A to Z 2k18: Reflections as a daily blog

As any of you who have followed me for more than the last month will know, I'm a daily blog.  You might have picked up from the fact that this blog is called "Song A Day", but I can totally understand if you would assume I don't actually post daily.

As with years past, my greatest challenge was simply visiting other people's stuff.  I had 3 blogs I read every post of this year (which is about 3 blogs more than last year), but other than them I was super bad about making sure to check out other people.  I also was still bad at commenting, so apologies if I visited and almost never commented, I promise I probably liked your stuff.

I suppose the biggest issue with that is that I always come into this challenge hoping to find somebody else who talks about music.  There's not as many music bloggers here since you all are mostly writers, but as in the past, I have found that's not too big an issue.  I also feel a lot better about my posts, since I'm a better writer than I was a few years back.  I've also mostly managed to blend my tastes and more publicly enjoyed music for the posts, so I'm sure that helped.

That's a biggie too, this year I managed to post a few more Metal tracks that actually went over well!  I did a quick look through years past, and I discovered that this is one of the best years I've had for conversations too!  It's just been a great time all around.  Even though we had a lot less people signing up than in the past it still was a good year for people like me who just had quick entertainment pieces.

Shoutout to my fellow song blog I found run by Lauren Mayhew too.  She had the bomb idea of posting her top iPod song plays, which was just a blast to follow.  I'd never heard of The Wanted or McFly before April, but you'd better believe I heard about them by the end of it, haha

I liked the individual sheets for posts too, that's not a bad addition at all.  Honestly I loved the Google Forms signup too, it was a really good play that helped fix the issues that arose last year.  And the categories?  Good options there.  Took me a second to see what I qualified under cause "Entertainment" is a pretty broad category, but that's alright.  I loved being able to sort people by categories that worked much easier than years past.  It kinda helped me find some people that were more in the same vein of posting as I was.

A good year, all things considered.  Hope some of y'all will swing by as the year goes on to check out what I have going on.  The music selection is generally a bit out there, but I enjoy it, and since this is mostly a passion project that's what really counts.  See you guys next time, enjoy the song.

Band:  Dire Straits feat. Sting
Song:  Money For Nothin
Album:  Brothers In Arms (1985)
Genre:  Classic Rock

Song wise today we're kicking off a nostalgia trip of the first music I got loaded onto my iPod by a friend of mine.  We're gonna walk through the mess of me realizing I liked Metal music with a slew of Hardcore, , Hard Rock, and way more.  I'm pumped about this, so I hope y'all enjoy it too!  We'll start it out with Dire Straits, who's guitar riff in Money For Nothing made me realize that's what I was after in music.

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A to Z 2k18: Z is for Zebrahead

Band:  Zebrahead
Song:  Anthem
Album:  Broadcast To The World (2006)
Genre:  Punk
Language:  Brief

Boom, we made it y'all, the final day of the A to Z.  I'm rather pleased we made it this far.  I had no clue it would be so much harder this year to manage to find a few of these letters.  As per my usual trends, most of these posts were written a day in advance, so if I hadn't picked out a band for a letter (like today for example), it was a mad scramble at 9pm to make sure I got a post done before midnight.  Ha, I tell ya, absolutely bonkers.

In my mad scramble while writing this I found this punk band called Zebrahead.  They're actually kinda catchy, a little bit of Ska action going down in here.  All in all a good time, yeah?  I'm always down for a new punk band, so this is kinda cool.

It was cool seeing everybody that swung by this year, see y'all again at the reflections post!

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A to Z Runner Up: Wednesday 13

Band:  Wednesday 13
Song:  Cadaverous
Album:  Condolences (2017)
Genre:  Horror Punk

I was so close to putting Wednesday 13 as the post for W, but I opted to have him slot in on Sunday instead.  Ironically, both bands have heavy dark themes too, so that's kinda funny.

