Band: Metallica
Song: Sad But True
Album: The Black Album (1991)
Genre: Metal
I'm not sure why, but this song's intro riff has been playing on a loop in my head for the entire evening. I've found this to be a good way to stop that, so here's an absolutely bomb Metallica song from one of their best albums.
This was one of the first Metal albums I ever bought, so hearing this is bringing back loads of memories, not gonna lie.
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Band: Bad Wolves
Song: Zombie (Cover)
Album: Disobey (2018)
Genre: Metal
I would put this cover in the same category of Disturbed's cover of Sound Of Silence, in the sense that both are very good. It's not quite as good as Disturbed's song, but that doesn't mean it can't be fantastic still, ya know? Don't let the Metal tag scare you off, this is a reasonably faithful to the original sounding cover, not in the band's traditional style.
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Artist: Mick Gordon
Song: Hellwalker
Album: Doom (Original Game Soundtrack, 2016)
Genre: Metal
There's a break at 2:08 that 's straight up what I love for in music, my goodness.
So Doom. I'm sure that anybody even six years older than me probably remembers when Doom first made a splash in the gaming scene. I was pretty oblivious back then as a literal 4 month old child, but that's to be expected. I did however get to be around when the newest one came out, and hoo boy was that a time.
People talking about how violent it was, and acting like Doom didn't have a precedence for that way back in the day. Man, it was a cool time. Also my gaming friends who bought the game (I haven't yet myself) that let me play so I could hear the bomb soundtrack it has.
I feel like Doom is the shooter that needs to exist. It's literally the mindless shooting game that movies and the media try to demonize. Personally, I love what it has going on. It has just as much story to it as you want it to (highlighted where you can literally punch the computer giving you exposition to move on quicker), and it's just you and your guns against the powers of hell. It's great honestly, there's no ambiguity about who the bad guys are since the opposition are crazy monsters that are still the OG designs from the 90s that are literal hell spawn.
But yeah, the soundtrack is straight fantastic. Take a listen at least for the break I mentioned, it's super cool.
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Band: Stone Sour
Song: Tired
Album: House Of Gold & Bones Part 1
Genre: Hard Rock, Metal
I'll be honest, I chose this song because it's 3:33 in the morning and I'm tired. I've been putting time into figuring out what an RSS feed is and working on podcast episodes, which has been keeping me up a little bit. It'll be great when it's finally done, but my goodness it's rough right now. So yeah, check out my website from time to time to see if we can manage to get this podcast off the ground, yeah? #SupportMe
It's a really good song though. It really highlights the Alice in Chains influence that members of Stone Sour have in their music. Like, that riff is straight up lifted from some AiC song, I know it. I love it though, seeing they're one of my favorite bands. Anything that mimics that flavor of grunge is cool with me.
You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, or even sponsor me on Patreon. No big, do whatever. But yeah, Twitter and Facebook are where I’m most active.
Band: Bride
Song: Psychedelic Super Jesus
Album: Snakes In The Playground
Genre: Metal
Now I already shared my original favorite Bride song, "Hell, No", so I've gotta pull one that I found myself at a later date.
Most of the music I'm sharing here is likely to be a Christian act, and Bride is no example. While I only learned this recently, this song is about how in the town Bride comes from everybody seems to think of Jesus as some 60s hippie guru. That's not really his though though, so Bride made a song about it. Kinda cool knowing the back story I suppose.
I just know these guys helped get me into Hair Metal, and basically are the reason I started listening really heavily to Iron Maiden for a few years.
You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, or even sponsor me on Patreon. No big, do whatever. But yeah, Twitter and Facebook are where I’m most active.
Band: Black Sabbath
Song: Supernaut
Album: Vol. 4 (2972)
Genre: Metal
As I promised, yesterday was the last day of Sabbath covers for a while. Doesn't mean I can't post a Sabbath original though, right? Here's the original of the one I posted yesterday for comparison.
Yeah, rather big fan of their old stuff. There was so much stuff they had going on that helped shape what I enjoyed about playing bass for years. There's still some stuff I apply in most of what I play to this day, and while I've only been playing for like, 8 years or so, it's enough time to change style doncha know.
