Genre(s) - Heavy/power metal Origin - Sweden (not Umeå) Year of release - 2000 Bitrate - 128 kbps Size - 42.49 MB
[Was scheduled to appear here on saturday while I was away, but somehow it didn't. Here it is after all. Turns out I enjoyed a lot of bands I was prejudiced against. But I did steer clear of most of the blacker metals except Keep of Kalessin who were quite impressive. Fave bands: Blind Guardian, Monster Magnet, and (gasp) Papa Roach. I had a fantastic time and hardly got drunk.]
At the moment I am at Graspop in Belgium and Hamerfall aren't there. With all the modern thrash, groove metal and metalcore you know I can't be going for the music. The only good festival music are power metal, old school heavy metal and upbeat folk metal. Also huge-balls rock music. So I'm going for Blind Guardian, WASP, and Monster Magnet and I hope all the other bands die in nuclear fire. Including Wolves in the Throne Room and Negura Bunget. Seriously, who the fuck invites quality atmospheric black metal band to a festival, are you a complete moron? I go to festivals to have fun, get drunk and have some more fun. I dont listen to black metal for fun even when drunk. Festival atmosphere and black metal wage an eternal internecine war. So why don't we have more Hammerfall? Hammerfall's cool. They have this album with its title song named after some retarded tv show about some long-haired ex-cop biker that hunts corrupt, short-haired ex-collaegues. It has loads of classic tracks to bang your head to, throw the metal horns and shout along the catchy refrains, like Keep the Flame Burning and The Way of the Warrior and all of the others (except Always Will Be which is a shitty ballad). Shame on you Graspop organisers, shame on you. *insert easy and non-funny Flemish-people-are-stupid joke*
Genre(s) - Black metal Origin - Romania Year of release - 2002 Bitrate - 192 kbps Size - 72.50 MB
I don't know yet if I'll be seeing Negură Bunget at Graspop - I hope to see at least a snippet but I just don't know about black metal on the middle of the day at a big sunny festival. Anyway, there's a fair chance you already know this band through their latest album Om, and then you know the kind of hazy, surrealistic, kind of metal they offer, steeped in the nature, folklore and tradition of Eastern Europe that more than any other locality leaves its peculiar mark on the music it inspires. On Om, Negură have fine-tuned their sound a bit further but this cycle of the seasons is already a showcase for the group's talent at creating a multifaceted depth in atmosphere that has no duplicates.
I have re-entered wage labour, pickin' dem orders for a distributor of pharmaceutical supplies, about three days a week. From halfway down the afternoon until usually way past midnight I'll be dragging that trolley fillin' it up with the sweet, sweet medicine. And catheters. And enemas. This kinda limits the time I can be posting here but it fills the dwindling treasury and keeps me off my assbutt. Don't be surprised if I'm not posting for a while, I will try to make up for lost time when I do.
Also from thursday until monday I will be at Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium and it will be super mega awesome even though the line-up kind of sucks, though there will surely be some positive surprises. More than the music I'm going for a good time with good friends, and it's all the vacation I got this year.
Genre(s) - Piano pop, singer-songwriter Origin - North Carolina/California, USA Year of release - 1999 Bitrate - 128 kbps
Here's a double album by that wonderful woman, Tori Amos. It's been over a year since she graced this blog, for which I humbly apologise to myself. The first disc is a regular studio album, her fifth, characterised by a bit of electronic experimentation but without losing her strengths from sight: emotional, evocative piano pop with her soaring vocals as the centerpiece. I've always found this one of her most versatile albums and it's got a few of the best melodies and vocal performances of her career (Concertina! Spring Haze!). Disc two is a live album recorded during her 1998 tour. It's even more awesome with many very powerful performances that easily surpass their studio renditions, especially Cloud on My Tongue, These Precious Things and Cornflake Girl. It's also the first time the beautiful Sugar is featured on any regular release of hers. I love the drumming on this one, as well, which usually doesn't pick my attention in more mainstream music. And I know mainstream is the ultimate cussing word to a lot of people who visit here but you know, sometimes it isn't that bad. Yeah, I'll stop writing so you can go download this stuff.
