playlist

IC2S Playlist Update 01/07/2015

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I’m just going to get right into it this week, so without further adieu, our first song is “A Man for All Seasons” by Robbie Williams from the Johnny English soundtrack. I have a bit of a weird relationship with Johnny English. For one thing, I think it was one of the very first movies I saw as a kid which left me feeling profoundly disappointed. On the other hand, it’s enjoyable enough that feels like it has all of the makings of a comedy classic, if not for the overly-silly third act and a non-sense plot. In any case though, the film’s theme song, “A Man for All Seasons”, nails the spy spoof tone with a very deadpan delivery, hyping up the hero to be a generic super-spy (which he obviously isn’t). It’s a pretty great song in its own right; it makes me want to sing along whenever I hear it.

Secondly, we have “Memories” by XXI (formerly A Feast for Crows), which was recently released as a single. I mentioned this song a few weeks ago when XXI announced their rebranding, but I hadn’t realized it was on Spotify yet until this past week (for whatever reason, a lot of Christian bands either don’t tend to utilize Spotify, they take longer to utilize it, or have huge chunks of their catalogue completely missing from it). As I said before, this song rocks and is a very fitting tribute to former lead vocalist Eric Gentry, who died in a construction accident. The song just plain bleeds emotion, and nails everything it needs to: as a eulogy, as a signifier of the band’s future and just as a really epic metal tune. I can’t wait for some news from XXI about their coming album, but I’m confident that “Memories” is going to be a fitting preview of what is to come.

IC2S Playlist Update 24/06/2015

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As you have probably noticed, I have found some time to start writing again, thankfully. It’s not so much that I have gotten more time, but moreso that I just decided to nut up and shut up, and just clamp down to get some of the stuff I wanted to write down. I still have a couple articles in the pipeline so hopefully I can stay reasonably active in the meantime.

First up this week is “Murderer” by Impending Doom from their album Baptized in Filth. I have been wanting to put up some Impending Doom for quite a while, but haven’t really gotten around to doing so. This is due in part to whoever is in charge of putting their music on Spotify, because they have done a piss-poor job of it. Only 3 of their albums are up on Spotify… two of which suck (in my opinion), and one of which is good… but appears on Spotify twice for some reason. Even worse, their two best albums are completely absent, with only a couple of tracks from them included from the Killing Floor 2 soundtrack. That kerfuffle aside, “Murderer” is a pretty awesome song. Impending Doom have to be simultaneously one of the most relentlessly heaviest bands I have ever heard, while remaining eminently listenable in the process (to show how fine that line is, I can’t stand the more guttural death growls on their first couple albums). It’s also worth noting that they’re a Christian band, which is pretty obvious when you actually listen to the lyrics, but also seemingly insane considering how dark and heavy their music is.

I had another song slotted into this place, but I literally had a last minute change of plans when Disturbed decided to blow our minds with an unexpected annihilation of their hiatus and new music debut. As a result, the second song this week is “The Vengeful One” by Disturbed, from their forthcoming album, Immortalized… and like I said a couple weeks ago, I’m already all aboard the hype train. I’m digging the song, but it doesn’t feel like a major departure from any of their previous works… maybe just a slight refinement like Asylum was if anything. That’s a little disappointing considering that we had to wait 4 years for new music, but I love their sound as it is anyway, so I’d be lying if I said I was truly bummed.

Also – holy shit. P.O.D.’s The Awakening and Immortalized are going to be dropping on THE EXACT SAME DAY. I might need to get a new change of pants on the 21st. Plus August also marks the release of Sovereign Council’s Laniakea, so it’s gonna be an epic month for me in music!!!

