Spacemen 3 - Playing With Fire

I like this band a whole lot. Sometimes they played like a dreamy drug trip of marijuana leaves, and and sometimes they crushed you with blocks of distortion. On The Perfect Prescription, there were many slow, druggy moments with awesome sissy guitar tone and amateurish blues scale climbing ("Ode To Street Hassle," "Call The Doctor," you know what I'm saying), in addition to ballsy rockers ("Things Will Never Be The Same," "Take Me To The Other Side," "Dope Nose.") They took you on a magical journey through the highs and lows of a psychedelic drug trip party fiesta.

Thing was, see, that shit like "Walkin' With Jesus" and "Come Down Easy" were the poppiest flippin' things the Spacemen Threes ever pulled out of their (FUCKING GODLY) asses! Even the nine minute Red Krayola cover is catchier than Gilbert Gottfried's guest appearance on Muppets Tonight.

Playing With Fire, on the other hand, is a completely different story. See, Prescription presented the perfect balance between Jason Pierce's dreams of holy negro gospel, and Sonic Boom's dreams for a noisy, psychedelicious future. Here, that balance is being disturbed greatly! The noisy moments ("Revolution," "Suicide") are REALLY NOISY and REALLY LONG (well, "Revolution" is only five or six minutes, but that's fairly epic in today's world of Short Music For Short People featuring NOFX, Less Than Jake, Mad Caddies, Lagwagon, and 97 more of your favorite punk rock revolutionaries), and Jason's lordy Jesus jams ("Come Down Softly To My Soul," "Lord Can You Hear Me?," "So Hot (Wash Away All of My Tears") are nowhere near as catchy as "Walkin' With Jesus." And that's to say nothing of Sonic Boom's not-very-noisy-but-still-really-minimal-and-droney quiet numbers.

The dudes were really starting to separate at this point, so you get all of your favorite aspects of Spacemen 3 taken to their absolute extremes. You might think that this is the most balanced Spacemen 3 album because of that, but you're obviously wrong. Here, you can clearly see where each guy is coming from musically, whereas on the one before this one, they're really working together to bring the psychedelic good times. So that one was more song-based, whereas this one is a more minimal, dronier affair. I guess. It's still pretty good, but at heart, I'm a song guy. As much as I enjoy "How Does It Feel?" and "I Believe It," they really don't do it for me the way "Transparent Radiation" and "Walkin' With Jesus" do. It's like why I prefer Goat to Liar; the latter may be the best representation of what the Jesus Lizard was all about, but the former is simply the best set of songs they ever managed to put together. Same goes for The Perfect Prescription and Playing With The Arcade Fire. In that order, too.

Rating: Do like noise, doom metal, microhouse, and krautrock? If you answered "yes" to the question, then you've probably already heard this album! So suck me off. Do you like indie rock and post-punk and 60s summer of love psychedelic boner jams? Then get Perfect Prescription immediately. Maybe hold off on this one. If you're into the dronier side of music, then you need Playing With Fire in your collection. If you're not quite there yet, then get the other one. Great band!

Song: "Revolution"... it's a shit!

Flipper - Generic

Let me tell you about this band Flipper. They were around in the 80s along with Hanoi Rocks and "Teen Wolf." They had a big 'ol bass-o distorto! They also had awesome, loud drums. Then the guitarist just kind of made noise. Also, there was a singer sometimes, and he yelled shit. The result was outstanding.

Along with Fall Out Boy's Hex Enduction Hour, this is definitely the greatest "on the verge of completely falling apart at any second" album ever. This is some cacophonous shit! Let me tell you, though, this is just the most life affirming shit ever. The lyrics on this album... this shit just tears me up. "I TOO HAVE SUNG DEATH'S PRAISES. BUT I'M NOT GONNA SING THAT SONG ANYMORE BECAUSE I HAVE FOUND OUT WHAT LIVING IS ALL ABOUT, IT'S LIFE! LIFE! LIFE IS THE ONLY THING WORTH LIVING FOR!" These fellas showed the world how they felt by being as noisy as possible, and it's just so fucking beautiful. Seriously, it might sound like a bunch of god-awful, chaotic instrument assaulting poop, but it's just so much more than that! This is some fucking powerful stuff. Wow.

"SHED NO TEARS FOR THE COP BLEEDING! HE ONCE HELD THE GUN! HE ONCE HELD THE KEY! NOW HIS PRISONERS WILL SING AND DANCE AND PLAY! NO TEARS WASTED, NO SORROW, NO PITY! NO! NO CRYING NO LOSS!"

Fuck. The singer really isn't singing in rhythm with the music at all, and he's barely singing in the way that one might define the act of "singing." But he's doing it because he cares. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Fun House and the Jesus Lizard fucking rule my dicks off, but they are just kickassingly abrasive in every way imaginable. This is a whole other sort of beast. Flipper was so real. The kids don't appreciate music like this. If they had been there, they would have understood.

Rating: Ridiculously high.

Song: "Life"

XTC - Skylarking


XTC, which is pronounced the same way as the popular drug, heroin. Were a bunch of drugged out british guys who wanted to record a very good album! and they succeeded! hurray! Everyone climb on top of my penis and gorge yourself on it!

You will have to excuse myself for my absence in the web reviewing scene, I have been busy fucking Jennifer Aniston.

Anyway, this album is full of uh, Orch pop I guess? The guy who sings it sounds like your gay art teacher from middle school but after eating four white castle sliders, and trying to poop them out at gunpoint. I like the vocals very much.

Most of the songs on this album are talking about eating members of The Smiths, I just took some pills and am having dificulty concentrating on the music. The second track is about smoking grass, I don't know what else to say about this album. The guitars are visceral! Actually, there are barely any guitars on this album. It's basically Sufjan Stevens if he was in a prog rock band. This album has more in common with Rush or King Crimson than it does The Beatles. The rest of the songs on here talk about killing Tony Danza.



I fucking hate Tony Danza.


Rating: 10/10, recommended for the entire family, or at least the gay ones, basically no straight person could like this album which is why i had to cut my penis off in order to review it. One of the gayest albums of the 21st century.

Song: XTC - Grass

Tenacious D - The Pick of Destiny

I don't know about you, but I think that Tenacious D is pretty fucking funny. For one thing, both of the guys are fat and middle-aged blokes who sing about Satan and fucking and rock 'n' roll and stuff. Also, they swear a lot! Swearing is awesome, and always hysterical.

Having enjoyed their TV series and self-titled 2001 (?) debut album, I was totally psyched for their movie The Pick of Destiny... FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO. What the fuck year is it, 2006? I assumed this would have been out by 2003 at the very latest. Luckily, I completely forgot about it (and Tenacious D) for the past three years or so. To my surprise, I was actually quite excited for this movie when I heard that it was finally being released.

Turns out, the movie is actually quite hilarious! Seriously, my experience watching this film was just so enjoyable. It's just non-stop cock rock ridiculousness. If you liked their first album, and if you liked the TV series, you need to see the danged movie! You'll love it. If you have a low-tolerance for Jack Black, well, I suggest that you stay away. Why would you want to, though? Dave Grohl plays SATAN! Ha! ERGH!

Listening to the soundtrack is pretty much just like watching the movie. So it plays as a concept album! See the movie first, though. There's a lot less of the "two guys jamming out on guitars" charm that the series and self-titled album had, and more ballsy full-band arrangements. Which is fine. For an overblown concept album, this thing is way too short, though. It's only 33 minutes. It should have been twice as long. Maybe next time. The first song is the best! It's a mini rock opera that contains the line, "Gotta suck a chode in the party zone!" Who the hell says "chode" anymore? LOL!!!!

I have a headache. My ex-girlfriend came back to visit my school, and she wanted to talk to me about something, but I didn't have time to stay around because I had to catch the bus, so I might never know what it is! I hope I never encounter her again. I feel like shit right now. I have to go do math homework and listen to Asunder. The new Converge is so fucking good.

Rating: Fuck!

Song: "Classico"... track 2 from this swell disc. Sweet jesus, it's awesome.

