Crack the Skye-Mastodon

I have a beef with “nu-metal”. For me metal was always big, scary and complex. Songs shouldn’t be less than 5 minutes, the bass and drums ought to evoke Satan hammering on your door and the lyrics should soar effortlessly above the rest, only met on occasion by screeching solos every 3 minutes. And under no circumstance must anyone even attempt to be “gangsta”.  In short I’m a devout follower of the Sabbath and Metallica models.

The problem with this is it can get boring, you cover the same ground. For this reason I forgive the music industry for its two decades of catchy chorus and grown men in dress up. Mastodon blew this situation away however on Crack the Skye. Variety is on full show here; “Oblivion” starts with a haunting, spacey synth intro. “Divinations” kicks off with rumbling banjo. Single tracks morph and change direction frequently.

The real impressive feat though is how good everyone is. The vocals are spot on, constant melodies; I still don’t know who exactly was on lead for this album. The two guitars fuzz and dance, the bass skips here and there, on the aforementioned “Divinations” all instruments gun it for a mad crescendo, which impossible holds together. Prog comes to mind very much, I’d compare their sound to recent Metallica with Sabbath. This isn’t thrash, Crack the Skye is much more focused on atmosphere and depth than moshing.

The themes have been updated too. Fantasy and the occult has been a metal staple since Zeppelin, todays it’s space and time travel. There is some kind of concept of a time travelling astronaut warning an occult of the Russian revolution or something, but all you really need to know is this is a trip album.

I’d recommend this to even non-metal fans, it’s an excellent example of the genre very much misunderstood by the mainstream. This and the Black Album should atleast be able to convert non-believers to appreciators. 

Slanted and Enchanted-Pavement

Do you like The Pixies? Silly question really. Pavement are a slacker alternative band from the 90’s who do the short, catchy, timeless and bloody odd in much the same way as Doolittle. The one difference is this album is honestly better in my opinion, which is no mean feat considering how often Doolittle crops up on best ever lists.

It’s warm and fuzzy throughout, “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” is slow and mellow with a dizzy, spastic solo at the end, breaking out into fun, nonsense melodies. Melodies and nonsense are recurring themes; “Trigger Cut” sees the band sing “sha-na-na” and don’t get me started on “Conduit For Sale!”, which is some kind of history rap with panicked chorus.

On other tracks the album absolutely wears it’s heart on its sleeve, “Here” and “Zurich is Stained” are spacious laments, very much for the slacker.

Throughout the bass is fuzzy and you can hear the drummer have a great time as the melodies grow bigger; on “Lorretta’s Scars” the beat is certain to move anyone. This is a through and through a lo-fi marvel, but the album quality is very good unlike, say; Dinosaur Jnr.

Like Doolittle every song is a hit, you wish there was more of it and whoever you are there is no way you cannot love this beauty.

BestEverAlbums.com

Finding good music advice is impossible on the web. Spotify and Last.fm will point out music based on your tastes and critical sites like Kerrang and NME do a good job of telling you about what’s new. Delving into the vast back catalogue of music is a daunting prospect however. This is where some cold, hard math comes into help.

BestEverAlbums.com averages 2,600 charts from critics and joe public to rank albums. I agree solidly with the chart, even if NIN are a bit too low and Bowie is on it a bit much. The website has other lists though for year and bands, if you’re after a good recommendation it’s worth checking out. Neither does it fall into genre bias either *ahem*RollingStonesMagazine*ahem*

You can easily make your own list and share it, which is always fun for listophiles like myself, and the forums seem friendly enough. Within days of making my list a little discussion had popped up underneath it.
The search doesn't work quite as well you'd like it too and no actual reviews for albums are posted, which is a shame. I can't help but think some dedicated editorials would be nice but that might just be me asking too much.

If anything this site is good for settling music arguments and firmly establishing Radiohead as “not just a band I like” 

Scars on Broadway- Scars on Broadway

I think the first two tracks on this album perfectly sum the rest up; “Serious” and “Funny”. The best comparison for Scars on Broadway is System of a Down, which figures seeing as 2/5ths of the bands make up come straight from System. That’s not to say they are identical, the liberal politics and good humour have come across intact, but the tone is bouncier and poppier. There is also a greater range of instrumentation, the sounds jumps from thrash to ballad to electro. Daron Malakian (The guy who screams “WAKE UP IT’S PARTY TIME!” on B.Y.O.B, y’know the one i mean) does a fantastic job fronting the band with impressive soaring vocals and is an ample fit for Serj Tankians position.

In party mode Scars rock seriously hard, “They Say” is infectious and catchy while “Chemicals” is a foul mouthed techno marvel that trumps anything SOAD have so far done. On the other hand of the spectrum “3005” is a thoughtful ballad revelling in how the right will finally die out, but still manages to be humouress and happy.

If you like SOAD you’ll find a lot to love with Scars, if you don’t know either than Scars is a brilliant entry to the mad pair and is well worth checking out.