IC2S Playlist Update 17/06/2015

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So… unfortunately this work assignment looks like it’ll be going on for another week at least, but hopefully not much longer than that. I have a couple articles started that I just need to have some time to think over and sit down with, so hopefully they’ll see the light of day soon…

First up this week is “the Patriot” by Countless Thousands, from their album We’re Just Really Excited to Be Here. I was exposed to Countless Thousands from the Unpopular Opinion Podcast, since the lead singer is a friend of Adam Tod Brown. They’re sort of an indie-rock/alternative band, and while I’m ambivalent to most of their stuff, some of it is just fantastic. I wish they had “Gang Fight” on Spotify, but “the Patriot” is great in its own right. It’s really catchy, with some excellent musicianship and vocals. It’s also an extremely scathing criticism of overbearing, self-righteous neo-nationalists who lord their national superiority over others, without actually putting anything on the line in the process… and if that’s not an IC2S-worthy song, then I don’t know what is.

Secondly we have “This Goes Out to You” by P.O.D., from their upcoming album The Awakening. I was actually going to institute a playlist “rule” this week where we don’t repeat songs by the same artist within a 6 week time frame unless something special happens… of course, then suddenly P.O.D. dropped this single on Spotify on the very day I had decided to go forward with that announcement.

In any case though, this definitely feels how you would expect a “first single” to – it’s energetic, radio-friendly and lyrically simple, but it’s still quite catchy. Musically, it seems to be hewing close to Murdered Love, so that’s a good sign, since it was their best album in quite some time, and I would expect the album itself to actually be heavier than this would have you believe (eg, think Korn’s single “Never, Never” from The Paradigm Shift, which sounded nothing like the rest of the album, thankfully). Plus, it’s a nice shout-out to the fans who have stuck with P.O.D. over the years. The only thing I could have done without for the playlist is the end bit… what do you call it? An epilogue? The transition? Whatever it is, I could have done without it for a single track – I’m sure it’ll be fine on the album itself, but when you’re listening to it at the end of a single track within a diverse playlist, it’s kind of annoying (not to mention that Tim’s voice is rather annoying already).

IC2S Playlist Update 10/06/2015 + Stannis Rant

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Normally I’d try to make this little intro as short as possible just out of obligation, but this week I’m going to rant a little bit about Game of Thrones… so SPOILERS if you haven’t seen Season 5 Episode 9, in which case I’d recommend skipping down past the album art…

So, if you know me personally, then you’d know that I really like Stannis Baratheon. He’s probably not the ideal ruler in Westeros, or even have a snowball’s chance in hell to pull through to the end (because, believe it or not, Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire tends to be rather predictable). However, he is a great character and the only one with a truly legitimate claim to the throne thanks to the right of a popularly-accepted conquest. He is the most righteous man in Westeros, and always tries to do the honourable thing (although Melisandre does cause his moral center to shift a bit on occasion).

However, Game of Thrones just screwed him up so spectacularly that it has me fuming at the show: with little provocation, Stannis went and burned his own daughter, Shireen, alive in order to offer her as a sacrifice to R’hllor. Don’t get me wrong – I think everyone knew that Shireen was going to die this season (because, again, GoT is rather predictable). However, I take issue with how it was presented, because it made absolutely no sense, turned Stannis into a big idiot and basically made his storyline going forward almost pointless. The only way I could see him killing Shireen was if Ramsay’s troops had fatally injured her, at which point Stannis would decide to make the most of an awful situation… but of course, this doesn’t happen and he basically does it with little justification.

First of all, Stannis loves his daughter above all else, and she’s basically the only person he actually feels any love for at all. That said, Stannis believes that he is Azor Ahai reborn, and a key part of that prophecy involves the hero sacrificing the person closest to him in order to save the world from eternal darkness. As a result, I’m not even opposed to the idea of Stannis sacrificing Shireen, because she obviously would have to be sacrificed if he wanted to follow the prophecy. Unfortunately, GoT tends to cut these sorts of contextual details out of the storyline, so in the show Stannis basically kills Shireen because he’s in a bit of desperation. Book Stannis basically says “screw this snow” and forces his troops to march through it regardless, which is the Stannis-ethos in a nutshell (remember, he also refused to surrender during the Siege of Storm’s End, even when all the food ran out and his troops were having to cannibalize each other to survive, and has been described as one who will “break before he bends”). Also, remember that he agonized about killing a bastard who he cared little for in order to acquire king’s blood, so you’re telling me that he’ll suddenly make the decision to kill his own daughter, his only heir, on a whim? Why wouldn’t he just take a bit of her blood like he did with Edric Storm/Gendry?

