Music in 2012

[Vongola_Boss_XI]

In 1974 Jon Landau said "I have seen Rock n' roll's future and it's name is Bruce Springsteen"

In 2012, "I have seen the future of Rock n' roll and it's name is The Gaslight Anthem"


Brian Fallon is awesome. Really love the new album Handwritten




Also great in 2012, Wrecking Ball by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. The Gaslight Anthem are awesome, but Bruce is STILL the Boss

[The Beast]

http://soundcloud.com/mergerecords/t...-goats-cry-for

I'm excited

I'm glad he seems to have been getting beter at this FULL BAND/ORCHESTRATED thing since Heretic Pride, because I seriously didn't care for most of that album

at least I'll always have like 20 albums worth of his cassette years

[Wagomu]

I actually really like Heretic Pride. It took a lot of time (it was the first Mountain Goats album I heard and when I heard it, I was determined to hate the Mountain Goats, haha) and there are still a couple songs that I don't love, but man that title track, Autoclave, Sax Rohmer and In the Craters on the Moon rate as some of my favorites.

That new song is definitely giving me a case of the vapors, though. And you're right that the full sound is much more refined now. I'm really digging this new track. It's amazing seeing his direct evolution between albums, too. He sort of backed down from doing the large band thing for a while and has come back at it with the lessons he learned in writing and delivery from all the albums in between. I'm really looking forward to this album.

[Sakonosolo]

A new Comus album came out just recently. Their first album was fantastic but their second album wasn't as good. This album is really good. It's weird though because it has three songs and then an intro to a suite and then the suite. They shouldn't have included the intro.

Here's a song from the album


They're progressive rock/folk.

[Wagomu]

Deathspell Omega's newest EP is righteous. It took me a while to get around to it, but damn are they good at bringing together the abrasive and atmospheric sides of black metal. They aren't really put together in each individual song, but the EP swerves in and out of those elements for great effect. The instrumental closer is a real standout to me, but it's hard to imagine listening to Drought as anything other than the full experience.



Up next on music I need to catch up on: Gaza and Nachtmystium.

[Sarfallet]

A new Comus album came out just recently. Their first album was fantastic but their second album wasn't as good. This album is really good. It's weird though because it has three songs and then an intro to a suite and then the suite. They shouldn't have included the intro.

I dunno, I'm not to into it... I'm thinking it doesn't hold a candle to First Utterance. :/ I really want to like The Maalgard Suit and audio quality isn't that important to me. But I would like to be able to... Like you know... Hear it. :P
*sigh* What could have been. :(

[Wagomu]

I've spun Gaza's latest a few times by now and it hauls ass. "No Absolutes in Human Suffering" it's called, and this album is a nice little lesson in violence. It reminds me of Trap Them, but with a lot of added heaviness and just a tinge of industrial-like pounding from time to time and even a couple tastefully done lighter bits. Part of this album is the soundtrack to breaking cars with a crowbar while the other is a reflection on what you've just done. It's like every song is the aftermath of the last one. Really nice stuff. I'll leave you guys with the album's opener:

[Vongola_Boss_XI]

Read this about the new Gaslight Anthem album....perfectly says what I couldn't

It would be stupid to try and tell you that the music you’re listening to is like nothing you’ve ever heard before. The songs on the Gaslight Anthem’s latest album are three or four minutes long, most of them, and they’re played on loud electric guitars, and there are drums, and to be honest, if you haven’t heard anything like this before, then you’re probably listening to the wrong band anyway. What’s great about the Gaslight Anthem is that there’s an assumption you’ll have heard something like this before - on the first Clash album, or on Born To Run, or the first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album, or maybe on a Little Richard record. That’s what hooked me in. I’ve been listening to rock’n’roll for forty years, and so maybe I’m too old to be writing this stuff, but on the other hand, maybe I know what I’m talking about, too: believe me, I know a lot of stuff sounds tired and derivative, and makes you feel as though rock music is exhausted. It’s hard to find new ways to tell stories and write songs; even clothes made out of meat won’t do you much good if your music is 1980’s dance-pop.