Radiohead- Hail to the Thief

God, since Dan is too much of an asshole to update, I'm going to fucking review a CD that everyone should know rules hard. It sucks that instead of adventurously reviewing some album of some band that you've never heard of I'm going to review fucking Hail to the Thief by Radiohead. But you know what? This album is fucking awesome and Radiohead hasn't fucking lost their title as the most creative fucking band in the world with this album. Oh, it's not as good as Kid A, Oh, it's not as good as fucking Ok fucking Computer. Wah wah wah wah. This album is just insane in terms of being clever, innovative, interesting, and fucking texturally face-rocking. While Kid A is a masterpiece, people fucking wave their dicks at Ok Computer because it came out in 1997, people were fucking listening to good bands like Built to Spill and Yo La Tengo, and had never heard anything as fucking surreal as that album. Nowadays, the album seems to have aged a bit, but that's neither here nor there. God, as much as I love some “indie” bands, I'm going to come out and say it. The underground music scene should fucking take a cue from Radiohead, that while most bands don't have the vision tha Thom Yorke does (I'll quote High Fidelity here, is the guy miserable because he has to make consistently ass-grinding music or is his music consistently ass-grinding because of how miserable he is?) but at least they (A lot of indie bands) could have decent production considering that people can write their own personal magna opus on their fucking iBook and have it sound like How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb for fuck's sake. Why is it that indie music has to hide behind being eccentric and under-produced a lot of the time in order for them to appear like they haven't sold out? I mean, fuck, not all bands are like that, but The Arcade Fire's Funeral definitely gains half of its texture from the fact that you can't even fucking hear what the strings are playing in the background while some guy yells like he's singing through a styrofoam cup? Just because your band is quirky, or avant-garde, doesen't necessarily mean that you can call writing good music in. I just ended that sentence with a preposition, but I don't give a fuck. How ironic is it that Radiohead, the modern day expression of Progressive Rock, is more down to earth and relateable then mister indie himself Sufjan Stevens and his orchestral overindulgence? Just because no one gives a fuck as to what Sufjan's ranting about means that he has to make up for it by having a bunch of pricks splurge violins and trumpets all over a bunch of songs that are half-written? Sorry Sufjan, Jon Anderson called and he wants his over the top performances back. Oh, and the Decembersits are good because apparently the Mariner's Revenge Song was written by a bunch of guys with acoustic guitars around a mic? Sorry, but having a idiosyncratic voice is one thing Colin Meloy, but if you can't sing then don't expect me to listen to anything you put out unless its instrumental. Radiohead is great, they are able to take one or two ideas, make a killer song out of it, and produce a whole album of awesome tracks full of minimalist and sometimes avant-garde texture that suprisingly sounds well-developed and interesting. Isn't it awesome how they can make weird music and still be successful because they don't rely on cheap gimmicks that half of the indie-underground seems to rely on?

Anyways, Hail to the Thief. Radiohead starts the album off with one of the best tracks they've ever done, 2 + 2 =5, a song that desperately rails against whatever authoritarian dystopia you feel like we're in. It's weird for a Radiohead song, it's fast, it's uptempo, you can make out the guitar, a mellotron erupts like a volcano spewing liquidy goodness all over the end. This song is weird and Thom Yorke is singing like a fucking bat out of hell. Then Radiohead does a complete 360, giving you three extremely weird, slow-tempo songs that are more haunting then anything I've ever heard. Backdrifts, with its annoyingly repetitive synth loop is quite possibly one of the coolest psychedelic things I've ever heard. Where I End And You Begin has the coolest bass-line, and the whole song eerily builds up to Thom Yorke cooly saying, “I will eat you alive.” There There has got to be one of the best singles of the last decade. It's a fucking musical gauntlet full of interesting rhythmnic drive and excellent guitar playing the texture role. Some of the lyrics are Thom Yorke's best ( “We are accidents waiting to happen”) and the song easily would have been the best on the album had 2 +2 = 5 hadn't been on here. The Gloaming is an interesting Amnesica piece, that while is kind of glitchy and strange, is a nice respite from some of the more standard rock orchestrated songs. The rest of the songs are very good, and I guess the point I'm trying to make is that this is still one of the most original songs I've heard (A Punch-Up at A Wedding isn't a suprise from a band that takes grooves as seriously as Radiohead does, but the funk-esque aesthetic gets completely adapted to Radiohead's style). As much as people want to say that most of the tracks here are derivative of their earlier works, those people can eat my ass because Hail to the Thief is the sound of a band that has completely polished their aesthetic and is churning out some of the most beautiful artifice that I've heard in a while. Let's hope the next album is a fucking awesome Radiohead album, and it sounds like it from the live stuff I've been listening to, will probably cement Radiohead's status as the best band in the world right now. If you'll excuse me, I need to go suck Radiohead's dick more.

Rating: 8.5/10

Download: Radiohead- True Love Waits

Enslaved - RUUN

As the singer of Venom once said as part of one of his many fantastic bits of stage banter from way back in the day, "RAAAAARRRRRRRRR BLACK METAL!!!!" And that's what this CD is! Awesome metal made by vikings from the cold depths of Scandinavia. And, holy balls, is it good! The vocals are all high and throaty like those of some sort of terrifying demon fellow. The guitars play nothing but the awesomenest of riffs. And the drums make you dance, dance, dance in your underpants! Seriously, this shit is really uptempo and feel-goody, unlike that USBM bullshit (aka FUCKING AWESOMENESS) that all the kids are into these days.

An interesting thing about this so-callled "black metal" is the difference between said musical genre and another called "death metal." For one thing, black metal is a lot "higher sounding" than death metal. A lot of death metal guitars are in an extra special tuning called "drop D," where the lowest string of a guitar (the E string) is tuned down to a note one whole step lower than that E! That's why they sound so danged LOW and DEAD (???) And then there's the vocals, which are all Cookie Monster-y and are all like "OOOOOOOOG!!!!!" all the time. Whereas with black metal, everything is slightly higher. The E string is tuned to the pitch that we most commonly associate with said string, and the vocals are usually a lot more high-pitched and, like I said, DEMON-Y. Interesting factoids! Indeed!

The first time I listened to this album, I noticed that a lot of the guitar chords were really bright and filled with colorful tones of note-y goodness that made them sound almost SHOEGAZEY. Like Swervedriver! I tried to play guitar along with Mezcal Head over the summer, and I just couldn't do it because of all the colorful goodness tones that I couldn't get a handle on. Quite the frustrating ordeal. Hey! Like Opeth (FUCKING AMAZING BAND, BUY ALL OF THEIR ALBUMS TODAY, SERIOUSLY), Enslaved makes excellent use of clean vocals, also, so those of you who are appalled by "metal vocals" have something to enjoy. You pussies! Ha, ha!

Also, I can't tell if the first words on this album are "I AM THE CREATOR OF RUINS" or "I AM THE CREATOR OF RUUN." The second one makes a lot more sense, seeing as the vocalist certainly did help to create this album, which is called RUUN. Still, he may very well also have ruined a bunch of stuff (asshole.) Most certainly not this album, though. Or he's the drummer in that band Ruins! AWESOME BAND! If you have any copies of their albums that you don't want, please send them to me immediately.

Rating: Outstanding!

Song: "Path To Vanir"

The Cranes- Wings of Joy

This is a serious review. So only read it if you're in a serious mood.

Imagine that you're walking down the street, it's late out, and you see a decrept burnt out building sprayed with graffit right next to the video store, where you were planning on returning Biodome after a fitful and disturbed viewing. You glance at the movie, glance back at the building, and throw Biodome into the trash. You jimmy open the half-busted wooden door to the building, and slowly creep inside. The walls are painted with pentagrams and anarchy signs and garbage bags torn open by stray cats litter the hallways. You hear a slow, murmering beat coming from a door at the end of the hallway. Just like you threw Biodome out, you throw caution to the wind and burst through the door. Inside you see a group of people stare at you, all of them looking like you've invaded some private ritual. A girl with jet black hair is wailing through a styrofoam cup into what looks like a polaroid camera. A strange, tatooed british limey is sitting in the corner, farting into an accordion. Another man is throwing (Tom) weights onto a keyboard, sending shrill hellish shreiks into the air. Slowly, you back away frightened, but it is too late. You've entered the world of the Cranes.

