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IC2S Playlist Update 20/01/2016

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Bloody hell, did I ever have a “week”. A friend and I got into a heated argument with a MRA on Facebook (he self identifies as an MRA-leaning egalitarian, but if you’re familiar with MRA/feminist circles, you’ll know that “egalitarian” is just a term which has been unfortunately co-opted by MRA-types to make them sound more reasonable). It was more-or-less a waste of time, but I did get some interesting insight into the MRA mindset and the crazy things that they believe (eg, holy shit guys, did you know that there’s a minority conspiracy to become the real social powers?). It has gotten my circle of friends talking about these sorts of social issues, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I write up some sort of post inspired by it soon.

First up this week is “Fear of the Dark”, the title track from the 1992 album by Iron Maiden. I have been going through Iron Maiden’s albums on Spotify and have been fairly impressed by what I have heard so far. The band has such a long history and so many albums, it will probably take me months (if not years) to parse through everything and get a good feel for everything. In celebration of this expanding appreciation for the metal juggernaut, I have chosen one of the band’s better known songs, “Fear of the Dark”, for no better reason than because it rocks.

Secondly this week we have “Why Shouldn’t We Kill Ourselves?” by Showbread from their newest (and final) album Showbread is Showdead. I was actually going to choose a Showbread song for this week, but lo and behold, they suddenly unleashed a new album unexpectedly, making them into a must-include choice this week. If there are any bands in the Christian music industry which can be truly classified as “punk”, I think that Showbread would be one of the few to deserve the label. They are exceptionally strange and always raging against the state of Christianity, the music industry and the status quo, without turning into a bunch of whiners like Five Finger Death Punch. I have only listened through Showbread is Showdead once now, but it is very similar to their debut album ‘No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical’.

IC2S Playlist Update 13/01/2016

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First up this week is “Space Oddity” by David Bowie from his 1969 self-titled album. I picked this song for really obvious reasons, seeing that David Bowie passed away suddenly and tragically this week. I can’t really call myself a huge David Bowie fan by any means, but he was one of those huge presences in popular culture which is always there, but one which you never really consider that they’re going to fade away – even moreso considering he was only 69 bloody years old. The release of The Phantom Pain has also helped to make this death more impactful for me, as Kojima wove David Bowie references all through that game.

“Space Oddity” is probably the most popular Bowie song, with Chris Hadfield’s cover being a particularly fantastic tribute. I have some fond memories of this song, as my brother and I sang it a capella in the back of my parents’ van on the way to Niagara Falls… we probably were really annoying our parents with our crappy singing, but it was a fun and oddly-distinct memory that will forever be associate with this song. Plus, y’know, it’s just a freaking great song. You will be missed David.

Secondly we have “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by The Beatles from Abbey Road. Holy shit, The Beatles are now on Spotify! I believe that I lamented months ago that I wanted to include this song on the playlist, but couldn’t as The Beatles weren’t on Spotify… no longer though! Getting the rights for The Beatles must have been a big coup for Spotify, and gives me some hope that perhaps one day I might get to add some Tool tracks to the playlist.

As for this song, it’s fantastic. It’s shockingly heavy, having far more in common with modern hard rock/metal than a 60s rock song. As a result, it’s probably my favourite Beatles song.

IC2S Playlist Update 06/01/2016

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First up this week we have “Blind” by Korn from their self-titled debut. I have a bit of an odd history with Korn: I saw them live in 2011 when they were double-headlining a concert with Disturbed, but didn’t really care for much of their music. However, I grew to really like the band’s (former, at the time) guitarist, Brian “Head” Welch, his conversion story and fantastic side-projects The Whosoevers, Save Me From Myself (the book and the album) and Love & Death, which make significantly better music than Korn proper. Through Head, I have retroactively been finding more interest in the band, and actually can appreciate a few of their earlier albums now. Their first, self-titled album is arguably their best though, and so I figured it was appropriate to put their first big hit, “Blind”, on the playlist as it exemplifies the best of their sound.

I was pretty torn between a couple other songs though. I had been seriously considering “Ball Tongue”, although deferred from it because I only really like the first 40 seconds of it. I was also really mulling over “Daddy”, but decided against it for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s excessively vulgar. More importantly though, it’s a rather strange song with some really sloppy craftwork. However, it makes up for this by being extremely passionate. By the time that “mother” is singing softly while Jonathan Davis literally bawls like a baby, you can tell that this is a really special moment and that Jonathan is working some major issues out in front of us. For that reason I rather like it, but it just wouldn’t work particularly well on its own in a playlist.

