Panic! At The Disco - The Ballad Of Mona Lisa

Band:  Panic! At The Disco
Genre:  Alternative Rock

One of my favorite songs I didn't mean to listen to.  I was just shuffling all of Panic!'s music on day and this happened to come on.  It's possibly one of my favorites now honestly.

But hey hey, it's New Year's Eve!  Hype for a new year, eh?  Hopefully less people will die next year than have this year.  My goodness, all the famous people that have died this year.  It's ridiculous, too many people that I liked a lot died this year.

On the plus side I learned that Kimbo Slice existed.  I always thought that was a nickname we made up at work for one of the managers, Jim.  We called him Jimbo Slice for the longest time and I honestly thought it was something that we all came up with.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Powerwolf - Cardinal Sin

Band:  Powerwolf
Genre:  Power Metal

One of many bands I originally started liking for novelty reasons, Powerwolf is really one of the driving forces that got me interested in Power Metal in general.  That Latin thing they do is rather fun, and then there's the odd tune with a mountain of German in it.  All in all it's a good deal.

The singer is like a freaking opera singer, so they have a lot going for them, yeah?

Plus I'm sucker for bands whose core lyrical themes can be summed up as "Werewolves, Vampires, and Satan"

<
Follow Me On Facebook

The Notorious B.I.G. - Going Back To Cali

Artist:  The Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls
Genre:  Rap
Language:  Strong

Let's start to round out the year with one of the best rappers there was.  Biggie has some fantastic flow to all his stuff and his some pretty heavy subject matter at times too.  I don't mean to imply that other guys don't tackle big things or anything, I've just been listening to Biggie a little more recently.  Suicidal Thoughts?  That song's heavy as all hell, you can't tell me you listen to that without the end catching you up a little bit.

I love his beats.  It's one of the things that I didn't realize till recently is that you can really tell the people who were touched by Dr Dre and those who weren't.  Biggie's sound is the old school gangster sound that I really really love.  All the beats sound more in line with aspects of Wu-Tang and that's a good direction in my opinion.

Love this dude though, so here ya go.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Winds Of Plague - The Impaler

Band:  Winds Of Plague
Genre:  Deathcore
Language:  Strong

Who doesn't like a little trash Deathcore?

I really would love to see Winds Of Plague live some time, I can't imagine their live show is too bad with how their stuff sounds recorded.  It might not be anything too impressive on a CD, but that stuff is usually still rather good live, yeah?

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Stone Sour - Bother

Band:  Stone Sour
Genre:  Metal, Alternative
Language:  Some

This is a rather depressing song honestly.  I never really remember how much of a downer it is until I listen to it, but it's really really good.

I know a lot of people say this, but old Stone Sour like this is so much better than the new stuff.  They recently put out a cover album that was mostly disappointing to be totally honest.  The songs they chose to cover were only ok, and the guitar work on some of them is just sad.  They never should have kicked out Jim Root.

This is a good one from the first album though, so it's safe.  It's not their usual sound, much more chill.  Really feels kinda like an Alice In Chains song.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Fitz And The Tantrums - The Walker

Band:  Fitz And The Tantrums
Genre:  Indie Pop, Neo Soul

This song was all the rage of Summer 2013 and for the life of me I can't understand why they didn't continue to be a big deal.  It's a catchy tune and there's a lot of similar stuff going on in their usual music.  It's even sudo soul music that you don't need to be black to get into, so that's just as great!  Like dude, just check out some of their chiller stuff, it's so nice.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Chase Holfelder - All I Want For Christmas Is You

Artist:  Chase Holfelder
Genre:  Holiday

It's freaking Christmas!  Heck yeah!  Merry freaking Christmas!

I hope you enjoy the super creepy sounding version of that Mariah Carey song.  This one is way better doncha know.

It's Christmas, don't read this, enjoy your family.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Project 86 - Mr. Grinch

Band:  Project 86
Genre:  Post Hardcore

As a happy Christmas Eve I've decided to give you a fun newish take on The Grinch's song.  The singer for P86, Andrew Schwab, wanted to recapture the horror he felt about The Grinch back when he was a kid, but he found that the original song just didn't cut it anymore.  The band rewrote the music and The Schwab fixed up the lyrics to give ol' Grinchy a touch up in the creep department.