So you have two choices. The first is this: you do something nobody’s ever done before. You play the nose-flute underwater, put it through a computer backwards, and get a black Japanese guy to rap over the top. Or you write a novel using only consonants. Or you make a movie which nobody can see. And that’s all cool, but nobody will want to read your second novel written using only consonants, so then you’ll have to write one using only vowels. And the second is this: you think, write, play and sing as though you have a right to stand at the head of a long line of cool people - you recognise that the Clash and Little Richard got here first, but they’re not around any more, so you’re going to carry on the tradition, and you’re going to do it in your own voice, and with as much conviction and authenticity and truth as you can muster. And if you can pull that off, you’ll be amazed at how fresh you can sound.

And the Gaslight Anthem sound fresh. Anyone who has ever been frustrated by anything - a girl, a boy, a job, a self (especially that) - can listen to this music and feel understood and energised. (And if I feel energised, Lord knows what they’re going to do to you.) And I’m beginning to suspect that they, like, read books, too. ‘Great Expectations’ - now there’s a great title for a song. And here, ‘Howl’ - there’s another one. Rockers who read. Songwriters who are not scared to go head-to-head with everyone else in rock’s great tradition. The Gaslight Anthem are my kind of people.

[Wagomu]

I am making some progress in my listenings. Some short reviews:

Nachtmystium - Silencing Machine:

These dudes are finally moving back closer to classic black metal form, but they've taken some of the lessons learned from their more recent adventures to heart. Some of it works really well and a bit of it falters, but this album is definitely a solid piece of under the influence black metal, harsh with some stranger sensibilities on the side.

Various Artists - Songs for Townes Van Zandt:

I'm only bringing this up since it's so well done and an odd group for a tribute album to a legendary country/folk man. It features Scott Kelly and Steven von Till from Neurosis and Wino from Trouble covering the man's music. They do a fantastic job of bringing in a dark atmosphere and emotion with their doom sensibilities and successfully bring the man's music into a different light.

The Faceless - Autotheism:

The Faceless have done a lot of listening since their last album (a fantastic slab of tech death called Planetary Duality). These guys must have been smoking crystalized Devin Townsend throughout their sessions, because they've taken a page from his book of Ziltoid/Deconstruction and mixed it into their sound. There are also some evident bits of Gojira and Cynic. I hate reviewing this as the sum of its influences, but they're so apparent that it's hard no to draw attention to them. The Faceless wear those colors proudly and look mighty fine in them. Sometimes the album dips a bit to far into the fondue of cheesiness, but I can forgive it.

Converge/Napalm Death - Split EP

Holy shit does this tear balls. 4 songs, 7-8 minutes long, all fury. This is the first Converge has recorded in a while and you can hear some new heavier influences in their playing. Only one of their songs is new fare and it's 50 seconds long, but damn is it to the point. Then they preach to this choir by covering Entombed with "Wolverine Blues." This is all within three minutes, too. Napalm Death throws up what sounds like a couple of Outtakes from Utilitarian and it's all good. Not as strong as the Converge side, but still plenty of asskickery going on.

[The Laughing Man]

Picked up the new Moonspell double-album, Alpha Noir / Omega White today.



I also picked up the new Circus Maximus album, Nine.

[GuetaMinute]

[The Beast]

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPl...96&m=158934525

The new Dan Deacon album can be streamed here and I like it a lot

--- Update From New Post Merge ---

Oh hey

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/19/158708...swans-the-seer

New Swans album is here to stream too!

[DarthAsthma]

the new flobots album is out.

http://www.youtube.com/user/XxacedragonxX/videos

that channel contains all the songs I think.
Haven't really listened to it yet. Just like 4 songs. Out of them I really like gonna be free.

[Wagomu]

The new Mountain Goats just leaked. I know what I'm going to be obsessing over for a month or two.

