has a pretty good Christmas album.  On top of that, he covered my favorite version of White Christmas, so that makes me reasonably happy.

I don't know what about this version of the song is my favorite, but it really is.  Mister Bubbles doesn't quite do it as well as te original, but it's still good, so here it is.

Dio - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

This is one of my favorite versions of this song I've heard, and there are a lot of good versions of this song.

The person singing this song is Ronnie James Dio, who is dead now.  It's kinda funny he'd be singing this song since he was very into demons and such.  He died in May of 2010 though, so it's a bit of a moot point.

SockPuppetParody - Immortal Christmas

Hey now, 2 days of YouTubers in a row!  Dang, I feel like I'm falling back to my old vlogging days with all the YT plugs I'm putting in right now.

I just found this the other day via Carach Angren's Facebook page and it made me laugh enough that I thought I'd show you guys.  Hope you enjoy it, cause it's only like 1 minute long.

ThePianoGuys - Carol of the Bells (for 12 cellos)

I'm gonna be honest with you.  For some reason I've had a lot of issues finding good Christmas Music.  Like, there's a lot out there, but I don't want to overload a single artist, you know?

In my desperation, I reached out to a friend of mine asking for recommendations.  Unfortunately she only suggested Trans Siberian Orchestra songs, and I already added them once so I felt weird doing it again.

She did mention this song though, and while it may not have been this version she was referring to, it is definitely a good one.  Or as a friend of mine might say after listening to it, "That was a good one."  This will be where I find out if any of my real life friends read this blog, haha.

Busta Rhymes - Grinch 2000

You know what?  We need another comedy Christmas song after these mildly serious ones.  Let's go with Busta Rhymes!

This was for the soundtrack to the Grinch movie released in 2000, hence the name.

This came up on a Pandora station one of my superiors at work made.  He was looking for Christmas Rap and found "The Christmas Rap" as a station.  Playing such classics as "Be'Claus' I Got High" and "The Real Slim Santa" you can be sure that this was an interesting station.  It did get banned after the manager complained that it was "dark music".  He was referring to it as a pollution to good "Christian Christmas values", but we decided to take it as a racist statement.

Trans Siberian Orchestra - A Mad Russian's Christmas

I feel like this is one of the Christmas songs that almost everybody has one their "special Christmas music" list, but I still like it a lot cause it's a bit of classical and a bit of metal tone all wrapped up in Christmas.

Hey, still though, if you haven't heard this song before you really should listen to it.  It's a bit of a classic I suppose.  It was released in like 1996 after all.

Enjoy, and keep listening your way through Christmas music with me!

Ludacris - Ludachristmas

I don't listen to Ludacris (with the exception of one song), but this song is hilarious.

Like I've said before I really like songs that don't take themselves too seriously.  Christmas Rap may be the easiest music to not take seriously that I've heard yet though.  Mostly because I'm sure that they don't actually mean to be this dumb but they really are.

I hope you all are enjoying the 10 days of Christmas, I feel like it's a lot of fun.

Dean Martin - Silver Bells

You know those songs that you listen to all the time and you have no clue who they are?  Well this is my example of that.

Christmas music is stuff that just blends together for me.  It's just kinda there, and the radio plays it.  A little while ago I tried to track down all of the songs I was familiar with for a playlist, but as it turns out I was majorly unable to actually find them since searching song titles on YouTube turns up about a billion results that may or may not actually be useful to me.

Turns out I never even thought of asking my parents who grew up much closer to this era of music.  Yeah, they were able to direct me right to what I needed.

Relient K - 12 Days Of Christmas

You know, yesterday talking about songs that killed my fingers reminded my of this song.  Because of this we will be starting Christmas week 3 days early!  Yay!

We played this at church last week and it's probably the most involved thing we've done yet.  The song is really easy, don't get me wrong.  Remembering all the cuts, half time moments, and accent hits on the other hand are not as much.

To make maters worse I had a blister on one of my main playing fingers from practicing this song and it made it bloody difficult to play.  Not a normal blister either, but one that was underneath my calluses.  It really sucks cause now I'm gonna have to rebuild an entire finger's worth of callus to keep playing at the same level.  That is hard and it hurts.

The song on the other hand is still really fun and worth a listen.  I enjoyed it enough to put it on my Christmas Spotify playlist, so that may or may not tell you something.

By the way, how about that cheesy header, eh?

Phil Wickham - This Is Amazing Grace

You know what?  It's Sunday, let's post some Jesus music.

