Illegal

So today I was doing some browsing and I happened upon an MP3 blog and I saw that it offered the new album from Amorphis. I've never really been a fan of this band but I keep reading great things about their albums, and I haven't heard anything current since "My Kantele." So I decided, "Meh, I'll give Amorphis another shot and give this a listen." When I went to download it, I got a message that it had been removed due to a reported violation. I've been seeing this more and more lately as I 'm aware labels are cracking down on blogs of this nature, and some sites follow through with removal requests. Without getting into a whole debate about the whole mp3 argument, I just felt a tad miffed. I wanted to hear Amorphis, and their label Nuclear Blast, was making it so that I couldn't listen to Amorphis. Isn't that a little backwards?

Bad Music

I was listening to Death Grips' "Exmilitary" album the other day. This is an album I'm still struggling to decide if I even like, but I keep coming back to it from time to time. If you haven't heard it, let me just say that its really weird and you're probably not gonna like it. Anyway it did manage to get me thinking about how I'm having a hard time describing reasons that I don't like it, and I think its mainly because of how original it is. Thats not to say that I've decided yet that I dislike it, but I can more easily say positive things about it than negative things. If you played me some top 40 country I'd most likely hate it and it would be easy to say how bad it is because I've heard what they're doing a thousand times before. I easily have a frame of reference and I know straight away that I hate it. So its much easier for me personally to say that something sucks because it sucks exactly like something else that sucks. I would guess most people would be the opposite and say "oh I like this, it reminds me of Lady Antebellum." Or at least they would say that its not bad because it sounds like something that they think is good or have heard before. They say people are always afraid of things they don't understand. I think over the years of being a huge music nerd I've grown accustomed to seeking out the absurd, the original, artists that defy boundaries. Artists that do that are the only real catalyst to progression within the art. So I defy you next time you say something is bad. I dare you to ask yourself why you think it is bad. If you had no frame of reference for what bad was, would it still be bad?

So here is Death Grips. I'm impressed by it and I applaud it for it's ingenuity, but I'm still on the fence about the album as a whole.

Playlist

Havent posted a playlist in a long time. Been really busy with a new job and new house and such. Been discovering lots of new great music.

Midlake - the Courage of Others [ Lush and extremely well written folk. Has a real 70's vibe to it, but far from boring and really really catchy ]

Lugubrum - De Ware Hond / Albino de Congo [ One of my favorite black metal bands, still as original, contorted and relevant as ever ]

Isengard - Høstmorke [ This is a huge classic, always worth singing along to]

Melechesh - Epigenesis [ Headbanging fun for all ]

Merkaba - Bones of the Sacred Forest [ Undeniably powerful and evocative modern black metal, i'll be listening to this for a long time ]

Horn - Naturkraft [ Traditional raw german black metal. Well written from start to finish ]

Yearning - Plaintive Scenes [ I've always liked this band, nothing too ground breaking but an album definitely worth owning ]

M83 - Hurry Up, Were Dreaming [ This give me a raging 80's hard-on. Wonderful album ]

Septic Flesh - Esoptron / Temple of the Lost Race [ I've always been kinda tepid with this band, but i found these releases to be a little more "gorey" than the other more greek romantic sounding stuff ]

Cry of Silence - Wandering Through pagan Times [ THIS is the new Xasthur. Xasthur who? ]