The Cranes first album, Wings of Joy, is a pretty awesome album considering it's basically the progeny of both My Bloody Valentine and Joy Division. A lot of folk would consider this a goth album (If you solicit me to listen to shit like VNV Nation or Tiger Army or HIM or something, I will hunt Tim Burton down and kill him) but I think this album is really just minimalist C.R.E.E.P-assed shoegaze. Songs like Starblood and Leaves of Summer kind of rock, but in a sort of David Lynch-esque way. Beautiful Sadness gets my award for worst song title ever, but it's haunting strings and meandering keyboard lines are really hypnotic and would be really interesting to see live. Adoration is a pretty awesome jaunt through the deserts of your MIND, while Alison Shaw croons something unintellible but otherwise mesmerizingly spellbinding (Like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.). Compared to albums like Forever, Wings of Joy is pretty stripped down and slow, but it's a great moodsetting album that owesome sort of debt to Brian Eno as well. Wings of Joy is also slightly less dynamic then their other albums but it has a lot more intricate string work and it's more haunting in regards to the overall textures of the songs (Sixth of May is a plodding, shoegazy song that always seems to raise the hair on the back of my neck.). So really, if you like Joy Division, My Bloody Valentie, Yianni: Live at the Acropolis, or any of the other bands I've name-dropped, then you should probably pick up this album. If you like Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive then this album is basically those televised features in SONIC FORM.

In other news, I thought I could wait for Dan to update so that I could slack off for a while, but he's a stupid douchebag and he's waiting in line to pick up a Nintendo Wii! Anyways, I feel like making myself a peanut butter sandwich.

Rating: 8/10 If you don't know why then you should probably read over the review slowly, looking for clues that I've dropped throughout that may hint at the overall meaning of the review.

Download: The Cranes- Adoration

Led Zeppelin - In Through The Outdoor

I know it might not be the most popular opinion ever, but I do truly believe that Led Zeppelin got better with every album. The rock critics of the world don't want you to know this, you know. They want you to think that their first four albums are all absolutely untouchable rock classics, and that despite the many moments of brilliance that followed, Zep just continously lost the plot as time went on.

Zeppelin's first, second, and third albums all have their share of remarkable songs, but they sound like they could have knocked them out in about a week or so (and they probably did, as the first two were both released in 1969.) It wasn't until the fourth record that they started to sound truly confident. The songs were more compositionally "mature," and sounded like they had put much more thought into the writing and recording of them. It isn't always the case that more time in the studio means better music, but in the case of Zeppelin, this was (is?) very much the case.

Houses of the Holy was an even better album. They sounded like they were putting even more thought into their music, and even the most fillery song on the album ("The Crunge") ends up being one of the best songs they ever did. Christ, that's a great album. Led Zeppelin was best when they took chances with their music! The more adventurous they became, the more unstoppable they sounded. This is a fact! Sometimes their adventurousness was bogged down by uninspired songwriting like on Presence, but we can forgive them for that because it wasn't exactly made under the best of conditions.

In fact, neither was In Through The Outdoor, most likely, seeing as John Paul Jones seems to be the man at the head of most of these songs. Listen to all these fuckin' pianos and strings and and disco synths! Wow! That's some unexpected shit right there. I'm sure the world thought they were just a bunch of out-of-touch geezers who were trying to "stay hip" by incorporating all of these non-guitar elements. The world was probably right, but, fuck, these songs are just fantastic. For one thing, they don't sound as rushed as the ones on Presence. They're just as creative as the ones on Houses of the Holy, except there's a bunch of keyboards and they explore a wider range of musical genres.

The best part about Zeppelin, I think, is just how much fun they could be, which is probably the reason Rolling Stone thought they were crap because music isn't supposed to make you feel good about anything. Sure, "South Bound Saurez" is heavy cajun boogie woogie bar rock, but damnit, it's a great song! Why would somebody not like this song? It's not even an obvious "fillery" song like "Hot Dog" (which also rules.) And the more keyboardy numbers like "Fool In The Rain" and "All My Love"... these are just fantastic pop songs! They're two of the best things Zeppelin ever did. Does somebody honestly prefer the way-too-ordinary blues-rock of their first record to these two ditties? WHY??? Why would anyone feel this way? God, blues-rock is one of the more worthless genres ever.

"Carouselambra" is like "'Kashmir' goes disco!" Disco is great, in case you feel otherwise, in which case, you're wrong. John Paul Jones taking charge of this record is a lot like how Paul McCartney was the dominant force on Abbey Road. He's going to pull his band through one last album because he believes in them and their ability to end their musical reign of (mostly) greatness on a high, awesome note, even if it means having more influence on the songs than any other member. Which reminds me, while we're discussing Abbey Road comparisons, isn't "I'm Gonna Crawl" just a weirdly perfect way to end their career? Much like "The End"? Except it's like "The End" and "Her Majesties" rolled into one! You get the awesome guitar solo, the big, inspirational string section, the devastatingly emotive vocal performance, etc. But that's just the "The End" part. See, "I'm Gonna Crawl" is a SOULFUL BALLAD, like Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett or something. Not exactly something you would expect from Zep. Like "Her Majesties," it's a pretty "wtf" way to end the last album of one of the best bands ever. But it's great, see. That's the thing. Because this band was great. Be happy they stopped when they did. Don't be happy about Bonham dying, though. So just assume all the albums after this one would have been mediocre.

Dan should have written this review instead of me.

Rating:

Song: The whole album!

Sunn 0))) & Boris - Altar

Sunn 0))) and Boris are two metal bands that became really hip for indie kids to namedrop starting about one year ago. Boris is a band of Japanese people who play really fast Mötorhead type things, as well as slow, droney, Melvinsy shit. Sunn 0))) is two guys who specialize in wearing robes and playing monster metal riffs as slow and as loud as humanly possible while some black metal vocalist from Leviathan or Xasthur or some other awesome SF band screams in a most sinister manner.

I can sort of see why the Pitchfork readers of the world dig Boris so much. Their work is actually really varied, come to think of it. They have thrashy things, doomy things, shoegazy things, Hendrix-y things. And they're Japanese, and kids love those goddamned Japanese bukkake blogs! So Boris keeps it interesting for someone who isn't necessarily into metal. But Sunn 0)))? I just fail to see the crossover appeal there! The vocals are pure black metal, the songs are all 10 years long and go by at like 1 beat per minute, and unless you're a huge fan of black or doom metal (the real shit, not that sissy Pelican crap), or if you're a hardcore noise fan, I just don't really see how you could find any real enjoyment in this stuff (especially Black One, their "breakthrough album," which is the most evil-sounding one yet!)

Nevertheless, both of these bands are awesome. When I heard that they were releasing a collaboration album, I almost shit my pants and jizzed in them and farted all at once! That was one Bar Mitzvah that I'll never forget! This album has no speedy Mötorhead-ish Boris songs like "Ibitsu," and not a lot of the "awesome metal riff played really slowly" Sunn 0))) doodads that we have come to know and love. No, this is actually quite an eclectic little album with surprises galore. These folks are having a blast in the studio, collaborating wand fucking and sucking and such. There are also lots of guests on here. Jesse Sykes sings a song, Joe Preston contributes awesome vocoder vocals, Butch Walker co-wrote and produced three of the dronier numbers, and Kim Thayil plays some really loud rock 'n' roll guitar. Let's just talk about the songs.

The first song is a distorted mega guitar drone symphony. It starts out sounding like Sunn 0))) or a dronier Boris tune, but then the drums come in, and it eventually ends up sounding like slow-as-balls MELVINSY AWESOMENESS, with the Japanese guitarist girl playing her awesome screaming guitar leads (clitoris) on top of everything.

The next song is the shortest thing here, and it's a nice little piece, and it's sonically awesome and has a bowed bass!

Then the next song has VOCALS! WOMAN COUNTRY SINGER VOCALS! And CLEAN GUITARS! And PIANO! WHAT THE FUCK? This song is awesome. Lots of delay pedal and reverb.

The next song has a vocoder! And HORNS that sound like synths/SYNTHS that sound like horns! This song sounds like ELP.

The song after it is really droney and the Japanese chick sings it in a creepy little girl "Protect Me You" sort of way.

The final song is 14 minutes of sub-woofer raping feedback greatness.

Do you like big droney feedbacking guitars and all that shit? Then you'll like this album! Admittedly, the dronier numbers aren't nearly as mind-meltingly heavy as Black One, but they're awesome nonetheless.

Rating: This album rules.

Song: "Fried Eagle Mind"... this is the one with the Japanese bukkake vocals. It gets really distorted at the end, so watch out!

