p.o.d.

5 Dumbest P.O.D. Controversies

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Growing up in an evangelical household, there were lots of things which were considered “unhealthy” to my soul – heavy metal, horror movies, Dungeons and Dragons… perhaps unsurprisingly, all things I love today. However, one magical summer at an evangelical bible camp in 2002, I got introduced to my gateway drug to all things heavy metal, P.O.D. They became my favourite band and held that honour for more than a decade. Hell, at this point I still am incredibly fond of their music even if my tastes have gotten heavier and more depressing. However, during the years when I was really into them, I couldn’t help but notice the ridiculous level of controversy that has come their way with seemingly every new album they put out. Unlike some bands, I don’t even think this is intentional on their part, because the controversies they’ve courted are largely really stupid. So, with that in mind, let’s go over some of the band’s dumbest controversies over the years.

Before we get to that though, I want to cover the one legitimate controversy they’ve had, which would be the whole Marcos controversy. Sometime in early 2003, lead guitarist Marcos Curiel was kicked out of P.O.D. and was quickly replaced with former Living Sacrifice guitarist Jason Truby. It led to a whole bunch of bad blood and he-said-she-said about what really happened. Given that Marcos was brought back into the band when their contract with Atlantic Records expired at the end of 2006, it seems pretty obvious that Atlantic management were behind the split, but no official explanation has been given by the band since (as far as I’m aware).

Also, one last thing before we begin the list proper: I’m not going to pretend that P.O.D. are perfect. They certainly have some songs which could be controversial if the band was more popular than they are now. Their very first album has a (very shitty) song called “Abortion is Murder”, although the band had disowned the song by the time they were signed to Atlantic, so make of that what you will. There’s also a B-side from Murdered Love called “Find a Way” which implies that Obama is the antichrist and another song called “West Coast Rock Steady” which makes a rather dumb, tongue-in-cheek joke that could be interpreted as homophobic. Thankfully, for a Christian band, their politics tend to be much better than you might expect – I haven’t seen any anti-vax or pro-Trump stuff out of them and they were even vocally in support of Black Lives Matter during the George Floyd protests.

Anyway, with all that out of the way, let’s get to the list…

5) Playing Ozzfest 2000 and 2002

Evangelicals are a fickle sort. On the one hand, they love the idea of evangelizing to people and are always happy to remind you that Jesus shunned the religious elite in favour of hanging out with tax collectors, prostitutes and Samaritans. However, actually getting an evangelical to spend time with people they consider to be “lost sinners”? Good luck, as this first controversy demonstrates. P.O.D. have gotten heat from Christians for appearing on soundtracks for Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows and Little Nicky and for touring with bands like Korn and Insane Clown Posse, but the most notable convert-related controversy for the band would have to be their appearances at Ozzfest in the early 2000s. The early 2000s were a really shitty time to be an evangelical teenager. After being energized during the 80s, the 90s and 2000s left evangelicals completely impotent. They continued whining about video game violence and the depravity of rock music, but no longer were their complaints resonating in the larger culture, rather they were making evangelicals even more insular.

As a signal that the people leading the evangelical movement were a bunch of boomer fucks, evangelicals were still railing against Ozzy Osbourne in the early 2000s, despite the fact that he’s a Christian himself. To them, Ozzfest represented a symbol of everything they hated – dark music that promoted a satanic and sinful lifestyle, the perfect target for a reactionary conservative movement to organize against. Then along comes P.O.D., the biggest name in Christian music at the time, performing on the main stage alongside Ozzy, Rob Zombie and Tommy Lee (of Mötley Crüe fame). Suffice to say, the presence of a “Christian band” at these events ran entirely counter to the idea that Ozzfest was a source of all the evil in the world.

Professional dickhead James Dobson said that the band had forsaken their religious beliefs by participating in Ozzfest and there were several young evangelicals who thought that the band was selling out for fame. Looking back on the controversy years later, P.O.D. lead singer Sonny Sandoval has said that this view “didn’t make sense to us because we were called to go to the light and spread the word”. Unsurprisingly, I’m inclined to agree – the evangelical hatred of Ozzfest is more political than theological. They use it as a target, a representation of culture which is offensive to their intensely conservative values (note that James Dobson is the founder of Focus on the Family, which should tell you everything you need to know about what he would consider a “proper” Christian life). Having a Christian band happily playing these shows and using it as an outreach tool suggests that the culture of rock music isn’t evil, opens up the word of God to the people who may need it most and may even encourage Christian teens to take a second look at rock festivals. This is unacceptable for these conservative fundamentalists, so therefore they have to call out P.O.D. for their “transgression” against the evangelical hegemony.

4) Getting Censored Because “Youth of the Nation” Is “Too Violent”

I came across this controversy while doing research for this article and, I’ll be honest, this might be the most buck-wild of the bunch. Back in October of 2012 P.O.D. was scheduled to play Monster Jam Fest at the Majestic Ventura theater when, mere days before the show, the fairgrounds which were hosting the show emailed the promoter saying that P.O.D. weren’t allowed to play “Youth of the Nation”. The reason for this? Apparently the song was “too touchy and controversial” and “too violent” for a family event. If you’re unfamiliar, the song is about the tragic experiences of a group of teens, including a school shooting which was inspired by a real life shooting at Santana High School in 2001. Suffice to say, the song by no means glorifies violence and being against school shootings is in no way controversial, so I don’t understand what the problem is? In any case, P.O.D. agreed not to play the song, but the damage was done – several bands dropped out of the lineup, the venue had to be changed, $130,000 in tickets had to be refunded and P.O.D. themselves eventually dropped out of the show. Making things even more intense though was the fact that the fairgrounds were state property so there was some debate about whether this could be considered a First Amendment issue. Marcos Curiel certainly seemed to want to spin it that way, but ultimately the band moved on without making more of a fuss.

To make things even more wild, this was only a couple months before the Sandy Hook shooting, which should give one even more pause about this entire controversy. The US is a country where a band can be told not to play one of their biggest hits because talking about school shootings isn’t family friendly, while also conditioning their elementary school children to believe that shooting drills, bulletproof backpacks and teachers with firearms are normal, all because they consider gun control measures out of the question (despite overwhelming public support).

3) Censored and Banned Because Album Covers “Promote Paganism”

P.O.D. have had several album cover controversies over the years. While it didn’t become a full-blown controversy due to the band being too small to make a real splash, there was some complaints about the cover of their debut album, Snuff the Punk, whose original artwork featured an angel holding a gun to the devil’s head (this was subsequently changed to a far more family friendly version where the angel was just going to punch the devil mercilessly instead). Their first real album artwork controversy came with The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, which features a surreal, symbolic and mystical album cover by Jean Bastarache. I personally find it fascinating and evocative, it’s easily the best album cover in the band’s career. Naturally, because the cover required some interpretation, Christian retailers refused to stock it, claiming that it was “pagan” and objecting to the presence of a cigar. Christian stores wouldn’t even stock the album until a black box was placed over the cover, all because they couldn’t understand the symbolism.

The biggest album cover shitstorm would come with Payable on Death, which came out at the height of P.O.D.’s fame. The album cover, seen above, features a naked woman with butterfly wings with Latin script (which apparently is the word for the sung part of the preface for Mass) covering her nether regions. The cover alone caused 85% of Christian retailers to ban the album, mainly because the art depicts the woman’s public bone and some people argued that having “Sanctus” covering her genitals sexualized a holy term… because, y’know, naked women are inherently sexual according to these people. This ignores the fact that artist Daniel Martin Diaz is himself Catholic and put overt Catholic symbolism into the album cover (although that’s probably not a plus for some evangelicals, many of them believe that Catholics aren’t real Christians). That’s not even the end of the Payable on Death art controversies though. Noted crank Terry Watkins of Dial-the-Truth Ministries put out a long screed about how the art and symbols depicted in the album and its liner notes are “clearly among the most openly occult and dark I have ever seen”. Suffice to say, it’s absolute quackery and will give you a good laugh to read through. For their part, P.O.D. were now popular enough that they refused to censor their art this time around.

The real reason for this particular controversy? P.O.D. come from San Diego in poor, diverse neighbourhoods. They have roots with evangelicalism, Mexican Catholicism, Rastafarianism and various other spiritual practices which are unfamiliar to your average white evangelical. It doesn’t matter that Payable on Death‘s artwork is overtly Catholic to these people, it’s unfamiliar to their evangelical sensibilities. It doesn’t matter that P.O.D. are professed Christians, these people see a surreal cover like The Fundamental Elements of Southtown and, when they can’t see Jesus blatantly depicted, they assume that it’s because they’re trying to hide SATAN. It’s frustrating but that’s what you get when evangelicals have a cultural monopoly on the faith.

