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.

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.

Twitter  Facebook  Reddit  Patreon

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.

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.

Twitter  Facebook  Reddit  Patreon

A to Z Runner Up: Fractionally Human

Band:  Fractionally Human
Song:  Intro
Album:  Intro (single, 2018)
Genre:  Grindcore, Deathcore

You know what's a good band to promo for you all?  My band!  Sure it wasn't actually my original intent for a runner up, but we just wrote this song and I'm happy about it.

I feel like we're a great runner up option, case we just put out our first song in months, so that's a rather big deal.  Mostly I'm just super proud of it though.

We don't try to make perfect music.  We used to try, and we found it just wasn't as fun.  Sitting there, mixing tracks to make them perfect, it was just weird.  Nothing ever sounded like exactly what we wanted, with the notable exception of out cover of Sabotage in 2015.  Pure gold there, it's exactly what we wanted.

This one though, where do I start.  We've had this idea for an album all about a hungry walrus since like, 2014.  It was just gonna be a funny joke thing, ya know?  Well then we lost all the lyrics except for what we had recorded with Orca, thus prompting a new lyrical direction.  We opted to go with the walrus being a total narcissist.

This song had instruments recorded back in December.  We were so pumped to have music flowing after we did Oh The Places You'll Die in the same year.  We're rather slow song... recorders.  But after we recorded the guitars for this song my brother's computer had a glitch with the sound card.  It took him months to get it working again, which lead us to April 9th.  We both had the night off, and all we had to do was get me to lay down vocals.  It was a perfect evening basically.  We knocked out the rest of the song and finished it up on the 10th.  I'm super happy with the steaming pile of garbage that it is, so I hope you can enjoy it as well.



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.

Twitter  Facebook  Reddit  Patreon

A to Z Runner Up: Bravura

Band:  Bravura
Song:  Burst
Album:  Battle Of The Suns (2017)
Genre:  Blackened Death Metal

Welcome to the first runner up on the 2018 A to Z!

First thing I have to address, I love this album cover.  It's just so good, I can't see how anybody would dislike it (as a Metal album at least).  Secondly, I can't pass these dudes up, cause I happen to know the singer.  My dude Steve is fantastic at what he does, which among other things is screaming in such a way that I'm sure he's gonna blow out his voice, but he doesn't.  Like, seriously.  I don't know how he does it, but he's got a psychotic rasp to his voice that just pains me every time I've tried to replicate it.

Then the music.  Bravura is a band that's just filled with incredibly talented musicians.  It's absurd really, since Erie is filled with a lot of kinda sloppy Hardcore bands I don't always remember that a lot of really technical musicians around here.  Bravura managed to snag 5 of them though, and it really comes to light with their music.  They put on a great live show too.  They had one just last night that I unfortunately missed, but they were playing their music while a horror movie played on a screen behind them.  Now that's pretty nifty if you ask 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.

Twitter  Facebook  Reddit  Patreon

A to Z 2K17 Runner Up: S is for Septicflesh

Artist:  Septicflesh
Song:  Communion
Album:  Communion
Genre:  Symphonic Death Metal

Before Septicflesh became the titan of the Symphonic Death Metal community they are today, they were a rather disappointing Blackened Death Metal group.  When I say disappointing I really mean that.  It wasn't fantastic music, and while I know a lot of people would write off most Metal acts as just trash anyway this was honestly not great.  From 1990 to 2003 they had a sort of cult following, but that was about it.

After a 4 year split however they came back with a huge powerhouse album, Communion.

Communion was a huge change in their sound, not only because they got good, but because it seemed to create a sound for them to unify behind.  They didn't have an orchestra back in the 90s to play with, so when they started incorporating in in Communion (the album and the song), it was a rather big change.

While this album isn't the symphonic masterpiece that The Great Mass is, it isn't a bad album by any means.

Hope you enjoy it, see you with T tomorrow.

Follow me on Facebook        Support me on Patreon

A to Z 2K17 Runner Up: Megadeth

Band:  Megadeth
Song:  Tornado Of Souls
Album:  Countdown To Extinction
Genre:  Thrash Metal, Technical Metal

A close second to my final decision for "M", Megadeth is a rather good band.

There's of course the whole "Dave Mustaine was kicked out of Metallica" situation, but we aren't going to really talk about that today.  There's plenty of people who are more informed of the situation that can do that.  We're going to talk about the fact that Mustaine plays a freaking awesome rhythm guitar.