Weezer - Blue Album

Actually, it's just called "Weezer" but I guess Poo album is a good name for it, because this album sucks!


it sucks at being bad! Because this album is a grand slam! Tuna on toast! etc!

Hudson River and his band of merry men. (L2R: Donatello, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo) were releasing albums under the name "Pink Floyd" until they decided to put out this muscular tour-de-force LP. A lot of people, like Stephen Malkmus for example, hate this band because they say all they did on this album was rip off Pavement and make it poppy or something. Well good for Weezer! because these songs kick ass, and I would've probably never even heard of Pavement as early as I did were it not for these four young gentleman.

And where did the Pavement thing come from anyway? This band sounds like a bunch of power pop except without the gay synths or vocals, and theres loud Van Halen-esque guitars all over the damn thing. Pavement my foot! This band sounds like Big Black if Steve Albini took a pair of scissors and drained the testicles out of his scrotum, and then ran into Alex Chilton on the Chicago Blue Line and stole his soul and then robbed a bank to get a huge production budget on his next album, and then ran into Kurt Cobain on a plane once and talked to him about how Nevermind was great and that he wanted to make an album like it except about sweaters and alcoholic fathers and other such nonsense, then he shot Kurt with a pistol which drove Kurt to suicide.

So in conclusion, this album was written and produced by Steve Albini, who was working on the organ sounds, with much patience.

No, I mean, I was the first one to play Weezer to the rock kids, I played it at CBGBs, everybody thought I was crazy.

No I mean the singles are all great on here, but actually the thing is that pretty much every song on here is just an alt rock song. I never really saw Weezer as a singles band because their albums tracks are about as good as their singles. I don't think Rivers sits down after fucking a jap girl and thinks "arigato sailor moon-sama!! n_n!N!N *WATCHES NEW VOLTRON DVDS* and writes a song thats supposed to be a single. I think he just writes great toons (hentai) and anyone who thinks that Weezer is just disposable nonsense is a buffoon. This isn't even their best album like many think. It's got a couple tracks that don't really work. "Holiday" just sounds like something I would eat for breakfast and then go "man what a shitty breakfast, I think I won't go to work today or fuck my wife because my breakfast was so shitty" hence "Holiday" has caused lots of problems in our busy modern world.

But I digress, this is definitely Weezer's most interesting or diverse album, because it's the debut, so they were just playing songs they had been playing for years, so you have songs like "The World has turned and left me here" (with Pat Wilson on songwriting credits!) that just sound deliciously un-Weezery. See for yourself, or don't asshole.

Rating: Weezer's third best album, Green and Pinkerton are still better.

Song: Here's a Fujiya & Miyagi album, the names are japanese just like the names of the girls that Rivers Cuomo likes to jizz inside of.

Weezer - Weezer

Let's face it, power-pop is 99.99999% boring shit. Jangly guitars, lyrics about slammin' bitches, wussy "nice guy" vocals... good for a while, but grows unfathomably tiresome unless the band contains some sort of god-like master songwriter like Kerry King or Weird Al. There's a reason why there are 50 copies of every Matthew Sweet, Fountains of Wayne, Jellyfish, Material Issue, and Superdrag album for two dollars each in every single used bin in the country. Oh, and Cheap Trick have maybe four good songs. Sorry.

Luckily, Rivers Cuomo is a god-like master songwriter of the most ridiculous order. This album is a better power-pop album than pretty much all power-pop albums combined. The melodies rule. The guitars are huge. Some people complain about this album being too short, but it's just the right length. Ten songs in 28 minutes, and not a second is wasted. Awesome verses, awesome choruses, awesome solos that are just the vocal melody played on guitar, and the occasional awesome harmony.

This review sucks. I have to go do homework. What kind of asshole doesn't like this album? You know, it's really actually not all that similar to The Blue Album, now that I think about it. That album was actually sort of angsty, what with its hard-rock anthems for kids who couldn't be heard singing its songs in the garage where they belong. This one is just really happy and bright! It actually sounds like the color of the album cover! Great summer album. I mean, "Island In The Sun," seriously.

Rating: 10/10!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Song: "Ryan Parry - The World Is Terribly Infested"

Tool- 10,000 Days

Hey kids, it's me, your friendly neighborhood Maynard James Keenan here to give you the fucking lowdown on Tool's newest brilliant masterpiece, 10,000 Days. We as a band figured that you'd be too fucking blown away after Lateralus (the best album to come out since Aenima) to release an album, so we generally took our time you know, tried to figure out the exact rhythmn of Masonic chant we needed to make the songs on our new album fucking radical. You have to believe the Mayn when he says that 10,000 Days is the most fucking cerebral mindfuck you fucking little shits will ever receive. You're wasting your goddamn time away on the idiot box being brain washed by the fucking elitist Illuminati running this faux-corporate asshole of ours, we wrote fucking Vicarious to tell you how stupid you are. You're fucking getting high and dropping out of society and blaming all sorts of mother fuckers for your goddamn problems, we're fucking putting out scary shit like The Pot to put you in your fucking place. Listen you stupid spoon fed sheep, the only thing keeping us from devolving into a third-world slave hive is fucking Rosetta Stoned, which I wrote after taking mescaline with Danny Carey and knife fucking ten groupies after you paid $70 and watched me sing Prison Sex to a bunch of pimple faced wannabes. The Maynard doesen't pull any punches, so when you play Jambi and Adam Jones' furious riffs fucking rearrange your synapses, you better believe that the Tool is serious. I didn't fucking crash a car into my own goddamn house to paralyze my mom and then play Die Eier Von Satan for 24 hours straight in her house to kill her just so that you could fucking light a doobie to 10,000 Days (Wings For Marie) you stupid cocksucking morons. Listen, Intension is the best fucking thing put onto digital, Right in Two rules so much ignorant Christian ass that Ted Haggard is getting jealous. 10,000 Days is 27 years, in case you pre-neanderthalic thugs can't even count, so before you pass this record off as another fucking tape you can put in to look cool at your local “record discount” independent music store, remember that the men behind this album are fucking geniuses. Shit, even the fucking album art is a psychedelic trip through the depths of your fucking soul in itself, laden with underappreciated intricacy that you're going to fucking break a string over while you're trying to copy us and tune to fucking Drop-D. Ladies and Gentleman, this is Maynard out, and remember to buy our album or else you're just another toadying sheep paying to keep the powers that be in control of our society.

Rating: The Seventh number of the Fibonnaci Sequence, Except if you took the Fibonacci Sequence of the Fibonnaci Sequence. Think about it.

Download: Tool- 10,000 ways to leave your lover (Actually Vicarious)

Stefan

Stefan is a writer for the online music review blog "Solid Little Rock Jams."

When he writes reviews, they are usually entertaining and helpful to the inquiring music listener.

When he does not write reviews, as he has done for the past week, he fails to justify his existence as a human being and enricher of the internet.

If he were an album, he would be SR-71's Now You See Inside.

Rating: 2.5/10

Song: "GG Allin - Gimme Some Head"

Boredoms - Super Ae

Boredoms is a band of Japanese people who used to bang on shit and scream a lot back in the late 80s/early 90s, until some time around the mid 90s when they still banged on shit and screamed a lot, but in a much less chaotic sort of way. This album is the ULTIMATE PSYCHEDELIC FREAKOUT, minus the smelly hippyness. Some parts are tribal as fuck like a drum circle performed by ALIENS ON LSD DRUGS. Others are just brutal metal loudness. There are even some quiet parts.

When people talk about this album, they often mention that it sounds like heaven or nirvana or Sweet 75 or just some sort of blissful wonderfulness that they wouldn't mind hearing forever and ever and ever once they die and get to hang with Jesus and all those fuckers. I agree! The songs are really long and repetitive in an awesome, intense, hypnotic way so it's like being dead and having a bunch of awesome guitars and screaming Japanese people instead of a bunch of boring fellow dead people.

Another thing that lots of people like to point out is how Boredoms place equal emphasis on the "jam band" aspect of their music AND the "studio geniuses" aspect. In addition to the spontaneity that comes with Boredoms' wild prog-jazz guitar solos and zany a-capella covers of classic rock hits, they also take the time to make their work groin-grabbingly excellent in the "sonics" (?) department, so there's a bunch of weird panning, and awesome, sudden bits of vocal distortion, and tons of awesome editing shit that makes you say, "Wow!" I listened to this album last night, and I headbanged a lot.