The song's rather fantastic and a great into to your adventures into A Very P86 Christmas, which is an interesting take on a couple Christmas songs plus some originals as well.  Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Ronnie James Dio - Holy Diver

Artist:  Ronnie James Dio
Genre:  Metal

Here's one of the greater vocalists in Metal for ya.  Not in the harsh range mind you, but in the melodic range.

Watched a few interviews with him and he honestly seemed to have been a pretty cool dude.  Granted, he probably had a bit of a ego issue since he ran through a mountain of musicians over the course of his career, but he still made some decent music, yeah?

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Twenty-One Pilots - Guns For Hands

Band:  Twenty-One Pilots (TØP)
Genre:  Alternative Hip Hop

Honestly this is probably my favorite TOP songs.  It's got this great poppy beat to it while also being about a surprisingly deep subject, this making it a perfect pop hit.  I'm surprised it didn't get more attention actually, songs like that tend to do great with the kids, ya know?

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Pink Floyd - Learning To Fly

Band:  Pink Floyd
Genre:  Rock, Psychedelic Rock

I feel like there's a mountain of Floyd songs that just reek of nostalgia for me, but I never know what album most of them are from.  There's a lot of songs that I kinda assume come from The Wall of Dark Side Of The Moon, but since mostly what I'm familiar with are  mountain of concert videos and such I don't tend to know where most of them are from.

Is a good song though, so please enjoy, eh?

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Foo Fighters - Rope

Band:  Foo Fighters
Genre:  Alternative Rock

I rather like this song's intro.  The way it starts didn't lead me to believe the song's chorus would sound like it did but I'm mostly ok with it.  It's honestly one of my favorite songs that I've heard from Foo Fighters because of it.  It's not as generic as I tend to expect a lot of their stuff to be, which I suppose doesn't say much of my opinion of them, but that's fine.

Honestly Dave Grohl, talented though he is, is mostly a sort of joke, ya know?  He's great at what he does, but all the quotes and things credited to him, and things like that have made it hard for me to actually listen to him.  He talks a huge game about "Rock" and stuff, but at the same time he's all boring as hell.  His music is predictable almost all the time, so what does that say about his comments about the state of modern music?  He's part of the problem too honestly.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Weird Al Yankovic - Christmas At Ground Zero

Artist:  Weird Al Yankovic
Genre:  Comedy

You know what everybody needs this time of year?  Something to laugh at.  This is a little bit of a crazy time of year for anybody involved in ministry because it's one of the big two holidays.  My friend calls them Kreasters, my one pastor called the CEOs, but they both mean the same thing:  People who only show up to church on Christmas and Easter.

This, obviously enough, makes things stressful as we all work to see how we can get people to come to church year round instead of just at the one time of year.  The areas I work in are really heavily tied into this.

So yeah, let's pull in one of my favorite parody artists to lighten the mood, eh?

Weird Al's polka infused music has and always will be some of my favorite stuff to just laugh at.  The work he does to get the songs to sound the same as the originals is amazing and all of his originals are always funny.

Enjoy some off beat christmas music to step back with.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Corrosion Of Conformity - Heaven's Not Overflowing

Band:  Corrosion Of Conformity
Genre:  Stoner Metal, Sludge Metal

Speaking of that Primus song I complained about yesterday, that makes me think of way back when when I borrowed my uncle's CD collection.  I really had no clue what most of the music was, but it did introduce me to one of my favorite groups, Alice In Chains.  Obviously this isn't AiC, but that was the first set of connections I made.

When I first started listening to these guys I didn't even know what Sludge or Stoner Metal was, so when my brother got all holier than thou with all his "I listen to more types of music than you do" I know I at least listened to these guys first.

It's a really catchy groovy tune, I hope you all enjoy it.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Infected Mushroom - Becoming Insane

Group:  Infected Mushroom
Genre:  Psychedelic Trance

You know what's really annoying?  No matter what I do with this blog I will never be able to top the weird success of this post.  As of right now it has about 1173 views which is straight up annoying.  There's a very good reason behind that though, the song I posted is apparently impossible to find.  It's blocked on YouTube for copyright reasons and it's not on most streaming services.  Basically if you don't have the CD it was on like I do you can't find it.  Side note, the album is fantastic, I'd advise checking it out.

I managed to find some foreign streaming site that I got the song on my blog from, but apparently other people are not so inclined to look for it.  As such my blog is actually the number one result for searching for Primus playing Nativity In Black.  I'm like, 100% sure it's not getting me new followers either, which is the main annoyance for me.  That post is forever skewing my stats for nothing.