This whole week has inspired me to try and pick up a song or two here. Maybe I'll try and record one, I'll keep ya updated.
Band: Bruce Dickinson & Godspeed
Song: Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath (cover)
Album: Nativity In Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath (1994)
Genre: Metal
Nativity In Black 1 and 2 were some of my favorite albums when I was first venturing into more of the Metal scene. I had latched onto Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath as my main favorite bands, and when my uncle gave me this album I was super pumped. The whole thing was filled with songs that were just amazing. The thing is though, I was only familiar with about 1/3 of the songs. This tribute album actually managed to introduce me to more of Sabbath's songs, which was a blast.
But yeah man, the whole album is amazing. The second is just as good if not better, but it's actually impossible to obtain most of the songs unfortunately.
Band: Ghost
Song: Monstrance Clock
Album: Infestissumam (2013)
Genre: Rock, Metal
Ghost is probably my favorite satan themed band. They've got that heavy aesthetic going on but they manage to keep it from being abrasive like a lot of Black Metal bands do. Well as someone who follows the band I was rather shocked to find that there was a massive upset in the power distribution of the band recently. By recently, I mean Friday evening, September 29th. I'm sitting at a wedding reception when I get a little alert from Google that there's a little news thing on Ghost. Assuming it's something like tour dates or maybe a new album announcement I was kinda excited so I opened it.
Imagine my surprise that the headline was talking about how the singer was dragged off stage in the middle of the last song by security.
Watch the video to see what all happened. Looks like it was something shot by a fan, so audio quality is a little iffy, but take the time. It's only like, 2 and a half minutes long.
So here we are at the clear biggest part of the night, and right in the middle of some heavy crown response Papa Emeritus III get's dragged right away. The band clears soon after and a new figure, revealed as Papa Emeritus Zero. I'm assuming this will open up some new "back story" with Ghost and the whole mythos they've been building up.
Papa Zero addresses the crown however, and speaks a phrase in Italian.
"The party is over, the middle age is now beginning"
That's the mostly translation of what Papa Zero said the other night. Every time they've replaced the singer in the past it's been because a new album is coming, so I'm rather pumped about this. To be fair, the old singer has never been dragged off the stage in such a public manner as this. I'm seeing this as the "punishment" from Papa Zero for the reveal of the actual identity of Papa III and the court issues that arose. Realistically the band will keep the same singer they've had the whole time, but now we get to have a new set of face paint, a new outfit, and a new number I've loved each reincarnation we've had so far, so here's hoping things go well this next cycle, yeah?
So yeah, sorry not sorry for the repeat song, have fun!
Band: Hatebreed
Song: Looking Down The Barrel Of Today
Album: The Concrete Confessional (2016)
Genre: Metal
Language: Strong
Something I hadn't anticipated doing was enjoying Hatebreed. There's not really a reason for me to not have checked them out, I guess I just assumed I wouldn't like them. Honestly that's weird too since I really loved Jamey Jasta's part in that one 5FDP song, the fact it took me this long to actually take time to listen to a lot of the band's songs is ridicules.
I probably said a lot of this stuff last time I posted them, so I'll drop a story I just learned about recently.
Hatebreed was classified by CNN a while ago as a white supremacist band. This is untrue, and the band and fans reacted rather poorly to the claim that they were racist. CNN apologized later and took them off the list they had made, but come on, you're an international news agency, do some research. They really don't do well with details though, as highlighted in their 2014 segment which talked about "the hacker known as 4chan".
Band: Trivium
Song: In Waves
Album: In Waves (2011)
Genre: Metal
I honestly thought I had posted Trivium at some point in the past, but apparently I keep forgetting to.
Here's my mildly low effort post of the day, the song that got me a couple weird looks after school on Friday cause apparently nobody picked up on the fact that I enjoyed Metal and such.
See, in real life I'm a relatively subdued person that is reasonably chill about most things. My usual black aesthetic doesn't really affect me there since our uniform is black, so the vaguely imposing vibe I've been cultivating for the last 2 years is kinda lost on them. Plus I wear long sleeves, so you don't see any of my kinda angry looking spiky tattoos. Shame.
Band: Stone Sour
Song: Sillyworld
Album: Come What(ever) May
Genre: Metal
Language: Mild
Act 4, one of the main headliners!