…so, uh, yeah I picked “Blind” this week.

Secondly, we have “Hearts of Iron” by Sabaton from their most recent album, Heroes. The album recounts the accomplishments of exceptional individuals during wars, from archetypal war heroes (Audie Murphy), to brave medics (Leslie “Bull” Allan), to the lesser-known efforts of units who fought back in spite of overwhelming odds (“Night Witches”, “Resist and Bite”). “Hearts of Iron” is an interesting choice in all of this as it recounts the heroism of the German 9th and 12th armies, who fought through the Soviet army to allow German refugees to surrender to the West. I like that Sabaton acknowledges that, even if you’re on the losing side of a conflict and have been in support of a horrifically evil regime, you can still be a hero by doing good and saving innocent people. Not only did this action allow these refugees to get on the nicer side of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, but this also allowed these innocents to avoid the Rape of Berlin, an action which I would put up amongst the most despicable actions of the entire war. Considering that we have mythologized the Second World War as being a “good” conflict and placed ourselves upon the moral pedestal, it’s absolutely despicable that these sorts of atrocities have been swept under the rug of history for not fitting into our narrative. War, even one that is justified, is still a source of great evil and should be avoided at all costs.

IC2S Playlist Update 30/12/2015

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Good news – the Metal Gear retrospective is 100% complete and ready to go in the new year! I’ll be posting the first part on the 1st of January, and then a new post every second day thereafter, so be sure to tune in! It has been a lot of fun to go through the whole series and write up these analyses, so I hope you find them enlightening and enjoyable as well!

First up this week is “Black Magic Woman / Gypsy Queen” by Santana from the album Abraxas. There’s a good chance that you’ve heard this song before, as it is a classic (plus it was in Guitar Hero III). There isn’t really much of a story behind me picking this song, I just really like it, it’s a great example of a guitar-driven song and a good demonstration of the oddly “spiritual” quality to Santana’s music.

Secondly we have “My Allegiance” by ILIA from their EP Reborn. Back when Weathered Steel was still in business, they used to play ILIA all of the time… which was annoying, because they are distinctly not a metal band. It isn’t that their music is bad by any means, but when you have an upbeat Christian rock song sandwiched between 2 angry death metal songs, it makes them feel very out of place. However, “My Allegiance” was their only song that felt like it might have a place on Weathered Steel, in part due to the bridge where lead singer Suzy Martinez just suddenly starts roaring for a couple verses. It’s unexpected considering how low-key most of their music is, but it’s a cool, passionate moment which puts the punctuation mark on an already-enjoyable song, cementing it as something special to me.

However, I recently bought Reborn and discovered that there’s a “radio edit” version of “My Allegiance”. As someone who enjoys heavy music, I knew exactly what this meant – a “screamless” version. Lo and behold, that is exactly what the “radio edit” is, an otherwise identical version of the song, if not for the screams being replaced with watered-down, regular singing. It’s a really disappointing difference to me, which just deflates the song in my opinion. I enjoy when an artist is willing to scream in a song as it often gives them a further degree of passion to express themselves with. Furthermore, I have a sneaking suspicion that ILIA felt like they had to water the song down in order to get “My Allegiance” played on Christian “rock” radio… with heavy quotation marks around the “rock” bit. Christian rock tends to be musically neutered in comparison to real rock, which probably goes some way to explaining why it has such an awful reputation. I wouldn’t be surprised if ILIA agrees – after all, they did make the “official” release the one containing the screams.

IC2S Playlist Update 23/12/2015

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We’re going for a Christmas theme this week on the playlist (for obvious reasons, I would hope). Considering that this is a year-round playlist though, I’m going to be using the idea of a “Christmas song” fairly loosely in order to make my selections not feel very strange when you’re listening in late August.

HONOURABLE MENTION: This being the year we lost Christopher Lee, I think now is the best time to check out his metal Christmas carols. If you’re on Spotify, they have all of them there and they’re pretty enjoyable… in a rather cheesy way. Considering this is Christopher Lee we’re talking about, I think that’s the most appropriate way for it to be.

