RIP Leonard Cohen.

This one seems to be my favorite leonard cohen tune, i think mainly melody-wise, because there are a bunch of others i prefer for lyric reasons:



That "jane came by with a..." bit gets stuck in my head often out of nowhere.

RIP.

damn... RIP

I think ol' Lenny was underrated as a guitar player.

Love the keys on this- and how often do you get to say this about a metal record? And the clean vocals. And effecty guitar bits. I am enjoying the hell out of this record.

Someone finally listened to me and started utilizing low piano notes on heavy tracks. Such an aggressive yet completely ignored sound.

The new Metallica record. Which... Isn't out yet.

Amateurish cover art aside (c'mon, man; you of all bands have the budget for something decent) it's actually pretty darn good. The singles are a bit of a bait-and-switch, as half the record consists of their slower stoner-riff material... But with oddball time changes. That's actually pretty cool. It suffers from their usual habit of being over-long and including unnecessary bits. But: the vocal performance and production are the best they've had in ages; some of the more melodic vocal stuff is surprisingly good. Turns out a sober and mostly wah-less Kirk Hammett can actually play the guitar pretty damn well. The bass is probably the highest up in the mix it's ever been. If I'm remembering right, I counted a single "yeah!" which is an acceptable quantity on any rock record. I have decided I don't mind thrash metal's Phil Rudd Gnome, either. Sports Drumming gets dull after a while, and I think a big reason I keep coming back to this band is their quirkiness.

Now, I'm an unashamed lifelong fan, admittedly. And I hold controversial-to-unpopular opinions on their '90s hard rock era and oddball artsy stuff, as well as respect them for their artistic integrity- no, seriously. What band in that position and at that level of fame would wave such a giant middle finger at people's expectations, and make fucked-up sounding records rather than perform fan service or write radio hit fodder? I honestly can't think of another. But I digress. That surely colors my opinion.

A solid B. Not great- if I'm grading records, I only hand out As for great. But sturdy, and with some neat ideas.

Spoiler: most of the best ones are the slower stoner riff tracks. The thrash stuff is mostly just okay. Though the last track is better than the singles and is thrashy as all fuck.

I'm on a heavy Nirvana binge at the minute prompted by reading Heavier Than Heaven. Such a sad story/life Kurt seemed to have but I suppose if he was happy he wouldn't have created so much great music. I curse all the old farts on guitar forums for putting me off Nirvana years ago by saying they "killed music" or whatever. Where Did You Sleep Last Night from unplugged gives me chills at the end. Raw as fuck.

https://youtu.be/pecxDme4oVI

New whores album is pretty special.

Oooh. I didna know they had one.

Wow, last song on that rekkid sounded so much like Clutch's Juggernaut that i thought it was going to be a cover until the vocal came in. I mean if you are going to rip something off, it isn't a bad place to start, but just the same...

Whole thing sounds awesome though. No surprise there.

Oh yeah, that shit is kicking my ass.

I have to admit I prefer the two EPs to Gold but it's still awesome. There's just something about the vocals that bothers me on some o the new songs.

That is fairly flashback-y for me, yeah.

Man, this is fucking strange.

Been listening to this kind of a bunch since you poasted it. I have decided that it is a lot better than i remembered it being. Production especially.

Like Unsane playing NIN songs or something.

It's funny you mentioned that- Cam and I were talking about that record when I poasted it, he having never heard it before, and made a similar comment re: NIN and big sludgefuzz guitars. And we discussed production values on noise rock records as well, which are, perhaps ironically, often quite good in a conventional-but-not-overglossed sense. The genre's better-known representatives, post-'80s, are for the most part decidedly not lo-fi.

In re: that, pretty much every time I see someone on recording forums claim Steve Albini is a hack engineer, I can gather by their general tastes or lack thereof what they're taking umbrage at is the aesthetic of the bands he's well-known for recording. They want to hear Toto or Steely Dan, not The Jesus Lizard or Neurosis. But I digress as I am wont to do.

Fuckin' A wall o' noise.