Reviews by heavymetal

Who doesn’t love a little bit of group sex and a good ol’ circle jerk?

I don’t think this guy really made it over here in Canada. At least I can’t say any of this sounds familiar to me. It does kind of remind me of Sufjan Stevens, but less americana influence, more britpop influence. I did enjoy it, it was a pleasant bit of indie rock/folk, but nothing really blew me away apart from maybe Cause a Rockslide.

Well this was a weird experience and I'm always game for some more weird avant-garde music. I don't even really know what to say about this album. A lot of film noir vibes that were very cool one minute and slightly terrifying the next and maybe a bit too horny at times. I'd watch the imaginary movie he based this soundtrack on.

There is one thing I can be certain I have in common with Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo; we absolutely love messing around on the guitar with non-standard tunings, extended guitar techniques, pedals, and feedback to make weird noises. However, while I'm just annoying my wife and kid with weird noises in my basement, Moore and Ranaldo were out there using them to write some of the absolutely best and most essential alt rock possible.

I've nothing to add that hasn't already been said about Black Sabbath. This is an incredible album that birthed an entire genre.

In 2008 I bought tickets to a G Love & Special Sauce show mainly because I wanted to see the opening act, the John Butler Trio. I had absolutely no idea who G Love was at the time. Almost 20 years later and I honestly remember very little of that show. I do remember enjoying the show enough that I found a copy of this album and listened to it quite a few times afterwards, but neither G Love nor John Butler have remained in my listening rotation.

For some reason, I wasn't really expecting this album to hold up after all these years, but I actually really enjoyed listening to it again today. I get how some people would dislike it, but I really enjoy their blend of laid back, spoken word hip-hop over blues riffs and jazzy drums. It does lose a bit of steam in the last few tracks, though.

Overall, is it a masterpiece? No, but is it a fun listen? Absolutely!

Tori Amos fits into a fairly unique brand of singer-songwriter and art pop. I totally get the comparisons to some of her peers and contemporaries like Kate Bush, Alanis Morissette, and Bjork. While pop isn't my preferred genre, I do appreciate when someone stands outside the norms and offers something as confessional and poetic as this album.

I apparently had no idea who Chicago was up until now. I always thought they played generic classic stadium rock similar to Boston. Is that assumption purely based on the fact that they both have US cities as their name? Maybe? I honestly don’t know.

Anyways, this isn’t anything like Boston. The horns were incredibly funky and jazzy and the guitar playing was great throughout. There were also a ton of little experimental bits including a pretty awesome free form guitar freakout right in the middle that wouldn’t have felt out of place on a Butthole Surfers album 20 years later. Based on the reviews that track seems to be controversial and divisive in a similar way as Revolution 9 on the White Album. Speaking of the Beatles, I also enjoyed the little nod to I Am the Walrus on South California Purple.

My only complaints are that they definitely got a little bit self indulgent at times and it went on a bit long. Had they reined it in on a few tracks, this could have been a really solid album. That said, I still thoroughly enjoyed this album.

Thoroughly enjoyed listening to this album. It did start to sound a little one note by the end, but his singing is amazing and the arrangements are quite dense and complex. I’m surprised he didn’t see the same success as some of his peers especially since he’s considered one of the founding fathers of soul music.

I am not a fan of electronica or dance music at all. I normally find it incredibly boring and formulaic at best and outright annoying at worst. That said, this album doesn't fall into the same boring and repetitive 4-on-the-floor bass/snare pattern on every single track. There are interesting rhythms and embellishments throughout that made the tracks feel like they were evolving and prevented the album from ever feeling too repetitive. Which is to say, this album was at least tolerable, but I'm still not really a fan and it went on a little too long. I was pretty much checked out at the halfway point and I didn't really need a track of moaning for 6 minutes, but I did finish it!

Don’t make the obvious joke, don’t make the obvious joke, don’t make the obvious joke

Funk it! This album really funked my shit up, man!

After being thoroughly surprised by Music for the Masses earlier in this project, I decided to listen to more of their music. Violator was the next album of theirs I listened to in full and I was immediately hooked. It's dark and brooding, but doesn't feel quite as depressing as some of the music from their peers. The production is impeccable; I feel like the synth pop of today all leans really hard into the dreamy and ethereal, but this is incredibly clean and precise, and the songs are catchy and full of hooks.

This is a very finely crafted album drawing clear influences from Kraftwerk and Bowie's more experimental krautrock work and it's a clear indicator of where synth pop and new wave was headed in the next decade. It manages to be quite poppy, but there's also some subtle experimentalism happening throughout. At times it actually feels a bit industrial and it never fully slips into the gimmicky or cheap feeling I sometimes get with 80s pop music.

Separating the art from the artist and this album is just alright. It's an alt country album about heartbreak, which I've grown to enjoy a lot of alt country, but I just don't really connect with break-up albums.

Admitting my bias against the artist and it's hard to take some of these emotional songs seriously when I know he's a manipulative asshole. Even the anecdote about naming the album feels disingenuous to me. He deserves the heartbreak.

It's wild to me that three of the greatest guitarists, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton, all cut their teeth in the Yardbirds. Roger the Engineer is from their period with Jeff Beck and, unsurprisingly, the guitar playing is excellent. What is surprising is that I could never get into the Yardbirds. As a teen I was absolutely obsessed with Led Zeppelin, so of course I had to check out Jimmy Page's earlier band, but they just didn't do it for me at the time. Listening to Roger the Engineer now and I really don't know what I was missing. This is exactly the kind of music I would have loved when I was a teen; a mix of blues rock and psychedelic rock with a touch of hard rock here or there. It's not quite the type of music I listen to now, but I still really enjoyed listening to this album and I'm glad to finally be able to appreciate the Yardbirds.

In my recent exploration of metal music, I quickly found one of my preferred genres was doom/sludge/stoner metal. Listening to Paranoid and it’s abundantly clear how much modern metal bands owe to their forefathers. This album is easily one of the best metal albums ever recorded.

I feel like this album kept growing on me the further it got. I wasn't totally sold on it at first, but by the time He Would Have Laughed came to an end, I was hooked and wanted more. I'm definitely a fan of their lo-fi, psychedelic, experimental sound. It kind of sounds like a more psychedelic and experimental Mac Demarco. Like maybe what it would sound like if Mac made an album with Tame Impala or something.

This album has a huge nostalgia bias for me as it was one of the albums in my dad's collection that I was drawn to when I was growing up. I've listened to it countless times and the harmonica right at the start is still one of my all time favourite sounds ever. It has been a long while since I gave this a proper listen, so it was quite nice to have this album generated today. Listening with a bit more intention and I realized Supertramp have a bit of a prog rock, yacht rock, and 70s pop influence. It almost sounds like if Billy Joel or Elton John had hired members of Pink Floyd and Steely Dan to be their backing band.

Just some solid 70s punk. It didn't blow me away, but I enjoyed listening to it a fair bit.

John Prine is a songwriting legend. His songs are filled with wit, sarcasm, and humour, but they still teach valuable lessons, touch on important subjects, and can be heartwarming and touching.

His self-titled album has some of his best songs like the opener, Illegal Smile, or the still too relevant Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore. Not to mention Angel from Montgomery and probably my favourite, Pretty Good.