Gérard Lenorman - Ses Plus Grands Succes

Genre(s) - Chansons Françaises, pop, singer-songwriter
Origin - Take a guess
Year of release - 198?
Bitrate - 128 kbps
Size - 54.40 MB

Ses Plus Grands Succes, which simply means His Greatest Hits, is a compilation album by the French singer-songwriter Gérard Lenorman. I really do not know a lot about the man, but I remember having known his song La Ballade des Gens Heureuses (Ballad of the Happy People) for about all my life. It's still, to me, the most beautiful song on the disc though that may be because of the memories attached. Voici les Clés (See Here the Keys) and Si j'Était Président (If I were President) always flush my chest with some aching warmth as well, it's fantastic if music can evoke such a response. If you enjoy this album as much as I did, may I suggest for you to try this album out as well, by a compatriot and collaegue chansonnier Benjamin Biolay.

1. La ballade des gens heureuses
2. Michèle
3. La petite valse
4. Boulevard de l'océan
5. Warum (mein Vater)
6. Vacances en France
7. L'enfant des cathédrales
8. Si j'était Président
9. Voiçi les clés
10. Le bleu des regrets
11. Et moi je chante
12. Tu t'rappelles plus de rien
13. Le soleil des tropiques
14. Un ami
15. Le dauphin triste
16. Chanteur de charme
    

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Tori Amos - Scarlet's Hidden Treasures

Genre(s) - Chamber pop, singer-songwriter
Origin - United States of America
Year of release - 2004
Bitrate - Eh, it's actually in M4A (old WMP-rip of my own), hope you don't mind.
Size - 32.12 MB

This EP came as a companion disc to the concert DVD Welcome to Sunny Florida so that's the picture I used. It features six songs, and going by the title I imagine they are the unreleased overspill of the beautiful Scarlet's Walk that preceded the live registration. It's easy to conclude it must be less accomplished material for it not to appear on the album but I wonder if you could keep that up after hearing just Ruby alone. Seaside and the long Apollo's Frock are also beautiful, and would have been strong contenders on the full-length. This is really just an extra for long-time fans and completists, people new to the glory of Tori would do well to walk Scarlet's Walk first (find it here).

1. Ruby through the looking-glass
2. Seaside
3. Bug a martini
4. Apollo's frock
5. Tombigbee
6. Indian summer
   

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Powerwolf - Lupus Dei

Genre(s) - Power metal
Origin - Germany/Romania
Year of release - 2007
Bitrate - 192-320 kbps
Size - 68.88 MB

Powerwolf are a German band with a singer (and opera student) straight from the craggy mountains of Transylvania. Consequentially, instead of fantasy battles and the like, the band's lyrics are centered around vampires, werewolves, the devil and other creatures of the night. There is also a strange obsession with the Catholic church. Musically this is just perfect: crunchy guitars, great classic riffs backed by a church organ. It is suitingly bombastic stuff, but not too fast or needlessly filled with all kinds of symphonic arrangements. The all-important choruses are captivating and will keep popping up into your mind all through the rest of the day. The great and remarkable voice of Attila Dorn makes this highly uplifting release complete. Last year's album Bible of the Beast made it to my top-20 for 2009.

1. Intro (lupus demonae)
2. We take it from the living
3. Prayer in the dark
4. Saturday Satan
5. In blood we trust
6. Behind the leathermask
7. Vampires don't die
8. When the moon shines red
9. Mother Mary is a bird of pray
10. Tiger of Sabrod
11. Lupus dei
    

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Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows - Les Fleurs du Mal

Genre(s) - Neomedieval darkwave
Origin - Germany
Year of release - 2007
Bitrate - 128 kbps
Size - 67.96 MB

I wish to love Sopor Aeternus with all my heart, since Anna-Varney Cantodea is simply one of the most fascinating people in music today. However, Les Fleurs du Mal is actually the first SA&tEoS album that I could stand. It probably is the most playful release Cantodea and her ensemble have ever produced, musically and especially lyrically. Shave if You Love Me, Some Men and A Little Bar of Soap are even quite humourous. It is as if our heroine has never felt as comfortable being herself, before. The music is still based on medieval-ish instruments, keyboards, and percussion but the addition of a full-fledged choir ("sing it, boys!") lets itself be quite well noticed. I don't believe I've ever called an album sexy before, but it's just the only word that summarises Les Fleurs. Highly recommendable to everybody, not just darkwave fans.