Furthermore, this move has basically made Stannis into a gigantic idiot. First of all, taking his wife and daughter with him on campaign was just an incredibly idiotic and contrived move in the first place. Book-Stannis leaves them with guards at Castle Black in the King’s Tower, which just makes so much more sense (and also means that if she gets burned, there’s a very good chance that Stannis will not give the order and be unaware of it). Secondly, he just lost his Hand of the King and probably a ton of soldiers with this act. The only reason Ser Davos has followed Stannis is because he sees him as the most righteous man in Westeros. Now that he has killed his own daughter (with a certain amount of deception directed towards Davos in the process), he basically has to kill Davos or he’s going to end up getting betrayed for certain. Who knows how Stannis’ troops are going to react to this, although I doubt that watching their lord’s child get burned alive is going to galvanize their spirits all that much… It’s just a stupid situation, and one in which the books handled things SO much better.

Anyway, enough of that, onto this week’s first selection, “Imposter” by Red from their newest album of Beauty and Rage. I really liked Red’s first two albums, but they got perceptibly weaker on their third album, Until We Have Faces. Their fourth album, Release the Panic, was basically generic crap with way too much dubstep influence. After Release the Panic, I basically swore off of following the band, but luckily they seem to have realized their mistakes and have gone back to their roots for of Beauty and Rage. “Imposter” is one of the best songs on the album in my opinion, it’s just a really solid opening track with a very polished sound. It’s nice to see Red getting back into the swing of things, and I hope that they can keep it up for any future endeavours… at which point I might consider myself a fan again.

Secondly, we have “The Game” by Disturbed, from their debut album, The Sickness. I really like Disturbed, having seen them in concert twice now. However, my enthusiasm for them has dulled somewhat since they have gone on hiatus 4 years ago. That said, if they announced tomorrow that they were releasing a new album, I’d be right back on the hype train in an instant. I think that “The Game” is one of their more interesting songs. I take the lyrics one of two ways. On the surface layer, it’s about a girl who stupidly keeps cheating on her boyfriend until it drives him into a murderous rampage. My preferred interpretation (and probably the more likely of the two anyway) is that the boyfriend is an abusive and paranoid asshole who constantly freaks out at his girlfriend who he thinks is a cheating whore, until his insanity drives him to go on a murderous rampage. So, um, yeah… it’s a pretty happy song. Oh, and that’s not even mentioning that it just has a really catch sound to it.

IC2S Playlist Update 03/06/2015

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I have to apologize for the reduced blogging output this past week – I have been temporarily transferred to a different department at work so it has been cutting down on my thinking and writing. I should be done this in a week or two with any luck though, so I will hopefully be putting out stuff other than Playlist updates and Quick Fixes soon enough.

First up this week is “Devil’s Cave” by Sleeping Romance, from their debut album, Enlighten. I believe that a couple months ago I called Sleeping Romance “Evanescence, but slightly more metal and significantly less angsty”, which has to be the most accurate description of the band that there is. They’re a really young symphonic metal band, having only released Enlighten and a single since 2013, but their sound is already shaping up to be quite promising. “Devil’s Cave” is probably their most “metal” song, but it is easily their best as far as I’m concerned, and I hope that they continue to explore this side of their sound more in the future. That wicked guitar solo near the latter-half of the song is particularly noteworthy.

Secondly, we have “Rise of Evil” by Sabaton, from their album Attero Dominatus. As a power metal band, Sabaton is simultaneously silly and epic, and is one of my favourite bands. For the most part, their songs are all based on historical wars (their best album, Carolus Rex, taught me more about the rise and fall of the Swedish empire and European politics than any other educational source before or since). I wasn’t a big fan of them until The Art of War, at which point their musical quality shot up significantly with each successive album. However, I recently decided to go back into their first three albums and found some old gems that I missed the first time I went through. Perhaps the best of these old gems is “Rise of Evil”, a rather disturbing track about the rise of the Nazi government and the days leading up to the second World War. Sabaton have been accused of being neo-Nazis many times in the past, and I kind of wonder if this song has something to do with that… despite the song itself simply stating the facts really obviously condemning Nazism in the title. There is actually an even more tragic companion piece to this song dealing exclusively with the evils of the Holocaust, called “The Final Solution” (from the album Coat of Arms), which I recommend checking out as well if your day was looking just a little too positive.