This is a song we do at church a lot and it's one of my favorites.  It's really freaking hard to lay since the entire song is 8ths on bass with the exception of the chorus.  You can hear it best in the verse, but that's how it goes the whole times.  Honestly it probably goes like that through the chorus a bit too, but my fingers can't quite handle that.  After 1 rehearsal and two services my fingers feel about ready to fall off.  Basically the worst thing ever, but the song is so much fun that I don't even care.

If this isn't your cup of tea then I'm sorry.  I'm sure some of the Satan stuff that I posted during Halloween wasn't everybody's favorites stuff either.

Lamb Of God - Redneck

This is the original version of the song I posted a while back.  You may recall the Kesha mashup thing?

This song is probably one of my favorite songs by LoG, though that does bug me since it's one of their singles and the hipster in me wants to like the song that isn't as commonly enjoyed by people.  Ah well.

The song has some pretty trashing lyrics if you listen to it.  It talks about the singer of a band being a total..  Well, Redneck.  In some interviews the band said that it was about any singer who you thought acted like that and that is still a pretty good explanation.  However, it is not entirely true.

Turns out the song is actually about LoG's singer, Randy Blythe.  The band tends to take their frustrations out in music, and apparently some of the band had some issues with their singer's attitude.  I'm not sure if Randy knew about it right away, but it is public knowledge now and whatever came from it is long past.  They still play it, so he either doesn't care or has matured enough to know that it's just a song.

5FDP - The Bleeding

Back in the early days 5FDP was a legit good band.  They weren't too "bro" and they had a solid angry sound that really majorly killed it.

This is one of the songs off of the first album when Ivan Moody was still kinda singing like he was is Motograter, which is a really good thing.  In my opinion, this was probably his best sound he's ever had.  It was raw, unpolished, and had this punch that you just can't beat.  Unfortunately the band has moved past that point, so we'll not get to hear this anymore.

I'm really not sure how this song is supposed to be interpreted, because it almost sounds like an apology song, but then it's an I hate you song, and then it's just a pile of confusion.  It's kinda weird, but I can dig it cause it's super powerful feeling.

Powerman 5000 - Nobody's Real

We've got Powerman 5000 back with a song you may or may not have heard of.  This song is possibly my new favorite by them, so you should also enjoy it if you like any of the stuff I tend to post.

I know I've been revisiting bands I've already talked about, but really people I am only one man.  By myself I can physically only listen to so much music.  When I'm in an artist rut for example, I find it hard to talk about more than that one artist to anybody, much less actually think of things to say, ya know?

Also, can we please talk about his highlighter yellow hair?  Dude, come on now.

Many Apologies!

So my computer is currently down.  I have two more posts scheduled but it will be a lot harder to get things together without my laptop being available.  I'm sorry if this puts me behind in posts, I will really try to get them out on time like usual, but there's a strong chance it's won't happen.

Thanks for your patience, hope you still enjoy the blog!

Rappin' For Jesus

You guys want a cheap laugh?  Of course you do.

I'm still not sure if this is a joke or not, but every time I see it it makes me laugh.

Three Days Grace - The Good Life

Three Days Grace is a band that I almost feel bad for liking.  They are the radio rock that I am opposed to on general principal, but because of that I do at least find it really catchy and fun.

This song specifically is one that get's a lot of radio play.  Or at least got.  I don't tend to listen to the radio because it doesn't play songs I really like that much, ya know?

Days like today I kinda feel like I'm basically just posting a song with me saying a short nothing, but I hope you guys understand.  I don't always have much to say and when you post every day it can sometimes make things a little slow at times.

Machine Head - Halo

Machine Head has a really really killer sound.  They've got harmonies, they've got killer leads, and just in general are things I like.

This album specifically has some amazing stuff on it, but today I'm just showing you this cause it's one of my favorites on the album.

One thing I don't like about the band though is that the singer is a gigantic a-hole.  An excellent example of it would be the statement he made when they canceled a tour with Children Of Bodom so they could work on their album.

Alexi Laiho said this.

Post by Alexi Laiho Official.

And then Robb Flynn of Machine Head said this....

Post by Machine Head.

It's a beautiful example of how Robb is a little bit of a moron.  But her, here's the song.

Tech N9ne - Boogieman

Hey, so I repost artists sometimes.  Suck it up.

So I mentioned that Tech N9ne is one of the fastest rappers I've ever heard, but that's not like the only thing he does.  Like many artists, Tech has more than one song style he does.

This song is a much slower, darker sounding song.  I suppose that's a good thing for a sogn called Boogieman, but I still thought I'd mention it.

Also, the more I listen to him the more confused I am as to whether he runs a cult or not...

