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User
Reviews 8
Approval 87%
Soundoffs 102
Album Ratings 2749
Objectivity 84%
Last Active 12-28-22 7:12 pm
Joined 11-17-15
Review Comments 2,026
| Best Albums and Songs of April 2017
Not quite as good as March's output, but April did come out with some great stuff. Here's some of that "stuff". | | 23 |  | Incubus
8
--BEST SONGS-- | | 22 |  | Blood Command
Cult Drugs
10. "Ctrl + Alt + Delete": One of the heavier songs on the album, vocalist Silje Tombre's first notes hit you hard in the face and they don't really stop until the Paramore-like chorus. The technical drumming and often-muddy guitars also add pounding intensity to this fierce song. | | 21 |  | White Reaper
The World's Best American Band
9. "Eagle Beach": The definition of a diamond in the rough, or, more relatively put, an eagle in a flock full of those birds from Birdemic. Nonetheless, riff on this is really catchy, but what really makes it stick to your head is the lo-fi tone the guitar uses for the riff. Because the vocalist uses a purposefully static microphone, it smoothly follows an echoed and static guitar riff. The song structure is also just right because the band took the opportunity to use simple beats and rhythms instead of falling into unnecessary complexity. Please check out this song, and ONLY this song from the album if you like any form of indie rock. | | 20 |  | Sadistik
Altars
8. "Molecules": Altars really needed an absolute banger after the ninth track was over, and I didn't think I would hear Sadistik come on strong at this point in the album. This track alone proved me wrong. The awful hooks from earlier in the album are completely replaced here by something beautiful and dynamic. Terra Lopez does a great job here as the bass-heavy sound is made dream-like by her. As with a lot of Sadistik lyrics, his verses are very abstract and well flowing. Many of his bars on this song consist of taking two similar-sounding words and making them flow right next to each other in some way. The amount of times he manages to do this correctly is actually quite astonishing. Definitely one of the best rap songs of the year, right up there with JonWayne's “Paper” and Wiley's “Speakerbox”. | | 19 |  | King Green
Hesiod: Maintaining Sentinel Evolution
7. "The Fall of High Charity": This is great avant-garde stuff. Much like a song later in the list, the synth background plays a huge role in the overall sound. While King Green is still incorporating their chaotic, jazzy black metal sound (albeit much calmer here, and for good reason), they use a synth drone that kinda likes sound the menu backgrounds of old GameCube games. When dealing with music that has a very fantastical, yet memory-like atmosphere, nostalgia is an excellent sound to cover. | | 18 |  | John Mayer
The Search for Everything
6. "Rosie": I don't care about how cheesy the concept of this song is, the careful mixture of instruments here is quite sublime. The backing vocals on the chorus was a smart addition, and the guitar solo actually quite well done. The tropical sounding keyboards on this track are probably the most prominent sound additions to the vibe the song gives: love. Pretty great song, especially for an artist I'd imagine wouldn't be near this good, and even a better album... | | 17 |  | Artificial Brain
Infrared Horizon
5. "Graveyard of Lightless Planets": Many songs on Infrared Horizon contain a guitar that's similar sounding to one of those alert sounds in military barracks. It fits with everything else because of the “robotic chaos” story that the lyrics and even the album cover can hint. This song in particular makes the best use of that guitar sound because of the way the other instruments revolve around it. The alarm still sounds the same from front to back, but as the song progresses, the instruments and vocals lose more structure and control, eventually going into complete and utter chaos, just like how a robot apocalypse might would play out. | | 16 |  | Ulver
The Assassination of Julius Caesar
4. "So Falls the World": This is pretty much an aural depiction of the fall of Rome. The devastating lyrics and haunting piano go together extremely well, and they create very memorable hooks and sounds, respectively. The drums have a very jazzy taste to them, which gives the piano a further accompany to that type of haunting sound. The vocals are also really well done because of the way they echo almost like a megaphone, which one could correlate to a public warning of total destruction. Awesome stuff. | | 15 |  | Nightbringer
Terra Damnata
3. "Serpent Sun": If you happen to get past the pretty boring meat of the album to this song, you have a highly unexpected treasure waiting for you at the end. This is black metal done gorgeously. Easily the most standout part of this song is the conjuncture of the organ and the guitar to keep a holy-sounding (or unholy, considering, well, it's black metal) background to merge with the high-pitched vocals. It makes for a great combination especially when an occasional lead guitar comes in to give a bit of melody forefront with the singer. | | 14 | | Blood Command