Honestly, I wasn't sure how I was gonna feel about this show. I know Corey is a pretty terrific showman from his work with Slipknot, but I didn't really know what to expect from a Stone Sour show.
Happily, I was not disappointed.
They played a couple of my favorite songs, they got people to sing along to the intro of Absolute Zero and in general had the second most hyped crowd of the night. Straight up fantastic.
When they got to the last song though is when things got really crazy. Corey did some talking then kicked into Fabuless. I want you to check out that video at least real quick and, if you don't want to watch, skip to the 1 minute point.
As soon as the song kicked in we got greeted with 5 of those waving dudes from used car dealerships. Here's a pic I took. Not too clear, but you can kinda see it.
Band: Wovenwar
Song: Matter Of Time
Album: Wovenwar
Genre: Metal
I feel like this is the best band to follow up after As I Lay Dying for a reasonably solid reason. The band is literally all of As I Lay Dying with the clean singer from O Sleeper.
After the whole "I wanna murder my wife" thing, As I Lay Dying is on hiatus essentially indefinitely. Tim has managed to burn bridges pretty heavily with the rest of the group, so they went off and made a new group. That group is Wovenwar.
Another band that my brother has tried to show me many times, Wovenwar is one of the most solid bands I've heard recently. I was pleasantly surprised at how good their music sounds. AILD isn't exactly the best sounding band, but WW has such solid guitar tones, I have no idea how it's the same musicians. But hey, nothing to be sad about there, we get a fantastic group out of it.
Band: Stone Sour
Album: Hydrograd
Genre: Metal
Release Date: June 30th, 2017
Well let's start out right off the bat here, Corey Taylor's voice sounds fantastic on this album. Quitting smoking has treated him incredibly well.
Also I still dislike the greaser they picked up as the new guitarist, Christian Martucci. Not just because he's a man who simultaneously looks like the singer from Theory Of A Deadman while also needing to let go of the 40s, but because I'm suspicious he had a hand in the butchery of the solo in their Creeping Death cover. I understand Josh Rand is a huge fan of Metallica and I really hope he isn't the one that gave me this absolutely trash solo that just felt like it was about hitting all the notes, regardless of if they were in key or not.
That being said, this album is actually really solid. While I enjoy the edge that Jim Root brought to the group, the difference between Slipknot and Stone Sour is a lot bigger now. It's been pretty prominent for a while, but the early albums had a couple songs that could have been traded back and forth easily enough, and House Of Gold & Bones had one or two as well.
Listening to this album I'm kinda picking up what Corey had been hyping it as. He was talking about how the album was "flat out Rock ‘n’ Roll in its best form", and I get that vibe from a lot of it. There's a very different feeling to this album than there was to any of the others. There's more songs that are low key, and there's less angry songs in general. I mean there's some really obvious examples of solid old school SS songs, but one the whole it's just more subdued than previous work.
While I did trash on their new guitarist for that Creeping Death solo, his work on this album is pure gold. I may not have liked a couple of the songs here and there, but I can't deny that the guitar work was amazing across the board. The band has really hit a solid groove with this album that I was worried they wouldn't hit again.
The Tracks:
After that intro track we hit Taipei Person/Allah Tea, and while it grooves in a different way than other Stone Sour tracks of the past I can't actually say that it's bad. It's a solid new step in their sound that actually is managing to get me excited about the band again; something I lost with the back to back cover albums.
The album starts out really strong in this way. It's clear that they put their songs that sound more typical to their sound closer to the beginning to make sure to draw you in and "trick" you into liking the rest of the album. Let's be real, fans are brutal when it comes to bands "having the nerve" to change their traditional sound. I mean heck, the intro riff to the song Hydrograd even sounds similar to Absolute Zero for a second to help make that bridge feel stronger. Not for long, but that initial walk is there for sure.
Song #3, which is actually the 5th song on the album is one I don't like as much. I heard it as one of the singles released for the album a while ago and I gotta be honest, in my mind it sealed Stone Sour's doom to the radio rock folder of music, and that made me really sad. Listening to it in the context of the rest of the album I know it was definitely made to be one of the radio singles, but happily, it doesn't reflect the rest of the album as a whole.
