I don’t have much to say about this one other than I love the style Gogol Bordello brings to the table. It’s better to listen to this one and experience it for yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, I love TDH’s main works, but goddamn, I’d love to see a little bit more of this, too.

I love this type of voice. The lead singer from Cage The Elephant has a voice like this. It fits the song perfectly.

I was so excited when Rise Against announced their new album Endgame. I had heard a track or two on the radio and thought that it would shape up to be a pretty good album, more in the vein of The Sufferer And The Witness.

Well, I was wrong.

Sadly (and surprisingly enough), it turned out very mediocre. A listen to a single, random track I can always find enjoyable, but listening to the album from beginning to end has proved near impossible for my ears. Even with shuffle on, the album just seems like one long, droning piece of music, never changing much in its presentation. Having a track pop up when I’m listening to my entire library is awesome because each track on its own holds its own, but together…. they just sound too similar.

Unless you’re a huge Rise Against fan or just someone who compulsively must keep their library complete, I wouldn’t really recommend getting this album.

…I never thought I’d say that about a Rise Against album so soon.

Don’t you just love that album art? It’s actually a pretty good summarization of the album’s content. Yes, this band with a ridiculously long name is a progressive/alternative rock group. I bet you had no idea.

I actually found out about this wonderful band thanks to Riley over at HERMITOLOGY and I couldn’t thank him enough. Though it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it definitely is mine. I listened to one song prior, Weight of the Sun, and I thought I’d have a pretty good idea of what the rest of the album would sound like, but I was completely wrong. Yes, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised. The album is simply exploding with creativity and talent.

A mediocre song from a one-hit-wonder band, this song’s style pretty much paints an accurate painting of the nineties. Generic Industrial music from a band that was trying to imitate Nine Inch Nail’s success and probably also helped launched the Nu Metal genre out of obscurity and into popularity. While the song itself isn’t bad, it’s nothing special, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the only worthwhile track from this band.

If this song sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve played Scott Pilgrin VS The World: The Game. The entire soundtrack was composed by Anamanaguchi (which I continue to spell wrong a different way every time). Their music is reminiscent of old 8-bit videogames, and for good reason: they use a real live hacked NES to generate the musical tones so familiar to retro gaming veterans.

The first time I heard this track, I had an instant eargasm, and this was before I knew this was the same group that composed the music for Scott Pilgrim The Game, but they apparently have a way at making the chiptune genre their own, and it definitely shows in this gem.

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In a word? Fan-fucking-tastic. (It’s hyphenated, it still counts as one word.)

Seriously, the same goes for the rest of this album. I would have never thought in a million years that Serj’s odd style of experimental rock would work so well as arranged for an orchestra. If you’re a fan of System of a Down or Serj’s solo album, or are just plain looking for a great album to pick up, I highly recommend this one. I had just recently obtained a copy of this myself, and I was immediately awestruck at just how epic the live performance is. I’d even be comfortable saying it’s already become my favourite live album of all-time just because of how unique and rare this sort of concert is, especially one that works well. I always enjoy an odd, awesome juxtaposition of musical styles. I’m having a hard time focusing on the track itself because the awesome is just overflowing from this album. Go check it out right NOW.

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Hey, look: a love/hate song that doesn’t suck! Wow, I never thought I’d see the day. The lyrics in this one are great, and although the accompanying music is fantastic as well, the lyrics and vocals are definitely the highlight of this song for me. The words and the emotion that’s injected into them by the vocalist’s singing perfectly captures the feeling of how you just hate to love that wonderfully nauseating someone. The accompanying  music is just the icing on the cake,  working together with the vocalist to paint a vivid scene of a day in the life of this dysfunctional couple.

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Now here’s a match I never would have thought up in my wildest dreams. A popular Drum N Bass band collaborating with a Swedish Melodic Metalcore band. It sounds odd on paper, and one could describe it as that, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a bad thing. I think this is the track that stands out the most on Pendulum’s Immersion (2010) because of the sheer difference in style to the rest of the tracklist. It’s definitely the heaviest on the roster and also one of my favourites due to the refreshing feel of the track. It’s something both participants aren’t used to, and I think the idea was executed very well. The track is predominantly metal but does contain signature Drum N Bass properties such as the steady drum beat in the background as well as trance plucks and synths as well as vocoding applied to Rob Swire’s vocals. Nothing sticks out as oddly out of place or obnoxious, and I commend the artists for doing such a great job at fusing these two vastly different musical genres into something so aesthetically pleasing.

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Say what you will about Avenged Sevenfold; these men have quite a bit of talent between them all. Any band with the ability to fuse multiple genres into 8-9 minute epics and have the song seem as if it’s only 3 and a half minutes long knows what they’re doing. The song has plenty of lyrics and variation to keep it from feeling repetitive and stale. The choruses are a good two or so minutes apart, giving the song a nice pace. It irks me when a song repeats the chorus after only 20-30 to seconds. The song itself uses dynamics liberally, a very admirable quality in music today as it seems to be lost on today’s musicians. The song opens up with merely two acoustic guitars, but an old-western type electric guitar comes in with a chorus and strings, eventually swelling into a steady metal/rock riff accentuated by the same acoustic guitars the song opened with. It’s a song  you can rock out to in the car but it’s also soulful in its own way.