I really don't care for this song. I have had people whistle it at me just to bug me for years now, and that really made me not like it.
Still though, it's stuck in my head, and that's what usually governs my posting anyway.
I'm not gonna talk about this song though, I'm gonna talk about tomorrow.
Tomorrow is April 1st, and while I'd love to do some sort of joke type of thing, I'm not. What this is is the beginning of a wonderful month. A month of A to Z.
I am participating in the A to Z Challenge this year as some of you may remember from a post a while back. Well for those of you that care, it is starting tomorrow.
What I'm gonna be doing is posting full albums. I've got all but "Q" picked out right now, and I'm really really excited about this.
I hope you're all as excited about next month as I am!
Zappa is an interesting guy, as I have said before. He's got some weird songs, and some really weird songs. This one is just a tiny bit weird sounding.
So this is a song that has haunted my mind recently.
I first heard it quite a few years ago and I liked it. I never really thought I'd hear it again though cause, you know, it's an old song.
Well lo and behold, this was one of the songs in How I Met Your Mother. You know what? I liked it then too. It's a kinda catchy song, and the way that they used it was perfect.
Then my friend played it at work.
For 7 hours.
7
Hours.
Not ok.
Now you can all have it stuck in your head to, so screw you guys. (not really, please don't leave me.)
This was the theme song of a game called Dead Island. It was a reasonably good game, but this song was absolutely fantastic.
You were actually able to play as the mythical rapper Sam B and he was a pretty good choice. I never finished the game unfortunately, but that's not the point. The point is this is the first rap song I ever liked, and it sent me down the path to all kinds of rap stuff.
I'm gonna throw some shameless self promotion in here. This is a song that my brother and I recorded a while ago. It's a cover of a Cannibal Corpse song and it was insanely fun to do.
I programmed the drum track and screamed at a microphone and my brother recorded bass and 4 layers of guitar.
My only issue with it is that I ended up mixing the vocals a little low, but there's not too much I can do about that at this point.
If you like it the song has a free download attached, just like any of our cover songs.
Somebody found that the Thomas The Tank Engine theme song worked well with an awful lot of rap sounds placed over it. I'm not here to judge, but I'd call that man a genius.
Now before you click that link I gave you I will warn you. A lot of those posts suck. There are a few gems in there, but you need to scroll a lot. or you could just set the sorting options for the top posts of all time.
This is the first Dank Engine song I ever heard, and it still holds a really special place in my heart.
When I showed it to my mom she claimed that it ruined my childhood. Not sure how it killer her perception of mine, but whatever.
We have 3 songs here. In order are Come On, Machine Gun Funk, and Sky Is The Limit.
Firstly, I don't usually like country music. This is irrelevant.
Secondly, Avi Kaplan of Pentatonix is in this song, and he can sing freaking low.
Acapella music is something I've always enjoyed at least a little bit. I'm not sure what it is about it, but it's probably the fact that the members of the group have to be really talented to pull it off well.
So a very good friend of mine loves this band. I don't think they're too bad, but it's not totally my cup of tea, ya know? Still, it's catchy and all that, so it's not too bad.
I'm not sure what Timeflies does really, but it seems to mostly be taking the chorus of catchy popular songs and throwing their own rap verses over it.
This song came to mind cause me and some guys are gonna be surprising her when she comes back to town. It's gonna be awesome.
This is a song off of the first album from 98. Not too bad really, and the first lines always made me chuckle a little bit for whatever reason. What can I say, I am amused when people talk about hitting each other.
This song was earlier in Godsmack's career, so it doesn't really follow the same outline I gave you the first time around. Oh wait, it does. it follows it perfectly. Come on guys, vary your style just a tiny bit.
I figured I should provide a bit of info based on what I said before. This is the band that Alissa White-Gluz left The Agonist for. Well actually she didn't leave The Agonist for Arch Enemy, she had intended to front both bands. Unfortunately though, things didn't work out that way and she is only with Arch Enemy now. It's kinda sad considering that she used to do so much more, but you never know. Maybe the next Arch Enemy album will be bigger, or more, or something like that.
It's not bad, it's just a lot more generic I feel.
My brother showed this band to me a very long time ago, but I never remembered to actually check them out. Well he showed them to me again yesterday, so I figure this is the best way for me to remember to actually look up their stuff again.
Firstly, this is an example of Metalcore done right. Secondly, just in case you haven't started watching the video yet, the singer is a chick.