Fabuless is a very classic sound for sure. I feel like it's a really good song to have put after Song #3 to make sure they don't lose people who are listening through the album. The harmonies and song structure are incredibly reminiscent of House of Gold & Bones 1 & 2. Outside of lyrical differences I could see them getting put in as one of the tracks there.
Don't get your nostalgia hats on too quick though, cause we switch back to the newer sound in The Witness Trees. It's not the radio feel of #3, but it's not as typical a Stone Sour song as say, track 3, Knievil Has Landed.
Rose Red Violent Blue (This Song Is Dumb & So Am I). What a title. Dude. The song is ok, but also another one that's solid for radio, but not much else in my opinion. I find it's musical theme to be a little all over the place.
Thank God It's Over is a good one though. It's a rather straightforward tune, but not like, in a bad way. It feels like a placeholder that's supposed to sit toward the end of the album and, go figure, that's where it sits. For what it is, it's a good song.
St. Marie on the other hand is... Acoustic. Not in a good way like Bother, some of the crappy songs on Come What(ever) May, or anything like that. It's like, a country song. Corey's voice fits it well, but I feel like the song has no place on the album. It could be a bonus track on some special edition, or like, just a song Corey plays on his book tours, just not here.
Mercy grants us it's aptly named mercy in getting us far away from the track that shouldn't be here. It has that heavy bass line groove that Stone Sour uses so well and even though I'm not a huge fan of the flow of the vocals in this song it fits in with the new album's tone very well.
Whiplash Pants worried me at first with how low it starts out, but it manages to pull back into their classic heavy sound again. It highlights something I'm really not sure of for the album though, so many of the songs have an into that I feel doesn't really fit the rest of the song. I'm fine with contrasting intros, but there's just so many of them on this album.
That scratchy raspy lead tone on Friday Knights is dope though. The verse pulls back down again to the clean sound, but while the song is up it holds it's own as one of my favorite tracks on the album.
Somebody Stole My Eyes is probably the angriest song on the album. Check out the into up till about the 30 second point. It's all go go go but then Corey says the word "stop" and it feels like the song just takes a breath. It's so slick, just a solid piece of work in general.
When The Fever Broke is the last track and SS decides to leave you on a sad note. The track is a little ethereal with a haunting guitar lead that kinda floats through it. It's a really bold move to end on that I'm glad they did. For people like me that went into the album expecting to hate it the song helps end me on a song that's a heavier dose of the new than the old, bringing the whole experience together. The structure of the album just feels like it was leading to this point, and then it rounds off really well.
As far as angry songs go, all we really have on the album are Fabuless, Whiplash Pants, and Somebody Stole My Eyes. Heck, they aren't even angry the whole way through like their old school angry tunes. That's not bad since the first album was probably the only album they released that was all hard, but it's the sound I associate with them a lot.
The Wrap-up:
Long story short, I suppose if you're looking for "old" Stone Sour, you're probably gonna be disappointed. It's not like their old stuff, this is a new face for the group. I'm not mad though, I think this is a solid direction for them. While I'll miss the brutal material of the first album, the edge of the concept albums, and the sheer enjoyability of Come What(ever) May, I think this is the right path for these guys to take. It makes sense with how Corey is getting older that he wouldn't try to keep up with 2 really intense bands at once, and if he's gonna calm down somewhere it would be here. And the most important part of that is that they didn't totally sell out to do it.
There's a few tracks I wouldn't have put on here, but as a new path for the band I guess I'm not really mad about it. It's a package deal and, when it comes down to it, it's not all bad. I don't even think I really missed Jim Root by the end of the album, it all worked together really well.
It's a solid album that's worth a listen, so go ahead and give it an hour of your time.
Unrelated to this song at all, I'm helping host a small music event tonight and I'm rather pumped about it. Managed to book 4 acts for it. I had hoped for a couple more, but this'll do fine I suppose. They're all really solid people, so it'll be a good time for sure.
Aight, so this song.
Turns out this is one of the new singles W13 put out for their new album. I heard it in some concert promo video they put out a little bit ago and fell in love with that discordant guitar line in the intro and chorus stuff. So freaking good. It's an effect that can go wrong really easily and I'm glad that these guys managed to pull it off well here.
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