Rate The Song Above You

7/10 It's quite a neat dark techno song with a fitting drop that wouldn't be out of place from a battle theme in a sci-fi theme.

Kota Hoshino - Good Feather

6/10 okayish japanese post hardcore tune with ear grating 2008 compression

Carlito & Addiction - Just Wanna Be

7/10. bouncy stuff that uses it’s samples to great effect. Is on the long side, and certainly best as an amping club track, but nevertheless a good thumping beat that builds on itself into classic early 2000s EDM.

The Chalkeaters - Crushing Thirties

Edited by CanuckMcDuck1 on Nov 16th 2023 at 8:31:29 AM

7.5/10

A song about Sonic the Hedgehog going through a mid-life crisis should not sound this awesome, what the fuck.

Franz Ferdinand - Do Yo Want To

Edited by Angry_Clown on Nov 19th 2023 at 8:55:43 AM

7/10. It's very upbeat and interesting, and the tune is quite groovy and catchy. However, it doesn't really have that intense energy or distorted sound that could make it sound even better. It does make for a good listening to though.

Paradox - Kill That Beast

8/10, a nice metal banger

Rammstein - Hallomann

This went up a point or two in my book once I looked up the translated lyrics. For a band who've always had a bit of a reputation as edgelords, this is a shockingly effective treatment of some of the most sensitive subject matter there is - harrowing and evocative without feeling pointlessly gross, with a great grasp of when leaving things unsaid is more impactful than spelling it out. It's a shame the musical backing is a very paint-by-numbers version of Rammstein's usual "Tanzmetall", because there's aspects of this song I wish they embraced more often. 7/10

Björk - Hidden Place

9/10: One of Björk’s best post-Homogenic songs, and easily a highlight from Vespertine (which is saying a lot). A sobering and soft opening to an introspective album. It’s like you’re sinking into another world with the quiet drums and samples, which bloom into a harrowing chorus. A beautiful representation of newfound intimacy that easily sets the mood when you’re alone.

R.E.M. - Lotus

7.4/10 Solid rock track, but I don't really love what Stipe is doing with his voice here. It sounds kind of strained.

Sigur Rós - "Gobbledigook"

7/10. It works very well as an emotional and dramatic track, especially with the classical guitar. The stomp sounds also add flavor to the piece overall.

Callenish Circle - Sweet Cyanide

20/100 - Gothenburg melodeath: achieving the same dead-end boredom and sterility equivalent to "AI" decades before it was a thing, dollar store pedal point riffs and pseudo-breakdown choruses included.

Nergal - Necro Spell

Edited by StillbornMachine on Nov 23rd 2023 at 7:19:33 AM

2/10. Its mostly just Noises than music, imo.

Smith & Tell--Forgive Me Friend

5/10

The riff at the beginning was pretty cool, but sadly, it's the only thing that sets this song apart from any other pop song I've heard, as otherwise it sounds pretty generic.

John Coltrane - While My Lady Sleeps

8.5/10 Honestly really dig this nighttime atmosphere. The bass and piano combination does most of the heavy lifting to really set the mood, but the brass is also nice.

IDLES - "Dancer"

85/100 - This sounds like someone looked at post-punk, decided it was too haughty and airy, and tossed it out of its comfy uptown flat to survive on its own in the back alleys and low-income housing projects of a bustling city. It sounds positively clumsy compared to most in its subgenre not for ineptitude but a gutsy, rhythmic attitude that turns melody into a backdrop in exchange for a forcefulness lead by atonal singing and pulsing, thumping bass. In a way it feels like reconnected the "post" with the "punk. A lot of it feels very wrong, the sort of thing we might criticize as sloppiness, but that comes off as very much deliberate and lends it so much of its gruff, confrontational attitude. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Serpent of the Abyss - Endless Night

6/10. The guitar riffs and percussion felt very fast paced and energetic, and there was a lot of melodic variation throughout the piece that was enjoyable. The vocals were also quite nice, but they were a bit too muffled and that reduced the intensity of them a bit. The song also begins to overstay its welcome towards the end despite the enjoyable melodies.

VAND3ST - Overall

5/10 I don't want to say you have to reinvent the wheel, but this feels like the most paint-by-numbers one of these tracks I've heard so far. Just some flair or motif to set it apart wouldn't hurt.

The Doors - "Peace Frog"

9.5/10 - A wistful yet seedy bop that is one of the best Doors songs through pure vigour. The bass guitar takes hold to deliver a bluesy style while the rest of the band (and the hook of a fast-playing organ) go all out in their playing. The song switches into several tone changes that it should seem disorienting, but instead it feels fully put together. The sinister lyrics underscore it with Jim Morrison’s classic wispy voice and a macabre vibe of impending doom. The whole song has the sense of being one last funky dance before the end times. With it’s get-down attitude, it’s easily the highlight of Morrison Hotel and the Doors’ crazier songs.

Pet Shop Boys - Heart

The single mix of this track, which is the one I was familiar with thanks to British radio and its love of the Pet Shop Boys, feels like the more "complete" version. This version's not bad, but the single mix's additional elements really bring that classic gay-bar energy that the PSB helped define. The album mix can't help but feel like it's missing something vital by comparison. 6.5/10

The Beach Boys - Surf's Up

93/100 - Like a shrunken-down orchestra stuffed into a pop group's body. Harmonies are the name of the game and they have a lot of them; a lot of weighty, melancholic ones not quite somber but articulate and finely aged, not just in terms of when they were recorded but the very atmosphere they evoke. It avoids settling into easy verse-chorus feedback loops; the shift towards amore abstract, percussion-free a quarter of the way into the song is a risky move yet it becomes a masterful one by the halfway point. It's a new song by that point but one that builds off of and culminates the swelling melodies into their most heavenly, ascendant form. It borders on a spiritual experience as a whole.

I added three points for having an actually good fadeout ending.

Aeon Winds - Primordial Fire

2/10 what is this? The mixing is shitty, the vocals, if they are even meant to be vocals, sound like a raspy grandpa and are barely legible and barely even audible in the mix, if I'm even hearing vocals (Edit: later in the song there is some weird spoken word, and that doesn't change my overall opinion since I didn't like that either). The song is also overly repetitive and it doesn't change in an interesting way at any point. If the instrumental had better mixing it would be kinda decent, though.

Darkie - Ye Hua Dam (also known as Sat Tee Touy and/or Look At The Owl, no idea why)

Edited by TheRealBerdly on Dec 5th 2023 at 12:02:00 PM

5/10. While the inclusion of Asian instruments is quite nice, the melodies seem to be quite repetitive, and the synths and vocals seem to lag behind the rest of the instruments of the song.

Tarik Bouisfi - Control

5/10 it's alright. It's a typical blade runner gated pad type electrohouse song where the main keys gets pretty annoying after a while.

Big Bud - Baby

30/100 - Generally speaking, a style with a big focus on rhythm runs into a problem when the very sound of the percussion, bass, and well, rhythm starts to get a bit annoying. I can't 100% put my thumb on it; something about it feels a little to watery or thin or it's the pitch or it's *something*, maybe a combination of these factors. Add six minutes of it and the problem scales with that.

Regardless I hope Phil had a good birthday.

Void - Iniquitous Owl

8.5/10. It has nice, rapid guitar riffs and the percussion is also quite nice. The vocals also mix well with the instruments and overall it's something enjoyable to listen to.

STXRBXTH - GLORY