First up this week we have “Christmas at the Zoo” by the Flaming Lips from their album Clouds Taste Metallic. At first glance, this song seems to be a pretty typical (presumably coked-up) Flaming Lips song. Setting free talking animals at the zoo on Christmas eve? Umm, okay… That was more or less my feelings about the song until I started to think that it might be an allegory. That line of thinking led me to think that perhaps the song is about US foreign policy (seriously). I might be way off-base with this interpretation, but the idea has made me like this song quite a bit. Basically, the singer’s desire to free the animals is meant to represent America’s “democratizing” efforts. Conversely, the zoo animals represent the nations which America’s attentions are drawn towards. While democracy may be a thing that they ultimately desire, they need to acquire it on their own terms or it’s never going to work out. I doubt that this is the actual intent of The Flaming Lips when they wrote this song, but I have found “The New Criticism” method of literary interpretation to be very useful in many circumstances, as it is not about authourial intent, but rather what the text says to the reader – which, when it comes down to it, is arguably the most important consideration, right?

Secondly, we have “Old City Bar” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra from their album Christmas Eve and Other Stories. There’s no other Christmas album that I have listened to more this year, and “Old City Bar” has quickly become a favourite for its great story. To put it simply, this song (and the album as a whole) are about how people do good at Christmas, but this season does not have to end if we continue to do good all year round. “Old City Bar” is a very Christ-like song in my personal opinion. It slowly tells the tale of a bunch of social outcasts spending their Christmas Eve in the titular old city bar. The song then details how the seemingly cold-hearted bartender’s life is changed, as well as the person he helps and the lives of those around him who witness his actions, through one good deed. It’s a very heart-warming song and one which is a great year-round as far as I’m concerned.

IC2S Playlist Update 16/12/2015

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First up this week is the famous title track from “American Pie” by Don McLean (no, not the 90s teen sex comedy). This is another one of those selections that everyone knows and loves, and for good reason – it’s fantastic and a cultural milestone. A lot of people have been stuck listening to the shorter radio edit, but for the IC2S Playlist I chose the full-length version, because it is simply better, full-stop. Definitely one of the better known “long songs” out there, and a good case for why songs should be allowed to go over 4 minutes more often.

Secondly, we have “Healing Subconsciously” by Volbeat from their debut album, The Strength / The Sound / The Songs. It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s now been over 2 years since I became a fan of Volbeat. The Strength / The Sound / The Songs is definitely my least-favourite album of theirs, but “Healing subconsciously” is one of the more hypnotic tunes in their catalogue. Volbeat’s lead singer, Michael Poulsen, has a really weird way of singing in which I can’t even tell what the hell he’s saying 95% of the time, but it still sounds amazing. Seriously, listen to the song and then check out these lyrics: I caught maybe a third of that, tops.

IC2S Playlist Update 09/12/2015

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I just want to put in a post-script to the SJW posts before we get into the playlist for this week. I feel like I might have come across as arguing with a “no true Scotsman” fallacy in regards to what SJWs want/don’t want. This would be especially hypocritical considering that I have written in the past that we should own up for the misdeeds of individuals in our group. I do condemn the bad things done by SJW-types and hopefully I got that across well enough in the two articles. It is also worth reiterating that “SJW” is not a term that the people it’s referring to have any control over. As a result, the “purest” forms of SJW (small minority who maybe actually do try to censor media and get games banned) get conflated with all stripes of social justice types as the term becomes more and more meaningless. Hopefully this makes things a little clearer, since it’s a rather annoyingly complicated situation.

First up this week is “Hurt” by Johnny Cash from the album American IV: The Man Comes Around. Within a day or two of me putting up “The Man Comes Around” on the playlist, I instantly regretted my “6 weeks” rule and wanted to include this song. It is absolutely fantastic, and one of the few songs that I know which is extremely highly regarded by everyone familiar with it. It is also just a really strange fit too – a Nine Inch Nails song covered by a 70 year old country and gospel singer? It works though, and brilliantly at that. Check it out and be sure to listen through all of American IV: it’s a fantastic album.

Secondly, we have “You’ll Be In My Heart” by Phil Collins from the Tarzan soundtrack. I’ll admit, a pop hit is a bit of a weird choice for the IC2S Playlist, but we’re going with it. This came up in my MP3 player the other day when I put it on shuffle and it hit me with a wave of nostalgia. Ever since it came out, I have regarded Tarzan as my favourite Disney animated film. I watched it again a few years ago and it made me want to cry. Between the childhood nostaglia and the fact that it was resonating with me at a formulative time (I was in school and had moved out from home), it is just a really powerful film. I don’t know what it is about apes, but between this, King Kong and Planet of the Apes, many of my favourite movies have them involved in a major capacity. I’ve always loved this song as well, it was one of my favourite songs as a kid before I stumbled across hard rock music. I hope that its inclusion on the playlist awakens some nostalgia and good feelings in you as well.