2) P.O.D. Aren’t “Real Christians”

Before I really dive into this one, let’s put this all in perspective – I’m talking about a band which is famously considered lame in the mainstream for being a nu-metal Christian act. You’d think that they’d at least get embraced by Christians for being as successful as they are, but no, as you can probably see from this list of dumb controversies, the Christian crowd are probably their biggest critics. This lack of acceptance from the most conservative parts of Christianity has dogged the band for their entire career, to the point where “not Christian enough for Christians, and too Christian for the world” has basically become their go-to descriptor. In a 2015 interview, Sonny Sandoval described one of their earliest gigs where they were asked to play at a local church, but not even a minute into their set they got shut down for their “ungodly” music. I found a depressing thread from back in 2005 on the (I shit you not) Christian Gamers Alliance forum, which covers such important and debated topics as “Is playing a warlock going to send me to hell?” and “Is Minecraft evil?”. Anyway, the thread in question was about Demon Hunter and P.O.D. and whether they could be considered Christian bands, or were “Christian” at all. In regards to P.O.D. they claim that because they don’t proclaim the name of Jesus in every song and because they don’t stand and preach during their concerts that they’ve sold out to the world. It’s not just this gaggle of weirdos that believe this either, this was a pretty common refrain amongst evangelicals at the height of P.O.D.’s popularity. I found a study by Bobbi Hooper whose thesis paper was about the attitudes of Christians towards various CCM bands and P.O.D. were often highlighted as a band which “wasn’t Christian enough” for many evangelicals because they aren’t overt in their lyrics. There’s actually an anecdote from one participant who said his friend loved P.O.D., but when he went to a concert and they didn’t proselytize to the crowd he lost respect for them.

Then there’s the cranks. Terry Watkins has a whole article about how P.O.D. aren’t real Christians because they swear, have tattoos and don’t adhere to white, evangelical Christianity. The European American Evangelistic Crusade take it a step further, saying that P.O.D. don’t believe in hell, that they believe in a perverted Rasta Jesus and various other ridiculous accusations. Then there’s convicted pedophile David J. Stewart of Jesus-is-Savior fame who more-or-less echoes what the others have said (although he REALLY wants you to know that Jesus wasn’t Rastafarian). All this evangelical gatekeeping can be dismissed outright since, nearly twenty years later, P.O.D. are still out there witnessing through their music the same as they ever were. Evangelicals have just never truly embraced P.O.D. because, in my opinion, they don’t represent the safe, white norm that they want and expect… which is perhaps why, despite all their successes, P.O.D. have never won a Dove award (which is basically the Christian equivalent of the Grammies.

1) “I Am” Swearing Controversy

“I Am” is, without a doubt, the most controversial song in P.O.D.’s career (and, again, this is from a band that has a song called “Abortion Is Murder”). What could possibly stir up such a shitstorm, you may wonder? Simple: a Christian band said “fuck”. Now, this is especially dumb for several reasons. First, the record label got cold feet and bleeped out the lyric, so no officially released version of the song even has the word in it (although there are uncensored, pre-release versions out there with the word intact). Secondly, the band had been publicly using profanity for a decade by this point and had strongly considered putting out an anti-suicide song with profanity six years earlier, so it really shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Third, within the context of the song it makes a lot of sense. “I Am” is an incredibly angry track told from the perspective of someone who has been hurt, rejected by society and who is questioning why they should give a shit about a God who people say loves them. There is a powerful, real sincerity when they say “Are you the one that’s come to set me free? / ‘Cause if you knew who I am, would you really want to die for me? / They say you are the cursed man, the one who hangs from this tree / I know this is the one and only son of God, so tell who the fuck is he?” It’s especially poignant because, prior to the release of this album, Sonny Sandoval had been thinking of walking away from the band. He went on a hiatus for four years, during which he started doing youth outreach where he met a lot of broken teens who clearly were the inspiration for the track.

Naturally, evangelicals took all this into consideration and threw a fit. Jesus Freak Hideout, one of the biggest Christian music review sites, notoriously halved the score of their official review of the album because they felt that the use of profanity soured the entire experience, which just made the controversy even more contentious. If people were talking about P.O.D. at this time, then they were debating whether they had crossed a line with this song (I know that my childhood youth pastor, who was a big fan of P.O.D., was disappointed by the track and wouldn’t let his kids listen to it… again, they bleeped out the goddamn swearing on this track). There were plenty of hot takes about the subject on both sides, from people saying that it’s unacceptable to sin to promote God, to others saying that the Apostle Paul swears in the Bible, the translators just don’t accurately convey this. I think my favourite take has to be from Christian blog The Two Cities, which explains why swearing is nowhere near as big a deal as evangelicals make it out to be:

“Is sin bound to phonetics or intentions? Of course, the issue is not phonetic. It would be absurd to suggest that the F Bomb is sinful because words that begin with a fricative and end with a velar are evil. Well, here’s a made-up nothing word that matches that criteria: “Vug.” Try pronouncing it. It is phonetically very similar to the well-known F Bomb, yet apparently it would not be inappropriate to say! Now, this is an admittedly absurd example, but it helps prove the point. To go further, what of the halfway swear words that have appeared? When someone types “sh*t” on facebook for instance, are they trying to keep themselves from sinning? Has the removal of the “i” rescued one from moral downfall? Or by saying “freakin” instead of the F bomb are we saying anything different? Additionally, what’s the moral weight of saying “A$$” that “butt” does not possess? It’s arbitrary. Completely. Same thing applies to poop=crap=sh*t (it’s the same referent for goodness sake). I’m reminded of something Paul may have said about the letter of the Law here…

“The truth of the matter is that swear words are cultural products that have come into existence in multiple contexts and in multiple languages. In fact, this is an evolutionary linguistic phenomenon as certain words become taboo over time (e.g. faggot). For our American readers, it is generally recognized that “crap” is a more sensitive word for refuse than “sh*t,” but in the UK many regard “crap” to be a cuss word. So words can contain cultural stigmas, but not inherent worth. The excessive use of swear words can indicate a certain heart attitude, such as a rebellious spirit, or indicate a dearth of active vocabulary. But these words per se are not sinful. Thus, there is no inherent moral value in swear words, or any other word for that matter. The Apostle Paul warns us to refrain from crude speech (Eph 4.29; 5.4; Col 3.8), which refers to being crass. Additionally the passages speak to belittling others. Berating a fellow brother — you idiot! — is far worse than saying, “I fell on my A$$.”  What truly matters is the heart.”

Sandoval himself said, in regards to the controversy, “the only thing the Christian community hears is the F-word. They disregard the whole point of the song, because of the F-word. I think that’s pathetic.” Unsurprisingly, I’m inclined to agree.

When it comes down to it, most of P.O.D.’s controversies come from them not fitting into what white evangelicals expect of them. P.O.D. are more than happy to go about their business and preach God to their own people, but the people who are already saved and who don’t accept them to begin with keep finding reasons to tell them they’re not good enough for them. To show why these people need to calm the heck down, I’m going to end with a little anecdote. Back when I was in my teens, the one black family in our evangelical church had their two nieces from Jamaica come to live with them. They were at a church youth event where various Christian rock bands were being played and these two clearly weren’t interesting in what they were hearing. I then happened to put on The Fundamental Elements of Southtown and suddenly they lit up and asked me what band this was. The reggae, funk and rap that P.O.D. weave into their hard rock sound resonated with these two far more than any of the safe, white, evangelical gospel that they’d had to listen to up to that point, and that’s always stuck with me. There’s a wide world out there and, if you still have faith like I do, then we need more bands like P.O.D. to spread the good news to the people who get ignored by wider Christian culture.

Ranking the Albums I Listened to in 2018

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Hey, it’s that time of year again! That’s right, the time of year when I look back on the random-ass music I’ve listened to, most of which no one has heard of or cares about! If you’re curious about last year’s picks, you can read the list here. I decided to change up the title of these lists going forward because, while “Favourite Albums” is less wordy, by no means do I want people seeing some of the low-ranked crap on this list and thinking it was one of my favourite albums of the year.

Also, in February I had the pleasure of seeing In This Moment and P.O.D. in Detroit, along with opening acts New Year’s Day and Ded! It was a fantastic time and I’m so glad that I got to see two of my favourite bands live. Was also a great experience to share with with my fiance, along with my longtime friend and fellow blogger at The M.

