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”
I’m rushing this one out because I’m about to leave for vacation and just want to shut the world out. So I went over to Apple Music and saw they had a “Station For You”. Station for me? AI algorithms it is. Let’s see what the machine powers think I want to hear at 3:30am because I can’t sleep due to crippling anxiety over every minute detail of getting to the airport, getting through security, getting on the plane, getting to my designation, getting through Customs and finding a way to my hotel. Maybe I’ll edit this later once I’m in a saner frame of mind…
Continue reading “(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 45: I Am Your AI DJ…”
Who would have thought out of all the music out there, it would be that idiot Trumper Blackie Lawless who would catch my attention and help distract me from what increasingly feels like an oncoming global storm? In related news, W.A.S.P. were kind of amazing, huh? I know everyone gives love to the debut, but I’m really drawn to The Headless Children and The Crimson Idol. This week’s playlist has some of that, some newer metal that came in the post, and a bunch of stuff in between. Have at it below the jump.
Continue reading “(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 39: The One With W.A.S.P. and Auriferous Flame”
Make no bones about it. Heritage, the 10th “observation” from Sweden’s premier progressive death metal titans Opeth was the album they needed to make. Tired of trotting out the same (though unique to them) twisted melodic progressive death featuring incredible syncopation, lush keyboards and solos, and Mikael Åkerfeldt’s sublime death growls, the band needed to change gears to survive. So yes: there’s no arguing that this album needed to be made, and based on the – in my opinion – progressively more progressive and exploratory albums that followed Heritage absolutely succeeded in reinvigorating the band, whether you like the change in direction or not. Does that mean I actually like Heritage, though? On the occasion of the recent reissue of the album on vinyl I decided to wade back into the waters and see what I could find for myself.
Continue reading “Opeth: Heritage (2011)”
Finally. As of this morning you can listen to my buddy Dan and I wax rhapsodic about our favorite non-metal albums of 2024 wherever you get your podcasts, which means it’s time to finally get down to bees-niss and sum up the year in new music. I already recapped most of the metal selections in my various (Un)Focused Definition playlists, and of course you can hit the “best of 2024” tag to read the reviews for many of them regardless of genre. We’ll use a lot of same categories I used back in 2021, and add a few more to talk about the stuff that wasn’t completely reviewed here on the site. Let’s get to it below the jump.
Continue reading “Consuming in 2024: My Favorite Music”
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.
Consuming the Tangible 