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.