Alright, let’s get to the rankings…!

19) Evolution, Disturbed
Oh how the mighty have fallen. About a decade ago, I would have said that Disturbed were one of my favourite bands. You could justifiably say that their songs all sounded pretty similar, but it was hard to deny that they weren’t refining their sound for the better with each successive album.

…and then the big four-year hiatus happened. At the time I had hoped that this break might give them a creative refresher, but their triumphant return Immortalized was anything but triumphant. It was a creative mishmash and definitely felt like the band’s first major step backwards. The only breath of fresh air was the band’s surprisingly evocative cover of “The Sound of Silence”, which became a major radio hit and changed the public perception of the band. This surprising hit most clearly influenced the band’s direction on Evolution, as Disturbed splits the album evenly between their traditional hard rock sound and slowed down ballads… and the results make me wish that “The Sound of Silence” never happened, because Evolution sucks.

The album opens with “Are You Ready”, which is probably the best song on the heavier-half album, but doesn’t really hold a candle to Disturbed’s previous singles. It also doesn’t help that it’s a totally empty protest song that doesn’t dare make any sort of actual statement. Bland, uninspired and not daring enough to make any sort of statement is pretty much what you could say about almost all the heavy songs on this album. Considering that Ten Thousand Fists had “Deify”, an overtly political song criticizing the presidency of George W. Bush, you’d think that Disturbed could find something to take a stand on, right?

If Evolution was just a bunch of bland heavy tracks, it would be a mediocre album, but it wouldn’t be awful. However, half of this album consists of slowed-down ballads which make you realize that Disturbed don’t really understand why “The Sound of Silence” was such a hit for them. For one thing, the songwriting is (again) really bland at best and the slowed down tracks utterly waste the talents of the rest of the band. David Draiman seems to be going for an inspirational tone with his singing, but when the most “inspirational” track “Hold Onto Memories” has nothing more to say than “appreciate life”, it comes across as weak. Album closer “Already Gone” ends the whole thing on a dull, unsatisfying note. Even worse, the album has four bonus tracks on the deluxe edition, one of which is by far the best track on the whole album, let alone the best ballad: “Uninvited Guest”. The fact that it’s a bonus track is baffling and I can’t help but think that this was done for cynical reasons to shift copies of the deluxe edition.

As a longtime fan of Disturbed, I say with confidence that Evolution is the worst album that they’ve ever released. It’s just a total mess and far from the step forward that the title would imply. Even if the individual songs didn’t range from mediocre to bad, the album’s structure just makes things worse, threading between heavy and slow songs haphazardly and with little sense of flow. By the time the album comes to an end I literally said “wait, that’s it?” Immortalized was bland enough, but after this album, all I can think is that it’s about time that I evolved beyond Disturbed.

18) And Justice for None, Five Finger Death Punch
As you might have gathered from my recent blog post, I really hate Five Finger Death Punch, so the fact that their newest album comes in ahead of Disturbed should just further illustrate how bad Evolution is. On paper, they seem like the sort of band that I should like: I had heard a bunch of songs of theirs which were really enjoyable and I typically enjoy aggressive, angsty heavy metal. However, Five Finger Death Punch embodies the absolute worst elements of that type of music, pushing their macho rhetoric to the point of toxicity. A band can only rage so much at the world, blame everyone else for their problems and posture about how they’re going to beat your ass before they come across as a bunch of whiny losers instead of the badasses that they think they are. This also isn’t helped by the fact that their songwriting is some of the most embarrassing stuff I’ve ever heard, repeating the same kinds of macho phrases and chalked full of swearing thrown in for no other reason than because they think it makes them sound tough. The end result is a “tired formula that makes wannabe badasses swoon”. They might be the only metal band that I actually like more when they’re selling out for radio hits, as their slowed down stuff tends to be better written and lacks the toxicity of their typical material. Their radio hits also tend to be covers, which admittedly they are usually fantastic at and really give a unique spin to (again, not having to write their own material helps significantly). It’s actually too bad that FFDP’s songwriting is so cripplingly abysmal because they clearly are a talented band that can make good music.

Anyway, that brings us to And Justice for None. I skipped Got Your Six when I heard just how lame the lead single “Jekyll and Hyde” was, but it’s immediately obvious that the band hasn’t changed a bit since I last checked in on them. For what it’s worth, the album is 100% typical FFDP. There are some enjoyable songs (“Top of the World” and, awful title-pun aside, “Sham Pain”), some good songs (“Blue on Black” and “Gone Away”, both of which are covers which just further illustrate this band’s strengths and weaknesses), lots of mediocre stuff and some utter garbage (“Rock Bottom” and especially “Fake”… just look at these lyrics and try to imagine taking them seriously). Unexpectedly, the second half of the album is actually somewhat slowed down compared to the first half, kind of like Evolution (although it never goes quite that far into ballad territory). This works better than expected since it actually makes the album itself have some flow to it, although I feel like it’s ultimately just a weak attempt to pander to a wider audience.

Like I said at the start, And Justice for None is better than Evolution, if only because I know for a fact that I’m going to come back to some of the songs on this album again someday. While it definitely has its lower points and hasn’t changed my opinion on FFDP in the slightest, at least it has some moments of enjoyability.

Also, just because I don’t have anywhere else to put this, have a good laugh and look at this stupid fucking mic-stand that FFDP uses!

17) Oblivion, Smile Empty Soul
This is the first entry on that made its way onto this list thanks to random Spotify recommendations. While listening to a random discover station, the song “Bottom of a Bottle” came on and I was digging the sound, while also being floored by the brazenly hedonistic lyrics (although apparently they’re meant to be metaphorical, you’d never know it though) and the ridiculously emo band name. I was pretty intrigued in any case and decided to check out Smile Empty Soul when I saw that they had a new album named Oblivion. Unfortunately, Oblivion is pretty forgettable and has basically turned me off from bothering to spend much more time on Smile Empty Soul. Oblivion is a passable but mediocre post-grunge hard rock effort that doesn’t seem to have much to say (the fact that their one protest song is yet another “the whole system sucks!” anthem is distressing). Hell, the only song which had any sort of impact for me was “Small Incision”, which is just a short, moody piano interlude… yikes. If you’re into post-grunge then you might enjoy Oblivion more than I did, but I can say with reasonable certainty that this is an album I will probably never listen to again.

16) The Hallowing of Heirdom, Winterfylleth
Winterfylleth are a band that I got into early this year while hungering for something to fill in that Agalloch-shaped folk metal hole in my soul. Winterfylleth don’t exactly meet that lofty expectation, but they do put out some decent black metal, even if all their songs all sound pretty similar. Their last album, The Dark Hereafter, took some steps to differentiate each song and incorporated more clear folk influences, which was a welcome step and which made seeing where they were going to go in the future more exciting.

When a new album for 2018 was announced, Winterfylleth were quick to clarify that they were doing something completely different and it’s probably a good thing that they did so. Whereas their previous albums were raw, black metal with plenty of folk inspiration, The Hallowing of Heirdom goes full-on traditional English folk music. It’s an understandable fit for the band considering the style that they’ve carved for themselves, but it’s a major departure from their usual sound and definitely takes some getting used to.

For my own part, I don’t have a ton to say about this album. I preferred the harmonizing of black metal and folk on The Dark Hereafter, but The Hallowing of Heirdom presents an intriguing experiment for Winterfylleth. I just hope that this isn’t indicative of the band’s long-term future. The Hallowing of Heirdom is a decent album, really well-crafted and beautifully atmospheric, but it’s also just not really something I can see myself listening to on a regular basis. It would make for really atmospheric background music in a Dungeons & Dragons session, but that’s about the only way that I can see myself interacting with this album again.

15) The Now Now, Gorillaz

Gorillaz usually release one album per presidential term. This irregular cycle has left me wondering if the band had dissolved unceremoniously on more than one occasion, although it does give new albums an “event” status and a provides a unique flavour on each release. The one time they broke this pattern was with 2010’s The Fall, which was recorded on an iPad during the touring for Plastic Beach, which was released less than a year earlier. It was by far their weakest and most throwaway album at the time, owing to its spontaneous and experimental nature.

I mention all this because The Now Now came out just as unexpectedly, a little over a year after last year’s Humanz and I was left wondering whether it would be another The Fall. The Now Now is thankfully better than that, although it definitely feels like a “lesser” Gorillaz release. The album has a very chill tone to it, much more cohesive than the chaotic grab bag that was Humanz and with far less guest contributions. That said, the only big standout is “Hollywood”, which meshes the album’s chill tone with a really mesmerising house/dance sound. Other than that, none of the songs really stand out to me as being anything special. The Now Now isn’t a bad album, it it lacks that special feel that a Gorillaz release typically has. I know Damon Albarn has said that he doesn’t know how many more years the band has left in it so he wants to release albums while he can, but if that means that we get more albums like The Now Now rather than a Plastic Beach or Demon Days, I question if it’s worth it.