1. Architecture
2. Always within the hour
3. In der Palästra
4. A little bar of soap
5. Bitter sweet
6. Our lady of the broken hearts
7. La mort d'Arthur
8. The simple joys of maidenhood
9. Helvetia sexualis
10. Les fleurs du mal
11. Shave, if you love me
12. Some men are like chocolate
13. The virgin queen
    

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The Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station

Genre(s) - Psychedelic rock
Origin - San Francisco, California
Year of release - 1977
Bitrate - 128 kbps
Size - 31.89 MB

I'm a big fan of the Dead's expansive hallucinogenic jamscapes of the sixties, as well as their sudden turn to folk music in 1970. The material that followed American Beauty never caught much of my attention except for this one; Terrapin Station. It's a very organic rock album that is still nothing like what they did in their first five or so years. There's a psychedelic edge but it is not as consciously pushed, rather a pleasant side effect. It's very relaxing music. The album's raison d'être is of course to showcase the heavenly title track, a decent 16 minute course through all kinds of different moods. Plaintive verses, smooth and chilled-out, then a cautious preparation for the finale, and through a blistering drum solo (that will not bore even you) to the climax that sounds like the sky is breaking and a coked-up angel's chorus descends down to earth to herald the second coming of our estimated prophet.

1. Estimated prophet
2. Dancing in the streets
3. Passenger
4. Samson and Delilah
5. Sunrise
6. Terrapin Station, pt. 1
   

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Nehëmah - Requiem Tenebrae

Genre(s) - Black metal
Origin - France
Year of release - 2004
Bitrate - 128 kbps
Size - 49.92 MB

In the last decade, France has come to be known as a hotbed for black metal innovation, but Nehëmah must have missed that memo. The veteran band isn't one to change its style over the course a mere 12 years, and this reminds me very strongly of Darkthrone's Under A Funeral Moon. True, some more subtle synths have slipped into the music, making Requiem Tenebrae the most lucid of the band's albums. You won't have to worry that this might make the sound more melodic, it doesn't. What it does, is provide added grimness at the most effective of moments, such as the sick finale to Consciousness in Evil or the lingering miasma of Taken Away. Through the Dark Nebula is a furious closer regularly punctuated by single floor tom beats like cannonblasts, a very effective way of making the whole track sound even more hostile. For all their staunch traditionalism, Nehëmah know how to make old-school black metal engaging again.

1. Creeping chaos
2. The great old ones
3. Dead but dreaming in the eternal icy wastes
4. The elder gods awakening
5. In the mist of Orion's sword
6. Taken away by the torn blackshroud
7. Consciousness in evil
8. Through the dark nebula
   

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Absu - Tara

Genre(s) - Black/thrash metal
Origin - United States of America
Year of release - 2001
Bitrate - 192 kbps
Size - 69.12 MB

Celtic-Sumerian occult blackened thrash metal, from Texas of all places. Quite unique stuff, with a very dry, trebly production that highlights the insane drumming of Sir Proscriptor McGovern and not much more. It really does not lend a good atmosphere to the music and that is a pity, because when it comes to songwriting, Absu are a fairly sophisticated bunch (much more so than what the genre blackened thrash would probably convey) and the individual tracks are strong and bound to linger in the mind for a while. Tracks like A Shield with an Iron Face and "She Cries the-eh Qui-yet Lay-hay-hake!" could be called positively catchy, while the Stone of Destiny shows a more epic side. The new album has a better production and atmosphere but I liked the songs less, maybe I need to get used to it some more though.

1. Tara
2. Pillars of mercy
3. A shield with an iron face
4. Mannanán
5. The cognate house of courtly witches lies west of county Meath
6. She cries the quiet lake
7. Yrp Lluyddawc
8. From ancient times (starry skies burn to ash)
9. Four crossed wands (spell 181)
10. Vorago (spell 182)
11. Bron (of the waves)
12. Stone of destiny for Magh Slecht and Ard Righ
13. Tara (recapitulation)
    

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Maximum the Hormone - Buiikikaesu!!

not the official cover; it was just too ugly

Genre(s) - Rare poep ouwe
Origin - Japan
Year of release - 2007
Bitrate - 128
Size - 44.70 MB

Okay. For some unimaginable reason someone decided to inject three Japanese menchildren and a womanchild with speed and monkey genes, take away their dictionaries, and lock them up in a room with musical instruments. The session was of course recorded and the result is Buiikikaesu!!. The music is insanely hectic and hectically insane, alternating between impossibly bouncy, happy-go-lucky stuff that will make your face go like ^___________^ and more aggressive parts with harsh vocals at a staggering speed. The lyrics would have been bilingual if the English parts weren't simply references to random everyday objects ("Bikini sport the monkey spanner ponchin!"). I generally hate music as angular and chaotic as this but this is just unforgivably catchy. And my brother asked me to up this. So there you go, sorry that it took about a year!