IC2S Playlist Update 02/12/2015

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Good news: the Metal Gear retrospective is proceeding very smoothly. I have only 4 games left to go in the series to play and review (although one of those 4 is Ground Zeroes, which should take only a fraction of the time that the others will). As a result, I figure that the retrospective series should likely be finished and ready to go by the start of the new year. I’m getting really excited for this, I have put in a ton of work on each of these entries and hope that people enjoy them!

First up this week is “Jesus of Suburbia” by Greenday from their landmark album American Idiot. Back when I was starting high school, American Idiot made Greenday HUGE amongst my peers. As a result, I got bombarded with their music, which turned me against them out of sheer annoyance. However, the one song that I couldn’t help but love was the song which has gone on to be recognized as arguably the best from the album: “Jesus of Suburbia”. It was a bit of a formative song for me, back when my taste in music was just starting to move beyond “what my parents listen to”. It helped set my love for really long songs, especially ones which evolve quite a bit over the course of the song. As someone who grew up in a rather dogmatic household, this was also one of my first “transgressive” songs. After all, in my mind at the time, this was a “taboo” song due to its references to drugs, swearing and that it seemed to be belittling Jesus. Also, y’know, it’s just a really great song.

Secondly this week we have “Whore” by In This Moment from their album Blood. I have been getting into In This Moment recently, which has stemmed from two sources. First of all, Metal Rock Radio plays a fair bit of their music. Secondly, Maria Brink appears on “Criminal Conversations” from P.O.D.’s The Awakening, which can make a strong case for being the best song on the whole record. These two sources have made me really start to like the band. For one thing, a female-fronted hard rock/metal band is really unusual outside of symphonic metal, which already makes them stand out. Supplementing this is the fact that Maria Brink has a really distinctive singing style. In a way, it kind of makes me think of a heavy-metal version of Caro Emerald – she has a very great singing voice which she can use to effect to make herself sound extremely sultry… before immediately breaking out into a scream. “Whore” demonstrates these dimensions quite well and just makes for a very enjoyable song.

IC2S Playlist Update 25/11/2015

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First up this week we have “Kashmir” by Led Zepplin from their album Physical Graffiti. I know that you know this song. Everyone knows this song. It’s just so damn good and the usage of middle-eastern-style sounds was just inspired… and there’s not much more I can say than that. I didn’t intend for this entry to be so lazy, but it’s occurring to me while I’m writing this that there really isn’t much that I can add to the conversation on Led Zepplin or “Kashmir” which hasn’t already been said. As a result, I will say “enjoy!” and move on to the next entry.

Secondly we have “Long Live the Party” by Andrew W.K., from his album The Wolf. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been really getting into this album and have been listening to it almost every day. As much as I like I Get Wet, The Wolf is just a more interesting album in almost every department. The songs do skew towards Andrew W.K.’s reputation as the “god of the party”, but there are also some which show his current status as a “positivity activist” of sorts, such as “Never Let Down”, “The End of Our Lives” or “I Love Music”. Apparently telling stories about positivity is what his whole radio show on The Blaze is about which, considering the rest of The Blaze’s raw sewage output, is rather strange and just baffles me on how Andrew W.K. managed to secure it.

IC2S Playlist Update 18/11/2015

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If you’ve been reading the blog for a long time (hi Matt!), then you might find it sort of conspicuous that I haven’t written anything on the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday. The simple truth is that I have tried on a couple occasions, but everything I’ve come up with just feels hollow in the face of the enormity of that evil. It also doesn’t help that the story has still been unfolding and, while we seem to have a decent grasp on what happened now, it’s hard to say what the repercussions of this attack may be. I might write up something eventually, but at the moment I can’t say for certain.

First up this week we have “Whip It” by Love and Death, from their album Between Here & Lost. This is actually a cover of a song by DEVO, which I hadn’t actually listened to before picking this for the playlist. It’s… wow, it’s such an enormous difference that I’m having a hard time articulating it properly. The DEVO version is a really fast, silly, goofy-sounding 80s pop track, whereas Love and Death’s version is a very heavy, crunchy, serious and slower-tempo track. It makes me wonder how the heck Love and Death got the inspiration to cover this song, because it’s just so far removed from the original version.

