Remember when I mentioned a second part to album releases today?
Well folks, like I mentioned this morning on AFGM Facebook, there seems to be quite the amount of new music coming to your ears today via music stores and online retailers. There was even enough material here for me to split it into TWO articles. We're going to leave most of the hard n' heavy stuff for part one and 'all the rest' for the second (haha). Seems fair right? Anyways...
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…And You Will Know Us By The The Trail Of Dead - Lost Songs
"But Trail Of Dead hasn’t abandoned its prog ambitions—it’s refined them. The best songs here (the tongue-tied melodic assault of 'Pinhole Cameras,' the dizzying 'Up To Infinity') traverse sonic peaks and valleys, often building to a roaring climax and quieting to an atmospheric hush, just before firing back up again. Keely’s written some of his most emotionally direct songs to date, pulling lyrical inspiration from American cynicism and the social freedom he’s experienced living in Cambodia. But Lost Songs’ MVP is Reece, who—frenzied drumming aside—re-emerges as a dynamic frontman foil: On 'A Place To Rest,' he screams himself hoarse over proggy guitar squeals. Meanwhile, on the relentless 'Catatonic,' he alternates between a victorious yelp and a soothing melodic calm, rallying against pampered modern complacency. Even at its most polarizing, Trail Of Dead has never lacked thrilling ideas. But with Lost Songs, it’s rekindled the raw, unflinching spirit that, a decade ago, placed the group among rock’s elite." -AV Club
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Incubus - The Essential Incubus
"Arriving hot on the heels of the celebratory live anniversary set Incubus HQ Live is the retrospective The Essential Incubus, a 28-track collection rounding up highlights from the group's six albums and three EPs. Unlike the 2009 collection Monuments & Melodies, which attempted to please fans by digging into uncollected rarities, Essential focuses on Incubus' main body of work, presenting it in thorough detail, then annotating the journey with liner notes from Gary Graff. All of the group's charting Billboard singles -- including 'Pardon Me,' 'Drive,' 'Talk Shows on Mute,' 'Megalomaniac,' 'Anna Molly,' 'Dig,' 'Love Hurts,' and 'Adolescents' -- are here, along with judiciously selected album and non-LP tracks, making this Essential a true representation of Incubus at their best." -All Music
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Gary Clark Jr. - Blak and Blu
AFGM - Gary Clark Jr: Doesn't Owe You A Thing
"If you’re all things fuzzy, loud, blues and rock ‘n’ roll, Blak and Blu is your go-to album. Gary Clark Jr. proves that he is versatile. He is also able to bring modern influences to the rock ‘n’ roll sound. Presenting the style in a way that is respectful to the rock ‘n’ roll genre, but also in a way that captures the ears of the new generation. Black and Blu is reminiscent of the true blues and rock ‘n’ roll days and is definitely worth a listen to." -Music Feeds
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Swedish House Mafia - Until Now
"Having recently announced their split, Swedish House Mafia are releasing this compilation to accompany their farewell tour. Around a third of Until Now is their own music, as embodied by Greyhound – best summed up as John Barry meets the Chemical Brothers – and the jaunty Primark house of this week's No 1 single, Don't You Worry, Child. The rest is remixes and retweaked old hits, such as Miami 2 Ibiza, which has sprouted a soft-rock verse lifted from Dirty South's Walking Alone. All are subjected to the same heavy hand on the tiller: beats are stonkingly four-to-the-floor, singers wail, breakdowns shudder. The apotheosis is The Island, a blaring remix for Pendulum, which presumes anyone listening will be so trolleyed they won't notice its manifest lack of soul or brains. That said, it all has a headbanging urgency that induces anyone listening to tap a foot, so Until Now can probably be classed as a triumph for the band." -The Guardian
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The Doors - Live At The Bowl 68
"This concert, which is believed to be the band's finest show caught on film, has been restored by using original camera negatives. The audio has been remixed and mastered from original multi-tracks by the group’s engineer, Bruce Botnick.
The Doors Live At The Bowl '68 also will include three previously unreleased tracks from the performance; they weren't released in the past because of technical issues with the recording. Those tracks are 'Hello, I Love You,' 'The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)' and 'Spanish Caravan.'" -Guitar World
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RZA - The Man With The Iron Fists
"There's tension within the songs, there is emotion and nuance in sound, a bit like a full-scale assault on one's imagination. Call it a friendly takeover. Songs like 'Rivers of Blood,' 'Built for This' and 'Tick, Tock' walk a fine line between atmospheric Western tunes and steam punk hip-hop. RZA and Flatbush Zombies' 'Just Blowin' in the Wind' is disturbing in the way its deconstructed sound hisses threateningly, but the eerie-sound song is still a winner. 'White Dress' finds West rapping with auto-tune about a damsel closely resembling his own girlfriend, and it's the album's only misstep.
RZA's works have always had a distinctive cinematic quality, but this record digs for iron and comes up with gold. It's kinetic, mesmeric and chimeric." -SF Gate
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Shiny Toy Guns- III
"The album flows well and you do feel as if you have been on the same 3 year journey as the band though the album. It has its ups and downs but ultimately STG are back, and that comes across in the album like the pieces of a jigsaw are being put back together after a long time apart. Just like We Are Pilots none of the tracks are bad, some stand out more than others and are definite ‘single realise’ tracks compared to other more album based tracks. As a whole it feels like the album doesn’t have enough base to it- where We are Pilots on full make your chest rumble and the floor shake, this doesn’t quite go that far. This is the second album fans wanted with Carah back in lead vocals and now part of the creative circle of the band." -No Flash Photography
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Hunter Valentine - Collide and Conquer
"As I listened to the album enjoying it’s radio-ready hooks and rock aggression, coupled with it’s pop sensibilities and sensitivities, I hypothesized that if you reduced or removed the distortion from the vocals and the overall mastering (which I’m still on the fence about), and added an 80′s cover song, you’d have something very similar to the album 'Falling Uphill' made famous by fellow Canadians Lillix in 2004 (they were the girl band that covered 'What I Like About You'). Quantity is not always quality though, and what Lillix may have had in production value, Hunter Valentine make up for on Collide and Conquer in lyrical depth and a very ‘teeth-to-the-grind’ type performance and attitude." -Infectious Magazine
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Nero - Welcome Reality
"Despite all the prog allusions and big concepts, it turns out what Nero are really good at is something all the prog allusions and big concepts suggest they might disdain: pop music. Welcome Reality's highlights invariably involve Stephens's girlfriend, vocalist Alana Watson. It's not just that Nero can write melodies, although they can: big, hook-laden tunes you find on My Eyes or Must Be the Feeling. It's that they come up with intriguing ways to present them. Guilt takes a euphoric hands-in-the-air breakdown and stretches it into a song: the effect is both familiar and slightly dislocated. Scorpions sets Watson's densely effected vocals against a huge, echoing guitar solo. Her voice on Crush is pitched so high it recalls the sped-up R&B samples that permeated hardcore in the early 90s; what's going on behind it, meanwhile, sounds like a mid-80s freestyle track unraveling amid a series of atonal electronic honks and squeals. Then, unexpectedly and rather thrillingly, everything shifts: what appeared to be a whole track turns out to be merely an abstract intro to a Day-Glo, wildly commercial song. You listen to it and think: these two could be genuinely amazing, innovative pop producers, something the world perhaps needs more urgently than a quasi-classical dubstep track called Fugue State. Whether that's what Nero want to be, however, is a moot point." -The Guardian
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Did you get all that info? Can your bank account afford a selection like this? (haha) Cheers to you all and make sure to crank your favourite album today!
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