1. Buikkikaesu!!
2. Zetsubo Billy
3. Kuso breakin no breakin lilly
4. Louisiana Bob
5. Policeman Benz
6. Black power G men spy
7. Akagi
8. Kyokatsu
9. Bikini. Sports. Ponchin.
10. What's up, people?!
11. Chu chu lovely muni muni mura mura purin purin boron nururu rero rero
12. Shimi
13. Koi no mega lover
14. Bonus track
    

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Skyclad - No Daylights Nor Heeltaps

Genre(s) - Folk metal
Origin - Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North North England
Year of release - 2002
Bitrate - 160 kbps

When it comes to folk metal, if Skyclad didn't write the book then at least they were its editors-in-chief. They were far ahead of most of their peers and in my humble opinion still one of the very few to ever do it right. They're a very likeable bunch too. The music is miraculously uplifting, and sublimely Anglosaxon, building from a NWOBHM-platform instead of the standard melodic death/black metal one, and adorning it with fiddle melodies audibly native to British soil. And of course they are rooted in that wonderful British class consciousness; their lyrics are left-wing without a doubt, but drenched not so much in politics as in a very astute and thoroughly sarcastic analysis of the world around us. Oh, and since precisely this release, Skyclad even have a good singer! So for No Daylights they retooled a few of their best tracks to suit his clear melodic voice and there you have an album and a half of great, really quite harmless metal that will pick up your mood and have you looking hard if you want to find any flaws at all. In fact, would it be sad if a bastard album like this (Martin's lyrics, Kevin's voice) was the band's best material to date? Because it seems a lot like it is.

Disk 1 - Load it down (42.70 MB)

1. Penny dreadful
2. Inequality street
3. Spinning Jenny
4. The cry of the land
5. Another fine mess
6. Sins of emission
7. The widdershins jig
8. History lessens
9. Land of the rising slum
10. Single phial

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1. No deposit, no return
2. A great blow for a day job
3. No strings attached
4. Building a ruin
5. Loco-commotion
   

Rammstein - Mutter

Genre(s) - Industrial rock/metal, Neue Deutsche Härte
Origin - Germany
Year of release - 2001
Bitrate - 192 kbps
Size - 61.59 MB

Since everybody should already know Rammstein and this album will probably be taken down in no time, I won't bother with a long introduction. Maybe not the best comparison, but just as with the Korn album I've held on to this after all these years out of pure, sweet nostalgia. If you like rock music that should be reason enough to check this if you haven't before. Some great songs, that's for sure.

1. Mein Herz brennt
2. Links, 2, 3, 4
3. Sonne
4. Ich will
5. Feuer frei
6. Mutter
7. Spieluhr
8. Zwitter
9. Rein raus
10. Adios
11. Nebel
    

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Sun of the Sleepless - Demo

Genre(s) - Atmospheric black metal
Origin - Germany
Year of release - 1999
Bitrate - 128 kbps
Size - 13.78 MB

Sun of the Sleepless is, or perhaps was, a one-man experimental black metal project that is officially still active but seems to be on its arse since releasing the split. Markus Stock is an adventurous soul in metal-land with his folk-metal-goes-acoustic-folk band Empyrium, the cinematic horror metal of The Vision Bleak and the progressive gloom rock of Noekk. It's at the marges of metal that he can work his magic best. This demo is still fairly regular: a mere three short pieces of fantastic atmospheric black metal that has everything you love about it. If your ears were for smelling you'd smell rich damp earth, pine needles and smouldering bonfires.

1. Thou, whose face hath felt the winter's wind
2. Grimme pain
3. Nebelmond

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Sun of the Sleepless & Nachtmahr

Genre(s) - Experimental black metal/black metal
Origin - Germany
Year of release - 2004
Bitrate - 192 kbps
Size - 61.15 MB

It's on the split with fellow Germans Nachtmahr that Sun of the Sleepless really starts to set itself apart by way of some very overt electronic influences, especially after the Burzum track: Neunter November is kind of trip-hop, Spring '99 starts out triphoppy too but rises and falls in metalness (it's easily the best track off the split) and Tausend Kalte Winter is a piece of pure industrial. Nachtmahr really play quite standard black metal, but it's not bad. They would be better represented on a split with another classic style band because the difference between the two is grating and to the latter band's detriment. But perhaps you may think otherwise.

1. Sun of the Sleepless - A wolf in sheep's skin clad
2. Sun of the Sleepless - Romanze zur Nacht
   
3. Sun of the Sleepless - Dunkelheit (Burzum cover)
   
4. Sun of the Sleepless - Neunter November
   
5. Sun of the Sleepless - Tausend kalte Winter
   
6. Sun of the Sleepless - Spring '99
   
7. Nachtmahr - I
   
8. Nachtmahr - II
   
9. Nachtmahr - III
   

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