Secondly, we have the title-track “Nostradamus” by Judas Priest. Last week I was going on about how I was (finally) starting to get into Iron Maiden, but still wasn’t a big Judas Priest fan. However, I am a big fan of this song, which just so happened to play on Metal Rock Radio when I was thinking about how underwhelming I found Judas Priest to be. This is just the sort of metal that I love: dark, epic and lengthy. It sounds more like an Iron Maiden, Mastodon or old-school Metallica song rather than what I’m used to hearing from Judas Priest, but maybe I’m just not familiar enough with their discography yet.

IC2S Playlist Update 11/11/2015

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It’s Remembrance Day here in Canada, and if you haven’t read my Quick Fix related to it yet, then you might find it interesting. Naturally, it’s going to be a sombre and respectful day around here though, especially since I have family in the Canadian Forces.

On a more positive note though, I’m making quite a bit of progress on the Metal Gear retrospective. I’ve completed 4 games in the franchise thus far and have their retrospectives all written up and ready to go, with a 5th game maybe an hour away from completion and the writing portion should take an evening to put together. It has been pretty fun thus far and I’m glad that I decided to take the plunge, because I doubt I would have gotten to experience the MSX Metal Gear games without it. It’s also giving me a better appreciation for the series, but I’ll leave any formal analysis for the retrospectives themselves. It’s going to be pretty great and I’m putting quite a lot of work into this, so I hope that you guys enjoy when it’s finally ready to go.

First up this week, we have “The Sneaking Chair” by My Heart to Fear from their album Algorithm. Back when Weathered Steel was still on the air, this song just dominated their Top 40 playlist. Most songs only last a week or 2 before disappearing entirely, but “The Sneaking Chair” must have been the #1 song for at least a month. It’s a pretty great song, I’ve been meaning to put it in the playlist for a really long time. In fact, the last time I put a My Heart to Fear song in the playlist (“4th Dimension Opera House”, way back in May), I had originally intended to use “The Sneaking Chair” but made a last minute switch. On an unrelated note, I have no idea how My Heart to Fear comes up with their song titles, some of them are just all over the place. Some will be really straightforward (“Wish You Were Here”, “Angst”, etc) and then others are… well, “The Sneaking Chair”.

Secondly we have “Blood Brothers” by Iron Maiden from the album Brave New World. It had always been a bit of a secret shame for me that I considered myself a through-and-through metalhead, but wasn’t really into some of the genre heavy weights, such as Iron Maiden or Judas Priest. However, since Weathered Steel shut down I have switched my Internet radio over to Metal Rock Radio, which plays the metal classics and modern metal all the time, and has been getting me quite into Iron Maiden. “Blood Brothers” might be my favourite thus far, it’s just a really badass song that makes you want to sing along. As someone who likes Sabaton and Disturbed, you can probably tell that this sort of “comradery”/battle song really appeals to me and is making me want to have an “Iron Maiden week” where I just fire up Spotify and blow through their entire discography to find all their gems.

IC2S Playlist Update 04/11/2015

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First up this week is “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses from Use Your Illusion I. For years, I considered this my all-time favourite song. While it has since been dethroned by “(*Fin)” by Anberlin (which, even then, was my 2nd favourite), I still really like it and Guns N’ Roses. If I had to guess, I’d imagine that my cooling attitude towards the song has to do with moving past teenage angst, so a breakup song like this is less appealing than a more thoughtful/theological/philosophical song like “(*Fin)”.

Naturally I decided to pick this song since it is the first week of November. I used to have a tradition on Facebook where I’d post a line from the song every day until the end of the month, at which point I’d post the song’s epic music video. It’s really too bad that Axl Rose is such a crazy asshole – it’d be great to get the original lineup back.

Secondly, we have “Down the Rabbit Hole” by Sovereign Council from their first album, New Reign. This is probably their best song from their debut album, although due to lineup changes, they aren’t able to play it anymore without a guest guitarist (since the song requires 2 lead guitars. This was disappointing, but it really reminded me just how good this song was and how much I wanted to hear it.

By the way, this entry how puts us to 56 songs and just short of 5 hours of music! That’s a pretty big accomplishment as far as I’m concerned, but it does make me wonder how long I’m going to keep the playlist going. I’m currently thinking that I’d like to keep it on a weekly update schedule at least until the playlist’s 1 year anniversary, but after that we’ll see how it goes.

