Album Reviews: Summer

The last time I had such an un-metal summer, I think, must have been at least two years ago. To be fair, I did reach back a lot for releases from 2016, an apparent heat-induced laziness preventing me from searching out new, potentially more interesting music. Summer is always a floatier affair, not really lending itself to the heavy sluggishness of my usual musical diet. Instead, there's some light-hearted prog and in memory of the fun days, a surprising amount of relative-to-doom upbeat punk.

A Music Tag

It's Monday again, a day which would normally be like any other day in the summer, but adult life isn't as kind. I have my internship, which is rather fun, only I have to bike an obscene amount in very hot weather for absolutely no money. But at least I feel like I'm doing something relatively useful.

Anyway, after concluding the same song titles series I wanted to do a Music Monday which would possibly include me gathering some of my favourite songs to dump on the (admittedly very small) unsuspecting readership. I found this tag on (Hungarian blogger) Bree's blog, which I promptly stole. The real challenge was not to include too many songs from my absolute favourites, so I tried to stick to one song per band.
(Long post ahead with youtube links!)

Album Reviews: June

June was kind of weak concerning metal releases, slightly better in other genres - which I just don't really listen to these days. I also had considerably less time to spend on listening to new music due to exams and more exams. I did look through June releases afterwards too, and still nothing really stood out to me even genre-wise; I guess after being spoiled in May it was a slight disappointment. In any case, summer month are always less busy.

Album Reviews: May

 

The May assortment of albums. Seven metal albums and a punk rock... but plenty of catchy and pop-like music. It was a rather good month, even if the end-of-the-semester period is crazy for me, and I haven't got the time to properly listen to new music.

Spring Playlist II

We've entered the astronomical spring with a solar eclipse, isn't that nice? Here wasn't much of a spectacle, especially since we didn't bother to get anything to view as little as we could have. I kind of forgot about it, even, but it was still noticeable - how the tone of the light changed just ever so slightly, how it was just a little too dark without any clouds to speak of. It was eerie in a very bright way, which made it all the more disconcerting.

I say this calls for a metal sort of spring. (I mean, how appropriate is the Shadows of the Dying Sun cover?) Anyway, to commemorate, here's a playlist (I've done quite some time ago, since this is a thing I do every changing of the seasons), vaguely spring-like for those who appreciate everything from pop-rock to metal. Well, mostly metal still.

A Year In Music

Aka my top40 of 2014 songs. So that I maintain a certain variety (and because of 8tracks' limitations) only two songs are included by any artist, which in some cases is kinda cheating - since I've listened to Shadows of the Dying Sun excessively, and WT and Rise Against certainly would have more than two songs if going by my iTunes play count.

You neend't continue, here's the playlist on 8tracks, but if you have loads of free time or are terribly interested in what I have to say (/fangirl) about these, then by all means, do read on. There are also separate youtube links there, for those who'd only listen to a few.

Best albums of 2014

A little sneak peak, bonus points for recognizing all of them.

Now that the end of the year draws near, I finally put together the top10 list of my favourite albums of 2014. Sadly, no-one will really care about it, because I'm not a tough critic guy writing for MetalSucks or Metal Hammer or any other online magazine. Recently I've thought about it, how I should have gotten into journalism and then I could spend my whole day writing about fashion and metal music and identity and the world - who needs money to pay for stuff anyway? But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't really enjoy it as a career.

So suffer my horribly long and unprofessional opinion.

Rise Against: The Black Market

Here it is finally, yet again one horribly subjective album review. Of one of the bands of my holy trinity (the others being Nightwish and In Flames), I'm not sure they could do an album I wouldn't like. This time I had my expectations low, because I knew beforehand this was going to be an album with 'personal themes'.

(Warning: This Is A Very Long Review! Proceed With Caution)

The Spring Playlist

I have lots of these Music Monday Playlists in store, but I decided seasonal is going to be a new thing! Each one is going to be posted after the astronomical start of the season - and of course, on Monday, hence the date for this one. It was hard to select songs for spring though, I guess you can imagine - fishing for a few happy songs among the sad metal, it's not an easy task. So it's a bit of a depressing spring. I managed to find a few love songs though, which I guess are season-appropriate.

(The songs are in no particular order.)

Against Me! : Transgender Dysphoria Blues

I finally have time to write a bit about some new albums (Hydra's review is coming soon too!). I admit that as much of a Rise Against-fan I am, I'm not that well-versed in punk rock as some other genres. I always, always say I'm not a musical critic in the slightest, so any of this should be taken as a highly subjective, personal opinion.