Wanted to do something different today. It’s my birthday, and I already built a playlist last week celebrating a bunch of great music that came out during the year of my birth. But the music of 1973 isn’t what made me into who I am now – that’s an ever-growing, ever-evolving store of musical moments and memories. And so I wanted to make another playlist, of the songs that inspired me, moved, me, marked significant moments of my life.
Continue reading “52 Reasons Why”
Last First playlist of the year is all metal. On Thursday Friday I released my Nine Circles Honorable Mentions Best Of List, and it’s a beast: 25 albums that moved and rocked me in some way. So similar to last week’s (Un)Focused Definition this is going to focus on those albums with the final, “official” best of metal list coming in the first year of January, and then my “all-in” playlist accompanying the year-end round up post here, sometime in mid-January. Okay, enough strikethroughs: even though we all know the tune by now about rankings as I listened back to this year’s playlist I was really, really happy. I love these albums. We’re already back to the 70s and prog/rock in the main albums reviews, but for one more week, let’s get heavy. Grab that denim vest, don those spikes, and let’s listen to some killer metal that came out in 2024.
With the end of the year looming I want to start getting some of my favorite albums of 2024 posted. The problem? Some of my favorite albums, particularly in metal, are over at Nine Circles where I somehow have managed to stay writing since 2016. The solution? Get a post listing, linking, and highlighting some of those reviews over here at Consuming the Tangible. I won’t tell you where these albums rank on my list (you’ll have to check 9C in late December for that), and the plan is in early January to do a round of all my favorite music for the year in a manner similar to what I did back in 2021.
With that, let’s dig into some great metal.
Continue reading “Consuming Metal in 2024: The Nine Circles Reviews”
We’re almost done, folks.
I have four films left in the Hooptober Horror marathon so the plan (well, hope really) is that next week is it, and after that we’re back to music reviews here on the site. I reviewed the new Oranssi Pazuzu over at Nine Circles and man, it was a refreshing change of pace (oh, the album kicks ass, too). That got me in the frame of mind to do a black metal playlist. I have one set up on my Apple Music account called, ahem…Corpsepaint. Obvious, I know, but it gets the point across. You’d be surprised at how good something supposedly shitty sounding on purpose can sound on vinyl, so this playlist is going to focus on those albums I have in my physical collection that are blackened to their very core.
Off to the playlist.
Continue reading “(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 19: Corpsepaint (Black Metal)”
Not gonna lie: I enjoyed the stroll through 2024’s big hitters. And I have my attention being torn in a myriad of directions, having to get the Nine Circles playlist ready, the next post in Cinema Dual’s ongoing Kurosawa retrospective, a concert to attend Friday (I’m seeing Dweezil Zappa), and an extended weekend in the mountains to celebrate the last days of Summer. All of which is just my roundabout way of saying it’s time for another abbreviated post celebrating the music of 2024. This time we’re focusing on the heavier side of the spectrum, so expect the playlist this week to be loud, fast, and ferocious. Except when it’s slow, low, and meditative. Or progressive. This is why I love metal so much, you know?
Continue reading “(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 13: 2024, Bringing The Heavy (Another Slightly Past Mid-Year Review)”
I have no idea what I did, but somehow I screwed up my Apple Music. I was uploading some stuff I bought from Bandcamp (a bunch of albums from the Italian prog band Celeste)and now iCloud won’t update my library and on my desktop all the music I loaded from streaming is gone. It’s still there on my iPhone and iPad, so I know it’s just a syncing issue, but it’s frustrating all the same because I had a different theme in mind for this week’s (Un)Focused Definition playlist.
But since that fell through the cracks, we’re going to do a playlist featuring tracks from some (more) recent vinyl acquisitions. What can I say? I have a problem, and it’s an addiction I have no desire to knock. So let’s get into it, starting with a preview of the next review and series, shall we?
Continue reading “(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 4: This Is Why (Physical Media)”
Consuming the Tangible 