14) Attention Attention, Shinedown
Shinedown are one of those bands that I have heard and enjoyed on the radio, but have never really looked into. However, when I heard that there was a new Shinedown album out and that it was supposed to be pretty good, I decided to give it a look. I had always dug tracks like “Devour”, “Sound of Madness” and “Cut the Cord”, they had an undeniable, hard-hitting energy to them which always made Shinedown stick out amongst the hard rock crowd, so I was excited to see how Attention Attention would harness that. Unfortunately, this expectation might have blunted my enthusiasm for the album, because Attention Attention is very unlike Shinedown’s heyday. There are some fairly heavy songs, such as “Devil”, “Black Soul”, “Evolve” and “The Human Radio”, which are where the album shines brightest. However, Shinedown have apparently taken a turn into pop rock on Attention Attention, because the album as a whole is much lighter and poppier than their previous work. Like, throughout this album Shinedown sounds like a heavier version of Imagine Dragons (most evidently on “Darkside”). Attention Attention isn’t exactly bad, it’s just not my thing at all and is just even more disappointing considering that it’s not the sort of product that I look to Shinedown to create. Maybe you’ll dig it, but I definitely did not.

13) Outsider, Three Days Grace
Other than what I hear on the radio, I’m not particularly familiar with Three Days Grace’s catalogue, other than the fact that founding singer Adam Gontier (the most notable aspect of Three Days Grace’s sound) left the band a few years ago. I figured that would be the end of the band, but here were are with the second post-Gontier Three Days Grace album and they seem to be going about as strong as ever. In fact, there are some songs here on Outsider, such as “The Mountain” and “Infra-Red”, which are about as great as any of the other major hits of the band’s earlier years. That said, the album is very much typical Three Days Grace, for better or worse. If you already have feelings about Three Days Grace’s brand of angsty, radio-friendly rock, then they are unlikely to change any. For my own part, I feel like Outsider has a few strong songs, but most of the album is fairly forgettable and is unlikely to leave a major impact.

12) Erase Me, Underøath
As someone growing up with Christian metal, I’ve always been aware of Underøath, but I’ve never really listened to them. This puts me into a weird place with Erase Me, as I have no real measuring stick for this album’s place in their career. What made me check this album out was the story of the band’s lead vocalist and last-remaining founding member, Aaron Gillespie. To put it simply, Aaron had a major falling out with evangelicalism and came back to Underøath on this album with a new direction for the band. Rather than continuing to just crank out music for the Christian music scene, Underøath are just playing what they want, including such “controversial” things as swearing in their music (as the reaction to P.O.D.’s Murdered Love shows, this is a MAJOR no-no in the evangelical scene). Honestly though, the controversy is pretty silly to me because thematically this is still very much a Christian album, featuring songs about hope, sacrifice and struggles which somehow get completely invalidated by the fact that Aaron punctuates them with a very real and raw “fuck” on occasion. Interestingly, these struggles with faith might have actually led to some legitimate angst which those who have had a falling-out with religion can relate to. Songs such as “ihateit” are infectious and enjoyably angsty and there’s a strong metalcore vibe to most of the album.

That said, the music itself is going to be hit-or-miss for some people. On the one hand, their evangelical fanbase has been turned off out of the gate. Furthermore, metalcore fans might be turned off by the electronic elements of the album, such as “No Frame” which almost sounds like a weird pop song. Even general audiences could be turned off by the fact that Erase Me ultimately just sounds like well-made but fairly generic metalcore. I’d say that Underøath are clearly talented and make some pretty good music, but it suffers a bit for being a tad generic. It’s kind of unfortunate, I was so primed for this album and the mindset behind it, it’s just so much more compelling than the actual music is.

11) Ember, Breaking Benjamin
Breaking Benjamin are a band I’ve passed over for most of my life, but I’ve finally started getting into them late into this year. I like the band’s heavy, dour and angsty sound and thought that I would check out their newest album, Ember. A couple tracks in and I was having a pretty great time – “Feed the Wolf” and “Red Cold River” were very enjoyable, if a bit samey and very much in the mold of Breaking Benjamin’s usual fare (if a tad heavier that previously). However, as the album progresses, it becomes increasingly obvious that “that usual fare” is all that Breaking Benjamin is interested in producing, because all of the songs on Ember sound very similar. Some songs are a little better than others, but they basically all have the same sort of sound, the same tone and same angsty themes that Breaking Benjamin have been mining for their entire career. The only songs which change things up at all are “The Dark of You”, which is quietly moody, and “Close Your Eyes”, which is basically the same as the rest of the album aside from the fact that it’s the only song with any sort of hopeful tone to it. Other than that, Ember is only really going to appeal to you if you already are really into Breaking Benjamin’s sound. When the tracks are all so samey, only the strongest ones actually stand out, making half of the album pretty much throwaway. Ember certainly isn’t a bad album – in fact, I quite like it. However, the lack of ambition and willingness to try something different makes it considerably less than it could have been.

10) White Nationalism is for Basement Dwelling Losers, Neckbeard Deathcamp + United Antifascist Evil, Neckbeard Deathcamp/Gaylord
I’m putting these two entries together since they basically sound the same. Neckbeard Deathcamp is a pretty good black metal act that shot into prominence early this year with the amazingly anti-alt-right White Nationalism is for Basement Dwelling Losers, which was quickly followed-up with a split EP with Gaylord, United Antifascist Evil. Neckbeard Deathcamp are satirical geniuses, everything from the album covers, to the song titles, to the lyrics (“Chrischan Conservatism”, “Incel Warfare” and “Please Respond (I Showed You My Penis)” are probably my favourite songs of theirs) and even the band’s pseudonyms are absolutely amazing. Neckbeard Deathcamp absolutely hate the resurgence of the extreme right and have provided us with an appropriate soundtrack for the times that we’re living in. The only reason I don’t put them higher on the list is because of the low production quality and that the awesome lyrics are wasted on growled vocals (I know that that’s the scene they’re in, but it’s still unfortunate that you can’t hear any of it). Still, the releases are only a couple of dollars each and the music is still pretty solid black metal regardless, so if you’re interested then they’re definitely worth checking out.

9) Space Nazis Must Die, Countless Thousands
Space Nazis Must Die is a charming little bit-sized EP from Countless Thousands. The titular song plays very much like a track from their debut album called “The Devil & Davey Munch”, a delightful narrative-song which is a very obvious “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” homage (for my money, the resulting song is infinitely better than simply covering the Charlie Daniels Band, which most bands would have just gone and done). While “The Devil & Davey Munch” serenaded the band’s bassist (the titular “Davey”), “Space Nazis Must Die” pays tribute to drummer Jon David, who gets to dropkick AstroHitler to death with the power of rock before blasting “The Star Spangled Banner” as a victory celebration and telling all the nazis to “get off my moon”. It’s as epic as it sounds.

Lyrically it’s not as savage or biting as Neckbeard Deathcamp, coming across like more of an anti-fascist power fantasy, but God what a sweet fantasy that is in this modern political climate. And here I was last year saying that I had hoped Humanz would be the soundtrack to the Trump years – nope, it’s anti-fascist anthems like Neckbeard Deathcamp and “Space Nazis Must Die” which are really capturing the modern zeitgeist. Big bands such as Disturbed and Five Finger Death Punch don’t want to get into politics because it affects their bottom-line (hence the toothless nature of Evolution), but indie bands can actually capture the feelings of our times in a manner such as this.

I give Space Nazis Must Die the edge over Neckbeard Deathcamp’s output since you can at least understand the lyrics and it’s just straight-up delightful to listen to. I do wish that it was a bit more substantial (the entire package is about 8 minutes long), but at only $3 it’s hard to consider this an unfair trade-off by any means.

8) Black Reign, Avenged Sevenfold
I have been off of the Call of Duty train for about 7 or 8 years now and never really got into the Black Ops games, so finding out that Avenged Sevenfold have contributed music to all of Treyarch’s entries in those games came as something of a surprise. I mean, a Call of Duty EP from a major metal act? Perhaps even more surprising, there are some really killer tracks on this EP. “Carry On” really shows off the stellar guitar work of Synyster Gates, but “Not Ready to Die” is the real highlight of the album. Oddly enough, the one track written specifically for the EP and for Black Ops 4, “Jade Helm”, is by far the weakest of the bunch, often cutting to silence for seconds at a time as if it’s meant to be used in trailer snippets rather than actually listened to. Still, Black Reign is way better than a Call of Duty EP has any right to be, demonstrating Avenged Sevenfold’s talents in the process.

