For some reason, I FUCKING LOVE LISTS. Weather it's a list of greatest albums of all time from whatever genre in a magazine or a list of hottest whoever-the-fucks on VH1 or E!, I just can't help but watch or read the damn things, and why? Cause I want to see who's number one!
Out of the (what seems like) 137 members and affiliates of the Wu-Tang Clan, you would think that it would be hard to stand out from the Clan crowd and easy to be overshadowed by members that have more hype like the very popular movie and rap star Method Man, and sometimes it is (see the Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck), but if there's one member of the Clan that shines based on skill alone - with no help from movie and television popularity - it's the GZA aka the Genius, my favorite lyrical swordsman in the Clan and somenoe who I believes earns his name.
Was I planning on writing one of my overly-long album reviews today that no one really reads to begin with? Yes, yes I was. The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band to be exact. But shit, why put forth the effort to write a deep, thought provoking analysis of an all-time classic album (that's the intent, at least) when instead I can lament as to why I'm still single in my twenties? That takes almost no effort! Therefore, let me proceed in my self indulgence.
Tool is the one band I have the
most respect for over any other band, even more than my favorites like Judas
Priest and Opeth. Why? Because the band, against all odds, broke into the
mainstream playing 7 minute progressive metal songs which were mostly unedited
on the radio and they became hits - big hits.
Throughout the years they have refused to water down or pop up their signature
style, and despite that, their songs continue to top the rock charts and their
album sell into the millions. They pack arenas to this day (when they came to my
city in 2007 they sold out our arena two nights in a row) and only need to put
out an album every 5 years thanks to the phone book sized royalty statements
they receive on a monthly basis thanks to the fact that their music is
gratuitously played on rock and alternative radio all over the world. So how
can a band that plays music that sounds like this play bigger venues and make
more money than all those cookie-cutter radio rock bands like Hinder and
Shinedown who have a much more accessible and appealing sound? The world may
never know.
Honestly, guys, I only go to about one fucking show a year. And why is that? Why would an avid music listener like myself voluntarily avoid going to see the musicians he loves live and in person? The honest truth, other than the fact that the tours I want to see rarely ever come to my city, is that I don't really enjoy going to shows to begin with.
[Taking a break from music today, I'd like to discuss an unbelievably moving video clip I saw earlier today that I deem very important and believe should be talked about. It is called "To This Day" by Shane Koyczan.]
This masterpiece has to be the most moving and unapologetically evocative and provocative piece of video I have ever seen in my life. Remember Amanda Todd's pre-suciceide youtube clip from last year that caused a waves-worth of tears from everyone who was ensnared by its content? I didn't shed a tear watching that. In fact, I was more into the awesome song playing in the background than anything Todd was telling us about with her note cards, and let me assure you, I could relate to almost everything she went through before her death (I still don't know the title and the artist, by the way.) This, on the other hand, made me break down in tears like a kid who just lost his favorite blanket, or a man who just lost his pet cat that he's had for all his life to a terminal blood disease (that scenario was actually the last time I cried, almost three years ago.) The sheer level of quality inherent in Koyczan's writing in this video is masterful and makes everything I have written on this blog so far look like Rebecca Black's "Friday" in comparison to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata". I'll be honest, It temporarily made me want to quit writing right after I saw it, and even after the tears eventually subsided enough for me to start thinking again, I was still apprehensive about writing a blog today. But, hey, there's always going to be someone better than you when it comes to anything you can do, like it or not. So, I persevere.
Pitch, time, meter, division and subdivision, intervals, scales, functions, logical relationships, rules, formulas, etc...All those words, believe it or not, describe the technical workings of something that most all of us love: MUSIC. And all these terms are just now being hoisted upon me in an attempt for me to understand the science behind how music really works in a basic music theory class I'm taking, and almost regretting.
Taking a break from my long diatribes about music, I'll use this opportunity to give a long diatribe about my atheistic viewpoints. Today I'll discuss how not only is life not a test, but it cannot be a test. This is based on the essays of TJ Kirk.
In case you haven't heard or if you're unsure of the matter, Earl Sweatshirt is easily the best lyricist in the California rap collective Odd Future and he has returned to lay down the law for all those new rappers out there, most of whom are much older than him. Shit, the kid's younger than I am at only 19 years old, and his lyrical prowess is way beyond his years. He displays heavy use of multi-sylable rhyme schemes and clever wordplay, as is evident by his absurdly epic verse on the Odd Future song "Oldie", his big return to the group on last year's OF Tape Vol. 2 after spending a year in a reform school of some sort on the island of Samoa. His time away inspired many a fan to chant "FREE EARL!" at concerts and wear Earl t-shirts and sweatshirts (how appropriate) despite Earl having only one body of work to his credit; the mixtape EARL. In short, Earl is free, and he's making it known. So far he's made appearances on other albums by his fellow Odd Future members like MellowHype, Domo Genesis, and singer Frank Ocean, and finally he's going to treat the Steve Harvey-hating masses to his second album Doris this year.
As is evident by my last couple ramblings, I’ve been on a pretty
serious doom metal kick as of late and I’ve been loving every miserable
wrist-cutting inducing minute of it! The stunted-tempo music of Candlemass,
Solitude Aeturnus, Hooded Menace, and of course, the funeral doom of bands like
Mournful Congregation and Evoken. However, the music of the latter two bands
would not be compelling me to abuse anti-depressants right now if it wasn’t for
Thergothon, a Finnish band who many see as the originators of the style with
their one and only album Stream from the
Heavens.
Yes, I just started using Spotify. Am I late to the party? Yes! But what's important is the fact that I'm on board and I now have a resource to discover loads of bands that fit into the incredibly unpopular microgenre of funeral doom
Remember this review where I stated that Pornography by The Cure is the most depressing album in popular music history? That assertion, arguably, still stands, but what about the most depressing album in underground music history? Now THAT'S a different story, because in the underground there is next to no expectations to be accepted by the public, much less to sell enough records to move out of your mom's apartment, so you have the liberation to make any kind of music that you damn well please, no matter how much it could, in this case, seemingly create clinical depression in the listener. And if there's one way to earn yourself an anti-depressant prescription, it would probably be by giving this album a few listens and then going to see a psychiatrist.
Well, shit. I totally forgot to do a Metal Monday post this past Monday, so to repent for my sin-rather than feeding my hands into meatgrinders so I can never type so much as another word again-I'll write about the ultimate current metal band, Blind Guardian, who deserve an unending amount of love and respect from the collective heavy metal community due to the fact that they make most metal bands look like pretentious posers who should hang up the whole being in a band thing and go back to working part-time shifts in their local record shop that makes two sales a week.