I first came across this dude on the recommendation of a friend of mine.  She told me to check out his song "I Walked With A Zombie", but I was on my religious music thing at the time and didn't want to listen to him cause I thought he was satanist.  That, in hindsight, was dumb.

After I chilled out a little bit I found him again via Murderdolls, as he was the vocalist.  They have broken up though, so if you want to get your Wednesday 13 kick live you're gonna have to catch his solo show.

He's got some super fun music though, so take the time to listen.  At least listen to Blood Sick, it's a straight up amazing song.

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A to Z 2k18: Y is for Yggdrasil

Band:  Yggdrasil
Song:  Valkyria
Album:  Vedergällning (2009)
Genre:  Folk Metal

Shoutout to Jeff for coming in clutch with another obscure metal band, amirite?  Apologies to those of you who don't enjoy the harsh vocals, this brings that sound in pretty hard.  After all though, the sidebar does say Rap and Metal are my main draws, so let's dive right in.

First a fun fact, Yggdrasil is the name of the tree of life in Norse mythology.  It was an immense ash tree tat held the 9 realms in it's branches.

I've found through the last few years that I've actually paid attention to any form of Folk Metal, that I actually like it a lot.  There's some bands like Eluveitie (please listen) that rock out the traditional instrument front, and then there's guys like Yggdrasil that go more in the Metal path.  I like it though, there's a blackened undertone that you don't usually find in this music.  There's a lot of Black Metal undertone here throughout the album, so if that's your scene it's straight gold.

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A to Z 2k18: X is for X

Band:  X
Song:  Poor Girl
Album:  More Fun In The New World (1983)
Genre:  Punk Rock

I'll be honest, I've always had this hope that I could find a band for the hard to hit letters that legitimately just is a letter for their name.  Like, the feeling I had when I found this band is similar to when I found out that Xzibit had a song called "X" that I could share here.

And these guys are fun music too.  There's some classic non-political Punk sounds here that are kinda refreshing compared to some of the music I've been sharing recently.

Their general sound is pretty solid honestly, I'd advise you check out some more of it if this is a song you enjoyed at all.  Only 2 days left!  Let's rock out the last of the A to Z here.

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A to Z 2k18: W is for Woods Of Ypres

Band:  Woods Of Ypres
Song:  Career Suicide (Is Not Real Suicide)
Album:  Woods 5:  Grey Skies and Electric Light
Genre:  Doom Metal

I decided to trot out Woods Of Ypres a little sooner than my usual 30 day limit between reposting a band because, well, I just love them so much.  (Actually I guess it's exactly past 30 days, but I only realized that just now.)

Woods 5 is a heavy album.  The last two songs describe (as many of them do) a depressed man, but more importantly the final track talks about a car crash.  Just before the album was released, the singer died of a car crash uncannily reminiscent to the one that had been sung about.  It made a lot of people wonder if he had planned it, or if it was just a terrible accident.

I don't want to post on of those songs though.  I feel like every time I've posted Woods Of Ypres it's been their mellow or super depressing songs.  Now while I'm straight up in love with Suicide Cargoload (best lyrical description of depression I've heard yet), they have some great songs that plod and grind a lot less.

There's honestly so much to love about this song, it's whole message is go and live your dream.  Most people would say it's career suicide to quit your job and do your band full time, but these guys are reminding you not to let life pass you by without taking a chance on yourself.  It's one of the reasons I love these guys.  Also the huge morose attitude.  That's good for me too.

There's little to no screaming here, so I hope you all can find something to appreciate in this.

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A to Z 2k18: V is for Velvet Acid Christ

Band:  Velvet Acid Christ
Song:  Lysergia
Album:  Twisted Thought Generator (2000)
Genre:  Electro-Industrial
Language:  Strong

Have you ever wanted to experience the music of Europe's club underground?  Me neither, but I have found it falling into my lap anyway for the post we have for V.

