I truly hope none of the bands here, who's albums I didn't write about when they came out, felt this terrible poverty. If so, I hope this enriches their lives slightly, although my guess is they didn't really feel this lack of coverage at all; after all, as Rainn Wilson says in The Rocker "How can you miss what you never knew?"
I decided to simply google the word "unloved" and came across the above image.
I truly hope none of the bands here, who's albums I didn't write about when they came out, felt this terrible poverty. If so, I hope this enriches their lives slightly, although my guess is they didn't really feel this lack of coverage at all; after all, as Rainn Wilson says in The Rocker "How can you miss what you never knew?"
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As someone who will literally listen to hundreds of new albums per year and is constantly on the hunt for new bands to listen to, people sometimes look at me a bit funny when I say I'm picky with music; their thought process being "This guy has like 50 gigs of music on his phone at all time, that doesn't seem picky to me!"
However, I've been that way for most of my life. I can get into a lot of music but there are also a lot of little things that can push me away. Probably the biggest thing I'm picky with is vocals and this is where the album at hand comes in.
Reading through the press material for shouldhavebeens the new album from Sweden's Tengil may induce some comments about pretentiousness or "taking yourself too seriously" but some of my all time favorite art, regardless of medium, was created by people who most would consider pretentious.
Especially when you consider what kind of album shouldhavebeens is, it's hard to imagine this being made by a few people just sort of fooling around, making some songs. This kind of art takes passion, dedication and a ton of raw emotion being poured into every facet of it.
Years ago I had a conversation with my brother's father-in-law (is there a term for that?) where the topic was whether rock music was dead.
At the time, I was of the opinion that "rock" had died in a way and told him that to me playing rock music had become derivative and you'd need some sort of fusion or genre melding in order to keep it interesting but at that point it's no longer just rock. My point for this was mainly the fact that what people would have referred to as rock music at the time was effectively pop music with electric guitars or people endlessly slobbering on Led Zeppelin's proverbial dick, hoping to get covered in Classic Rock magazine, a magazine somehow still being published on a regular basis. Similar to my thought process about punk being more of a state of mind than a genre, as well as my wider acknowledgement of the differences between scenes and genres (might do an editorial on this to be entirely self-indulgent and pretentious when I can be bothered) my views on this matter have evolved since then. What this means, for the purposes of this review, is that I genuinely believe there are great bands out there today playing music I'd comfortably call rock (maybe even adding a roll on the back of it). I know this is of no consequence to most of you and simply my stream-of-consciousness type rambling taking over but it has a big impact on my perception of the album at hand, The Hyena Kill's Spun.
Apologies for the Bon Jovi inspired title but I had to think of something to start this off. "This" being my third-of-the-way-through-the-year top 5 albums, an odd excuse to write a list of the stuff I've wanted to cover but been too lazy to write about.
Around this time last year I don't think I would've been able to put together a list like this, this early in the year so that either: A. Says a lot about the quality of this year's music B. Says a lot about how late I was getting on top of 2017's musical offerings. Regardless, and without further ado, let's get this show on the road:
Time for part deux of the top 10, presented as previously in full HD and alphabetical order.
After these five, and the honorable mentions to follow, it's finally time to launch into 2018 a couple of months late and give you some reviews of exciting new/upcoming music so let's get cracking on this shall we?
Now that I've crossed off the albums I didn't listen to it's time for the main event:
The albums I listened to and really loved! I made this list, I checked it twice and still didn't manage to get it out within a timeframe that it's still kinda relevant... So this will be in no particular order but rather a collection of 10 albums I absolutely loved and listened to a whole lot during last year, presented as last time in alphabetical order. Aaand I'm back.
I'm here to finish what I started, the list of albums I didn't listen to, from bands I love. I realize it's kinda like being that sleazy guy who says "if I was single, I'd totally fuck you" in a way, but if I'd have listened to these albums, I would have totally loved them...probably. So the first side-piece on offer is: One of the first progressive metal bands I got into was Cynic. I still remember being absolutely gobsmacked when I first heard "How Could I?"; the riffs, the bass, the drums, the solos!
At that point it had already been about 10 years since the band released Focus, so the band was long gone and there were no talks of a reunion to my knowledge. Suddenly, and seemingly out of the blue, they make a comeback and release Traced In Air. As a longtime fan, surely I jumped at this chance in a heartbeat, right? I'M BACK BITCHES! I promise my time away from the site wasn't all spent on catching up on several seasons of Rupaul's Drag Race (although a fair amount of time was spent on this) but rather on a combination of three things: 1. Writing for The Monolith This is the most obvious one as I already mentioned this in a previous post and on Facebook so I hope most of you followed me there (and back again for that matter). The reason for the return to Daedric Influence is in no way a poor reflection on my fellow Monolithians but rather a reflection on the fact that working with an editor turned out to be something I didn't want in my blogging experience. I wanted total control and instant gratification, even at the risk of posting stupid shit (which never stopped me in the past anyway). 2. Work stuff This has slowed my transition between The Monolith and DI slightly as my career has unexpectedly taken off and over the last two years I've worked in three different countries, none of which are Iceland which, as many will remember, was my home when this all started. 3. Life stuff This has slowed everything down a lot as there's been a lot of personal stuff, changes and anxiety getting in the way but hopefully getting back into this will help me get back on track. Now, throughout 2017 I got sent a lot of great promos, found a lot of great music on Bandcamp and wrote about very, very few of them.
What this means is that I'm going to do a "Better Late Than Never" review extravaganza throughout the first part of next year. This will include reviews for my top albums, honorable mentions as well as features on albums I need more time with (neglected albums if you will), some interesting finds and (potentially) an article about the albums that disappointed me. #flameshield If you're a band who released an album recently and you'd like to be covered, there will almost definitely be a delay but if I like your stuff I'll definitely spread it round like wildfire (I thought about making an STD analogy but I thought it would give a poor representation of myself). Hope you'll join me on this journey and see where 2018 can take Daedric Influence. Jon Thor |