Saturday, June 9, 2012

Music I'm Listening To Right Now

This entry is going to be a bit of a bonus, one I want to crank out really quickly.  Not because I'm lazy (which I am) but because I want to get some exposure for what I'm listening to out there and I suck at writing music reviews (See my April Music Haul entry).  I've been spending some of my free time and spare change at the local used record/music/game store and grabbed a few CDs because I'm still one of those losers that buys physical media.  So here's what I've been cranking in my car for the past couple of weeks:



Calabrese - 13 Halloweens

Calabrese are a three-piece, all of whom are brothers, horror-punk outfit VERY influenced by The Misfits.  I don't mean that as a negative or calling them a ripoff or anything like that.  In fact if you do listen to the Misfits and not Calabrese, you are missing out.  Calabrese definitely capture the magic that the original Danzig-era Misfits had that the current incarnations just can't recreate no matter how hard they try.  Even if Danzig and Jerry Only were to set aside differences and reunite, too much time has passed that I don't think it would be the same.  Calabrese have punk-rock and slight psychobilly tendencies but don't fall into the traps many of those other bands do.  Sure, they may have Danzig "Evil Elvis" vocals and pompadours but don't employ a gothic pin-up girl or a stand-up bassist who may or may not be the same person.  Every single song on this album will burrow into your brain and 13 Halloweens usually ends up being the album out of my current pile that I frequently go back to.





Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (2010)

For the record, Crystal Castles have two albums, both of which are self-title which I can't tell is trolling or brilliance.  This one is the second and wholly better of the two.  Any long time readers may remember me talking about Crystal Castles as I've had this album downloaded (illegally) for a few years already.  So I finally bought a copy, and a new one to boot.  I try to support my favorite bands when I can and I don't even consider Crystal Castles a favorite, but they do deserve some recognition for what they're doing.



AFI - decemberunderground

Also another album I've had downloaded for a few years but finally got my own copy of.  Though I like AFI, their more recent albums are more of a guilty pleasure of mine than a genuine like.  Needless to say, I felt a bit weird buying this at the same time as the next album on my list.



Watain - Lawless Darkness

Yeah, buying straight up Satanic black metal along with some Hot Topic punk probably simultaneously built up and destroyed any metal cred I had.  I've been wanting to give Watain a good listen for a while now and luckily someone had ended up trading in 3 of their albums. Lawless Darkness is their most recent and acclaimed album, hitting #2 on Decibel's Top 40 Albums list for 2010.  Watain plays "TROO KVLT" black metal, ensuring that they'll have good company among the likes of Immortal and Mayhem, if nothing else in the "sounds like" category if not "belongs with".




Cattle Decapitation - Monolith of Inhumanity

I mentioned this one in my last blog post and I just picked it up a few days ago.  I haven't listened to it a lot but I definitely like it.  However, while the band itself is probably the best they've ever been technically (the drums are about as close as a human can get to Agoraphobic Nosebleed-level blast beats and Travis Ryan is still finding more layers to his vocals), the songs aren't as catchy and memorable as they were in early albums like To Serve Man and Humanure.  But it's definitely worth a listen if you're a CatDecap or death/grind fan in general.



That's it.  That's a glimpse into what I've been listening to for the past few weeks or so.  I'm trying not to spend much money...but I just got back from a movie sale at the Family Video right by my apartment and bought Drive, Super and Horrible Bosses on Blu-Ray and Tetsuo The Bullet Man on DVD for like $23 total...and Blu-Ray Steelbooks for Batman Begins and The Matrix for $20.  So yeah, I'm bad at this whole "not spending money" thing.

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