Genre(s) - Folk Origin - United States of America Year of release - 2005 Bitrate - 160 kbps Size - 73.13 MB
Part of the Riot-folk collective of folk musicians, Ryan Harvey is a prodiguous songwriter. Like a modern-day Phil Ochs he uses minimal instrumentation and simple compositions to spread his left-wing, working-class views and that's something more people should be doing. Ryan challenges US foreign policies, sold-out unions, capitalist globalisation and - in the autonomous anarchist tradition - any form of authority, relying solely on clever (and true) lyrics and a lot of energy. This album is a very human and very inspiring set of songs with a couple of real angry gems in the shape of the proud Hudson Valley Strikes, the catchy And That's About the Only Thing that Governments Have Done and the positively furious If I Had a Rocket Launcher. Pure anarchoustic adrenalin. Oh and the Talkin' Writer's Block Blues is just plain cute.
A heart that beats no more
Open song to the US occupying forces
Mountaintop mining song
I-69
If I had a rocket launcher
It's not just Bush!
The plan puebla Panama
Field of schemes
AFL-C-U-Later!
That's about the only thing that governments have done
Genre(s) - Alternative rock Origin - Canada Year of release - 1993 Bitrate - 192 kbps Size - 58.92 MB
Life as a crash test dummy is insecure, nasty and short, and it's no wonder the music they make is hardly uplifting. The folkish, world-weary grace that they exhibit, on the other hand, is something you wouldn't expect from a bunch of anthropomorphic test devices, but it seems like they have had their joints oiled up real well. The mood and the voice of lead dummy Brad Roberts are instantly recognisable and my incentive for putting this up was hearing them on the the supermarket radio. It's a real shame that many people regard this band as a one-hit wonder, based on the song Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm. The album that the song with this highly inspired title(?) is a part of harbours eleven other songs that can all proudly stand up to the big hit.
Genre(s) - Black metal Origin - Nordrhein-Westphalen, Germany Year of release - 2004 Bitrate - 128 kbps Size - 66.09 MB
You know, this really isn't an easy album to review. Starting point may be the sole membership of Alexander von Meilenwald, the drummer - and he is a fantastic drummer, believe you me - of the late and great Nagelfar. Now, Nagelfar are a band I got the hots for, and The Ruins of Beverast , I guess, is of the same complexity and the songwriting is unmistakenly reminiscent, though to me it seems like this "band" incorporates elements from between two bands from the same family tree:Graupel's production and some of Verdunkeln's approach towards atmosphere. Von Meilenwald doesn't call it "oppressive black metal" without a reason. It hits like a train and still instils a feeling of horror and alienation. Recommended tracks are Between Bronze Walls which is really beautiful and ever more so towards the end, and Summer Decapitation Ritual, packing a riff like only a Nagelfar member could have written it.
Genre(s) - Post-rock Origin - United States of America Year of release - 2007 Bitrate - around 224 kbps Size - 67.63 MB
Even with the best of post-rock albums, it seems like if you describe one you describe them all. So when I'm saying this band is up there with God is an Astronaut and The American Dollar (yes, my very favourites), and have little intelligent to add to that, please do not let that discourage you. Something that might be said is that, like previously mentioned groups, this is some highly melancholic stuff, and while Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor may be super mega epic and all that, they are relatively emotionless. The Entire City Was Silent is post-rock by the book, but it makes you feel, and that's something I miss in the bulk of their colleagues.
Genre(s) - Ska Origin - Sint Petersburg, indeed Year of release - 2001 Bitrate - 128/192 kbps Size - 47.71
Leningrad are a Russian ska band and this album of theirs is called Made in Zhopa (= Ass). It does not pay tribute to its name at all. If we were to speak in meme terms, I suppose this would be made of win and relevant to your interests. Of course I haven't got a clue what any of the songs is about - except, I assume, the wonderful Hip-hop (pronounce: ghip-ghop) - but no matter what the songs are about, the language sounds fascinating. Especially in the hands of legendary singer and mastermind of the band, nicknamed Schnur, who's notorious for his use of the obscene sort of "side-language" of Russian, called Mat'. Their music was featured in the brilliant film Everything is Illuminated, based on the brilliant book, Everything is Illuminated. Anyway. Polnye Karmany, Zlye Puli, Stop Maschina are very entertaining tracks, and none of the songs is as rushed as some more punkish bands make them. On a sunny summer's day you too may find you are listening to this album over and over again.