Rating: Not BORE-ing at all! That's what this is! Why would you not have already heard this album, anyway.

Song: "Yes - Every Little Thing"... fucking awesome cover of one of the greatest songs the Beatles ever did! Probably the best song on Super Ae...I wouldn't know, I've never heard it, I just copied and pasted the Pitchfork review.

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust

"David Bowie" is a band formed in the late 1960s by Guitarist, Neil Young, and drummer, David Bowie. The band gained moderate success which was later dwarfed by the duo's later project, Tin Machine.

but let's forget about Tin Machine for a moment, and talk about this album. It is very loud and filled with pianos and gay men. Once upon a time before David Bowie had retired to become a boring hipster championing bands like Tv On The Radio and Weird Al, he used to write music that sounds a lot like whatever he was listening to at the time. Girls really like this album a lot, so maybe if you say you like David Bowie in front of some girl they'll have sex with you.

Let's go through song by song

Five Years - This song is very epic and filled with instruments.
Soul Love - Sounds like Metallica
Moonage Daydream - it has this flute or something in the middle of it that plays a nice melody, and talks about rayguns and shit and it always makes me think of Earthworm Jim
Starman - Song about the enemy in Earthbound and how much of a chode he is.
It Ain't Easy - I don't remember what this one sounds like
Lady Stardust - who cares
Star - dssdfdhdkdfhskghFUCK FUCKFUFKCFUFKCUFUCK
Hang On To YOurself - more like BANG on yourself, as in hit yourselfYEAH
Suffragette City - Everyone knows this song.
Rock N' Roll Suicide - Pro-suicide anthem, sounds like Sufjan Stevens


ooh la la

Rating: This album is actually really good. I used to not like it very much, I still don't like the drumming on it.

What does David Bowie and a hoover vacuum cleaner have in common?

They're both great at cleaning up cum stains! haha!

Song: Pavement - Kennel District

Weezer - Pinkerton

Pinkerton is the second album written and directed by Rivers Phoenix, and has a supporting cast of several A-list stars such as Brian Bell, inventor of the telephone, Brian Wilson, and Scott Stapp. Together these four created an unlikely synergy not seen since George Foreman knocked out Jet Li for the world cup.

Half of this album is just bitching and whining about chicks and stuff. I dig. Actually, it's more than half, it's pretty much every song. I guess Rivers Phoenix thought he was a total loser or something, I guess he was because he had been dead for like four years by the time this movie came out. So maybe it was released using zombie instruments and powers.

"The Good Life" is a song about the emo band The Good Life and it sounds just like them, right down to the cat screeching vocals and the bloodcurdling yelps. This album smells like a panda bear and is about as strong as a triceratops. The guitars are visceral. Everything is about as raw as my scabbing dick after I've rubbed it for 3 full blown hours of Full House marathon mary kate xxx HEATHER LOCKLEAR

Oh yeah, Matt Sharp provides some excellent backing vocals on every song, mostly just him going a bunch of annoying noises or going "I've had it!" He would later go on to win a grammy for "best alternative vocal performance" for Tool's next record and served as president of the United States until he was drafted and killed in Vietnam by three bears.

The last song is the only one that won't pound your asshole repeatedly. It basically is an acoustic ballad that ends with "I'm sorry" because Rivers is apologizing that one of the greatest albums ever has now come to an end. Fuck you, Rivers. asshole.

Rating: This is pretty much my favorite record, I mean, behind maybe one or two, I still like RATM's debut and Siamese Dream better than this!!! yes!!!

Song: Here's Weezer covering a Nirvana song or something! It sucks but it's funny. I once read a website where some guy thought Kurt Cobain didn't die and just came back to life as Rivers Cuomo.

The Melvins - (A) Senile Animal

Short version:

The Melvins are fucking awesome. This album is fucking awesome.

Long version.

Rating: 12

Song: Shitty demo I recorded of one of my band's awesome new rock songs!

Rush- 2112

After a few albums of flirting around with dual-classing to a Wizard, Rush finally makes the change from a Fighter to a wizard on their tour de force album 2112. Rolling a 20 and criticalling with their 20 minute masterpiece of conceptual song-writing, 2112, Rush could easily take out a Tarrasque or worse. What has happened in between 2112 and Caress of Steel that resulted in this massive leveling up? All signs point to Geddy Lee discovering some Gauntlets of Dexterity after looting the Temple of Elemental Evil, while someone probably casted Haste on Neil Peart. Not that anyone can hear it on the album, but Alex Lifeson definitely gained a few proficiency points in making his guitar much more expressive, and now when he hits a solo its utter majesty. Music producers at the time must have had poor saving throws to let a Canadian band record a concept album, especially after Rush died at the hands of the Necromancer at the Fountain of Lamneth. 2112's campaign setting is one a scientific-futuristc dystopia, where the members of Rush have to find the mystical Talking Guitar to battle the Priests of Syrinx who have usurped all of humanity.

The album also features a few side-quests, most notable with their passage to “Bangkok,” a mystical jaunt into the “Twilight Zone” where they learn many lessons after numerous tears, and then finally find a bag of holding to put all their instruments in, effectively getting something for nothing.

Rating: 11 on a d12

Song: Rush-2112

Yes - Fragile.

Fragile was one of the first punk rock albums in music history. The album was performed by midgets. The first track off this album, "Roundabout" is one of the greatest songs ever written, the bassline is incredible, the guy who wrote it, Ozzy Osbourne, later went on to write the bassline to seinfeld, that's why they sound pretty much the same.

The vocals on Yes albums are all done by this really happy guy named Jon Anderson, all of his lyrics have to deal with dragons and fire, so you might say that Jon Anderson invented the black metal genre with Fragile.

So when this band is not talking about dragons or the devil, or playing with fire. They are playing tightly recorded rhythmic beats and incredible sounds. Most of this album sort of blends together. It's pretty great, but I actually like the Yes albums that are like a couple tracks long even more, like Close To The Edge. Yes still knew how to write pop music when Fragile came out. They would forget how to do this in a year or two after Chris Squire was visited by Jesus Christ, a noted prog fiend, and wanted him to create lush soundscapes. The End.

Rating: 2800/3

Song: Yes - Roundabout

Henry Cow - Unrest

Jesus christ, it's only 9:37 pm and I'm already tired as shit, so I'm going to make this review snappier than usual.

Unrest is a fucking awesome early 90s indie pop band. In related news, this album by the band Henry Cow isn't very good at all. If you like to listen to people farting into clarinets and calling it "avant-garde" or "Rock In Opposition" (that's "in opposition to the music industry," apparently), then you'll probably dig this. I'm all for weird Zappa-like shit being influenced by free jazz and Messiaen and Stravinsky and whatever, but let me tell you, Frank Zappa wrote some damn good melodies in his time (1966-1969), and Henry Cow seems more interested in just being shitty than writing decent melodies.

Julian Cope described Henry Cow's opening set at a Faust (NOW THERE'S A BAND THAT IS REALLY, REALLY GOOD, YEAH) show that he attended as "wacky Cambridge University Degree music." And that's what this is, really. According to legend, they only had enough material for half an album, so for the second side, they just recorded a bunch of improvisations. So on the first half, they sound like a bunch scholarly, pretentious pricks who want to impress you with their "knowledge of 20th century non-rock stylings" and "arranging skills," and on the second half, they just sound like pretentious pricks. "Pretentious pricks"...fun to say, ain't it.

This music is just no fun at all. And I tend to enjoy bleak, nihilistic shit like this. If you want to hear the "Rock In Opposition" side of prog done right, buy me the This Heat box set for Christmas, and I'll burn it for you.

Rating: So Altar is awesome, as expected. I'll probably review it next week.

Song: "An Unrest song!" I would have YSI'd "Yes, She Is My Skinhead Girl," but I'm on my mom's computer, and there's just a bunch of King Crimson albums on here because I burned them for that mall-punk kid who likes Rush a lot, the dick, and the burner on the downstairs computer doesn't work.

King Crimson - In The Court of The Crimson King

The abbreviation for the album is ICOCK, or "I, cock" and basically gives you an idea of how wankery this album is. Actually, the album is not very wankery, it's one of the first real prog albums that ever came out. WAY BACK IN 1969, you see Robert Fripp was actually godzilla and wanted to create more terror than just stomping on asians so he decided to write a theme song about himself called 'Crimson King"(because he was a red Godzilla, not a traditional green one) and decided to form a band and hire someone outside of the band to write the lyrics, which i've always thought was pretty cool, someones job in the band is just to write lyrics. What a novel concept!