[The Beast]

The new Mountain Goats just leaked. I know what I'm going to be obsessing over for a month or two.

Gimme PLS

[Dumhuvud]

Has anyone here given This is PiL a try yet? Is it as good as reviews say?

[The Beast]

It's...Not terribly notable, I don't think. It's kind of a misstep, or the same step maybe, in a sense that it's mostly more of what one has heard before as far as PIL goes.

It sounds exactly like what one would expect a reunion album to sound like, now that I think about it, no matter what the band was

There've been bands that made terrible reunion albums like Steely Dan and also bands that kinda knew how to do more of the same well and build off it (like Rush's Snakes and Arrows was pretty organic for something that was "you know Rush right well this is Rush in 2007" and how good it was is based on how much you wanted to hear a new Rush album) and I guess this is sort of ... Somewhere in the middle of it all

I'll never remember it again in my life, personally

[Wagomu]

I'm loving the new Mountain Goats album. It feels like the right combination of my favorite moments from Heretic Pride on (including the Satanic Messiah EP, which had its cover done by the same dude). I'm going to need to listen to it again for a better conclusion. And again. And again. And again. And again. In summary, I've thrown my money at the preorder and am probably travelling by train to catch the show.

[The Beast]

Yeah the album was pretty great

Occult Themes are great themes to have (he's mentioned the implications of the word is a favorite of his) and after Strands of Oak's incredible Dark Shores (the superior folk/folk rock album of the year, admittedly), it's really refreshing to have a SECOND album that's also about ideas that don't have to do with confessional style lyricism

So far, I say Transcendental Youth is like... somewhere high on my current album of the year lists, but I can tell it's a grower like all of his post-cassette-culture albums so I'll give it more listens to fully decide on what its best merits are.

P.S. Strands of Oak's Dark Shores really is the absolute best folk oriented album of the year right now. It's about the bleakness of space, space mining, and being an astronaut and that's all literal, not metaphorical. It could've been spacier, but fuck it I love the hell out of it. it doesn't have any surprise moments on it, like suddenly transforming into Doom Metal before going back to acoustic guitar and synths, but it's all the more cohesive than Pope Killdragon was. Which was also my favorite album of the year the year it came out.

I just want folk to move the fuck on from Sad Sack Shit and realize that creating a mythology is so much more fun and interesting than being a fucking whiny white asshole with a guitar which is still Such a Thing to this day. Because it's never in style and never goes out of style, it's like it's trapped in non-progressive limbo. ... ... God, fuck Elliot Smith

[Bucephalus]

Really really really did not like that new Mountain Goats record. The added instrumentation just didn't give me a nice vibe and the songwriting was really patchy this time around. Lyrics were good, but melodically the LP was really lackluster.

This year just keeps disappointing. A lot of the "big names" for music this year have just put out boring record after boring record.

I'd honestly say that the brief list of worthwhile releases for this year that I posted earlier in the thread is still exactly the same.

My predictions for AOTY contenders, as I recall, were Swans and Flying Lotus.

The Seer was indubitably good, but I felt like it was at times just long for the sake of being long; sometimes the songwriting just blew my mind, but other times -most of the time- it was just "okay." I understand Gira's philosophy in creating hypnotic, punishing music, but the album was really quite exhaustive.

Flying Lotus put out my AOTY for 2010 and he would have released my AOTY for 2008 had it not been for Street Horrrsing. The man's a fucking genius and with each successive release he stirs the big melting pot of the LA beat scene and gets it flowing in a new pattern and style. I have no doubt that his album's going to be enjoyable, but I'm not sure if it will live up to the spiritual influences that made Cosmogramma a masterpiece. He released his first single with Erykah Badu and I've heard mixed opinions; I refuse to listen to his singles, as I prefer my initial listen to his albums to be a cohesive, flowing experience. Even if that Badu single was mediocre, I saw him live over the summer and the joints he played off the new LP were fucking delectable, so I'm not worried for the time being.