Reviews by deksametazon

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2024: #30 An album that references the COVID-19 lockdown (17th album)

Suburban mom music, with all the stomach turning moments: the cringe song names, lyrics, and singing (why the absolute FUCK does he use autotune). I barely made it to "Kick Ass" when I turned it off, because I know for a fact, Bryan was smiling when he wrote it and thought "Yep, this is what the world needs right now."

Those who, even vaguely, know me, know that I'm not a fan of most stuff you can label "extreme" metal. Be it because of vocals that sound like an agonizing trip to the toilet, or an overindulgence in guitars, something in that cog machine never turns the right way, and you end up with me laughing at a most of the time, sincere attempt at making a grizzled emotional musical movement.

Now, Acid Bath is an outlier to that. I suspect it's because this album, in particular, isn't a full scale metal album. Rather, it tethers between metal subgenres I like (doom, sludge and stoner metal) and alt-rock, with a flavor of extreme to it. Nothing too out there, mind you.

With that being said, what we have here is an album on the heavier side with a lot of misanthropy and angst, backed up by a swampy atmosphere that's just as heavy. The atmosphere really benefits from the primitive production, and their playing style is mainly between patchy melodic playing with a dose showing off akin to that of the thrash metal scene, and rough, deep repetitiveness and groove similar to Sabbath, with them sometime steering into folk and psych territory seamlessly.

I'd recommend this album for those who want to take their first steps into more extreme shades of metal. It's a unique album with a lot of history behind it, and more importantly, a lot of influence and well played music.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2023: #6 A hip hop album by a Native American or First Nations artist (8th album)

Run-of-the-mill gangster rap mixed with over-the-top production which made the whole thing collapse on itself. The fact that this guy raps about the same 3 things (gangs, drugs, and partying) really doesn't help it. It's not even bad to warrant a detailed analysis, it's just... boring. Boring to the point of not being interested and calling it a day at the midway point.

At least it was topping the independent charts, for what it's worth.

Obviously good, but I feel like it's lacking something to take it over the edge. Aaliyah's voice is absolutely gorgeous and sensual and her approach to the craft is so mature for a 22 year old that you think it's made by a person who's been at the top for 10+ years.

The problem arises with the 60 minute runtime, which had it been 35-40 minutes, would've put this one in the elite status for me, but as it stands, listening to 60 minutes of the same old sensual RnB isn't my jive currently.

Yeah, this is NOT an EP. EPs are 15-20 minutes long, not almost 40.

Anyway, this "EP" has some very nice moments. Revolute being one of them, with some real nice tempo drumming, and a good ass atmosphere from the second half. The rest is pretty decent. Atmospheric, dreamy, indie rock that's adequate and would gladly recommend.

Make no mistake about it, the album is pretty bad. But beneath all the glitch, the ptsd inducing onslaught of sounds and the fairly annoying vocals, the album boasts some forward thinking instrumental moments, which can be found in some recent works, and some parts which I'm certain will appear on some important albums in 2030 or 2040. Shame all its parts are jumbled into a incoherent mess of a sugar induced rush of a sound that is barley listenable.

1 star for musical content, plus half a star for laying the groundwork for a genre that has the potential to be very important in the, for a lack of better term, "grand musical scheme".

Y'know, Newgrounds and Youtube Poop perfected this type of music even before these two knew what an instrument was.

The biggest question mark I have after listening to this album is how much of a quality nosedive the third one will achieve?

There were some moments of quality on the first one, but here it's just more of the same, just a lot more unfocused and lame.

Nothing of interest here. Same old ideas recycled in an already seen fashion, thus making it a compressed enshitified mess that hides a lack of direction, and more so, hides the fact that it's an empty vessel for 50 minutes of noise.

Yet again, the impending alarm of doom is ringing, yet nobody is hearing thanks to glorified emo, indie and noise rock. Shame.