IC2S Playlist Update 27/05/2015

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Before we start this week’s IC2S Playlist update, I have a bit of timely good news. Last week I mentioned that A Feast For Kings’ lead singer, Eric Gentry, had died in an accident about a year ago and was hoping that they would be able to keep going without it hurting their sound. Well, not even 3 days passed between me writing that and a news article about the band popping up on my Facebook feed. The band has officially signed with Tooth & Nail records and has rebranded themselves as XXI. Most importantly, they have released a new song as a tribute to Gentry, and it ROCKS. The music video is in the link, I really recommend checking it out, it’s both heartbreaking and face-melting at the same time. All fears I had for the band’s future have been laid to rest, so you can expect more from XXI when their debut album drops.

First up this week is a cover of “Habits (Stay High)” by David Unger. You might know David Unger from his parody videos on Youtube where he takes a pop culture subject (eg, Home Alone, The Walking Dead, Star Wars, etc), then writes a really heartfelt love song about it, and then superimposes the band’s faces onto scenes from the movie/show. They’re pretty funny, while managing to be good songs on their own merits. He also does covers, and I really like this one in particular – in fact, I prefer it over the original version by Tove Lo, partially due to Unger’s really emotional singing, and partially because the song makes more sense to me when it’s sung by a man (might just be bias on my part, but the lyrics just come across as something a guy would be singing rather than a woman IMHO).

Next up is “Set It Off” by P.O.D. from their best album, Satellite. I have an embarrassing confession – for some reason I thought that I had already put the acoustic version of “Panic & Run” on this playlist, because of that post I had made about how much I liked The So-Cal Sessions. If I had realized this earlier, then I would have thrown in some P.O.D. within week 2 or 3. And speaking of surprises, I was also surprised this week when I discovered that P.O.D. has a new album coming out this August. I might have heard some rumblings a while ago, but if I did then I totally forgot about it because of all the buzz surrounding The So-Cal Sessions. Naturally, now I’m totally stoked and can’t wait til August rolls around!

Anyway, as for the actual song, “Set It Off” is just plain kick-ass from start to finish. Appropriately, this song is the one that kicked off quite a few things for me. In the summer of 2002, my parents had sent me off to a Christian camp for a week, and my counselor would listen to this album all the time. This song served as my introduction to, and started my love for, hard rock/metal and P.O.D., and has had such a massive impact on my life that I have a hard time truly quantifying it. I can’t really say what direction my life would have gone without that week at camp; I wouldn’t like half of the bands I do now, and who knows what sort of music I would be listening to. So, um… yeah. Great song, I love listening to it, and am glad that it’s finally getting its due on the IC2S Playlist.

IC2S Playlist Update 20/05/2015

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A bit of a post-script on my last post, regarding Mad Max and feminism: I was actually originally planning to write a different post which would have actually been arguably slightly pro-MRA (because, while I obviously identify as a feminist, a progressive Christian and a left-winger in general, I’m not someone who is defined by my “groups”). However, of course the idiots in the MRA-camp went and stirred up a new shitstorm elsewhere which needed to be addressed… so good job. I’ll still write it, but at least let it be on the record that I do not support MRAs in the slightest… (Edit: Eh, you know what? Screw it, I have lost all enthusiasm for the topic. Great job Clarey.)

Anyway, first up this week is “Separation” by A Feast for Kings from their EP Hell on Earth. This whole EP is filled with very personal, top-notch hard rock/metal and is well worth the $6 asking price. “Separation” in particular seems to be coming from the songwriter’s own experiences with a lying, unfaithful father. It’s truly tragic that A Feast for Kings’ lead singer died in an accident recently, doubly-so since they were days away from getting signed. I can only hope that the band can carry on without him, because the talent on display in Hell on Earth is truly astonishing.

