Tuesday, October 22, 2013

A few months of musings...

So, I realised that I've been horrendously lax writing the blog lately.  It's not for lack of ideas (I have pages of them on a USB stick...), more because my work uses gmail and attempts to sign in to the blog with my personal account just get auto-redirected to the work login page.  First world problems.

Anyway, here is a random and disordered summary of the last few months' musical musings...


  1. I didn't quite "get" the new Nine Inch Nails album at first but it grew on me a lot.  Enough really good songs and moments to make it worthwhile (the highlights are Copy of A, All Time Low, Various Methods of Escape and Black Noise).
  2. The footage from their tour looks phenomenal - Trent has taken the stage performance to a whole new level.  Super-excited for the NIN/Queens of the Stone Age show down here in March.
  3. The Sound City documentary was a pretty interesting watch and the soundtrack is a worthwhile listen.  I think the track Mantra, featuring Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and Trent Reznor is the first time they've all been on a song together, despite the fact they've individually paired up with each other on numerous occasions over the past decade.  Anyway it's a pretty sweet track and it really makes me wish they'd do more stuff together.  But I also want more Them Crooked Vultures so you can't really have everything.
  4. I liked the new Queens of the Stone Age album a lot more than I expected to, considering it is the exact opposite of what I thought it would be.  I was expecting a hard, aggressive record and it's a weird, broody, trippy thing.  But it is catchy, and engaging, and also that artwork that random guy did for it is freaky and very fitting.  Well done Mr. Homme.
  5. Earth Rocker is still the best album of the year.  However there has been a ton of great stuff, including Deltron 3030's Event 2, Run the Jewels, Vista Chino's Peace, Alter Bridge's Fortress, and definitely not Megadeth's Super Collider.
  6. Alter Bridge's Fortress is a pretty heavy album by their standards.  The opening and closing tracks are both brilliant and there's a lot to enjoy in between.
  7. The Soundwave line-up has some amazing stuff - most notably Testament, Down, Alter Bridge, Megadeth, Alice in Chains and Rob Zombie.  The headliners suck (sorry, but Green Day and Avenged Sevenfold just don't cut it), but it doesn't really matter given how the rest of the bill is shaping up.
  8. I like Testament more and more as time goes on.  Their latest live album, Dark Roots of Thrash is a stunner.  These guys are like a really good red wine that just gets better with age.  A very thrash metal red wine, that is.
  9. I had a random urge to listen to Type O Negative the other day.  They are still highly entertaining and a solid listen.  RIP Peter Steele.
  10. The new Monster Magnet album sounded pretty good on the pre-release stream.  Dave Wyndorf has been very hit or miss over their career but when he produces a good album, it's generally very good (Dopes to Infinity, Powertrip, Mastermind...).
  11. Lemmy is hilarious.  When asked what was different about the new Motorhead album from its 20 predecessors, he responded with "it's more recent and we stood in different positions when we played it".
Anyway that's enough for now...