Cult Drugs
2. "The Secret Impresses No One": If this song is a secret, it did far more than impress me. Just like through much of the album, this song exemplifies how the band can write catchy, yet powerful choruses to flow with heavier and more demanding verses. The vocalist is particularly gifted with this idea, and on this song, it's the lyrics that determine where her intensity goes. More exclamatory lyrics are intensified like “Sink!” and “We'll make it rain!” and the more fun lyrics are said in a calmer tone (e.g. the entire chorus). What steals the entire track for me, however is the guitar solo after “We'll make it rain!” The way the muddy, yet melodic guitar molds itself with the double-bass pummeling of the drums makes this one of the best hardcore punk moments of the year. Speaking of the drumming, just listen to the intricacy of it through the verses. It won't impress no one. | | 13 |  | Shadow Of Intent
Reclaimer
1. "The Tartarus Impalement": Every part of this song works, which is why I, and surely many other people, were on their knees completely overpowered by the epicness of this track. The string section certainly is an attraction here. The perfectly-tuned guitar lead makes an excellent melody and the bass grooves near the end are heavy as hell. The double-bass rhythm throughout is certainly leg-crushing, but the most intriguing part of the drum playing on this track is the intercom monologue where the beat goes through the three main “metronome” instruments on a drumset. I thought it was an outstanding concept. As usual on the album, the vocals impress, but I think especially here because they centered their brutality around the chorus instead of cheap breakdowns like earlier on the record. | | 12 |  | Gorillaz
Humanz
--BEST ALBUMS-- | | 11 | | Shadow Of Intent
Reclaimer
10. 7/10 If you really like symphonic death metal or are on a crave for that genre, absolutely listen to this. It's a great album, and Shadow of Intent sure mean business when it comes to heaviness. The growls and screams on here are really impressive because the band was careful on where to alternate between them without making them conflict with the sound of the music. The middle of the album does get quite bogged down due to repetitiveness, but just wait for the amazing climax at the end of the record starting with “The Great Schism”. It just gets better from there. | | 10 | | King Green
Hesiod: Maintaining Sentinel Evolution
9. 7/10 AnimalsAsSummit came out with another really cool release, proving once again that he can make great avant-garde material in short amounts of time without the songs feeling rushed out or uninspired. In fact, this record seems to take a whole new idea into place differing from his past releases, and that's a much larger electronica influence. On most cases, he manages to blend the parts of these electronic sounds with the unique instruments and vocals very well. I almost wanna see him try country with the “King Green” black metal sound now. | | 9 | | Sadistik
Altars
8. 7.5/10 This is yet another fresh release from a guy who has proven himself to be a great underground rapper. His abstract lyricism and chilling beats are all here in dominant fashion. I do wish he didn't repeat small phrases for a lot of his hooks as they do tend to get ear-grating, but sometimes it sticks and really works. This is a very consistent album, so I obviously recommend the whole thing, but the pairing of “Molecules” and “Kaleidoscope” is really amazing, and any rap fan would enjoy those tracks. | | 8 |  | Ayreon
The Source
7. 7.5/10 Please listen to this if you absolutely love cheesy, ridiculous prog rock because, despite this record being nearly 90 minutes (perhaps too long), this is a hell of a fun ride. The different sounds that relate in different parts of the story (e.g. spacey atmospheres in Part 2 where the characters are in outer space and the aquatic-like instrumentals in Part 3 where our characters are literally in an ocean) really fit. The massive, and I mean MASSIVE, amount of guest vocalists actually do a really good job with keeping the album at a smooth flow rather than conflicting with each other's sounds. Sometimes the album does get a bit too ridiculous and the lyrics are quite lacking (which is to be expected), but I recommend this. A story about how a group consisting of James LaBrie, Tommy Rogers, and Simone Simons and about 10 others are the last of their kind because Russell Allen accidentally killed all the humans is too good to pass up. | | 7 | | Ulver
The Assassination of Julius Caesar