Until today (the date of writing, 4.24.18), I had never heard of these guys.  I was mildly scrambling (again) for a band to fill a space because while I had planned out the beginning of this fairly well, I did kinda leave this last week up to the wind.

So Velvet Acid Christ.  I'm picking up some heavy Nine Inch Nails vibes, but what I'm reading on their Wiki page is their main pull seemed to be a lot of the Goth bands of the 90s..  You can really hear that too, with all the lyrics for the most part being angrily whispered.  The music has some of the NIN sound I'm thinking of though.  All in all this is some creepy haunted sounding club music you'd be hearing in some choppily shot scene from a 90s or early 2000s low budget movie.  Like a horror film or a dark action movie.  In fact I wouldn't be surprised if when I went through my cheap action movie phase I heard these guys.  Like something I would have heard in The Watcher or something.  Looking into it they weren't featured, but way too much Rob Zombie was.

So yeah.  I don't know that I'd ever find myself in a mood to listen to Velvet Acid Christ, but they are a band I'm kinda glad to be familiar with.

Here's a link for anybody that YouTube's auto generated video won't play for.

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A to Z 2k18: T is for Those Poor Bastards

Band:  Those Poor Bastards
Song:  Old Pine Box
Album:  The Plague (2008)
Genre:  Gothic Country
Language:  Brief

If you don't enjoy Those Poor Bastards at least a little bit, I'm legitimately concerned for you.  This band (at least their older material) is some of my favorite music I've had the fortune of being shown.

I'm personally not a fan of Country music on the whole.  There's some artists I enjoy, but all in all it's just not stuff that I like.  Those Poor Bastards bringing in Gothic Country though, that's some really cool stuff.  It's the lo-fi sound I'm really into though.  There's some really twangy stuff they've put out that I'm not as in love with.

Now their album Satan Is Watching is hands down their best material in my mind, but The Plague is in a similar vein, so it's not too bad either when it comes down to it.

Old Pine Box is just solid, it's got a super haunted sound going on and those lo-fi drums with too much reverb are to die for.

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A to Z Runner Up: Sounds Like Chicken

Band:  Sounds Like Chicken
Song:  El Chupanebre
Album:  Like A Cannonball To The Ocean Floor (2005)
Genre:  Ska

Hey hey, it's that really hard to find Ska band I mentioned the other day on that Operation Ivy post!

So first things first, you can get their music for free since it's now all under creative commons licensing.  For real, no strings attached, here's some great music for free.  I hope you love it.

I've got a lot of good memories connected to these guys, and for some reason a very specific memory of a drive to a family vacation.  Good times y'all.

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A to Z 2k18: S is for September Mourning

Band:  September Mourning
Song:  Eye Of The Storm
Album:  Volume II (2016)
Genre  Hard Rock

Fun fact, I actually wrote this post back in November when I accidentally clicked on a wiki hyperlink that took me to this band.  I was looking up info on Avatar for the first post I made on them and when I was about to close the tab I hit the link to this band in their description.  Good choice though, since that's what helped lock the whole theme we're most of the way through in for the month.  Gotta love random inspiration, yeah?

So hands down the best thing about this band is that they have a female singer that's actually good.  I am so incredibly picky when it comes to female fronted rock acts and September Mourning knocks it out of the park.  I suppose I am also influenced by the fact that these guys are operating with some heavy theme action.  Love a band with a theme.

The gist of the theme is that the vocalist is a hybrid Grim Reaper and human named September.  She goes through the world of the living and the dead with her human side giving her the sense of empathy to give certain human souls a second chance.  (no, I totally didn't just slightly reword the wiki outline, what are you talking about.)

Turns out the band has a whole line of comics that follow along the story as well.  I'm super freaking pleased about finding them to be honest.  You never know what kind of weird music you can find if you look hard enough, ya know?  And this stuff is even pretty radio friendly, so who knows, you might be hearing them all over soon.  Heck, it'll have been almost 6 months from the writing of this post, they may have blown up by now too.

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