which agalloch album/ep

The Mantle

listen to from which of this oak its great

today i listened to The Outer Limits, on which Voivod slowly abandon the cyber-metal noise in favour of becoming a "psychedelic" (read: they learned how to abuse reverb and delay) hard rock band. complete with buttrock pentatonic riffing and all. there is a cover of Pink Floyd's "The Nile Song" that literally sounds like Def Leppard. for reference, Voivod previously covered a Floyd tune (Astronomy Domine) on the album Nothingface and succeeded at turning it on its head and making it their own. this is just disappointing.

by most rock standards this would be pretty good, but for a band that prided themselves on being otherworldly and anachronistic while most other prog-thrash bands, while good, were dated on arrival, this sounds just like rock from 1993. i guess it's a natural evolution for a group that was constantly evolving but it's just not that interesting.

fortunately they get their groove back several tracks in with "The Lost Machine" onward and the album reveals its true self as a rightful successor to their classic late 80s prog trilogy. the centrepiece of the album is the 17+ minute "Jack Luminous" which is probably the best thing i have heard from this band so far. melodic in an alien way. i assume most of their good ideas were pooled into this one track. the rest of the B side is standard Voivod greatness too; "We Are Not Alone" as a closer wraps it up nicely.

overall this is a worthwhile mixture of middling tunes and some of Voivod's best work. if you can brave through the lame first 4 tracks then this is absolutely essential.

Emphasizing that I didn't abandon this!!!

I'll be doing Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley soonish lol

Pendulum was alright? Honestly I didn't like it as much as Immersion, although it did grasp me a bit more than In Silico. Can't claim it was particularly inspiring

I also didn't abandon this! I've just been sick and busy with school stuff.
Hey at least I can't possibly get any more behind now!

Finished!!

Nick Drake was pretty neat passive music, not something I'd end up listening to often, but quality for what it was

Jeff Buckley was really neat though, big fan of the styles on this album, great vocals. Will re-listen



Monthlong favs: Jogger, Che Aimee Dorval, Sufjan Stevens, Cowboy Junkies, Jeff Buckley

i listened to my LPs, i might post my thoughts on em later.

it amazes me how much busier i am now than in november. and back then i thought my life was busy lol. i could barely handle 3 LPs per week

Yeah I've been blowing this off for a while but I listened to Visions by Haken while doing some homework and I loved it. Great prog metal, sounded beautiful, wonderful song transitions, last track was amazing, 10/10 wank wank wank.

WOAH HEY I JUST LISTENED TO SOME STUFF

Cowboys From Hell by Pantera
I actually listened to this way back when we were doing this and forgot to write about it. It was alright. I didn't like it as much as Painkiller or Number of the Beast in terms of metal albums I've listened to this (month). There were a few songs I liked but the only ones I can remember now are Cowboys from Hell and Cemetery Gates.

Wildflowers by Tom Petty
This album is pretty much the reason I stopped. I saw the run time was an hour long and was like f*** doing that at any point in time. But I felt like I didn't want to skip an album because that's cheating. I just listened to it today and honestly I skipped most of it anyway. I would listen to a minute of the song and if the song was boring I went to the next one. Most of the songs were boring, so I probably listened to maybe ten minutes of the hour. But hey I broke the seal that was this album so now I can move past it.

Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police
The Police are a really neat band that I never really listened to aside from hearing Roxanne and Message in a Bottle on the radio all the time. I really like their new-wave sound and Sting is an amazing vocalist. This album was pretty good, and I was surprised by how good they are instrumentally. The song Behind My Camel is entirely instrumental and was composed and performed solely by the guitarist because Sting hated it so much he refused to perform for it. Which is weird, because it's the best track on the album IMO. It's really weird, with a sort of Arabic style guitar riff in it. Overall really nice stuff.

I'll post again when I finish the remaining albums.

LMAO you're just a few months late

do we wanna do this again for november ? we did it last year on november. i think we should do it again

Sure I'll do it again

August was exhausting for me so I wouldn't want to do it personally but if you guys want to you're more than welcome

Sam's Town by The Killers
The Killers' first album Hot Fuss is one of my favorite albums ever, and I heard When You Were Young from this album in every Rock Band and Guitar Hero since RB2. It's a pretty great song, but the rest of the album is pretty bland. I looked up some stuff about it and apparently Brandon Flowers considers the song Read My Mind off this album the best thing he's ever written, which is a huge shame because it's not as good as any song on Hot Fuss. When You Were Young is the best track and none of the other ones are good enough to point out. The whole album in general is much less creative than Hot Fuss and Flowers never kicks up the vocals like he does on 90% of the songs on that album. Oh well.

Singing Bones by The Handsome Family
If you've seen True Detective, you'll know Far From Any Roadas the first season's theme song. The rest of the album is pretty similar. Dark, brooding country sound. Pretty atmospheric across the album, with none of the songs upbeat or happy. I liked its sound, but it got pretty samey after a while. It never really gets different in any song. Still pretty good though.

The Earth, a Small Man, His Dog, and a Chicken by REO Speedwagon
Admittedly I picked this one entirely based on its title alone. I like REO Speedwagon's greatest hits album but hadn't heard really anything else. This album ended up being pretty good mom rock. Every song is about love and how much I love you. So lyrically it gets kinda tiresome but musically I liked it a lot. I'm into cheesy 80s sound like this for the most part.

Good News For People Who Love Bad News by Modest Mouse
I only knew of Modest Mouse through Float On because it was in a GH/RB. I didn't really know what to expect going in so I didn't have any sort of expectations. Ultimately I don't think this band is for me. I might give another one of their albums a go but I just didn't like this that much. I can see the appeal, it's just not my thing I guess. Float On is a great song and I enjoyed One Chance too.

OK DONE

Top 10

I left out Heart and Jethro Tull because I'd probably be somewhat biased.

I'd be down to do this in November but I might not be able to do one every day. If we waited until December when winter break happens it'd probably be easier. Or I could just not do one a day and try for like 3 a week, w/e

Do it in December but make listening to at least 3 Christmas albums mandatory