Anyway, this album is pretty awesome, the first and last tracks especially, the first track is just hard rocking, and the singer is so distorted, he describes a "twenty first century schizoid man" and he sounds british as FUCK. Who does the vocals, Greg Lake? Bill Cosby? I can't remember, the drummer sounds like he came straight of out a marching band, bashing away and making the entire album sound like a fun parade. I love pre-John Bonham drum sound! It's so adorable and harmless!

The album also has moonchild on it, which sucks, there's just a bunch of organs. What the hell? Did they record this in a church, if so, I hope the church was swallowed into hell for making such bad music!!

The last track is great though, it sounds like video game music or something. See, rock and roll was still in it's infancy when this album came out, so rock had all sorts of weird albums like these that just sound so unconventional, Prog bands todays influences are like, King Crimson and Yes, but what the hell were King Crimsons influences? Probably like Jazz and crazy stuff like that! It's really neat. Bands had to create ideas, cool!

Anyway, Robert Fripp is the drummer but after this album the band broke up, Robert Fripp kept the name King Crimson and went on to shorten it to KC, and then became KC and the Sunshine Band.

Rating: Great album, but it's got some parts that are just plain blustery, I saw The Prestige the other night, it had David Bowie in it, though I wish Robert Fripp had been in it too.

Song: All of them are great, they're all like 200 minutes long so I'm not giving you any of it.

Electric Light Orchestra - Eldorado

Hey, folks, happy Halloween! And what better way to celebrate such a day as this one than by reviewing an album by the Electric Light Orchestra, something that I intend to do right now, in fact.

Calling this album a "prog" album is somewhat debatable, really. It's really just a bunch of Beatlesesque pop music. The thing is that it's a bunch of Beatlesque pop music in 1974 with a 30 piece orchestra and some big, awesome synths, and the songs are bookended by a couple little things called "Eldorado Overture" and "Eldorado Finale," and "Boy Blue" and "Nobody's Child" both have the same stupid horn fanfare intro, so it must be a concept album or something. This album is just ridiculously ambitious, as so much awesome music from the first half of the 70s generally is. I guess that's why this sometimes gets lumped in with "prog-rock." That and the big, awesome synths that jump out at you every now and then.

You know how Jeff Lynne is the main guy in this band? You know how Jeff Lynne basically sucked George Harrison's cock until the day that he died? Well, that all makes perfect sense when listening to the songs on here. They're Beatlesesque, sure, but they really just sound like a bunch of George Harrison songs. I mean, like solo George Harrison. That's right, this is the real fucking deal.

Violins! Cellos! Horns! Piano! This shit is total orchestral pop like Sgt. Pepper's, but even more over-the-top because this is 1974 we're talking about. These songs are just so grand-sounding! After the dumb intro with the movie sample and the orchestral overture, "Can't Get It Out of My Head" comes on, and the melody just makes your goddamned heart melt, and you can't get the song out of your head (lol). I LOVE THIS SONG. I love the way the bombastic "overture" segues into the piano part at the beginning of this song. The violins are all loud-like, and then they get super quiet, and you just hear those totally beautiful piano chords, and then Jeff Lynne starts singing, and it doesn't suck at all. This shit is bombastic in an achingly beautiful, melodic sort of way. I love the little synth doodles in this song, too. It's an "FM classic," I guess. Great.

"Poor Boy (The Greenwood)" starts out sounding a lot like Bob Dylan because lots of people like him or something. You know, it's funny because on most of this album I can't understand what the hell Jeff Lynne is actually singing. It's either his tone, or the way he recorded the vocals, or something...I don't know. It's weird. I should be able to understand what you're singing, Jeff. You dick. SHIT, I'M LISTENING TO "MISTER KINGDOM" FROM THIS ALBUM RIGHT NOW, AND NO ONE EVER COULD HAVE WRITTEN THIS SONG WITHOUT FIRST HEARING "ACROSS THE UNIVERSE," WHAT THE HELL. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THE BEATLES, SERIOUSLY. WOW.

Rating: If this album were (was?) made today, it would probably receive endless amounts of acclaim from "indie rockers" because they love melodramatic orchestral crap like Sufjan Stevens and M. Ward (both of whom aren't nearly as terrible as I just made them sound, honestly.) The indie kids seriously need to put down the 70s Eno albums, and get some fucking ELO. This shit is for real, seriously. I give it any number of stars.

Song: "Laredo Tornado"

Gentle Giant - Octopus

I'm going to let you in on a little secret about the Solid Little Rock Jams review blog, and that is that we just kind of review whatever we feel like reviewing, or whatever we happen to be listening to at a certain point. This blog is not meant to provide comprehensive overviews of artists' entire catalogues, nor is it meant to keep track of recent music. No, this is a BLOG, and when you have a blog, you just sort of chronicle your day to day life, and jot down whatever thoughts happen to be swarming around in your noggin on any given day.

That's why the majority of my reviews will be positive and full of hardcore deep dicking. I review what I happen to be listening to, and let me tell you, a good 85% of the albums that I listen to are ones that I enjoy immensely. I, for one, prefer not to waste my time with albums that I do not enjoy listening to. Too often, I will encounter an album that does not necessarily please me to no end. These albums can suck my dick, and I will demand that they do so when I review them negatively.

All that said, this album kicks ass. I heard it for the first time last Thursday, and since then, I have listened to very little else. Have you ever heard of Gentle Giant? Maybe you haven't! See, 70s prog-rock spawned several extremely successful mega-superstar-bands, and I'm sure you've heard of all of them. Genesis, Jethro Tull, ELP, Yes, Rush, all that shit. Then there's King Crimson, who was never as successful as the previously mentioned bands, but still maintains a hardcore following of dorky, glasses-wearing males TO THIS DAY.

Gentle Giant, on the other hand, had trouble getting their albums released in America way back when, so they were never particularly successful over here in the USA. Maybe they were big in the UK. I honestly have no idea. Point is that even after 35 years or something, they remain relatively obscure, beknownst only to the most hardcore prog fans (or me, or any number of people who aren't necessarily "hardcore prog fans.")

This is simply a crime against humanity. It's not like this stuff is hard to listen to at all. Octopus is accessible as shit! This is pop music, goddamnit. Of course, it's extremely unconventional, idiosyncratic pop music. After all, this is generally classified as "prog-rock," despite the fact that only one of these eight songs stretches past the five-minute mark. All five guys in this band play about fifty different instruments, and all 250 of these instruments are featured on this album. These fellas are all quite obviously "classically trained," and you can tell by listening to these songs, a couple of which contain multiple vocal parts that are complex to the point of resembling crazy Bach-style counterpoint.

That's another cool thing about this album. Unlike Keith Emerson, Gentle Giant does not use its love of classical music as an excuse to shred and be shitty. These brosephs actually manage to combine classical music with rock (as well as folk, jazz, etc.) in ways that actually benefit their songs, and make them so flippin' INTERESTING to listen to. These songs are simply overflowing with awesome, somewhat-medieval melodies and totally kickass rhythm/time signature fuckage, as well as some occasional bursts of keyboard shredding for good measure.

In conclusion, please enjoy this picture of Gentle Giant drummer John Weathers.

Rating: Really, really high! I can't stop listening to this album. I just constantly feel the need to go back and experience the vast number of good ideas contained on this excellent piece of albumry. This shit is just so bizarre and exciting! You'll love it!

Song: "The Advent of Panurge"...this is the first song on the album! It's awesome! Shit!