Seriously, it's like he did it to just get back at the Metallica guys.  He plays a freaking awesomely complicated rhythm guitar that puts a lot of people so shame.  His riffs are freaking solid and just make me happy.

This isn't really the best example of that I guess, but just know that 90% of the background guitar is the singer.  That's all you need to know to be at least a little impressed.

Follow me on Facebook        Support me on Patreon

A to Z 2K17 Runner Up: Bride

Band:  Bride
Song:  Hell No
Album:  Live To Die
Genre:  Heavy Metal, Glam Metal

You know how 80s Metal was kinda its own thing that stayed to itself for the most part?  Well there was a Christian subgenre of that as well, and it was terribly wonderful.

While a lot of people are familiar with Stryper and Petra (considered Metal by some uninformed people I know), not as many knew about Bride.  In fact I only know of a couple people who are familiar with them.

They are good though if that's the kind of music you like.  As far as the good old Hair Metal sound goes you don't have too look to hard to find that 90% of the bands are straight trash.  Just don't even bother.  But these guys were a good time, and most of their albums were pretty nice too.

Follow me on Facebook        Support me on Patreon

A to Z 2K17 Runner Up: Alice In Chains

Band:  Alice In Chains
Song:  Sludge Factory
Album:  Alice In Chains
Genre:  Grunge

As any regular readers will know, I post every single day, like, forever.  It will never end until the day I die.

Ok, that's a little depressing.  But not as depressing as this song!

Songs about drug addiction are never a happy subject, and songs about heroin are even less so.  But hey, Layne Staley wrote about what he did, right?  While he was a fantastic vocalist, he did have his problems.

Apologies for the short post, I'm a little tired today because I delayed writing this till the night before.

See you guys for the letter B tomorrow!

Follow me on Facebook        Support me on Patreon

A to Z Challenge: Runner Up: Ghost B.C.

Band:  Ghost B.C. (Ghost)
Genre:  Metal

Did you ever watch Lawrence Welk on tv?  The Polka King of the Midwest?

I don't suppose you ever wondered what it would look like if they had taken a Metal band a put them up there, did you?

Well you're in luck, because this is exactly what it would have looked like.

Ghost is an absolutely wonderful band, really.  They've got the whole costumed thing down even better that guys like Slipknot and the like because they live this too.  They have elaborate personas that they take up when they are in costume that it's honestly impressive to think their families don't know who they are for the most part.

For real, they keep the fact that they do this secret from friends and extended family.  That's what I call devotion.

A to Z Challenge: Runner Up week 2! Die Antwoord

Band:  Die Antwoord
Genre:  Rap Rave
Language:  Strong

I heavily regret not having these guys be the official post for D.  I don't know why I thought it would be better to have Dream Theater there considering these guys are much more...  unique.

Bygones be bygones and all that.

Die Antwoord is a South African group that I can only describe as artists.

Their lifestyle is a tribute to their music and vise versa.  They take what they do very seriously while simultaneously not taking it very seriously at all.  The style they have is called Zef.  Basically if you're Zef that means you don't really care about what other people think and such, you just care about being you.

Actually if you saw the movie Chappie then you'll have seen them.  They're featured quite heavily in it as I recently found out.  Like, literally two days ago I found this out.  I haven't seen the movie yet, but I really want to now, ya know?

Anyway, their music is clutch.  They've got this crazy dance club vibe going that just screams "I did way too many drugs", but it's also really cool.  You can tell that they really don't care how you feel about theirs stuff while managing to put out a quality product.

This is a weird video, but all their other videos are rather weird as well, so take what you will.  I love their stuff, so if you trust my opinion there's that, right?  Without further ado, please enjoy a video about when art videos run into music videos at like, 100mph.

A to Z Challenge: Runner up week 1! Alestorm

Band:  Alestorm
Genre:  Pirate Metal

So as a daily blog I'm not going to take today off like most all of the other blogs are gonna do.  Instead I'm gonna run a runner up on Sunday since there's not really any extra letters to slip in, ya know?

Alestorm.  Pirate Metal band.  They sing about booze.

The thing that's really cool about these guys is the way they get into everything.  They have a rather good sense of humor about things, dress like pirates, sing about booze and pirate things, and are all in all a good band on top of that.

Honestly the main reason these guys got runner up here is because I don't have too much to say about them, ya know?

To all my A to Z peeps, have a good day off, see ya tomorrow.