Deuce - The One

You remember Hollywood Undead, right?  Well this is the singer that got fired after the first album.  He apparently just stopped showing up to things.

This song is pure gold in my mind because it just sounds like him complaining that he got kicked.  Actually the entire album really sounds like that to be honest.

If you watch this video you can see a guy who looks like a redneck d-bag heroin junkie put on at least 700 different masks that all look equally bad.

It's a really catchy tune though, so it does have that going for him.  It's not bad material, it's just whiney sounding a lot of the time.

The other stuff he does is actually a lot better, so he does at least have talent.  Saving grace Deuce.

Primus feat. Ozzy - N.I.B.

***
Edit 10-31-16

Yo, what the heck is so special about this post, it's hands down one of the more boring posts I've written, so it's not like that's the attraction.  Is it literally because it's borderline impossible to get a link of this song anywhere?  I mean I know I had a hell of a time finding it, but it can't honestly be that hard, right?

Well either way thank for swinging by.  I'd advise checking out different posts, this one is hella ghetto.

****

Again with the cover songs?  Yes.  Yes and for very good reason.

Primus isn't really that great of a band.  The best thing about them is Claypool, the bassist, and that's just cause he plays like a madman.  Still though, this Black Sabbath song they covered?  It's killer.

[Edit: 4-5-17  Geeze, calm down guys, I just don't care for Primus as much as you all seem to.  Chill.  I have a few of their songs that I like, I just feel they're incredibly overrated as far as the fan base goes.]

So in 2000 12 or so bands got together and made Nativity In Black Vol. II.  The first album, released in 1994, was absolutely amazing, and this album was just as good.  It helped introduce me to a bunch of Sabbath classics and songs that didn't get as much attention as they could have before.


Pardon the non-standard link, YouTube is being weird about hosting this song.

Ozzy Osbourne & Primus - Nativity In Black (2001)

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Isosine - Tik Tok Redneck

I may have mentioned this in the past, but Mashups are some of my favorite kinds of music.  Seriously, there's no beating a good Mashup, especially when the two songs really shouldn't mix.  This is one of those.

Tik Tok Redneck is a mix of Ke$ha and Lamb Of God.  These artists should never be in the same event, much less the same song, but for whatever reason this worked really well.

The creator of this song, Isosine, has done some seriously good work with Mashups, but this is without a doubt one of my favorites.

Edit 9.17.17:  Adding this version to anybody that wants to hear the song still since it's been blocked

This may seem like a novelty to your guys, but in my heart it is amazing.

Faith No More - Epic

Call me weird, but as I sit at 5:30 am and hear sappy Christmas music, I kinda want to kill myself.  Don't get me wrong, I like a god deal of Christmas music, but this early in the morning I want to just sit and enjoy my coffee with generic rock in the background.

That's the main problem here is that during December all you can get anywhere is Christmas.  To combat this, I will refrain from any more Christmas music until the last 7 days before Christmas, kinda like what we had going on Halloween.

So Faith No More was a kinda big deal a long while ago, and by "big deal" I mean they had a unique sound and some singles that went big.

Funny thing though, they have just written an album and plan to release soon, so any fans of the band should be happy.  By all reports I've heard it seems to be doing well.

July Talk - Summer Dress

I learned about these guys literally yesterday, but I like them.  Canadian radio may be the best thing ever, cause where I live doesn't have the best selection of music stations ever.

Turns out I forgot to write this post yesterday, so I'm not going to add much since I'm writing it at 1am and I'm supposed to wake up for work in 3 hours.  This is how much I love you guys.  Also this is how much I can procrastinate.  It's impressive, eh?

But like I said before, I learned about this song on Sunday and I just happened to like it a lot.  Check it, maybe you will too.

Alice Cooper, John 5 and others - Santa Claws Is Coming To Town

Yay, it's December!  December means a mild upswing in Christmas music, and by mild I mean it will actually happen at least 4 times.  Hooray!

Continuing the tradition of non-traditional christmas music this is another kinda metal Christmas song.  By that, I mean it was on a metal christmas album even though it's just a harder rock song.  Eh, whatever, it's a good song.

Alice Cooper is one of my favorite artists from like 5 years ago when I first got into music, and over time he's kinda been one of my regular favorites.  His live show is hands down the best thing ever and ironically, the older he gets the scarier he looks an sounds, which makes everything in his show work out even better.

John 5 on the other hand is a fantastic shredder of the very metal field.  He's played with both Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie and has a very cool and distinct playing style.  He also can play country style music, which seems to be really weirdly different thing than his standard thing, but it works really well.