6. 7.5/10 Ulver gives us a sound with this album hardly anyone saw coming. If I had to describe it, it's very similar 80's synthpop with a history lesson attached to it. The music, however, goes further than that. A lot of drum/bass and electronic sounds can be heard here. The way Ulver uses these sounds, though, is quite interesting. On some tracks, they're left by themselves to create dance-like rhythms and on others they're mixed with the pianos and vocals to throw a dizzier feeling into those songs as a whole. At some points, I felt like the record was a bit too straightforward with its songwriting that ended up making those moments a bit boring, but Ulver overall continues to be one of the most consistent long-standing bands of the past 20 years. | | 6 | | John Mayer
The Search for Everything
5. 8/10 While the lyrics are definitely not the best I've ever heard, and ignore the stupid fucking titles on here like “Emoji of a Wave” and “Moving On and Getting Over”, John Mayer shows how he can put the right instrumental sounds in just the right songs. The jazzy drums and guitars on “Still Feel Like Your Man” make for a relaxing listen, and the chorus on “Helpless” is helplessly catchy. Some of the more somber tracks are more piano-derived and the more fun ones have mixed instrumental influences from tropical to jazz to reggae. This is probably the best and most diverse mainstream pop record you're gonna hear all year. | | 5 | | Artificial Brain
Infrared Horizon
4. 8/10 Let's be honest, the mixing on here is pretty bad. The vocals are just much too far in the back for me to really understand those sounds under the very dense guitar. With that being said, the instrumental technicality and guitar sounds chosen for almost all the songs here make for a real death metal treat. The Ulcerate-like craziness that can ensue on some of the tracks on this album are quite enjoyable to indulge in. I also like the band's risky, yet rewarding move of experimenting with the guitar's sound to flow with their concept of robots taking over the world because, had this not worked, the album would have been pretty terrible. Artificial Brain knows what they're doing and hopefully they can get the mixing right next time to make an even better release. | | 4 |  | Eglise
The Past
3. 8/10 Why did this band have to break up? They could have actually been the next Converge. This record had really solid ideas when it came to guitar patterns and bass grooves. They were quite unique, and they possibly made this album more impressive than its much higher-budgeted peers when rawness is considered. Even if somewhat monotone, I was intrigued with the vocalist, who had a voice I've never quite heard in any metalcore release before. I guess there were some decresendo song structures (in metalcore?) that I wasn't too fond with and the slower songs like “Mina” left a lot to be desired, but all the potential for a classic metalcore release really was there. | | 3 |  | Phrenelith
Desolate Endscape
2. 8/10 This is just about as good as traditional death metal gets. It's well mixed, it's guitars are brutally dense, and the drums are extremely heavy. While the guitars don't change much in tuning or sound, what does change dramatically is their riff structure. I think keeping song variations restricted to one or two major changes on an album like this is a very important move because then you don't have random death metal ideas scattered out like annoying fleas from song to song. Another cool part of this album is the ending song. “Channeling a Seismic Eruption” is the general sound of all other songs on the record combined, but with a post metal touch to it. | | 2 | | Blood Command
Cult Drugs
1. 9/10 This was one of the last albums I listened to before the month of April had ended, and by then I was really hoping for a release that would just be irresistably good, considering a ton of albums this month were just “meh”. This is where I found that album. This is by far the best punk release of the year, and one of the best I've heard this decade. The amount of effort this band gives to diversify itself from its peers in sound and concept is undeniably amazing. There are many really great tracks that all have different focuses in strong structure and even strong points. “Ctrl + Alt + Delete” centralizes its main riff and that riff's rhythm, “Nervous Laughter” focuses on the mixing of the different brass, string, and percussion instruments, “Gang Signs” is where the vocalist practically steals the show with the most intense performance from her on the record, “You Can't Sit With Us” has a very prominent chorus, and “The Secret Impresses No One”, as said before, | | 1 | | Blood Command
Cult Drugs
has a guitar solo that makes the song eargasmic. With only nitpicks to see here, expect this band to be a modern punk and hardcore focus for however long they decide to keep making music. | |
nol
05.06.17 | John Mayer album is pretty damn good really | Papa Universe
05.06.17 | damn straight, mate | Papa Universe
05.06.17 | I'll just leave these recs here, based on what you liked:
The Black Angels - Death Song
Gallops- Bronze Mystic
Royal Thunder - Wick | BlazinBlitzer
05.06.17 | Ooh, thanks a ton! | AnimalsAsSummit
05.13.17 | oh hell yeah diggin the list | BlazinBlitzer
05.14.17 | Thanks, man! |
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