But that's ok, it'll eventually raise me up in Google's search systems because of attention like that, right?

Here's an electronic group called Infected Mushroom.  They have nothing at all to do with the little rant I just made, I just love their album art.  And the acoustic guitar intro is kinda cool as well, it's a nifty offset to what the rest of the music turns into.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Lauren Daigle - Light Of The World

Artist:  Lauren Daigle
Genre:  Worship

Time for that fun post where I remind people that I'm a church working Christian right after a post like Slayer God hates us all...  Lucky for me I don't really care about consistency on that front, so here's the song that I spent 5 hours listening to yesterday.

I really love the harmonies in the chorus, they're hella pretty.

So I really don't enjoy listening to Worship music most of the time.  The only time I tend to enjoy it is when I'v eplayed it a lot and as such have good memories to attach to it.  Like, physically play, not list click play.

I don't quite remember if I played this one either though, and I'm also not sure if I even heard it before yesterday, but I kinda feel like I remember it.  A well, not really important.  It's a fantastic song and should be treated as such.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Slayer - Disciple

Band:  Slayer
Genre:  Thrash Metal
Language:  Strong

Gotta love some good old Slayer, right?  This is probably their most famous song outside of Raining Blood, but I guarantee a lot of the people that know this song don't know the name.  A whole lot of people know the lyric God Hates Us All cause, as pictured above, it's tattooed on Kerry King's arm.  Well it's the name of the album too, but whatever.

The album had some dubious honor though, it was released on September 11, 2001.  Pretty ironic considering the message of the album in general.  Actually I feel like ironic is a really terrible word choice, but that's truly the perfect word for the situation.

But hey, it's still a good song, one of the better Slayer songs.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Septicflesh - The Vampire From Nazareth

Band:  Septicflesh
Genre:  Symphonic Death Metal

This hearkens back to my very first blog post back in September of 2014.  I had agonized over what I should have posted at the time; I was really trying not to sound too basic but I was also trying not to go too far out there.  Well I suppose I totally failed since I totally opened up with a Symphonic Death Metal song which basically made me the edgiest I possibly could be.

It was horrible at the time trying to not pick a "classic" song that I thought people would have posted a million times, and it was also really difficult trying to pick the voice of my blog.  I started out a little fact heavy at first because I thought that was the only way my blog could be interesting.  That was a great idea up until I totally ran out of easy facts.  For real, I had no idea how to manage to get a lot of things that would keep the posts interesting.  I'm really glad I decided to stray away from the that format, cause that would have made this whole thing a lot more stressful than it needed to be.  For crying out loud, I post a song every day, there's no way I could possibly get all of them to have an individual tidbit of info, you know what I mean?

But hey though, here's The Vampire From Nazareth, a wonderful horrific sounding song.  This is probably the pinnacle of the album with the way that the Symphonic aspect blends with the Blackened Death Metal.

Hey hey, I'm back to being hella edgy.  Yeh.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

King Diamond - Christmas

Artist:  King Diamond
Genre:  Heavy Metal

I feel like I really need to listen to more of this dude's music seeing as I've posted two of his Christmas songs and none of his regular music.

I hear it's quite good, and judging by the fact that I really enjoy the novelty and quality of these Christmas songs I would suppose that I'd like it.

I dunno, I just never listened to Mercyful Fate or his self titled solo stuff I guess.  Except one, and it was about a haunted house, or a house haunted by his dead grandma.  Something like that.  I dunno, it was interesting.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Gucci Mane - St. Brick Intro

Artist:  Gucci Mane
Genre:  Rap, Hip Hop
Language:  Strong

Here's the Christmas song everybody's clearly after, Gucci has gifted us all with a true classic.

Honestly I wish more new Christmas music like this existed.  Here's the problem though (which is something I've noticed in church music as well, but that's a totally different argument), all the good Christmas songs were, for the most part, written back in the big band era of the 20s and 40s.  Sure there were new ones written up into the 60s, but for the most part there haven't been any good songs put out since then.  You get your remakes of the old classics, you get your single tunes here and there, but nothing on the whole albums of christmas tunes of the old days.

I want more groups to put out original Christmas tunes like this, but a lot of the times it just sounds weird.  There's something about the old tunes that are just cemented into place.  It's probably because there's only a few months to play them so they didn't get as old to people in the same way that playing the same 60 songs would get for literally anything else.

