Reviews by heavymetal

I'm not sure if this album really deserves to be on a list of 1001 albums you need to hear before you die. It wasn't bad per se, but it just didn't really do anything for me. It was inoffensive and quickly became background music. I'm usually waiting for an album to end when I dislike it or wanting to hear more if I liked it, but this is right in the middle.

Great psychedelic rock album! Honestly, the only bad thing I have to say about it is that the "electric jug" sound quickly got annoying. Other than that, they've got everything I love about psychedelic rock music.

I really enjoyed the instrumental side of this album, but the lead singer is an insufferable twat and his lyrics are pretty terrible. Not that the songwriting is bad, I get that the point of the album was trying to "explore the dark psyche of the 90s male", I just found very little to be relatable or enjoyable about his concept of the 90s male.

Damn, this album was an experience! I absolutely loved that!

I love avant-garde and experimental jazz, but I’ve got embarrassingly little knowledge of the genre as a whole. There are a lot of blind spots in my jazz listening history, so I really appreciate that this project is slowly filling them in.

I’ve heard the name Guided By Voices for years, but I don’t think I could have attached any context to the name; I couldn’t have named a single song, what genre they were, or even what era they were from. So, this is yet another huge oversight because this is right up my alley. Dirty, dusty, gritty, lo-fi, noisy, fuzzy, experimental, grungy, indie rock. I think I’m going to dive into the rest of their discography today too.

It genuinely makes no sense how 9 different rappers can come together and record an album that’s this good. You’d think with that many cooks, they’d have spoiled the broth for sure, but somehow it all came together.

I love the minimalist approach, the gritty beats, the kung-fu samples, the pop culture references, and all the different rappers. Everyone brought a different personality to the table and it somehow works without becoming an incoherent mess.

You can really feel this album’s influence on modern hip hop too. I feel like this is the album that so many rappers have been trying to recreate in their own way since they first heard it.

This is just funky, psychedelic, weird, and experimental in all the right ways. Absolutely loved it!

While listening to Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chasers), I realized that Funkadelic is the band that Frank Zappa would have formed if he was influenced by funk instead of classical music.

It’s a shame licensing disputes keeps albums off streaming, but all the more reason for me to go find this one on vinyl.

This is just a quintessential psychedelic rock album full of unique, fuzzed out guitar, some haunting organ, and Jim Morrison’s absolute insane weirdness.

Break On Through is probably one of the strongest album openers ever and the End is probably one of the strangest closers.

Once again, it’s been ages since I’ve listened to the Doors, but I loved diving into this again!

Yet another post-punk band I clearly should have listened to long before now. I'm halfway through a second listen and am completely hypnotized. Noisy post-punk is my favourite kind of post-punk and this album absolutely delivers on that front! I love the sharp, jagged guitars with the heavy flanging modulation! And the driving, pounding drums!

Also, I feel a bit thick having not realized that Siouxsie Sioux is pronounced Susie Sue.

Green Day, and this album in particular, were huge when I was in middle school, which was a time in my life where I would only listen to classic rock and "punk". You know, the kind of punk that got played on classic rock radio stations from time-to-time? Comically, I think Green Day are literally the kind of punk that gets played on classic rock radio stations now.

Anyways, at the time, Green Day's brand of pop punk felt like the most corporate sellout and least punk music I'd ever heard. Now, I realize teenage me was a closed-minded idiot, but admittedly, I'm still struggling a bit to get past those feelings while listening to American Idiot now.

I can hear the punk influences and the societal commentary is right in your face, but it feels so hollow, fake, and safe. Paint-by-numbers punk music with no real edge. Honestly, this kind of feels like my generation's U2. An uber popular band with decent songs, but it just doesn't really do it for me. Am I still just being a closed-minded idiot? I don't know, probably. Maybe I'll come around when Dookie is generated?

It’s pretty clear that you’re not supposed to take this music seriously. It’s just a bunch of Norwegian dudes making stupid punk rock music with pretty terrible lyrics. It was kind of fun, but I have no desire to listen to this again. Overall, I don’t hate it, but I definitely don’t love it either.

Freedom! ‘90 was a pretty great song and I’ve definitely heard it somewhere before, but nothing else really stood out to me except maybe Soul Free. It mostly all kind of sounded the same by the end. That said, I did enjoy this more than the last George Michael album that was generated, but not sure if that’s really saying all that much. Overall, it was fine as far as smooth, soft pop rock goes.