IC2S Playlist Update 28/10/2015

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First up this week is “God Is Dead?” by Black Sabbath from their latest album 13. I wrote a short article about this song almost 2 years ago*, claiming that the song was in fact the opposite of the anti-religious song that it appears to be on the superficial level. I still hold fast to this interpretation of course, and it has caused the song to endear on me ever since its release. I hadn’t heard it in quite some time though, until a couple weeks ago when my internet radio station of choice put it on and reignited by love for this song.

Also, I just love how the song sounds. The dark, religious imagery is very effective, and the song has an unmistakable twinge of menace throughout it. It’s just a great example of modern metal and proof that Black Sabbath still have talent and relevance even after a career spanning four decades.

Secondly, we have “Normandy” by Project 86 from their album Rival Factions. Rival Factions was a really strange album for Project 86. From what I understand, there seemed to be lots of frustration within the band about their musical direction – some of them wanted to branch out their sound, and I imagine that there was frustration over the control exercised by frontman Andrew Schwab. The band’s drummer ultimately left prior to Rival Factions‘ recording, while the other bandmates (except for Schwab) would all leave as well by the time that the next album was complete. These frustrations are clearly the primary driving force behind Rival Factions, as the title points out. The album has a really diverse sound: they’ll use their traditional post-hardcore sound for a couple songs, then they’ll break into metalcore, then a straight-up rock song. The resulting album isn’t entirely cohesive and has an extremely short runtime of just over 30 minutes, which makes it probably my least-favourite Project 86 album**… I mean, I still enjoy it, but it’s a bit of a blemish on Project 86’s otherwise extremely consistent discography.

Anyway, “Normandy” is probably the song which most directly addresses the background struggles of Rival Factions. In high school, right as I was getting into Project 86, I was actually going to do a presentation on this song for a class where we were supposed to interpret a poem or song. It’s probably a good thing that I never did this presentation (I got my wisdom teeth taken out the day I was supposed to present so I got off scot-free), because even now I still have a fuzzy idea of what it all means. The song seems to very cryptically use the metaphor of a head-on collision to represent the opposing wills of individuals leading to a severing of ties.

*Side note: two freaking years ago? Where has the time gone?!?
**The only other album of theirs that I think is rather weak and might actually be my least-favourite now is their latest release, Knives to the Future. The album is pretty well-done I’ll admit, but very few of the songs stand out and I can’t help but be disappointed that their hardcore sound has been toned down significantly. Again – still a good album, but I just found it a tad disappointing and not the same high bar that Project 86 usually hits for me.

IC2S Playlist Update 21/10/2015

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Unlike recent weeks, I don’t really have a theme tying the songs together this week. We’re going to start out with “Nuclear” by Mike Oldfield from Man on the Rocks. I’ve been listening to the Metal Gear Solid V soundtrack for a couple weeks now and it’s making me really dig this song. It was a good selection for the game, as its apocalyptic imagery fits the games’ themes perfectly.

Speaking of Metal Gear, the preparation for the big retrospective is underway. I’ve been writing up a review for The Phantom Pain and have blazed through Portable Ops in the past week. I’m currently working through Peace Walker and then we’ll see where it goes after that. I’m planning on sticking to canon entries only (including Portable Ops of course and Rising as well), but if I’m not sick of the whole series after all of this then I might do a couple entries for the Ac!d games because I remember enjoying both of them quite a bit. So… yeah. That’s what my life looks like for the next couple months. It’s gonna be a mammoth undertaking, but it’ll be very fun and hopefully will give me a better appreciation for this franchise I enjoy so much.

Anyway, secondly we have “Hearts Alive” by Mastodon from Leviathan. I was really debating between this and arguably their most popular song, “Blood and Thunder”, but “Hearts Alive” won out in the end. For one thing, if you’re familiar with the playlist then you’re probably aware that I’m a big fan of good, long songs. “Hearts Alive” definitely fits that bill at over 13 minutes in length. Mastodon has such a classical style to their metal, that it always shocks me that they are a post-2000s band, as they sound like nothing else that I’ve heard from their era. Like, when they put out their debut album, nu-metal was probably the most commercially-successful force in metal. Maybe I just haven’t explored the genre well enough yet, but I have always found Mastodon to sound very regressive, but in a very intentional, intelligent and good way.