3rd (and 2nd) Week of January in Albums
I accidentally hit enter on this list earlier lol. An in-order rankings of all the albums I heard through the past two weeks. |
| 1 |  | Starset
Vessels
4/10 There are about 3 tracks I like on here, but I feel like I completely wasted so much of those 71 minutes from my life on that album. Everything else is so bland, stale, and overproduced (which is saying a lot because I generally like cleaner production). Can't stand the vocals either. |
| 2 |  | Gone Is Gone
Echolocation
4/10 It's like Troy Sanders sang while trying to chew food the entire time. Every instrument and band member on this is really dull and safe, and it's worse knowing who the band members are. |
| 3 |  | The Flaming Lips
Oczy Mlody
5/10 I can hardly remember any of the songs of this album, and the ones I actually liked happened to have godawful titles. Most of this was stuff was pretty much elevator music. |
| 4 |  | Bonobo
Migration
5/10 What happened with this?! I've heard 2 albums from the guy (Animal Magic and Black Sands) and enjoyed them a lot, so I had pretty high expectations for this, especially after hearing the first two tracks. But the sound and production made this so irritating to listen to. Anything that wasn't earbleedingly poor-sounding was just alright. |
| 5 |  | Sundara Karma
Youth Is Only Ever Fun in Retrospect
6/10 It's aight. It's a somewhat enjoyable boy band pop rock album with not too much distinction from the average. "Happy Family" is pretty dope though. |
| 6 |  | Mechina
As Embers Turn To Dust
6.5/10 I enjoyed this a good bit, although the compliments I would give I could also say about Acheron and Progenitor as well; they're all really similar. i just wish they didn't put two song-length piano tracks, which i thought was pretty unnecessary. |
| 7 |  | The xx
I See You
6.5/10 I really enjoyed the first 6 songs, and hoped they could keep at that pace, but when "Brave for You" came on, the "XX" formula started to fall a little flat on its face. Still would check out this album though. |
| 8 |  | The Drip
The Haunting Fear of Inevitability
7/10 Really good grindcore. I liked the way this album made subtle changes of riff types in the guitars with each passing song. It does start to bog down in the end though, and the backing vocals aren't good at all. |
| 9 |  | Black Anvil
As Was
7/10 Raw black metal, but not the typical kind of raw. The band tries to explore different sounds on here with success, but it still doesn't really strip away from their identity. Unfortunately, this album has the tendency to be a little too raw too often because the instruments aren't in sync some of the time. |
| 10 |  | Count to Altek
A Seraphia Entwined
7.5/10 I don't think I've heard anyone make anything close to whatever the hell this is, but I really can't help but admire the experimentation here. It's like a jam session if taken out in a swamp where bigfoot was the vocalist. Pretty cool stuff. |
| 11 |  | Pain of Salvation
In the Passing Light of Day
8.5/10 I've listened to this album 6 times, and, yes, it really is as good as people are making it out to be. Besides the obvious outlier "Reasons", every track has at least one moment that's fantastic in its own right. My favorite part of this album is, no joke, the lyrics. I don't really like calling anything "sweet", as in "aww, that's so sweet", but that's the first adjective I thought of with the last track, especially the final few minutes of it. The opening and ending tracks are contenders for songs of the year. |
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