Band: Burzum
Album: Fallen
Best song: “Vanvidd” and “Budstikken” are the best songs on the record.
Worst song: “Valen” is pretty bad.
Separating artists from their art is one of the most difficult things for a consumer/appreciator of said art. There are scores of wonderful pieces of art made by terrible, awful people. Moreover, loads and loads of art is distributed by terrible, awful organizations. The problem with music, it seems, has not been solved. Continue reading
Band: Marilyn Manson
Album: Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)
Best song: “The Fight Song” is pretty good.
Worst song: The entire second half of the album is disappointing.
I, like most reasonable people, adore The Onion. Not AV Club, which I also love, but rather the proper Onion. My relationship with it goes back, of course. In high school, one of my friend’s siblings went to University of Wisconsin, where it had begun and my friend would get copies of The Onion and laugh at it. This was, of course, before the Internet. I believe, its first foray outside of Madison was into Chicago, where we’d pick up free copies from newspaper boxes. Continue reading
Band: Chelsea Wolfe
Album: Ἀποκάλυψις (Apokalypsis)
Best song: “Moses” is one of the best songs of 2011.
Worst song: “Friedrichshain” is the lowest point on a very strong album.
Genre is a shitty way to describe music, but it’s such an ingrained part of the culture that no one can avoid it. Mastodon isn’t a band, they’re a metal band or a thrash band. Continue reading
Band: This Will Destroy You
Album: Tunnel Blanket
Best song: “Little Smoke,” no doubt.
Worst song: “Osario” isn’t great.
Back at my old job, I used to talk with one of our reporters –Doug is his name — about various stuff. A lot of the conversations got pretty strange, like the time we discussed history’s greatest monster (we settled on Stalin, I believe) or the most effective way to a group like Al Qaeda to terrorize DC. Continue reading
Band: Amalgamated Sons of Rest
Album: Amalgamated Sons of Rest
Best song: My Molina bias has me saying “Jennie Blackbird’s Blues” is the best song on the record.
Worst song: The hidden track, “I Will Be Good” isn’t much.
The entire notion of a “supergroup” is a little dated and silly. Admittedly, it happens a fair amount and the results are rarely completely terrible — the first Raconteurs record is, really, quite amazing. Indie rock doesn’t have superstars to occupy said supergroups, so, for example, The Sea and Cake wouldn’t be considered such a group. It’s just a band with a dude form Tortoise and Archer Prewitt and such. Were these more mainstream artists, it would probably be a supergroup. Continue reading