Saturday, November 03, 2007

New music!

(Yeah, I forgot to post yesterday. This was largely because of a truly mind-numbing project that hit my desk a little before lunchtime yesterday. At least it's 90% done now.)

So, I haven't talked much about new music lately. To remedy that, I've got a new-ish band and two new albums to talk about!

The new-ish band is Velcra. I say new-ish because they've been around since 1999, but I only heard about them very recently. Jerome found them totally on a fluke, and we both love their stuff. Wiki calls them industrial metal or rap metal. I guess I can kind of see that, though they remind me a bit more of Conjure One, which is sort of techno/electronic music. Yeah, I don't like trying to put stuff into a genre... :) At any rate, good stuff, female fronted, and from Finland. Yay! :)

Then today, I was in Ballard running errands, and my bus stop to come home is right outside Sonic Boom. This is a dangerous thing for me, because my bus is NEVER there when I get there, so I start looking at Sonic Boom, and then I get sucked in, and buy stuff. Very clever. :)


Anyway, I knew that Avenged Sevenfold's new album was supposed to come out on Tuesday, and dammit, I just can't resist those boys. :) So in I went, looking for the CD. I didn't find it at first, but instead found the new She Wants Revenge. We saw them open for Placebo last year, and they were exceptionally good live. They're also exceptionally good on CD. So I grabbed the newest one, This is Forever, because it was only $10.

Now, I joke around a lot that She Wants Revenge ALWAYS sounds like She Wants Revenge, even when they do Nightmare Before Christmas songs. And they do. But you know what? I'm okay with that. Because their music makes me dance around, and Justin Warfield's voice is utterly amazing. (BTW, if you like She Wants Revenge and want to laugh a bunch, check out "Spite & Malice" by Placebo. Justin Warfield RAPS on that song.) So yes. This is Forever = good.

And I did find the Avenged Sevenfold CD. I just got done listening to it (after listing to SWR). The album cover is totally boring. Black logo on white background. Bleh. It's also self-titled, no clever name. Bleh.

But the album is amazing. It basically still sounds like Avenged Sevenfold has sounded since their last album (when M. Shadows stopped screaming all the time). Then I got to "Lost," which is the 8th track. I started laughing a little, because I know Jerome isn't going to like that song very much. It gets sorta New-New-Wave towards the end, and he's gonna call it emo. I suspect, however, that he will immediately take it back when he gets to the last two tracks: "A Little Piece of Heaven" and "Dear God." WOW!

"A Little Piece of Heaven" has horns and other such amazingness. It's almost cabaret sounding! From A7X. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either! "Dear God" is also nothing like what I'm used to hearing from them. Of course, now I have to go listen to the whole album again, because I was trying to work on other stuff during the first half, and now I'm afraid I missed some other gems!

I'll probably write up full reviews of both of these soonishly. I just have to write my other paid articles first!

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