Dream Theater- Images and Words

Unzip your pants and pull out your Peter

Right now I'm going to review Dream Theater

Some people say prodigious playing is absurd

I think it was under control on Images and Words

Pull Me Under sounds like Lars' Ulrich's band

The solo gets me very wet in my small gland

At least this album has Taking the Time

Another Day is an operation mind crime

Mike Portnoy is good but I think he's not the best

His bass drum sounds cheap and heavy like a hooker's chest

You know what's good, Metropolis and Under a Glass Moon

And then at Waiting for Sleep you know that it'll end soon

Overall I think this album's good if you like to rock

But playing it won't get you any pussy for your cock

I guess I can't stop without mentioning Learning to Live

But by the end of the album I don't have much attention to give

It's still pretty awesome and this album has some thrills

There's no doubt about it, The Mars Volta kills

Rating: Two thumbs up

Download: Dream Theater - Under a Glass Moon

The Mars Volta- Deloused in the Comatorium

This review will be guest-written by three people knowledgeable on the Mars Volta:

























As you can see, there are many different trains of thought on the Mars Volta. Please comment with your incredibly valid and thoughtful take on them in our comments section! Thanks, Roger Daltree

Rating: 5 stars
Song: The Mars Volta - Drunkship of Lanterns

The Melvins - Lysol

I listened to this album a week ago while I was doing my History homework. Lemme tell you something, the bass on this sucker is REALLY FUCKING LOUD AND PROUD. My floor was shaking, damnit. Now, I know that these is the Melvins that we are talking about, and such an occurrence is expected when one listens to a Melvins album, but seriously, the bass is just really, really powerful on here. Moreso than it usually might be. How would one explain such an ordeal?

Well, once upon a time, the Melvins made a full length LP with one Mr. Joe Preston in the band. This is that full length LP. Joe Preston was in the band Earth for a while. A few years ago, he joined the band High On Fire for a relatively short period of time. He also played on a few Sunn 0))) records. In fact, he introduced Sunn 0))) to Boris, and both of those bands have a collaboration album called Altar that is undoubtedly one of the best albums of the year even though I haven't heard a note of it, and you should buy me a copy when it comes out Tuesday.

The point is that Joe Preston is a big, loud, doomy, droney metal drone guy. Joe Preston also plays bass on Lysol. That is why Lysol is the heaviest, most drone-tastic Melvins album ever. The first three minutes or so are just total slow droney doom shit like Earth, and then Dale Crover starts beating his kick drum and crash cymbal every once in a while, and there are some mystical, wordless vocals, and eventually Dale really comes in with those drums, and it's FUCKING BRUTAL. The Melvins have always been heavy, but at no point in their career have they sounded this downright FURIOUS. ABRASIVE, even.

This album is one 30 minute track, and maybe 2/3 of it is just totally pulverizing doom metal (but not the sissyish kind that you're used to hearing from Pelican or Isis or whomever), and then for the last 1/3, they play some covers, and they're a lot less scary, but they're awesome anyway. This is the Melvins album for pissed-off noise/metal/free jazz/no wave-type music listeners. Bullhead, also, but some sissy girl plays bass on that one, so it's a lot gayer.

Rating: I don't know, 9.1? Fuck ratings up the anal!

Song: "A History of Bad Men"...a song off the new Melvins album (A) Senile Animal! It's fucking awesome!!! Purchase it often!!!

HEY, SORRY THERE WAS NO UPDATE YESTERDAY. BLOGGER WAS DOWN OR SOMETHING AND WE COULDN'T UPDATE. HERE IS AN UPDATE TODAY. ALSO, CHECK OUT THAT MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO. COVER BECAUSE THERE'S A NAKED BROAD PROBABLY FINGERING HER VAGINA, AND IT'S FUCKIN' HOT, DAD!


Akron/Family - Meek Warrior

Jesus christ, do I enjoy Akron/Family's two 2005 releases. See, I have this friend Kate who I sat next to in geometry last year, and I would always complain to her about how I hate Devendra Banhart and all that smelly, bearded hippy shit that the kids seem to dig these days. So she seemed pretty convinced that I would absolutely hate Akron/Family's 2005 debut. She gave me a copy, I listened to it, and I just thought, "Eh? I should hate this, but it's just so sonically interesting! And the melodies are pleasing as shit. Gee, these guys are just really good at making music together."

Then I heard their Split LP with Angels of Light, and that ruled, too. And it rocked really fucking hard. I was pretty convinced that they were one of the two or three best bands in the world, so when I heard that they had a new album, I got really psyched! At first, I was like, "Yeah, it will be totally amazing, obviously. These fellas are at the top of their game." Then I started hearing people who loved the first record saying things about how Meek Warrior is a major dissapointment, and I started to worry. Had they grown too confident? Were they really just randomly throwing ideas at a wall? It didn't help that the running time on the album was a mere 35:00 (compared with the first record, which was an hour long), and that the lyrics sheet presented songs that consisted of maybe two lines repeated over and over.

Well, guess what? I love this record! It might not have as much "emotional depth" as their last one, and it might be pointlessly all over the place in some spots, but I don't give a shit. I'm a fan! As evidenced by how I feel about their still infantile discography as of October 25th, 2006, I think anything these guys do is genius. Sorry! Until Michael Gira suddenly comes out and says, "You know, these guys have jumped the shark," these guys have my support all the way.

So, what does the album sound like? This album sounds like a bunch of bearded twentysomethings getting together to make "mind-expanding sounds." The first song is 10 minutes long and starts off really noisy, and then there's some chanting, and then some balls out RAWK for the masses to enjoy, and then some other stuff. It's a total fucking mess! Gee. This album also has some folky shit here and there. The last song is a gospel hymn or some shit! Wow! One of these songs is in a different language. I can't tell if it's French or not. Who cares? I'm glad I only paid $9.99 for a new copy of this. Pretty good deal.

Rating: If you became an Akron/Family super-fan thanks to both of their 2005 releases, then you should get this album. You might like it a lot. Even if this album sucks, it's still less boring than Animal Collective, seriously. I give it a 90125! How about 9012Live: The Solos? Oh, yeah? How about Tormato? Such a question has troubled man since the dawn of time.

Song: "Gone Beyond"...I don't know if this is one of the better songs on here. I like it, but there's only three words in the whole song, and it's probably not the best track to play for someone if you want them to buy the album. Argh. I'm too lazy to upload anything myself, so you get these links to the record label's site, you vagina beast, you.

LCD Soundsystem - Original Run

Sorry, I can't think of a good pun for this one.

LCD Soundsystem is a project run by James Murphy. WHO IS NOT RELATED TO POPULAR FICTIONAL CHARACTER, Murphy Brown. He likes to make "disco punk" albums that remarkably sound very similar to Phish or say, Belle & Sebastian.

Anyway, this time around, the soulless presidents of Nike commissioned Mr. Murphy to do a song for Nike for some reason. Maybe so they could turn the song into a GIANT LASER and destroy incoming asteroids with it. Indeed, most of the lyrics deal with asteroids and global warming. Nike cares greatly for our planet and it's people.

The track is a multi-part movement and is actually longer than a Van Halen album, it's almost as long as two Van Halen albums actually, it doesn't sound like Van Halen at all though. it's electronic, the beat is funky fresh and the rhymes are fat. I dig the hell out of it. It's got a bunch of cool parts and for such a long song it hardly ever loses it's appeal. It's not as dancy as you might think it to be, but it's still plenty cool. Maybe because it is "intelligent dance music" or part of the IDM genre, and i do not have the cranial capacity of knowing just how to dance to it because I go to community college and think that the new My Chemical Romance album is pretty great.

Rating: Have you seen the asian broad in LCD's touring band? Now she's a hot slut i'd love to bork!

Song: Here's the whole fucking thing!

Magnolia Electric Co. - Fading Trails

Jason Molina is one prolific motherfucker. I mean, between 1997 and 2003, he released a whopping NINE studio albums under the Songs: Ohia moniker, in addition to a live album, some EPs, and maybe something else that we don't know about because the guy in the record store put it behind a bunch of Nerf Herder albums where no one will ever find it.

Back in 2003, Molina released The Magnolia Electric Co., simultaneously killing the Songs: Ohia project, and ushering in a new day where he and his band would just play awesome Crazy Horse-style country rock because it's a damn good thing to do. Since then, we have seen Molina release a solo album, a live album with the MEC, a studio album with the MEC, maybe a few EPs here and there, and now, in this year 2006, we have yet another Molina solo album AND this record, Fading Trails, which rules. I will discuss it at greater length in the paragraph after the next one.