Genre(s) - Gothic metal Origin - Sweden Year of release - 2008 Bitrate - 224-320 kbps Size - 84.87 MB
Despite numerous recommendations I still haven't taken the effort to delve into Tiamat's back catalogue beyond Judas Christ, but that's because I've simply been satisfied with their later material. Now this album is quite a bit heavier than the aforementioned one, like they mixed it with their early nineties sound. It's dark and heavy stuff that manages to combine charging bombast with a twisted sense of beauty. Some of the melodies seem somewhat Middle Eastern-tinged which definitely serves the occult mood well. Temple of the Crescent Moon is a ripping opener, seriously absurd in its ecstatic savagery, and unfortunately moments of such grandeur do not recur very often in the rest of Amanethes, though plenty of moments are also pretty dramatic. But in any case most of the songs on here are as dark and alluring like that tall, handsome man in the trenchcoat who's lost his puppy in the bushes and is asking you to help him find it.
Genre(s) - Martial industrial Origin - France Year of release - 2001 Bitrate - 256 kbps Size - 27.07 MB
Please download this EP (couldn't find the artwork) and listen to the track Ma Promesse. If you think it's boring wait till he stops singing, and the main melody kicks in. Damn. Coupled with the nihilistic drum rolls, that just tears me up. It's the sound of the misplaced and tragic pride of soldiers dying for nothing in a trench war. The emotion is very powerful here. The two other tracks are also good, but have a different atmosphere. They remind me more of seafaring(?) and seem to hint towards their later, military-poppier sound. Wich I actually prefer. But Ma Promesse... holy crap.
Hey, I was just thinking, if you have been enjoying the music so far, why don't you click "follow blog" to the right there in the sidebar, sit back and be kept up to date about the posts on here automatically? It's like, super handy.
Of course it would also enhance my status in Blogland but y'all know I don't give a mandrill's technicolour ass about that, right?
As it is there seems to be somewhat of a disconnection between the amount of downloads served (over 20 000 now according to Mediafire statistics, wooo!) and the small but militant core of individuals that keep an eye on this page over a longer period of time. You have no idea how often this has made me call my dear Mum in the middle of the night, crying.
So hop aboard and stick around if you want to, and make a hard-working blogger proud!
Cheers and kindest regards,
Bart / "Charles D. Ward" (it's a Lovecraft thingie, y'know) Your blog operator
Genre(s) - Postpunk, gothic rock Origin - Inkberrow, Worcestershire, UK Year of release - 2007 Bitrate - 128/192 kbps Size - 46.67 MB
Twenty years after the release of the live album The Evening of the 24th that was one of my first uploads for this blog, came the album that initially got me into them. Despite their categorisation as a gothic rock-slash-postpunk band, And Also the Trees seem to contain many elements from neofolk before it even existed as such, in that the compositions are so much more quiet and nature-inspired than bands the genre denomination may remind you of. I like the Sisters of Mercy and Chameleons too but this sounds nothing like it. Listen to This Beautiful Silence or Accordeon Man and you will get my drift. That's not to scare the gothic and postpunk fans off. This is sprawling, beautiful, mood-invoking music for (dark) romantics of any kind to wet their pants over.
Genre(s) - Depressive blackened pop/rock, oh yes Origin - Sweden Year of release - 2006 Bitrate - 128 kbps Size - 38.45 MB
Today's a shitty, shitty day and what better way to deal with those than to give in to it completely? Here's a band that seems made especially for grey and weary days like this. The ambiguous, cynical mixture of pop music structures with helpings of postpunk and depressive black metal sentiments generate a feeling of hopelessness that any regular depressive black metal band can only dream of achieving. Pulver is created to alienate and lock you up into your own most secret, unspeakable thoughts. There are some harsh vocals but the guitars sound very open and the strangely fitting programmed drums never turn aggressive. In fact, it's very melodic and quite accessible, were it not for the ultra-despondent nature of the music that is bound (and meant) to rub off on the listener. Woods of Infinity meets Rocketship for some Joy Division covers. Now put some pants on, Lady, you are indecent.
