Imperial Triumphant : " Alphaville"

Once again number Colin Marston of Krallice among their collaborators as well as more main stream names from the progressive metal community Trey from Mr. Bungle and drummer Tomas Haake from Meshuggah. The angular labyrinth of winding jazz infused riffs and circular drumming that makes the song hypnotically spin. If you did not figure out on the first song, the second one makes it perfectly clear this is not a black metal album. The bass drives the second song more. There is more dissonance to the weird mathmatics they throw at you/. Some of the choice to be weird work better than others, the precussive break in "City Swine" kills the songs helter skelter momentum. They do finds some blast beats for a few moments after this. They jazzy piano flourishes are the most worthwhile part of this song.

The growled and screamed vocals on "Atomic Age" remind you this is a metal band not a math rock band despite evidence your ears might try to tell you other wise. I think Sigh made a better argument for this. These guys use more chaos and dissonance. I like that it is sonically intense. I do not think in terms of song writing they have stepped forward , but have opted to be more experimental. I appreciate this though I am not sure this will take up the time I normally spend listening to Igorrr who fills the weird void for me more often than not. "Transmisson to Mercury"  blends more boozy jazzy into things, which is far from the first time this has been done in metal so I am not sure what all the fuss is about . It is more of a sound than a song, but the sound is sonically pleasing to me so that gives them more slack, but I am by no means blown away by this.

The title track just kind of falls out of the previous song. The choas eventually is run through a more conventional metal filter. The actually find a groove on this one before wandering off into more proggy moments. By the time we get to " the Greater Good" the novelty of weird has begun to wear off. They did milk it for mileage well. Then they include two cover the first being Voivod's "Experiment" . Musically it's ok , but the vocals are growled and terrible. The cover of "Happy Home" is equally obtuse.  These guys are great musicans , this is a step further into prog, I will give this album an 8, not likely to make any of my end of the year lists, but likely to be on those that are trying to look cool.

The Sound of Me Before You pt 2

This is the second part of a four part series I am doing, with a theme  of if you are sharing your life with someone  once of the most important things you can share is your music. It's the pieces of me that I don’t have words for as they are an amalgamation of my thoughts and emotions relating to sonic vibrations. Music can always take me back to a place in time. We are going through the angry teen years, which were also filled with drugs, but not the real hard stuff that comes in the next installment. It's interesting to imagine how two people might have interacted at different times in their life if they met under different circumstances. So this is a soundtrack to that.  I have organized it in terms of the year these songs are released . The story they tell is somewhat loose. This is me giving these songs as token to someone of what was inside me before they knew me. This is what my life sounded like before I met them. 

Me Against the World




infinite dreams




Sleepless Nights


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Dead Skin Mask

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Girls of Porn




Kindergarten





Prison Sex


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Reptile


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How it Would Be


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In Praise of Bacchus


 

The Top 100 albums of the 90s :10 to 1

So here we are at the end, ultimately these are the ten albums I get the most playtime out of with the top 6 still in my iPod and the others shuffling in and out of it, which considering how much new music I ingest on a daily basis says something about their staying power.

 10- Faith No More - "Angel Dust"

When I saw these guys live last month this fact became more than evident. They hit their peak with this one as the bar was raised way to high.

 


9-Janes Addiction- " Ritual De Lo Habitual"

 This was pretty close with "Angel Dust" , but the song "3 Days" gives it the edge. The radio songs just skim the surface and if they are all you have heard you are doing yourself a disservice.


 

8-Mr Bungle- S/T

If it was not for this album " Angel Dust" would have never come about.Mike Patton never sounded better.
 

7-Radiohead- "Ok Computer"

"Kid A" is a close second, but this one sounds good even if I was not on drugs at the time, though when this album came out those moments were few and far between. Yorke's voice is great , but at the end of the day its about the songs and they stand the test of time for sure.

 
6-Tool- "Aenima"

 When this album came out it was played at least once a day, any one who was getting stoned to me in the mid 90s will attest to this. This was more of Tool vs Tool , and this beat out "Undertow" because there are more dynamic layers.



5- Type O Negative -"October Rust"

 More goth than metal, then layers of this album are amazing, if you are going to get high, then sit between two speaker and listen to this loudly. One of the best produced and written albums ever. Peter Steele's voice also had more depth and passion.


 


4 - Swans- "Love of Life" 

 This beat Tool out, because the songs don't take you back to when the album came or feel hampered by how the perception of heavy changes over time, Tool was great, but doesn't seem all that heavy anymore, these guys invoke the same feeling of awe every time played.

 


3- Morrissey - "Vauxhall & I "

 This album came close to being almost as good as The Smiths. If you accept Moz on his own two feet then this is without a doubt some of his best singing and songwriting.


 

2- Cocteau Twins- " Heaven or Las Vegas"


 Heaven should be in this album's title because that is what it sounds like, really the almost 80s drum sound which you almost don't notice once Elizabeth starts singing, is the only thing that gave the number slot the edge as they are not confined to any passage in time.


1- Dead Can Dance- "Into the Labyrinth" 


 These guys are their only competition, so by process of elimination "A Passage in Time" is a compilation and this album is better than "Spirit Chaser". These songs defy time, they could have come out two hundred years ago , and some did or 200 years in the future and it doesn't matter they just happened to have been released in the 90s when this project was at it's peak.