So another Tuesday, which means a new batch of goodies to listen to throughout the week! I have recently covered quite a bit of the NIN 2013 buzz so it was with great anticipation that Trent's side project How To Destroy Angels released their debut LP "Welcome Oblivion" today. Soilwork is a given for me considering I covered the details of the album right from the get go. The double disc is a testament to the hard work the Soilwork has done over the years and (personally) would rank it against highly rated album such as "Stabbing The Drama" or "Natural Born Chaos".
I think the two albums that caught my attention without any prior knowledge of them would have to be Chelsea Light Moving and Bethel Music (minus the huge religious undertone). Both albums had character right from the get go. When I read further into CLM and found out that it was being fronted by Sonic Youth founder Thurston Moore, now I had even more of a reason (parentals were huge Sonic Youth fans, so ipso facto). Now going back to Bethel Music, the music is encased deep into religious belief and is based out of the Bethel Church in Redding, California. But that shouldn't be a reason to avoid the album if you are agnostic, atheist, other religious practices, etc. The album has no lyrical content and should be appreciated for the music itself, not for who it is intended. If you are only focusing on one aspect of the album, then you have missed the point completely.
Anywho, the synopsis is done and now it's your turn to buy one, two or all of these album a your local record store or online retailer. Cheers!
Nothing stays stationary on Welcome Oblivion -- even the quietest moments have things percolating in the background, and when a torrent of sound is unleashed, it isn't a mere deluge; there is definition, the empty spaces accentuating either the noisy squiggles or the shimmering, insinuating melodies. And make no mistake, Welcome Oblivion does have its share of melody, as this isn't merely a collection of sounds: there are songs here, some as tight as the defiantly new wave "How Long?," and others as elliptical as the skeletal "Ice Age" -- each are distinguished by their exquisite details and slow, ingratiating melodies. Welcome Oblivion is not an album that comes on forcefully, and by many measures, it's the most measured record of Reznor's career, yet it's also his most melodic, showing that this former angry young man has a design to grow old gracefully. -All Music
Nanobots finds the band in fine form. Blending the band’s signature storytelling, some dueling horns and sly humor, Call You Mom is a caffeinated pop gem. Title track Nanobots puts a dark cartoonish spin on the world of technology while the call and response chorus and percussive guitar line of You’re On Fire dares even the grumpiest wallflower not to dance. -Nothing But Hope and Passion
And if the music is decidedly grizzled, Moore is equally snot-nosed and disgruntled on the lyrical front. “Lip” angrily chugs along beneath the singer’s fuck-the-world refrain, while the free-associative poetry of “Mohawk” further heightens the record’s emotional intensity. Tension has always had a sizable role to play in Moore’s work, but Chelsea Light Moving takes that nervous energy to a much more personal place, and the record lifts his high-strung sonic freak-outs to new heights of neurosis.
To be fair, Chelsea Light Moving isn’t Sonic Youth. Instead, the band (and, by extension, the album) plays like the menacing Jekyll to Sonic Youth’s Hyde, stewing angrily like the latter band’s bipolar brother on Adderall. Moore could have easily shifted gears and made a clean break from his storied noise rock past, but rather he digs in deeper, and at almost 55 years of age, he’s rarely sounded as in touch with his youthful pluck. -Consequence of Sound
People, Hell & Angels is primarily collated from material recorded throughout 1969. While there's very little thematically that pulls this collection together, there are some interesting trends as to how Jimi was writing these songs. The first is the inclusion of different musicians such as Stephen Stills' appearance on 'Somewhere' or Lonnie Youngblood's saxophone on 'Let Me Move You'. The second thing that's striking about the material here is that Hendrix was seemingly searching for a new sound. The tracks recorded that summer like 'Hey Gypsy Boy' and the instrumental 'Villanova Junction' seem more melancholy than much of his other work for example. -Contact Music
"Without Words" began as an instrumental experiment by the Bethel Music community who set out to push the creative boundaries of worship. Each song offers a distinct listening experience and carries its own story. Songs from previous Bethel Music albums have been deconstructed and re-arranged into versions that hint at original melodies through unique instrumentation and modern sounds. Each track creates a dynamic, ambient, and cinematic atmosphere free from lyric and discourse. This album ventures into new territory and explores what it is to worship without words. -Amazon
(*For this particular album, I tried to veer away from the religious aspect of it as that has little effect of my opinion of the music. The music itself is great and makes for a good afternoon background album.)
At the end of the day, a double album may have been a very ambitious goal. I feel like Soilwork might’ve been better off had they done what Opeth did with Deliverance and Damnation and split The Living Infinite into two distinct albums, one with the faster, heavier songs and one with the more melodic, gentler (relatively, of course) offerings.
The Final Word: While The Living Infinite features some truly fantastic songs, the album as a whole is not as engaging nor as exciting as The Panic Broadcast. Still, Soilwork have released an album that will stand very proudly in their history. -Bloody Disgusting
Likewise, the perfectly constructed emotional arcs of most of the songs seem so manufactured that even the rough edges feel intentional and put on. The songs on Love focus on chaotic human sounds and feelings, but polish them to an un-human degree, ending up with the type of perfected imperfection that ultimately just sounds like a commercial or the heart-string-tugging closing credits to any anonymous indie film. While pleasant enough, and not lacking in detail and fervor, the passion presented on Love is so by-the-numbers that it becomes ignorable. -All Music
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