Tag: metal

New Music: August

September 17th, 2019

Whew! The longer I do this column, the better I get at finding new music, and the more I realize just how much music comes out every month. This month, we have music from Birds of Bellwoods, Ariel Pink,, Leaves’ Eyes and more – a mix of genres if I’ve ever heard one. And those are the ones that didn’t make it onto the list! I also made a point of sauntering over to the punk and metal charts, since that’s usually more my style, so there’s some more of those genres on here this month as well.

1. Love Too Much – Keane

Keane was one of my childhood favourite bands, especially as I went through a difficult move from England to Canada. However, upon the release of their third album Perfect Symmetry I drifted away from their music, finding it wasn’t the same anymore. ‘Love Too Much’ is the first single from their upcoming album Cause and Effect, and it’s not quite a return to form, but something much more interesting – a fusion of the heavy beats and rhythm from Perfect Symmetry and onwards with the thematic depth and hopeful tones of their first albums.

2. Cross You Out – Charli XCX and Sky Ferreira

Is there anything better than two enormously talented women teaming up for a hit song? That song being a heartfelt, empowering goodbye to a toxic relationship. Charli XCX and Sky Ferreira both embody a dark-pop style that’s been getting more and more popular, and that style is used to fantastic effect on Cross You Out, a moody song that is best described as radio-friendly industrial. Charli XCX is a new artist for me, but with this single, I can’t wait for her new album.

3. Tear Up – Area 11

Area 11 is another new name for me – a British four-piece that apparently genre-hops as much as they like. This song is a pop-punk anthem in the style of McFly, Fall Out Boy or Death Cab for Cutie, albeit with a more electronic bent to it. The main singer’s voice is distinctive – at first listen I wasn’t fond of it, but it’s grown on me, and I don’t think the song would be as good without it. It’s a song about the end of the world, catchy and foreboding, with a unconvincing promise that it’ll ‘all work out’.

4. Separate Houses – Press Club

Despite the overarching feeling that there aren’t enough girls in the punk/hardcore scenes, there’s actually plenty – it’s just that they often get overshadowed or ignored in favour of the more “traditional” male acts. But Press Club’s Natalie Foster is impossible to ignore in ‘Separate Houses’ – she’s a hot mess, falling apart and trying to hide, crying out ‘am I letting you down a little more than you’d like? I keep saying I’m fine, I hate it’ and ending the song with a repeated, desperate, “I keep on pretending that I am getting better”. It’s an immensely relatable song, especially for people on the uphill climb of recovery, and I haven’t been able to stop listening.

5. Miracle Pill – Goo Goo Dolls

That’s right, there’s more Goo Goo Dolls music! Miracle Pill (and the new album as a whole) is a significant break from their signature sound, putting guitars aside for a smoother, synth-and-piano pop sound. It’s not a widely-beloved change, but I for one am quite enjoying it. Miracle Pill is immensely catchy with amazing lyrical writing, about – appropriately enough – the past weighing you down. (The song ‘Indestructible’ is also amazing, but I didn’t want to include two of their songs.)

6. No Muss No Fuss – Ralph

Ralph is a rising star in the Canadian pop world, a quirky fashion icon who writes smooth disco songs about love and jealousy and manages to combine the aesthetics of David Bowie and Regina Spektor. ‘No Muss No Fuss’ is a excellently produced song about the most banal, frustrating of things – the ex that won’t leave you alone, or get the hint. Ralph’s gorgeous vocals and songwriting mean that even those who have (miraculously) never experienced this will be bopping along.

7. KURT KOBAIN – Velvet N*groni

Velvet N*groni’s first album NEON BROWN is experimental R&B with a dark side, smooth synths sliding together with syncopated beats. KURT KOBAIN is my favourite off of it so far (and not just because of the title) – the music video is in ghostly monochrome, with muted, distorted vocals. The lyrics for this song have actually not made an appearance anywhere online yet – which means the content of the song mostly suggests itself through the video and atmosphere.

8. Unsainted – Slipknot

(TW for eye contact, flashing and religious imagery in the video)

Time for a proper metal song on here! First off, if you’re not a fan of metal and guttural vocals, you won’t like this song. If you don’t usually like Slipknot, however… give it a try. ‘Unsainted’ uses more melodic contrast than usual for Slipknot, and the chorus melody is echoed by an operatic chorus in the background, giving the song a lot of power behind the intense guitar riffs and growling that mark the verses. The lyrics are incredible, too – I’m reminded of how many people listen to ‘Snuff’ and are shocked to find out that Slipknot’s lyrics are actually really good. Some of the standouts for ‘Unsainted’ are ‘I’ll never kill myself to save my soul’ and ‘You killed the saint in me, how dare you martyr me’ – strong statements against the Church.

9. Teeth – 5 Seconds of Summer

BIG TW for the video for flashing, claustrophobia, and medical stuff. It’s an extremely good video and I HIGHLY recommend it.

5 Seconds of Summer’s ‘Teeth’ is from the soundtrack of 13 Reasons Why, but don’t hold that against it. It has a killer riff, and a chorus that’ll get stuck in your head for the next week. More than that, though, it’s another installment of ‘industrial pop’ with a hell of a message – it’s about a toxic relationship and an abusive girlfriend who just won’t let go. It’s not often we get songs about bad girlfriends that don’t treat it as her just being naggy or a cheater but instead monstrous and abusive; the video makes this even clearer with some incredible cinematography. I have to admit, I’m fascinated to see where this goth/industrial trend in pop is going.