Eh, got a couple good albums I can dredge up though, and Gucci is releasing The Return Of East Atlanta Santa on the 16th, so that's cool, eh?  As long as it's a full blown Christmas album at least.  Apparently this is his 3rd one, so I'll have to look at the other two.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Demon Hunter - Cold Winter Sun

Band:  Demon Hunter
Genre:  Metalcore, Heavy Metal

OH SHOOT, THEY JUST STRAIGHT UP RELEASED IT ALREADY!

"Wait, Noah, I feel like you may like this group?"  Yeah...  I apologize for how hyped I am about this album, this is just one of the things I've been looking forward to for a long time now.  By a long time I mean about 2 years since that's when the last album was released.

I'm really excited about the direction that Demon Hunter has decided to take.  I'm a big fan of all their old stuff, but the fact that they aren't remaining stagnant is really a great thing.  Their guitarists keep switching around so I suppose that would really help to keep the sound fresh.  That's another thing though, for having so many new guitarists they have really managed to keep a really good central sound to the whole thing.  Like this song, all the guitar parts were written by Patrick Judge formerly of The Showdown, but it still has a lot of the DH sound to it.

If this is what they're comfortable releasing so far I can't wait to hear the rest of it next year.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Guest Post: Deafheaven - Luna

Band:  Deafheaven
Genre:  Black Metal, Black-Gaze

Many rides to work have been spent hyping myself up for the day and destroying my neck muscles listening to this 10 minute long wall of sound and pure musical destruction.

"Luna" off of Deafheaven's latest record "New Bermuda" opens with the gnarliest riff and a sudden barrage of snare drum abuse. It's almost unrelenting at times, but knows when to take a chill pill at the right time. By chill pill I of course mean the band's signature "shoe-gaze" interludes that progress into the most optimistic guitar chords and thunderous percussion.

This band receives numerous awards and recognition for their near flawless records including 2013's "Sunbather" and they definitely deserve the attention of many heavy metal listeners.

Being able to witness their fine-tuned live set while supporting Carcass was an enormous pleasure as well as deafening...(haha).

***

Today's post is a guest post by my friend Steven Attenborough of Bravura.  Be sure to support him by checking out their music too, its great!

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Skrillex - Ragga Bomb

Artist:  Skrillex with Ragga Twins
Genre:  Dubstep

I swear I thought this song was here ages ago.  I found it back in like, the beginning of summer, so I really honestly thought I had to have shared it by now.  I really love the synth sound Skrillex used in this, it's so dirty it's falling apart while you listen to it.  Basically this song is a lot of what I live about Skrillex's work.  I don't seek out his music, but when I do there's always a song or two like this that's just great.

Yo, I can't talk about this song though cause I just found out that Demon Hunter's first single dropped for their new album!  :D  Hype hype hype

It's currently only available to people who helped back the album, but you'd better believe that I'm reviewing the hell out of this album when it releases.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

ScHoolboy Q - Collard Greens

Artist:  ScHoolboy Q feat. Kendrick Lamar
Genre:  Hip Hop
Language:  Strong

So here's a dude I only heard because I had a friend make me listen to his music.  Honestly I was a little resentful at first but I'm now really glad they showed him to me.

Q does this really cool thing where his rap flow kinda goes all over the place.  Not all over the place in a bad way, it's just different from what I expected from the usual music I get sent from that person.  That being some hella hood music.  This is a much high quality thing than that stuff.

Also if you watch the the video you can see that Macklemore and Obama are both in it.  Kinda cool.

<
Follow Me On Facebook

Beatallica - Hella Day For Holiday

Band:  Beatallica
Genre:  Holiday, Parody
Language:  Maybe?  It's hard to understand.

Beatallica is a bit of a special thing.  Realistically there's a very low chance of something like a Beatles / Metallica band to work out, but these guys manage to make it work out really well.  The weird blend the get going on is rather beautiful and even though their newer album we a little Metallica heavy it's all good.  Mostly because the singer Jaymz manages to do a knockout impression of old school James Hetfield vocals.

But this is a Christmas album and shall be treated with the same indifference that most Christmas albums from non-Christmas bands should be treated with.  Contempt.  Not really, but it's a basic fact that most Christmas albums are of lower quality than regular stuff.

This is funny though, so I suppose I can get over my prejudice.

<
Follow Me On Facebook