I don't care who you are, this girls screaming is absolutely amazing. She's got some killer lows too, and she does clean singing. There is only one piece of bad news here, and that's that she is in the band Arch Enemy now and they vastly underutilize her talent.
The new singer they have is really generic sounding and I kinda hate her, but I'll let you pick for yourself whether you like her or not. Honestly, you probably don't like this song at all and you'll be moving on with your life as soon as you finish this post. That's ok, I don't mind.
If memory serves Motograter was the second band I ever posted. I'm kinda bummed that I wasted my favorite song back then since it's a time when people didn't read any of my posts. I mean, that's mostly cause I was just starting out, but I might make a new rule about reposting songs. Maybe a 1 year hold, then I can repeat songs as long as it's a fresh post?
Still though, the story's the same. Invented an instrument, helped define a genre, and it was a generally great time. Also Ivan Moody, the singer, is the singer for 5FDP.
So yeah, that soundcloud I was talking about. This is one of the guys I follow.
He's come a long way from what he started with, and this song is actually a remake of one of his older things. I believe that this has a free download as well, so if you like it go and get it.
Knife Party is one of my more prefered electronic artists. I really don't know too many legit acts cause a lot of my electronic music / remixes usually come from individuals on Soundcloud.
So this song is called Bonfire, and I like it a lot. It makes me think of my brother and his friend dancing like idiots. Good memories.
Year, I'm bad at planning ahead this week. Not my fault though, Netflix just got the first 4 Saw movies and I had planned on watching the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th sometime.
Apocalyptica plays metal on Celos. They distort them and rock out, it's great. They've done a Metallica tribute before, but this is one of their original songs.
Here we continue my trend of liking dumb music. Seriously, there's no redeemable qualities to this song.
I don't know though, there's a really big appeal to simple repetitive music that just kinda flows. Songs like this are what I like to start my music with to be totally honest. I'm not sure why, but the driving bass and stuff helps me get ready for the day.
Fun fact, when I rap along with Eminem's song "Real Slim Shady" I apparently sound like Cartman from South Park trying to sound like Eminem. I'm not sure how to feel about this, since it really makes me sound like an idiot. Eh, That's me though. Friend first, boss second, and entertainer third.
I haven't posted my "Nazi Dance Music" in 2 months, so here's another song for you to enjoy!
Some days at work are very stressful, but music like this that has a dance beat with harsh vocals really helps. I find it to be good pump up music, though everybody has their own opinions.
Worth Dying For is a Christian Rock band that I first heard of something like 7 years ago. At youth group the pastor set this song as our theme one year and it really stuck.
It's kinda generic in a way, but as far as I'm concerned this music is great. It's a really fun song to play and all that stuff, so give it a listen.
Ok, this remix week is getting old and it made me late with today's post. Not cool.
We need some Nu-Metal to get out of this, and who better that Soulfly?
Soulfly is a band from Phoenix and released their first album in 1998. For Nu-Metal this puts them kinda right in the beginning middle and as is typical of the genre, it's kinda all the same sounding to a certain point.
The lyrics are half in Spanish and half in English, and they are usually very politically charged. Still good music though, even though it has a giant opinion.
What could be better than some good old patriotic music? Maybe a nice little dubstep remix of it!
Saints Row is famous for several things, but we're not gonna talk about most of those. We're gonna talk about it's soundtrack. This game has one of my favorite soundtracks. It's actually my third favorite right below the Hotline Miami and Payday series'.
It's sense of sarcasm and parody is amazing, and that's one of the reasons that this song exists.
Hollywood Undead's song Hear Me Now is kinda... Bland. It's mostly just their usual "Hey, it's a rock-ish song) type of stuff.
Jonathan Davis is the singer for Korn, but he also does some DJ-ing on the side as J-Devil. Something that he apparently also does is remix some people's music.
He straight up turned this into a Korn song, and that makes me very happy.
I'm not sure who was the person behind this remix cause they just put it at the end of their album. I'm supposing that it was just could have done, or maybe it was an aspiring sound tech that wanted to be special. I don't really know though, so let's move on.
This is one of my favorite pump up songs. I can't recall if I posted the original before, but the raw "I hate you" energy that pours off of this is some of my favorite stuff, ya know? I really enjoy the aggressive energy of it.