10. Lorem Ipsum (Arctic Anthem) – Anamanaguchi

TW: Lots and lots of flashing for the video.

As much as I’ve been nerding out about lyrics in this column, Anamanaguchi proves with this song that you don’t need lyrics that make sense to make an amazing song. ‘Lorem Ipsum’s only lyrics are, as you might have guessed, the ‘lorem ipsum’ text – for those who don’t know, the text traditionally used as filler text to test formatting when printing books or other material. “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” is the opening part, and the section used in the song. I particularly enjoy the amount of research obvious in the music video, down to using actual manuscript illustrations and zooming in on the actual original of the ‘lorem ipsum’ – a Cicero text that actually says ‘dolorem ipsum’. (Lorem is not a word in Latin.)
ALBUM REVIEW: Within Temptation – RESIST 2019

July 22nd, 2019
Within Temptation has been one of my favourite bands for more than a decade – Sharon Den Adel was one of my first queer crushes, and they were the first band to really get me interested in metal. (It’s amazing what going from ‘Memories’ to ‘Enter’ will do for a slippery slope into symphonic soundtracks.)

Not surprisingly, then, they’re one of the few artists that I have kept up with. Often, artists I listen to a lot will release new material and I’ll find out years later. I did miss the release of this one by a few months, but that means that I’m listening to it for the first time untainted by reviews, bad or good.

MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

WT has always danced with genre limitations – their very first album was gothic metal complete with beauty-and-the-beast vocals and death metal growls, only to slide smoothly into Celtic and symphonic. This is, after all, the band that collaborated with Xzibit. However, this is the most metal they’ve sounded in a while. While The Unforgiving and Hydra were great, they were closer to hard rock than anything else. In sharp contrast, the guitars on RESIST are crunchier, the drums are louder, the vocals are rougher.

That’s not to say that RESIST is pure metal. Far from it. This time out, while returning to some of their roots, WT has used a lot more electronic sounds and instruments in building their songs. “The Reckoning” uses static and synth to round out its sound, and the blithely weird “Supernova” almost sounds like it belongs in a club. (That song specifically reminds me of the Unhum Remix of “On Whom The Moon Doth Shine” by Theatre of Tragedy; while ToT’s venture into electronica didn’t go nearly as well, that particular remix is another fantastic blend of metal and electronic affectations.)

The collaborations have also continued, although none of them are quite as jaw-dropping as the previous album. Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach, Anders Friden of In Flames, and Jasper Steverlinck of Arid all lend their voices to the album, and they all work pretty well. Friden is probably the best of them, his death-metal snarls on ‘Raise Your Banner’ really adding something to the song instead of serving as just an extra layer of vocals. I do miss how I felt when I first read the track listing of Hydra and saw Tarja, Howard Jones and Xzibit’s names, but different collaborations happen for different reasons.

I also enjoy the new maturity of sound on display. While the songs being similar lengths/tempos is a major downside, the lyrics, sounds and concepts are far less cheesy than previous WT efforts. Some of that is RESIST’s status as a concept album without it dedicating every song to it; a lot of it is a new resonance to the lyrics. (More on the lyrics in a bit.)

INSTRUMENTATION AND LYRICS:

Sharon Den Adel is a self-taught vocalist, and while I adore her swooping soprano (there hasn’t been enough of it on the last few albums) there have always been moments where her tendency to stick to what she’s comfortable doing have been obvious. On this album, however, I really notice how much her voice has grown and developed over the last two decades. Of course, there’s still some cheese; while ‘Holy Ground’ is my favourite song off the album, that first moment of Den Adel trying to sound more Rock than usual is a kicker.

In terms of instrumentation, unfortunately, at points the backing music gets a bit busy. A lot of this I’m willing to attribute to mixing, but while the ‘wall of sound’ works for a lot of RESIST, there are songs that could have benefited from more distinct instruments. ‘Raise Your Banner’ and ‘In Vain’ in particular suffered from a certain muddiness, only made more obvious by the inclusion of instrumental versions on the album (oops).

Lyrically, some songs are better than others, and there are still some awkward moments, but the consistent upward movement seen in previous albums is still there. One of my favourite lyrics is the chorus of ‘Holy Ground’:

Burying the truth with lies
Fed up how you justify
And now I hate it
And how I hate it
You’re so despicable
When you’re acting unreasonable
And I hate it
And I hate it
Your words like firing guns, bullets raining
The way you hurt me ’cause you never wanna face it
Your words like firing guns, bullets raining
Bullets raining, you never wanna face it

SONG FAVOURITES:
1. ‘Holy Ground’, definitely. It reminds me a bit of ‘The Cross’ from The Heart of Everything but with a harder edge – the Terminator 2 Sarah Connor to the OG, one might say.
2. ‘The Reckoning’ has an iconic opening, and the mix of den Adel and Shaddix’s vocals is pretty much perfect.
3. ‘Supernova’ is weird, but the weird is what makes it work – it’s a dancey, electronic symphonic metal track, which is a new experience for me. And the lyrics are great, too!
4. ‘Blood for Freedom’ is the hardest song on the album and it really gets the blood pumping.
5. ‘Firelight’s lyrics get a little bit Adele at time, but the instrumentation in particular is unique – the kind of thing you expect from darkwave rather than symphonic metal.

Tag: metal

New Music: August

ALBUM REVIEW: Within Temptation – RESIST 2019