7) You’re Not Alone, Andrew W.K.
I really love Andrew W.K.’s ambitious, hard-rocking sophomore album, The Wolf, even more than his more popular debut, I Get Wet. However, nothing that he has put out since then has gotten my attention. You’re Not Alone is a decent course correction, feeling very much like a long-awaited follow-up to his first two albums. Everyone knows that Andrew W.K. loves to party, but on You’re Not Alone he combines that with the self-help philosophy that he has been developing over the last several years, to the point where this album almost feels like it’s forming the basis of a cult of partying (such as the highlight “Music Is Worth Living For”). The music itself is a classic Andrew W.K. overwhelming wall of sound, complemented by his awesome harsh vocals (which had been missing from some of his more disappointing releases). I do feel like the album itself, along with some of the songs on the latter half, are a bit too long though and the overall package could have done with some fat trimming. Still, You’re Not Alone is a pretty decent Andrew W.K. release, it’s just still nowhere near the same level as his first two albums and none of the songs stick with you quite as along either.

6) The Sin and Doom, Vol. II, Impending Doom
Impending Doom are, in my opinion, low-key one of the best Christian artists out there. There are few bands in the Christian music scene which could legitimately hold up against other bands within their genre, but Impending Doom put out some brutally heavy deathcore that can be appreciated whether you agree with their faith or not. Funnily enough for a deathcore band, their songwriting is a key component of this – most of their songs tend to have moments which you just want to scream along to. The Sin and Doom, Vol. II doesn’t stray too far from this formula, although it does take a little while to really hit its stride. The first few tracks are decent but don’t particularly stand out from the rest of Impending Doom’s output. However, by the time “The Serpent’s Tongue” comes up, the album really kicks into overdrive. The song itself is somewhat silly, disparaging Satanism in the black metal scene, but you kind of have to appreciate Impending Doom for having the balls to take a stand for what they believe in in this case (it doesn’t hurt that this track has one of those awesome “scream along moments” when lead singer Brooke Reeves shouts “Satan hates you because you’re made in the image of God’s only son!”; a classic Impending Doom moment if there ever was one). If there was any doubt about Impending Doom’s place in this scene after “The Serpent’s Tongue”, that’s totally washed away by the awesome “Unbroken” and “Devil’s Den” (which, again, will leave you screaming “Slaughter the demons that are crawling on my brother’s back!”). It takes a while to really get going, but once it does, The Sin and Doom, Vol. II makes for some really killer death metal. It certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s high quality and really gets your blood pumping and your fist bumping.

5) Circles, P.O.D.
I’m always a bit nervous whenever a new P.O.D. album comes out. They’ve been one of my favourite bands for almost 16 years and were what got me into heavy music in the first place. That said, they always try something different with every new release and I’m never really sure if it’s something that I’ll enjoy, that perhaps their new music will somehow hurt their legacy for me. For their last couple albums, P.O.D. have also been starting to feel like “the old guys in the room”, complaining about the current music scene and hearkening back to a time when music was better (their last album, The Awakening, was made as a concept album for this very reason). Thankfully, Circles doesn’t lean too hard into this negativity and reminded me just why I still love P.O.D. after so many years.

P.O.D. never really stick with one uniform sound from album-to-album. Circles sounds somewhere in the neighbourhood of Murdered Love and Satellite, with tons of different influences dotted throughout the album – lots of heavy hard rock, rap, reggae, funk, punk and even a gospel-flavoured tune. It’s also quite interesting that lead singer Sonny Sandoval raps the lyrics to nearly song on this album, something which P.O.D. hasn’t really done since their earliest albums. I know some people just can’t stand rap-rock, but I think it works and makes for an interesting mixture when you consider all the myriad of influences and styles P.O.D. works in throughout the album.

There are some real standout tracks here: the title track is really good and “Listening for the Silence” is fantastic, with a powerful chorus that you’re going to struggle to get out of your head long afterwards. These are definitely two of my favourite songs of the year, hands down. There are some other big standouts as well: “Rockin’ with the Best” is enjoyably heavy and I can see it being amazing live, “Fly Away” (the aforementioned gospel-inspired track) is really unique and “Soundboy Killa” is a really cool rap-rock fusion which would probably be even more of a standout if the band hadn’t released it as a single more than a year ago (having seen the song live though, it definitely is a killer track to witness). There aren’t really any stinkers on the album, although I’m not sure yet whether I like the really strained screaming on “Panic Attack”, and some of the songs have excessively repetitive and simple choruses. The album could also do with being a little longer (it’s less than 40 minutes in total), but the band really does make the most of each song and I really have to commend them on how they’re still trying to find unique avenues for their sound after 25 years (cough Breaking Benjamin cough). Circles is a very solid effort by P.O.D. and while not every track is top notch, even the weaker tracks are unique enough to be interesting and worth checking out.

4) When Legends Rise, Godsmack
Godsmack can usually be relied on to put out decent music, but they never have hit that “next level” and I’d struggle to say that they have ever put out a truly good album. They’re usually like Breaking Benjamin – releasing music which is largely the same as what they’ve done before. As a result, the fact that Godsmack named their newest album “When Legends Rise” made for a pretty big statement from them. While the album doesn’t really meet the lofty standard of “legendary”, it is definitely the band’s strongest release ever and puts Godsmack on a much more interesting course going forward. When Legends Rise sheds most of the aggression, angst and casual misogyny that defined their earlier, drearier releases, in favour of a more hopeful hard rock sound. It’s still familiar but refreshingly updated and (dare I say it) matured. “Bulletproof” is a particular highlight, sounding very different than anything else Godsmack has ever done and is possibly my favourite song of the year. That said, the album is definitely frontloaded – after the slowed-down “Under Your Scars”, the second half of the album is noticeably weaker than the first, feeling a little more like their usual output. Still, When Legends Rise was a pleasant surprise for me. I wasn’t expecting much, but Godsmack have put themselves onto an interesting track here and I’m very excited to see where they go in the future.

3) The Sacrament of Sin, Powerwolf

Powerwolf feel like the band that was made for me – a musical fusion of metal, werewolves and religious fanaticism. Sign me the hell up! They can usually be relied on to put out great albums, even if their sound and style has been set in stone for over a decade now. Enter The Sacrament of Sin, which goes to show that if you’re not going to reinvent the wheel, then make sure that that wheel is rock solid. Thankfully, even if it’s largely more of the same, Powerwolf have crafted some really high-quality tracks which show off their “metal mass” style (power metal with traditional Catholic mass songwriting and organs). “Demons Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is a particular highlight, as is the powerful “Where the Wild Wolves Have Gone”, which really shows of Attila Dorn’s operatic vocals.

The deluxe editions of The Sacrament of Sin also come with a bonus disc called Cummunio Lupatum, featuring other artists covering Powerwolf tracks in their own style. I was super excited for this because Powerwolf’s last album had a similar bonus disc where they covered some of their favourite music, resulting in some absolutely killer tracks. Unfortunately, Cummunio Lupatum lands with a damp squib because most of the covers are either mediocre or straight-up bad. The only track which is any good is Kissin’ Dynamite’s cover of “Let There Be Night”, which sounds absolutely amazing. If the rest of the covers had been anywhere near as good then the deluxe edition would be a must-buy, but thankfully this doesn’t take away from the more consistent quality of The Sacrament of Sin.

2) Disobey, Bad Wolves
Disobey is the case-in-point on why Five Finger Death Punch’s abysmal songwriting is so crippling. Bad Wolves’ sound is very similar to Five Finger Death Punch’s – their style of metal is similarly heavy, aggressive and, hell, the biggest single off this album is even a cover. The key difference though is that Bad Wolves can write a damn song and don’t make themselves come across as assholes in the process. Disobey has a number of different lyrical topics, although it largely revolves around themes of protesting overbearing authorities. Tracks such as the killer opener “Officer Down” at least flirt with political topics, in this case police violence, which is more than you can say about many of the other toothless “protest” albums on the lower-half of this list. There’s also plenty of musical variety from song-to-song which always keeps things interesting. Disobey largely succeeds due to the fact that it’s a constantly inventive, polished and very high-quality release which isn’t afraid to say something. I can only hope that Bad Wolves can top it going forward.