Funny thing, this video has some major issues staying on YouTube, so here's a Soundcloud link that's been up for 2 years. Should be safe.
Here's a Spotify one though, just in case the Soundcloud one goes down.
I just found this the other day while I was looking for that Daft Punk song and I have decided that I really like The Glitch Mob. They seem to have that big low synth sound that's great. It's super dirty nd distorted to the point of sounding like the signal is falling apart, I love it.
Now I can't take all the credit for loving that style of synth so much, I wouldn't have even had a description for it if it weren't for the fact that my brother only likes synths that sound like that.
I would call this a really solid remix though and well worth checking out. Enjoy it, play it loud, and yadda yadda yadda.
I have never seen Tron. I feel like I'm one of the few people who was like 18ish when the movie came out that didn't actually see it, but it's true. Heck, I never even saw the original, though I hear that's not an entirely bad thing.
I heard this song on a dubstep/techno playlist a friend of mine made as a pre Youth Group thing while people were just hanging out before things started and I had to have it though, cause come on, this song is catchy.
Hey! I'm playing in a wedding today, so my week has been a bit messed up. Since I haven't had too many chances to post, here's a song that we aren't actually playing. I know, disappointing. Hey though, it's still good music.
On February 23 of this year, Carach Angren came out with another Symphonic Black Metal masterpiece.
I wrote the song reviews as I listened to the music, so take into consideration that you are basically reading a live review up till the very end.
Band: Carach Angren
Genre: Symphonic Black Metal
Language: Strong
Caution: Disturbing Themes
Opening up with a small into titled "Once Upon A Time..." that slowly builds in intensity and sounds like the into to a dark telling of Little Red Riding Hood or something like that. However, that is not the direction that this music decides to take.
If anybody is interested, the lyrics are here if you want to read along while you listen. Simply click the song title and it will drop the lyrics down.
We then hit the second track titled "There's No Place Like Home". With the title of the album, I originally anticipated an album that followed the thought path of some of The Grimm Brother's fairy tales. I was very mistaken, considering this song is very much about domestic abuse. It's actually a really dark story the lyrics paint and it borderline makes me uncomfortable with how graphically it describes everything.
At this point it is clear that this is going to be one of the darker narratives Carach Angren has undertaken as we follow the story of a brother and sister.
The next step taken in this dark journey is "When Crows Tick On Windows". The children flee from their abusive home, only to be caught again by their father. After dragging them back home we find that the mother has killed herself rather than live with this life anymore. It has a rather haunting string piece at the end that turns into an emotion laden lament.
"Two Flies Flew Into A Black Sugar Cobweb" brings back the thought of flight from the nightmare house. The children run into the woods and get lost in the night. Fearful, they continue on till dawn when they come across a city and a small playground. Here they meet a man dressed as a clown, who seems to want to help them at first, though it is then revealed that he only wishes to drug and kidnap them.
"Dreaming Of A Nightmare In Eden" takes a mild step away from the main narrative to tell a very dark take on part of the tale of Hansel and Gretel. This is likely a dream brought on by the drugs they were given.
"Possessed By A Craft Of Witchery" opens with the children waking up in a basement. They have been kidnaped by "a deranged psychotic" who hears the voice of a witch in his head. The only way to keep the witch at bay is to kill children in a ritual manner. We close on the death of the boy in this story.
"Killed And Served By The Devil" opens at the end of the last song. The way the killer mutilates the boy is now described from the perspective of the sister, who is restrained in a cage in the same room this is taking place in. After the dismemberment has finished the girl is forced to bury her brother in the back garden. After she finishes burying the boy it is time to clean the kill room. After being told that she will serve as a slave to the killer until the witch calls for her death, it is time to eat. There is quite a thing at the end, which I will let you hear.
"The Witch Perished In Flames" opens on the girl waking in her cage again. Following the murder of her brother she contemplates suicide. However, she realizes that there is naught to be gained through her own death and she makes the commitment to be brave. Taking her chance at the next meal, she kills the man. During the scuffle a fire breaks out and she leaves while the monster burns in his home.
"Tragedy Ever After" begins with Gretel waking. She ran hard into a tree and now is unsure whether she is in the real world or not. Judging by the strange shadowy being calling to her, it would seem she is in purgatory. Seeing as it's purgatory it makes sense that the burned corpse of her brother's killer returns. Or wait, is it? As the song says while the abusive father is shown leaving the room, "The real nightmare continues in reality."