Genre(s) - Psychedelic rock/folk, singer-songwriter Origin - United Kingdom Year of release - 1985 Bitrate - 320 kbps Size - 94.52 MB
Previous Hitchcock post (here) was a compilation I made, combining some of my favourite songs. It was a measure out of necessity, not knowing what album to post. But it felt a bit like cheating so after long deliberation I chose this one for the upping. It's an and the Egyptians-release so it's relatively complex and rock-oriented, but as always balances the fine line between psychedelically goofy and really really beautiful. Robyn displays a gorgeously shimmering guitar sound here, giving half the songs an introspective, even sad-ish slant, but keeps things spicy with some more upbeat and diverse material like The Fly, Goodnight I Say and Strawberry Mind. This edition is the 1995 remaster, with the added advantage of two live tracks that are wildly superior to their original versions, and the long ambient track Pit of Souls that ends with an almost post-rock like bang. But don't ask me what Fegmania is supposed to mean.
Genre(s) - Black metal Origin - Norway of course, you silly Year of release - 2001 Bitrate - 192/128 kbps Size - 44.34 MB
Plaguewielder is the single most reviled Darkthrone album in the band's impressive lifespan, and I totally don't get it. I'm no professional music reviewer, I can only judge a band subjectively, based on what the music invokes or fails to invoke in me. From that perspective this is one of my favourite releases by the band. Then again I totally don't dig the tinny production of A Blaze or Funeral Moon, and find they contain many boring segments.I simply get much more of a kick out of the clawing riffs on Weakling Avenger,Command and Wreak. I'm not a noob either, I've been listening to black metal for many (or at least a couple of) years longer than any of the more mainstream music on here which I only learned to know during the past four years and usually less. So what exactly is "wrong" with this album - and me for preferring it? Please give it an unbiased (re)try, and me your opinion. It might be you who has to reconsider his/her judgement.
Genre(s) - Black metal Origin - Germany Year of release - 2006 Bitrate - 256-320 kbps Size - 80.04 MB
This is not the band that's come to put the "fun" back in funeral. Nope. This is a votive offering to the coming death of mankind. Pure, cold, venomous hate is the gospel that Funeral Procession preach, through a black metal vessel without any vain ornamentation. Musically it reminds a bit of De Mysteriis-era Mayhem, but adapted to the year 2006 and this decennium's much more apocalyptic perspective on the future. The mix and production are very strong, especially the drums have a lovely deep rumble to them, greatly reinforcing the leaden guitars and intimidating vocals. No fun here, boys and girls.
Genre(s) - Sleaze rock Origin - LA, Cali, USA Year of release - 1986 Bitrate - 128 kbps Size - 30.35 MB
Oh my god, look what the cat dragged in. Four ultra-sleazy and effeminate good-fer-nuthin's with a lousy, pubescent attitude and only mediocre talent who think they can play rock 'n roll. Though perhaps not the genre's undertakers, at least this band was present at the funeral, with a big grin on the face and dollar signs in the eyes. The music on this debut is simplistic and dated into dementia and after writing the ridiculously ballsy lyrics the gents clearly had no more balls left to put into the music. So why am I sharing this again? Because even somebody who can profess his love for Kylie Minogue without flinching needs a guilty pleasure.
This blog is meant to generate attention to bands that I think deserve it, and aims for a large variety of music styles. I will only share albums that I personally recommend, and do not honour requests. You won't find complete discographies here as I encourage individual research and do care about the artists enough not to offer their entire lives' work for the taking. If you notice a mistake or a wrong/broken link, please let me know so I can fix it. Thanks!
Complaints and compliments can be directed to bartromeijn-at-hotmail-dot-com but for quick messages by all means use the shoutbox and comments.
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The music I offer on this blog is for display purposes exclusively. You are not entitled to download or listen to it at all. Go away.
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