Finally, we have “Never Let Down” by Andrew W.K. from his album, The Wolf. I guy from work recommended this song to me, and while I don’t really care for Andrew W.K. in general, some of his songs (like this one) are pretty awesome. He also described his musical style as “life metal” as opposed to death metal, and I can certainly see what he meant. His voice and music scream “metal”, but his lyrics are almost 100% based on partying, love/sex and general positivity, making it sound more like a pop or lighter rock song. Considering that he debuted in 2001, I imagine this was in response to the overbearing angst permeating nu metal at the time.

IC2S Playlist Update 13/05/2015

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Welcome back for another IC2S Playlist update! We’re now 9 songs in, clocking in at 53 minutes, with a nice mix of rock/hard rock, metal, electronic and pop music. We’re actually getting to the point where you could throw this playlist on in the background while you work or go for a drive, so… yeah… if you do that, then I’d like to know what you think (as long as it’s positive, haha). Also, this happens to be my 100th post on I Choose to Stand, so that’s a pretty epic milestone to celebrate.

First up this week is “4th Dimension Opera House” by My Heart to Fear from their album Algorithm. I was really tempted to do their song “The Sneaking Chair” instead, but this one edged it out because of its really interesting lyrics (I’ll probably add “The Sneaking Chair” at somepoint in the future though, because it really kicks ass, so stay tuned). In a nutshell, the song is about how things only get worse when humanity gets what it wants. The song details a sci-fi story about how a well of unlimited power is discovered in a small town. It starts out as a promise of good, but it quickly descends into government regulation, riots, poverty, war and overpopulation. In the end, they destroy the well to stop all the problems that it caused in the first place, and make a concerted effort to forget that it even existed… until 10,000 years in the future, when another well is found. It’s a really interesting idea for a song, and the ending shows how the cycle of human desire and self-destruction continues itself. One interesting note for me though is that the song kind of feels like the conservative ethos told in an allegory, but it doesn’t change that I think it’s a very interesting song. My only real complaint is that I wish it was longer. The main body of the song could easily have had another verse about how the well screws up the world, but it feels like it just skips through all of that very quickly. Still, I’d recommend checking out Algorithm, it’s a very solid album from start to finish.

Secondly, we have “The Other Woman” by Caro Emerald from her album Deleted Scenes From the Cutting Room Floor. I have really gotten into Caro Emerald in the last couple weeks, I really like her jazz/big band/pop mixture and her classy, sensual style. This song in particular sounds very Tarantino-esque, or perhaps could form the basis of a kick-ass James Bond theme song (holy shit, please get Caro Emerald to make the next James Bond theme please!!!!). I dunno, there’s not much more beyond that that I can say – it’s just a really great song from a very talented artist, so check it out.

IC2S Playlist Update 07/05/2015

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Another week, another IC2S Playlist update! It was pretty hard to narrow down what I wanted to play this week, and I can imagine that next week won’t be any easier (especially since I have discovered a new, awesome artist so I always get pretty excited when that happens).

First up is “Think” by Kaleida. If you ever have seen John Wick (and if you haven’t, then rectify that mistake immediately), then you’ll recognize this as the rather hypnotic pop song at the start of the incredible “club scene”. I was listening to the John Wick soundtrack and thought that it was a really cool song. It feels somewhat minimalist to me, it’s very deliberate and not overblown, but still manages to be very catchy. Kaleida doesn’t have a lot of music yet (they don’t even have a Wikipedia page yet), but if they can keep putting out stuff like “Think”, then I might just become a fan.

Secondly, we have “Reminiscence” by Sovereign Council. I chose this song for a couple reasons. Firstly, I actually knew and went to school with a couple of the guys in Sovereign Council, and I like to support local artists – especially when they put out epic power metal like this. Secondly, they just put their new album, Laniakea, up for pre-order. I’m pretty damn stoked for it. New Reign was pretty fantastic for an indie debut album, and now that they’ve matured quite a bit and made the band a bit leaner, I think that Laniakea will be even better. I can only hope that they make it big.