God damn, the first few tracks were cool as hell! It loses a lot of steam through the middle with the slower more soulful songs. I much prefer the more upbeat, funky songs.

Yeah, this one’s not for me. Boxcars was a decent song, but other than that I just wanted to turn this off.

I guess I’m just not a fan of the whole honky tonk sound or song writing style at all. This isn’t quite as bad as modern country, but it’s not far off.

Actually I take it back, the last few songs are just as bad as modern country. There’s nothing cornier and more inauthentic than a country singer singing about their truck and tractor.

I've been curious to hear some of U2's earlier work after seeing Achtung Baby described as their "most transformative album" when it was generated early on in the list. Achtung Baby wasn't bad, it just wasn't exciting to me either, but seeing that their earlier albums were generally described as harsher, post-punk albums did excite me.

Well, the earliest album of their on the list has finally been generated and, it's fine. The first few tracks I've heard countless times on the radio growing up and they honestly do nothing for me at this point; they just sound like generic U2 tracks.

It does start to get interesting through the middle of the album with Drowning Man, the Refugee, and Two Hearts Beat as One. Maybe it's because I've never heard these songs, so they're still a bit new and fresh to me? They definitely do have a bit of a harsher sound (in a good way) to them than what I normally expect from U2.

Unfortunately, the last couple tracks lose their edge (pun intended) and return to the somewhat generic U2 sound that really does nothing for me.

Overall, I enjoyed this one a lot more than Achtung Baby and All the You Can't Leave Behind, but I still don't think I've been convinced to be a U2 fan.

I had always been somewhat aware of Wilco, but I was fairly late actually discovering them. I only really started listening to them after seeing them live in 2018 (thanks Ben!), but Wilco, Jeff Tweedy's solo and side projects, and his earlier work with Uncle Tupelo all quickly became some of my all time favourites.

This album in particular perfectly encapsulates what I love about their music. It's deep, complex, and surreal music masquerading as simple folk and rock songs. Each simple song has been fully deconstructed and rebuilt multiple times by Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett in the studio with Jim O'Rourke's mixing and were made more complex with Jeff's obscure lyricism, Glenn Kotche's complex drumming, and found sounds / music concrete samples added throughout. The Conet Project samples that led to the name of this album in particular are some of my favourites.

If you have the time to listen to the deluxe version you can hear why the recording process nearly destroyed the band with Jay Bennett and Ken Coomer being fired in the end. There are multiple different directions that members of the band were trying to push leading to multiple album titles all with different mixes of the songs. Would this album have the same legacy if they had released it as The Unified Theory of Everything, American Aquarium, Here Comes Everybody, or Lonely In the Deep End?

Whoa, I was not ready for the opening couple tracks on this album! I was expecting pleasant folk music, which is exactly what is setup by Bookends Theme, and then Save the Life of my Child comes straight out of left field with chaotic synths and an incredibly psychedelic sound.

I feel like I'm surprised by Simon & Garfunkel every time I listen to them and this album is no exception. Their music is always more complex and experimental than I'm expecting and I always enjoy listening to it more than I expect that I will, but for some reason, it never occurs to me to actually listen to their music.

Because the "life cycles concept" is only on the first side of the album, it feels unfinished and it makes the second half of the album feel a bit like an after thought, but I don't think it really detracts too much from the overall experience, so I'm not going to dig too deeply into it.

It’s absolutely wild that they managed to actually record this! A man singing about cocaine, whisky, being arrested, murder, and spitting in the warden’s eye while on death row to an audience of actual prisoners. The live setting, from Cash’s mistakes and banter to the warden’s announcements to the audiences enthusiasm and energy, is what absolutely makes this album shine.

All that said, I am admittedly more intrigued by Johnny Cash’s persona as the Man in Black than I am with his actual music. Not that his music is bad; I do enjoy it and can absolutely appreciate his influence, but it’s not really something I seek out to listen to everyday.

This was a pretty interesting listen, but I don’t even really know how to describe it. It’s somewhere between jazz and progressive/psychedelic rock with a bit of folk thrown in for good measure? At times it reminded me of David Bowie, others it reminded me of David Byrne’s solo work. Anyways, I’m always up for music that’s on the more experimental end of the spectrum.

Damn, this is great and is a refreshing treat after yesterday's album! I can't believe I'd never even heard of Michael Kiwanuka! Such a smooth, cool, soulful vibe, but with very interesting instrumentation that somehow feels both modern and straight out of the 70s at the same time. I'm definitely going to check out more of his music.