For all its attributes, Molina's official debut with the Magnolia Electric Co. (band) What Comes After The Blues sort of came off as The Magnolia Electric Co. (album)-lite. Magnolia was such a grand sort of record. There is simply no denying the power of epic beauty fests such as "Farewell Transmission" and "Hold On Magnolia." That shit just grabs hold of you and makes you go, "Well, shit, I'm really moved right now." Unless you're soulless and shitty, which you may very well be. What Comes After The Blues was extremely similar in sound to Magnolia, but it just didn't have the depth of its predecessor. The songs were decent, sure, but they just DIDN'T HAVE THE SAME EFFECT, I GUESS. I don't know. It seemed like he could have knocked those songs out in his sleep. Of course, the sleep of a genius produces much greater albums than the sleep of the common man. So it was good anyway, then. But he didn't develop his band's sound at all, really. Yeah, that's it. The fucker stepped sideways, he did.

And he more or less stayed there for this new record. But it sounds darker. A lot darker. The full-band rockers are a lot more kickass and confident sounding this time, and the sparser numbers are pretty damn lovely. It's shorter, too. I like these songs a lot more than on the last one. Better melodies, more memorable lyrics. You know, at this point in his carreer, Jason Molina seems pretty content with his ability to just shit out albums like this one, and sometimes they're alright, and sometimes they're a little bit better than alright. Fading Trails is an example of the latter. If you lost track of Molina back in 2002 or something and want a taste of what kind of stuff he's doing now, go get The Magnolia Electric Co. If you can't get enough of that album's rootsy, all-American fanfares for the common man, then pick this one the fuck up, seriously.

Rating: If you like Molina's voice and unibrow, you will like this album. Awesomely enough, this album might also appeal to folks who just enjoy good albums, as I do. All of these factors contribute to my enjoyment of this album. Find a torrent of it or something.

Song: Magnolia Electric Co. - "Montgomery"...awesome song. Check out that weird piano thing at the beginning! By the way, this is actually a Rancid album.

The Annuals - Be He Me

The Annuals are a blog band.

I'm going to be straight to the point here. This album is a piece of shit. I would rather gag on my scrotum then listen to it again. I would rather gargle my own urine and slurp up my own shit like a fucking turd milkshake.

All of the songs on here are boring, they are densely layered indie anthems atop bullshit vocals. All these little individuals melodies go nowhere, all the members are nazis and they all eat children. I read an article where the lead singer talked about how much he hated black people and that he had sex with Kurt Cobain before he died.

Look, I've got nothing else to say, strangle my throat with my own cock before I talk about listening to this album again.

I would rather have gophers gnaw at my testicles than listen again. Someone rip off their dicks and shove them down my throat!

I love the sights and smells of the things that come out of a girls butt!

Rating: I'm going to get the reputation of being the one who's reviews are too short.

Song: John Lennon - Working Class Hero

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Brain Salad Surgery

Emerson, Lake & Palmer is commonly believed to be one of the three or four worst bands ever. Some folks might tell you that way back in the early 1970s, ELP was the antithesis of everything that true rock 'n' roll stood for. All three gentlemen were disgustingly talented musicians who played really, really, really, really fucking fast and complicated-like, attempted to combine rock with classical music, and put 30 minute songs on their albums. These same folks might also tell you that ELP's "pomposity," "bloatedness," "wankery," and "pretensiousness" are why punk rock bands like Screwdriver and Avril Lavigne were inspired to come along and show the kids of America that rock 'n' roll was really just about banging out three chord anthems to let the world know that you don't give a fuck.

The reason that ELP is such an easy target for "punk rock saved the world from the pretensiousness of prog-rock"-type people is because they overexhibited every trait associated with "prog-rock"...the dumb concepts, the pointless displays of technical proficiency, the side-long, multi-part epics. Because Keith Emerson was the biggest control freak in the band, and wanted nothing more than to play his organ (penis) as fast as humanly possible and as much as possible, ELP focused mainly on these things rather trying to actually write decent, memorable songs (something that Greg Lake was only somewhat capable of, anyway.) So that's the general verdict, then: while the members of ELP were obviously skilled musicians, they lacked the ability to create any sort of moving, poignant music because they were too concerned with showing off.

This would all be a huge problem for me if Brain Salad Surgery wasn't so damn fun to listen to! When music is as unecessarily complex and shredding-heavy as ELP's, it becomes more funny than genuinely impressive. That's why Dragonforce comes across as so comical. Besides, Keith Emerson is such a serious musician that he doesn't even realize how stupid so much of his music sounds! Listen to these synthesizer tones; they're hilarious! They all sound completely out of place! And he's using these totally wacky synthesizer tones to SHRED upon! It sounds like Mega Man music or something! Ha, ha! And his organ is a laugh riot! Besides having its head covered in lint and encrusted semen and 8 year old boys, it's also just extremely awkward when used as a lead instrument in a rock context. In church, it's cool. For playing endlessly sustained, hypnotic drones on...yeah, sure, the organ is great for that. For carnival music? Of course! Jazz? Why not. But ELP was not a jazz band. They tried to make quite a bit of music that actually rocked, and (much like when they attempted to interpret classical music, tried to write some actual songs, etc.) they failed miserably. When King Crimson played heavy music, they were able to actually make it sound somewhat menacing. When ELP attempt to get heavy (like on "Knife Edge"), they just sound like jackasses, and one of the main reasons is that fucking organ. A distorted organ just doesn't have the balls of a distorted guitar, and that's just the way it is.

Anyways, about this album. It starts off with "Jerusalem," which is an old English hymn or something, and it's a damn good hymn, so it makes for a damn good ELP song, I suppose. Whatever. Then there's "Tocatta," which is one of their famed "interpretations of a piece of classical music" that gets the kids all worked up. It's the only one on here like that, though, so it's pretty easy to take. Plus, it's filled with a million different parts or something. "Still...You Turn Me On" is the next song, and it's absolutely lovely. Greg Lake has a totally kickass voice, but about 90% of the time, he's singing absolutely shit songs, so you can't really tell. But this is a good one. It has that little bouncy wah-wah guitar in the chorus for no good reason whatsoever! Great song. "Benny The Bouncer" is on here to show you that these guys could actually be a lot of fun sometimes, but only when they're playing crap filler, which is what "Benny The Bouncer" is, despite the fact that it rules. Once again, the synthesizer part in this song is just hilarious. I know it's supposed to be a funny song, but I seriously doubt that Emerson had any idea just how fucking stupid it sounds. Goddamnit. The last song is "Karn Evil 9" and it's half an hour long! It starts out really great, proceeds to get even better, jams out for about ten years without totally boring me, and then suddenly turns into a weird sort of patriotic sounding hymn-type thing before ending with some totally crazy synthesizer speaker jumping that sounds pretty "trippy" if you listen to it on headphones. And then it's over!

Rating: This album rules! The really long song is almost not boring at all, and the one actual song on here is damn good. Who cares about the other songs. I give it an 11,000!

Song: "Karn Evil 9"...that's right; the whole thing! You deserve it!

Iron Maiden - Flowerslave

This album came out the same year that The Smith's debut came out, these albums pretty much sound the exact same. Dissonant drums, scratchy guitars, very subtle bass work and mournful crooning all over the motherfucker. The title track is incredibly dancy and faggots all over the world proclaim "2 Minutes To Midnight" to be their favorite power metal song about gay men climaxing in an asshole, as in "2 minutes nailing my partners anus is all it takes for me to blast my (midnight) cum into his ass." Don't believe me? Take a look at the gay cum-swapping lyrics.

the killer is breed of the demon seed / the clamor, the fortune, the pain

Anyway, all the songs are great. The band is in the top of it's game by 1984, and the entire line-up is the same one that did the definitely not-as-good Piece Of Mind album. "Aces High" remains a fist pumping scorcher some twenty years later. Bruce Dickinson is still wailing as loud and as hard as he can. OH YEAH, and there's none of that wussy ballad shit on here. This one will rock the dick out of your skull and boil your piss like a Foreigner concert.

Jennifer Lopez is their guitarist, and continues to slam power chord after power chord down your tummy, Tom Cruise is belting away at the drums like his kit is his only chance at salvation from the pits of hell. Their bassist is a eleven foot tall gorilla with a chip on his shoulder. Together these men and women create a perfect indie rock album that you can listen to with your girlfriend and/or significant other. None of the music on here is directly offensive, though some of the lyrics on "God is the anti-christ" may be too harsh and you may want to put the little ones to bed before this album comes on.

I once listened to this album while having sex with my dog.

Rating: PG: Some songs may prove innapropriate for people who aren't real men. If you don't like this album, grow a pair. Jesus.

Song: Here's a Paul McCartney song for some reason.