As for “Reminiscence” itself, I really dig it (obviously). I think that there are a few songs on the album which are better than it overall, but it’s the killer dueling guitars near the end which really sell it to me. My one criticism of the band would be that their lyrics can be a little lame at times, but their musicianship in this song in particular feels very professional and accomplished. Check ’em out!

IC2S Playlist Update 29/04/2015

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Wow, we’re at the next addition to the I Choose to Stand playlist already… I wanted to have another post up before this one, but I have been busy and it has been just running away on me (over 2000 words so far…), so that one will have to wait for a couple more days. In the meantime though, rock out to these two songs which have been added to our Spotify playlist (you can access it on the sidebar to the right).

First up is “Radio Girl” by Volbeat, from their album Rock the Rebel/Metal the Devil. I really got into Volbeat about a year and a half ago when I heard “The Hangman’s Bodycount” on the radio, and I really dig their hard rock/rockabilly style. I liked basically everything of theirs, but considered Rock the Rebel/Metal the Devil their weakest album for sure. However, I gave it another try lately and found that I like it far more than I remember – it drags a little bit at times, but I’d now say that all of their albums are close to being on par with each other. “Radio Girl” isn’t my favourite track from the album, but it is definitely the one I am enjoying the most at the moment, so if I didn’t include it on the playlist very soon then I’m afraid I wouldn’t show it its due.

Part of the reason I got into hard rock/metal music in the first place was because it was just so different than what I had grown up on, for one key reason: their music tended to have some actual lyrical variety. My parents basically just listened to old-school pop/rock and modern soft rock, so you can imagine how that sounded: basically 24-hours of “love songs”, non-stop. It was so sickening that I consider it a prime reason why I jumped ship to hard rock/metal in the first place. I do listen to the occasional love song still obviously, but I prefer there to be a bit of a twist in it. “Radio Girl” succeeds in that regard, while still being rather sweet and (dare I say) cute, and not diluting their sound for additional radio exposure. Basically, the song is about a man who is down on his luck, but becomes enraptured by a woman whose singing he hears on the radio. I think we can all sympathize with this song to some degree, and there is a deceptively diverse amount of emotional contrast throughout.

Our second addition of the week is “The Czar” by Mastodon, from their album Crack the Skye. I wanted to put in this song last week, but ended up deferring to “(*Fin)” instead. I need to put this up front though: Mastodon is insane in the best way possible. Their music also tends to be ridiculously deep. Their first four albums were intentionally written to represent the four classical elements: Remission is fire, Leviathan is water, Blood Mountain is earth and Crack the Skye is air. Not just that though, but Leviathan, Blood Mountain and Crack the Skye are also fully-fledged concept albums in their own right: Leviathan is an adaptation of Moby Dick, Blood Mountain is about searching for a crystal skull to place on top of the titular mountain to achieve human transcendence, and then Crack the Skye goes even further: “the record would tell a story dealing variously with the art aesthetics of Tsarist Russia, astral travel, out of body experiences and Stephen Hawking’s theories on wormholes”. And yet, Crack the Skye manages to go even deeper than that. Brann Dailor’s sister, Skye, committed suicide at 15, and the album’s themes revolve with dealing with loss, making it a tribute towards this lost soul (in fact, I have also read that the album’s themes and progression correspond to the Kübler-Ross model). Oh, and did I mention that they make some killer music in general and are popularly considered the best metal band in the world at the moment?

Anyway, regarding “The Czar” in particular, it’s a sprawling epic, and easily my favourite song off Crack the Skye. The verses get a little repetitive, but I find that this creates a hypnotic vibe, and the musicianship on display is top-notch all around. The solo that kicks off the third part, “Martyr”, is particularly orgasmic, it must be said. I also really like the Russian influences, it makes the song sound very unique and fits into the bonkers concept of the album. There aren’t a lot of albums I’d describe as being “perfect”, but Crack the Skye would have to be one of them (The Dark Side of the Moon would be another, for the record).

Anyway, that’s it for this week – be sure to check out the playlist and try to enjoy the music. Hopefully I’ll expand your tastes a little bit!