1) Eat the Elephant, A Perfect Circle
I’ve been into Tool for quite a long time now, but I never really made the jump to James Maynard Keenan’s other band, A Perfect Circle. However, I was looking for new music for this list and remembered that A Perfect Circle had put out their first new album in almost 15 years. On a whim, I decided to check it out and… well, let’s just say that I thought that Disobey was going to be my album of the year until I was about 3 or 4 tracks into Eat the Elephant.

First off, if you’re expecting something like Tool, you’re not going to find it here. It’s quite hard for me to really categorize this album’s genre, because it’s so unique, although I might have settled on it being alternative rock or hard rock. Eat the Elephant really shows off James Maynard Keenan’s singing, which is immediately evident on the sombre but hopeful title track

One of the more refreshing aspects of Eat the Elephant is that the songs actually feel like they have something to say. From tracks calling to overcome the obstacles we face (or build) in our lives (“Eat the Elephant”, “Disillusioned”) to pointed political statements (“The Contrarian” for corrupt politicians, “The Doomed” and “TalkTalk” for the evils in evangelicalism), Eat the Elephant usually has something interesting to say. The album also has my hands-down favourite song of the year, “So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish”, which immediately gets points for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference. It’s a really cool song, alluding to the dolphins in Hitchhiker’s Guide to honour the deaths of celebrities in 2017, as if they’re escaping Earth before our nuclear annihilation. It’s a fantastic song, simply put. Most of Eat the Elephant is just well-crafted music, far more ambitious than basically any other album I’ve heard this year. Unfortunately, the latter quarter of the album isn’t quite as triumphant as the rest – tracks like “DLB” and “Feathers” certainly aren’t bad, but they don’t hit anywhere near as hard as earlier tracks. Worst of all though, the album ends on a really poor note with the overly-long “Get the Lead Out”, by far my least-favourite track and a very dull closer. It’s too bad that it closes the album out on a bit of a sour note.

I went into Eat the Elephant totally blind, not sure if I was actually going to like it. The resulting album really impressed me though and I’m certain that I’ve still got plenty more layers to uncover in further listen-throughs. I feel like I’m going to come back to some of the other, lower-ranked albums more often, but it’s hard to deny that Eat the Elephant is the best, most well-crafted album I’ve heard all year.

IC2S Playlist Update 20/04/2016

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So we’re now just a week short of the playlist’s 1 year anniversary, and the point where I’m probably going to stop updating it so regularly (or, at the very least, stop flooding the blog every week with Playlist updates that I doubt anyone actually cares about). The limited time is actually making it a little difficult to pick music, and I was actually going to pick some Impending Doom or Project 86… however, then Volbeat announced Seal the Deal & Let’s Boogie and released “The Devil’s Bleeding Crown”. If the rest of the album is as good as this single, then we’re going to be in for an absolute treat! Volbeat tends to be a bit of a singles-oriented band (similarly to Disturbed), meaning that this might be best of the best on the album, but I’m glad to hear that their sound seems to only be getting better. We’ll have to see I guess when the album drops.

Going along with that, I also picked “Babylon the Murderer” by P.O.D., which is pretty much universally considered one of their best songs in recent years. I’ve always liked how P.O.D. has a very reggae-influenced sound, and this has to be one of their best examples of mixing it with their signature hard rock.

…Anyway, I’m going to make this a little shorter than normal just cuz what I originally was planning on writing about has ended up getting spun off into a whole post of its own that I’ll put up later this week. Look forward to it!

IC2S Playlist Update 26/08/2015

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First up this week we have “Am I Awake?” by P.O.D. from The Awakening. While I was a bit worried that P.O.D. wouldn’t be able to pull it off, I’m happy to say that The Awakening was fantastic. While I would say that they’re my favourite band, P.O.D. is typically rather uneven – even their best albums usually have a couple tracks which aren’t very good. However, The Awakening is easily their most consistently good album since The Fundamental Elements of Southtown from way back in 1999. My only real complaint is that I’m not a fan of the story interludes which tie the album together. On the one hand, they do make the album a little more meaningful by linking the songs together. On the other hand, the acting in them is usually pretty awful, the writing is very “on the nose” and they don’t really seem to follow on another very coherently. This doesn’t detract from my assessment any (if you even have a cursory knowledge of Audacity then you can edit these bits out or make them skippable), but it is a bit of an annoying blemish on an otherwise solid package.

Secondly, we have “Them Bones” by Alice in Chains from their album Dirt. I had to find a new internet radio station to get my metal fix because Weathered Steel sadly went off the air. I’m now listening to a station called Metal Rock Radio, which I am enjoying overall. On my first day listening, they played “Them Bones” and it brought back a flood of nostalgia. When I was a kid, my brothers and I would play ATV Offroad Fury on PS2 all the time. This song was one of the highlights of the game’s soundtrack, and has made me do some digging on Spotify to see if any of my old favourite game soundtracks are there. I haven’t dug too deep into Alice in Chains’ back catalogue yet (I own The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here and have heard a few things on the radio), but I do quite like them… in fact, I’d go far enough to say that they’re probably my favourite grunge band (suck it Nirvana).

IC2S Playlist Update 17/06/2015

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So… unfortunately this work assignment looks like it’ll be going on for another week at least, but hopefully not much longer than that. I have a couple articles started that I just need to have some time to think over and sit down with, so hopefully they’ll see the light of day soon…

First up this week is “the Patriot” by Countless Thousands, from their album We’re Just Really Excited to Be Here. I was exposed to Countless Thousands from the Unpopular Opinion Podcast, since the lead singer is a friend of Adam Tod Brown. They’re sort of an indie-rock/alternative band, and while I’m ambivalent to most of their stuff, some of it is just fantastic. I wish they had “Gang Fight” on Spotify, but “the Patriot” is great in its own right. It’s really catchy, with some excellent musicianship and vocals. It’s also an extremely scathing criticism of overbearing, self-righteous neo-nationalists who lord their national superiority over others, without actually putting anything on the line in the process… and if that’s not an IC2S-worthy song, then I don’t know what is.

Secondly we have “This Goes Out to You” by P.O.D., from their upcoming album The Awakening. I was actually going to institute a playlist “rule” this week where we don’t repeat songs by the same artist within a 6 week time frame unless something special happens… of course, then suddenly P.O.D. dropped this single on Spotify on the very day I had decided to go forward with that announcement.

In any case though, this definitely feels how you would expect a “first single” to – it’s energetic, radio-friendly and lyrically simple, but it’s still quite catchy. Musically, it seems to be hewing close to Murdered Love, so that’s a good sign, since it was their best album in quite some time, and I would expect the album itself to actually be heavier than this would have you believe (eg, think Korn’s single “Never, Never” from The Paradigm Shift, which sounded nothing like the rest of the album, thankfully). Plus, it’s a nice shout-out to the fans who have stuck with P.O.D. over the years. The only thing I could have done without for the playlist is the end bit… what do you call it? An epilogue? The transition? Whatever it is, I could have done without it for a single track – I’m sure it’ll be fine on the album itself, but when you’re listening to it at the end of a single track within a diverse playlist, it’s kind of annoying (not to mention that Tim’s voice is rather annoying already).

IC2S Playlist Update 27/05/2015

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Before we start this week’s IC2S Playlist update, I have a bit of timely good news. Last week I mentioned that A Feast For Kings’ lead singer, Eric Gentry, had died in an accident about a year ago and was hoping that they would be able to keep going without it hurting their sound. Well, not even 3 days passed between me writing that and a news article about the band popping up on my Facebook feed. The band has officially signed with Tooth & Nail records and has rebranded themselves as XXI. Most importantly, they have released a new song as a tribute to Gentry, and it ROCKS. The music video is in the link, I really recommend checking it out, it’s both heartbreaking and face-melting at the same time. All fears I had for the band’s future have been laid to rest, so you can expect more from XXI when their debut album drops.

First up this week is a cover of “Habits (Stay High)” by David Unger. You might know David Unger from his parody videos on Youtube where he takes a pop culture subject (eg, Home Alone, The Walking Dead, Star Wars, etc), then writes a really heartfelt love song about it, and then superimposes the band’s faces onto scenes from the movie/show. They’re pretty funny, while managing to be good songs on their own merits. He also does covers, and I really like this one in particular – in fact, I prefer it over the original version by Tove Lo, partially due to Unger’s really emotional singing, and partially because the song makes more sense to me when it’s sung by a man (might just be bias on my part, but the lyrics just come across as something a guy would be singing rather than a woman IMHO).