**Going for longest post yet record**
So let's talk for a second. This is a musically solid album. Everything that they do plays to the mood of the setting they are trying to describe. Swelling and falling, the entire album just works.
I will give this a solid 8/10, a definite score for Carach Angren to add to their discography.
I listened to this album all the way through on Wednesday and I'm not sure how obvious it is to you guys, but I definitely felt like I was falling into a dark mood while listening to this. Something about music that has an orchestra in it just tugs at my emotions, and if you read through the lyrics while you listen the whole experience is heightened in a way. I don't mean to sound all emo, it's just what happens.
Still though, I would call this a really good album and worth a listen. If you're not a fan of Metal, check out the first and last track since they're instrumental anyway. It's orchestral with a gritty guitar undertone, so it's obviously good.
I only recently started listening to some Tupac (2pac?) after hearing he was on the official Vatican Myspace page. I enjoyed his stuff well enough, but as it is with most artists who die it's nearly impossible to find their normal music if you're just browsing. While just browsing I managed to find this song with Eminem, which made me reasonably happy since I like his stuff. All in all, this is a really solid track.
Freaking 2 days in a row... I'm very sorry guys, I promise I'll have it on time tomorrow. I actually have an evening to myself so I'll be able to commit to do things like write blog posts.
So recently I asked my friends for recommendations for my pump up playlist. I already had like8 to 10 songs on it, but I wanted to be able to get a good shuffle going without it always being the same, ya know?
I got very few recommendations from anybody however. 1 song that made my rap list, and another that didn't quite fit. But the there was also this song. It's very cheesy in it's pump up aspect, but it does serve the purpose of providing music that I vaguely enjoy that has a strong beat and has a bit of an emotional response.
I also like T-Pain, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg, so this song is kinda cool cause of that.
Green day is a band that a good many people feel are over rated. I'll agree that a lot of their stuff isn't as good as what some people say, but they still have some catchy tunes, right?
This is off the album Nimrod, and it's a song that I happen to enjoy a lot.
Apologies for the lack of content here, I forgot to write this post yesterday and it's late now.
Alice Cooper, the face of Shock Rock, the king of crazy stage shows. He's one of those people that your parents probably hated. Or maybe you were the parents that hated him, I don't run your life, you can be whoever you want.
This is one of his older songs, but in my opinion he's a really consistently good artist. Sometimes his stuff isn't that good, but I have yet to find stuff I legitimately dislike.
Note: I have not listened to his first album or 2, because I've been told they are bad. This does mildly make me a bit of a liar with the above comment, but I don't really care.
He's got a really amazing stage show as well. From hangings to getting his head chopped off this guy has done it all. There's been knife throwing, lots of blood, executions, ghosts, monsters, and duels. I can only hope that I'll actually get a chance to see this guy live and not just off YT vids.
Here we are, another fun little post cause it's the beginning of the month! I was really looking forward to this, not gonna lie.
So, some blog stuff first:
We have only one more month till the A to Z in April, so that's cool, right? I have all the posts mostly prepped with the exception of Q, it's giving me issues.
The theme for April will be full albums, and you know that's gonna rock, right? Fun fact, there are only something like 13 albums with the first letter being Q. 13. Thirteen. That's not a lot.
In trying to keep music diverse I will fall into some sort of rut from time to time. Like the avoiding Metal rut will bring us Rap and Hip Hop, and vice versa. I will try to get past that, sorry guys.
Other stuff that's cool?
People commented on one of my posts. This is a legitimately big deal, cause the only person so far has been my mom and while I appreciate it it's a lot cooler to see people I don't know reaching out to talk to me. Sorry Mutha', you just don't cut it anymore.
As some of you may have noticed if you are long term readers, Jeff has not made a post in like, 2 months. He decided that the stress to meet a once a month deadline was too much. This most certainly had nothing to do with the fact that I would ask him for the post about a day or so before I needed it, totally not a problem on my end.
On a personal note I got a promotion at work. Instead of just being the guy that knows everything with no benefits I am the guy who knows everything with benefits. Also know 1 of 2 official kitchen trainers. It's really cool, I shape people's minds and stuff. #PowerRush, amirite?
Let's be real, there's no way I'm posting such a popular song without it just not counting like this. I really like it though, and I might be filming a crappy little music video for work that has this song it it, so that will be cool, right?