EDIT: Turns out that I accidentally added the title track from Crack the Skye instead of “The Czar” initially. It’s still a good song obviously, so check it out, but that mistake has been rectified now.

I Choose To Stand Playlist

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Hey readers, you might have noticed that I have added a new feature to the blog: a dedicated Spotify playlist!* My last post about music sort of inspired me to do this (that, and I listen to way too much of the Cracked podcast). I’m planning on adding 1 or 2 new songs per week, depending on what I’m listening to at the time… or, if I’m in a bit of a dry spell, I’ll throw in some long-time favourites. Hopefully it’ll act as a good catalyst to at least make a post on a fairly regular basis, if only to explain my newest additions.

With that said, I think I’ll definitely make it a custom to explain my choices. For my first song, I wanted to do “Run” by Project 86… but unfortunately, their self-titled album it was the only one not on Spotify, much to my irritation. If you have read the blog before, you might know that the blog’s name comes from the lyrics to that song (even though the line itself is never even uttered in the actual recording, oddly enough). With Spotify dropping the ball though (or, more likely, BEC Recordings), I figured I’d just go with another favourite P86 song instead to make up for it. I ended up going with my current favourite, “P.S.” It’s an extremely dark and somewhat experimental song that exemplifies their sound on Drawing Black Lines (IMHO, easily their best album). I’m kind of sad that P86 have moved further away from this sort of dark content with each successive album, but that’s more of a personal gripe. Rumour has it that the title stand for “Porn Song” or “Porn Sucks”, and deals with pornography addiction and/or abuse (the Japanese section apparently is largely made up of the girl begging someone to stop hurting her). Anyway… I don’t know what else to say about it. It’s an awesomely dark song, I love it.

Song number two is one that I have been really getting into recently, “Escape from Midwich Valley” by Carpenter Brut. I heard it through the Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number soundtrack, but it apparently also appears on the Carpenter Brut EP I and Trilogy albums. In any case, this is the sort of electronic music that I’m really digging at the moment: slow and steady build-up before it just lets loose. I haven’t finished Hotline Miami 2 yet, but for some reason this is really striking me as a fantastic end credits track for that sort of screwed up story, and am hoping that I end up predicting this one correctly. I’ll have to check out Trilogy on Spotify sometime soon to see if Carpenter Brut’s stuff is all this enjoyable.

And finally, for my third song I felt like I was basically honour-bound to include my favourite song in the initial batch for the playlist. As a result, we close out with Anberlin’s “(*Fin)”. Ever since I first heard this song, about 7 or 8 years ago now, this song has been a top 3 contender for all-time favourite. For a while there I would have put “November Rain” ahead of it, but in the last couple years, “(*Fin)” has come ahead as the clear favourite for me. The song is just fantastic from top to bottom, building and building upon itself until you don’t think it can get any more epic. Children’s choirs are hit-or-miss in rock songs, but they really help here. The stand-out section of the song though is the last few verses where Stephen Christian just belts out full of emotion. As if this section wasn’t amazing enough, it gets even more impressive when you discover that he freaking improvised that whole section on the spot. Holy crap.

Lyrically, the song really resonates with me as well. There’s a few different, but related ways you can take it, but in a nutshell it is dealing with people of faith who think they’re doing good but are actually causing harm and turning people away with their actions (eloquently expressed as being “the patron saints of lost causes”). It’s just such an incredible song from top to bottom that I just had to get it out there as soon as I could.

I’m also extremely bummed that I’m never going to get to hear this song live now. Anberlin went on a farewell tour last summer to end their career on a high note. I was going to see Anberlin’s last Canadian show with my brother in November, but that was the day that the snowpocalyse hit. We were worried that the weather was going to keep us from making it to Toronto, but we succeeded despite the odds… and then discovered that the band was trapped under 2 meters of snow in Buffalo. Sad times all-round…

Anyway, thanks for reading. I’m already trying to figure out how to narrow down the songs I want to post next, so hopefully this will get me posting more!

*On the off chance that you didn’t notice, it’s on the right sidebar below the post archive.