Next up is “Set It Off” by P.O.D. from their best album, Satellite. I have an embarrassing confession – for some reason I thought that I had already put the acoustic version of “Panic & Run” on this playlist, because of that post I had made about how much I liked The So-Cal Sessions. If I had realized this earlier, then I would have thrown in some P.O.D. within week 2 or 3. And speaking of surprises, I was also surprised this week when I discovered that P.O.D. has a new album coming out this August. I might have heard some rumblings a while ago, but if I did then I totally forgot about it because of all the buzz surrounding The So-Cal Sessions. Naturally, now I’m totally stoked and can’t wait til August rolls around!

Anyway, as for the actual song, “Set It Off” is just plain kick-ass from start to finish. Appropriately, this song is the one that kicked off quite a few things for me. In the summer of 2002, my parents had sent me off to a Christian camp for a week, and my counselor would listen to this album all the time. This song served as my introduction to, and started my love for, hard rock/metal and P.O.D., and has had such a massive impact on my life that I have a hard time truly quantifying it. I can’t really say what direction my life would have gone without that week at camp; I wouldn’t like half of the bands I do now, and who knows what sort of music I would be listening to. So, um… yeah. Great song, I love listening to it, and am glad that it’s finally getting its due on the IC2S Playlist.

Back From the Dead 2: Electric Boogaloo

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I’d like to mention a couple other rather major changes that have happened over the last year that I neglected to mention in the previous post, but that I feel are worth mentioning. I was originally going to make this a small post, but it kind of ran away on me so I guess this is what you get for now. Enjoy it.

First of all, my music tastes have been refined a bit more. Work has allowed me to truly discover the joys of internet radio – no longer am I stuck choosing to listen to 3 classic rock stations, 5 pop stations or 1 country station. Now, I can finally listen to my actual interests, namely metal. I really should have sought out internet radio long before now, but… well, eh, whatever. Some of the bands this has introduced me to include A Feast for Kings (I really hope they can recover after the tragic death of their lead singer, because their debut EP was incredible), Impending Doom (if you have a single brutal bone in your body, you owe it to yourself to check out There Will Be Violence, Baptized in Filth and Death Will Reign), Sleeping Romance (kind of like Evanescence, but with more metal and far less angst) and My Heart to Fear (I’m only starting to get into them, but if nothing else then check out “The Sneaking Chair”).

My tastes have also started to shift slightly towards electronic music. This is largely thanks to the Hotline Miami games and John Wick, which have showed me that shooting people looks really freaking cool when you do it to a backdrop of electronic music. It’s not a genre that I’m a huge fan of still, but I can see that potentially changing in the future as I dabble with it. I have already used some of this influence for a Stormrunners compilation video – normally I’d do a straight-up hard rock or metal song to back it, but this time I decided to use an electronic-metal remix of Love & Death’s “Paralyzed” that I realized would be awesome for the task. I’m pretty impressed with the result, so we’ll see where this goes in the future. I was also working on an electronic album a couple years ago that I shelved, but I was actually listening to it again the other day and quite liked what I heard still. This new-found interest might make that album see the light of day after all… 😉

Oh, and on the subject of music, I’d feel awful if I forgot to mention P.O.D.’s The SoCal Sessions. I first saw them advertising this thing as a crowdfunded effort on PledgeMusic. As I have said before, they have been one of my favourite bands for more than a decade now, but I was hesitant about this one: an all-acoustic album where they cover some of their older songs. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t entirely on-board with this when I heard about it. For one thing, they already kind of did this with a live album called the Rhapsody Sessions, which was one of their more boring efforts IMHO. Furthermore, they had already tried a more acoustic sound on When Angels & Serpents Dance, which was a decent album, but felt like they completely ditched their heavy sound to the album’s detriment. The fact that Murdered Love went back to their heavy sound suggested to me that the band was trying to get back to their roots rather than following deviations. So basically, these potential issues were making me hesitant, but I pledged and more or less forgot about the album for months. However, I got a package in the mail a few weeks ago which surprised me, until I opened it and saw some really evocative album art with P.O.D.: The SoCal Sessions emblazoned upon it. I threw it in my computer and my worries about it being a lazy cash grab were blown away from the first song. This album is actually, to my great surprise, really good. Sonny nails it on the vocals, the song selection is excellent and very diverse, and some songs are actually improved by the acoustic transition. In particular, “Panic & Run” has to be one of my least favourite P.O.D. songs, but the acoustic transition takes it from an unfocused, too-fast hard rock song to an apocalyptic reggae track. The band’s reggae influences get played up even more, which is awesome as far as I’m concerned. In fact, the only track I’m not keen on is “Will You”, but that’s mainly because it is the only one that sounds like a “generic” acoustic version of a heavier song. Luckily, the other tracks are adapted far more interestingly.

Anyway, enough about music that probably only I care about, and onto something else that only I care about: theology (I’ll keep this one brief, I swear… if you can’t stand religious talk though, then skip ahead two paragraphs)! I think I have mentioned on the blog before that I am a Christian and grew up in a rather conservative, Evangelical family. However, around 6 or 7 years ago I began to feel paralyzed in my faith and was having trouble reconciling what I believed, what I had been taught, and the increasingly apparent politics of the Evangelical church. Things got worse when I went off to university as the Christian group I was with was pushing on me hard to evangelize to anyone I got a chance to. There was one particular question they were also pushing hard on me to answer their “spiritual conversation starter”, but I could not come up with an adequate answer: “what is it that you crave?” Hell, I still can’t come up with the sort of fundamental answer they’re looking for… knowledge? Certainty maybe? Ugh, thinking about that again is really bugging me.

In any case, the Evangelical monopoly on what it is to be “Christian” has been really bothering me, someone who is rather liberal and who strives to be an intellectual. However, one of my best friends (who happens to be studying for military chaplaincy) introduced me to Progressivism through Benjamin L. Corey’s blog, Formerly Fundie. I have to say, this has really helped turn me around and I feel like I’m actually growing and maturing thanks to my faith once again. I promised to keep this brief, so I’ll just summarize this really quickly: if you grew up in the church, then chances are that you’re going to start to question and start to fall away before you hit twenty. If your teachings were anything like mine, then Evangelicalism will make you feel like you either have to believe the way that they want you to believe or you’re a heretic. They’ll drill their ideology in you and make you feel ashamed (not necessarily for malicious reasons either, but just because religion has been designed this way to be self-perpetuating). If nothing else, just know that there are other understandings which still hold onto the core beliefs and which have just as much (if not more) theological basis than the mainstream church.

Anyway, thanks to Benjamin L. Corey, I have also discovered the joy of podcasts. As much as I’m loving internet radio, it can get a bit stale when they play the same songs on rotation every day. So I started listening to Corey’s That God Show while I worked, and it got me hooked. Listening to podcasts basically feels like learning at work, and keeps it from getting too repetitive. In addition to That God Show, I have been listening to The Cracked Podcast, Unpopular Opinion, Dead Things, Quality Control and Hello Internet. If you get the opportunity to listen at work, have long drives, or just have a fair bit of downtime, I’d recommend checking them out. 🙂

2012 in Media

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

With 2013 just a few days away, I think it’s worth looking back on the year that was. While it may be tempting to do this from the perspective of movies, I think that this was actually a rather disappointing year overall (or, at the very least, underwhelming). I mean, we had more than our fair share of mindless cinematic drivel (Wrath of the Titans, Resident Evil: Retribution, etc), extremely disappointing films (Taken 2, The Amazing Spider-man, etc) and decent films which didn’t reach their potential (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Prometheus, Looper [the 3rd act was horrible in my opinion], The Dark Knight Rises, etc). To top it off, Dredd bombed at the box-office. That said, there were some great films, but aside from Skyfall, The Avengers and Argo, most of the good stuff seemed to be skewed towards the first couple months of the year.

Anyway, I really didn’t start writing this to mope about the year in movies. I wrote to say that 2012 was the best years in music I can remember as most of my favourite artists not only released new albums, but they were almost universally amongst the best material in their discographies. Now I’ll preface this by saying that while taste in movies tends to be more agreeable, it seems like almost everyone has their own segmented tastes in music. I mean, my tastes are focused largely on various forms of rock/hard rock/Christian rock/metal, but even in that niche then there’s a good chance my tastes don’t overlap with most people. So while I had an amazing year in music, you might have had a terrible one, or you had an amazing one for completely different reasons. In any case, let me enthusiastically take you through my epic 2012. 🙂

Beginning the year was the very odd, but nevertheless catchy, Gorillaz/James Murphy/Andre 3000 collaboration, “DoYaThing”. The song was completely bonkers, but there is an unusual charm to it that grows on you with subsequent listenings (sort of like Gorillaz’s previous Plastic Beach amendment, “Doncamatic”). It wasn’t amazing, but I’d give the song a 6.5/10.

Next up was a busy April, which had 3 releases: True Defiance by Demon Hunter, which released the same day as Fighter by Manafest, and then the Chemicals E.P. by Love & Death at the end of the month. I was never much of a fan of Demon Hunter, but one of my friends recommended that I check them out again, and I’m glad that I did. True Defiance was a good album, amongst my favourites of the year. True Defiance opens with a bang with “Crucifix”, an amazingly intense headbanger of a song. The album is just strong throughout, carrying through to the melodic closer, “Dead Flowers”. If you love metal, then this is definitely worth checking out, even if you aren’t a Christian. I’d give it an 8/10.

As for Fighter, I admittedly have been a bit more cautious of Manafest since Citizens Activ came out. He is now 3 albums removed from his amazing Glory, but hasn’t recaptured the (ahem) spirit of that epic release. Fighter doesn’t really inspire any renewed confidence that he will be doing so anytime soon, and really feels like Manafest is just coasting off of his past success. The album sounds a lot like The Chase did. While it sounds like I really didn’t like the album, this isn’t really the case. It certainly is decent to listen to and has some catchy songs, but it’s nothing new. It’s a 6.5/10 for me.

Rounding off the month of April was Love & Death’s Chemicals E.P. I first started listening to Brian “Head” Welch about a year or 2 ago, and was blown away by Save Me From Myself. Naturally, I awaited his next album with bated breath. While the Chemicals E.P. isn’t as good as his previous album, it’s a decent interlude while we see how things shape up. I give it a 6.5/10.

After the packed month of April, May was where the trifecta of awesomeness began with Sabaton’s Carolus Rex. Some friends of mine introduced me to Sabaton a couple years ago, and while I liked a few of their songs, most of their albums were very weak… well, until I listened to The Art of War and Coat of Arms anyway. Each of these albums had built upon the others and produced some legitimately good music as a result. Of course, I wondered if Sabaton would continue this evolution, or if they would fall back into formulaic war-songs again. Luckily for all of us, they unleashed Carolus Rex, easily their best album, bar none. The album features a host of amazing tracks, including “The Lion From the North”, “A Lifetime of War”, “The Carolean’s Prayer” (their best song imho), “Carolus Rex” and “Long Live the King”. Hell, even the album’s b-sides are amazing, as I constantly find myself blasting their covers of “Twilight of the Thunder God” and “Feuer Frei”. All-in-all, Carolus Rex is a freaking landmark for Sabaton, firmly establishing themselves as a legitimately awesome metal band and giving themselves a major challenge to overcome next time they release an album. A 9/10, easily.

The 2nd entry in the trifecta of awesomeness was one which I had awaited for years, P.O.D.’s Murdered Love. P.O.D. has been my favourite band for over a decade now, through ups and downs. When I heard they were going to be returning to their hard rock/rap/reggae roots, I was stoked and the end product did not disappoint. Murdered Love is the best P.O.D. album since Satellite (which happens to be my favourite album, period… questionable taste maybe, but refer back to the 2nd paragraph please). The album features some great tracks, especially “Murdered Love”, “Lost in Forever” and especially “Babylon the Murderer”, while the other tracks are mostly solid. The only two which are questionable are “Bad Boy” (which is stupid but enjoyable) and “Panic and Run” (which I found “meh”), but they hardly sink the album. Also, the album spawned a fair bit of controversy for the song “I Am”, but that’s a matter for a later date. All-in-all, Murdered Love sated my P.O.D. appetite, and hopefully is a portent of greater things in the future. I give it a totally biased 8.5/10.

Rounding off the trifecta of awesomeness was Project 86’s Kickstarter-funded album, Wait for the Siren. Project 86 are an unfortunately under-appreciated hard rock band, but they have never had a bad album in their 15+ years as a band. Wait for the Siren doesn’t disappoint in this respect, delivering a characteristically strong and very heavy war-call to the masses. P86 are also known for changing up their sound on each album, and this one sees them experimenting with unorthodox instruments (mandolin, glockenspiel, etc), in addition to flowing between different tones and degrees of heaviness. The album opens on a very strong note with “Fall, Goliath, Fall”, and doesn’t let up once. I also quite enjoy “The Crossfire Gambit” (if only because it features Brian “Head” Welch) and “Take the Hill” (my favourite on the album). Wait for the Siren just goes to show that Andrew Schwab knows what he’s doing, crafting another excellent album and cementing P86’s legacy as a force to be reckoned with. 8.5/10.

With summer nearly done, August was rounded out by tobyMac’s newest release, Eye on It. tobyMac was actually one of the first Christian artists I heard and liked, and I count myself as a fan to this day. Welcome to Diverse City is one of my favourite Christian albums, period. Almost every song on it was a hit, and Portable Sounds basically carried on the same unique sound. I was worred that tobyMac was going to become stale, but lo-and-behold, he reinvented himself with a more modern sound in Tonight, making me believe he had the future in hand. However, when I found out that he was releasing his new album, Eye on It, a mere 2 years later, I was a bit worried (he typically runs on a 3-year rotation). Furthermore, toby was now taking inspiration from… dubstep artists. Blehhhhhhh. The finished product confirmed my suspicions: tobyMac had finally screwed up. Eye on It, put simply, sucked. I can honestly say I did not like any of the songs on the album (that’s not to say they were awful, but they failed to break the level of mediocrity). This was a combination of the dubsteb editing ruining the songs, the fact that most of them feel incredibly uninspired, or just plain stupid lyrics. Formerly, stupid tracks like “Whoopsi-Daisy” were forgivable because they were insanely catchy, but somehow toby seems to have lost that magic. Even the songs which are obviously being pruned to be singles (“Me Without You” and “Eye on It”) fail to differentiate themselves. Eye on It was a massive disappointment, and (thankfully) the only album this year which I can honestly say I hated. I’d give it a 4/10.

After the disappointment that was Eye on It, I was a little more cautious about the remaining releases of 2012 (of which there were still plenty). One of these I eyed most suspiciously was Showbread’s Cancer. I like Showbread, but they have always been an odd band and I am always apprehensive of their newest release. However, I really liked Who Can Know It?, and so decided to back their Kickstarter campaign. Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed by the end result: Cancer was very good, sort of like a cross-section of Showbread’s past. The message is similar to Who Can Know It?, with the instrumentation of The Fear of God and Age of Reptiles (a little bit of …No Sir, Nihilism is Not Practical too) with frequent tonal shifts, leading to a very diverse album. It tooks a couple listen-throughs to come to a final decision, but from the start I knew I enjoyed Cancer. It’s a very strong album, probably their most solid since Age of Reptiles. 7.5/10.

Rounding out 2012 was another duo of albums released on the same day, Anberlin’s Vital and Dethklok’s Dethalbum III (was there ever a more paradoxical pairing?). Anberlin have been gaining mainstream momentum the past few years and are quite prolific, putting out a ton of quality work despite quick turn-around times. The latest result of this is Vital, which certainly lives up to its name. Cities was a fantastic album (and “(*Fin)” is amongst my all-time favourite songs), and Vital stops just short of surpassing it. The songs are all strong, with particular highlights being “Self-Starter”, “Other Side” and “God, Drugs & Sex” (which is hypnotic and really kicks into overdrive when the duet begins). Vital is another feather in Anberlin’s cap without a doubt. 8/10.

Finally, Dethalbum III by Dethklok finished off 2012 in “brutal” fashion. I am a fan of Metalocalypse, and while The Dethalbum featured some fun songs, it was largely a light-hearted affair and clearly not meant to be taken to seriously. However, Dethalbum II reversed this trend, delivering an epic metal album which could easily be taken on its own merits. Dethalbum III follows in this pattern, although it’s not quite as strong as the previous album was. However, there are some very good songs on display which are instantly recognizable from the show, particularly “I Ejaculate Fire”, “Crush the Industry” and “Impeach God”. 7/10.

All-in-all, 2012 was a great year for me in music as you can see. It was almost better though, but unfortunately Love & Death’s first full-length album was delayed to January 2013! Damn… well, hopefully that’s just the start of another epic year – Love & Death and RED are both confirmed to be putting out new material, and with any luck we’ll see a new album from Disturbed (please get off hiatus!), Guns N’ Roses (lol), Art of Dying, Gorillaz and Mastodon!