(A Few)Albums That You REALLY Should Listen To, Pt. 1

Part 1 in a series of record reviews for albums that I think deserve a lot more attention. If you read these articles, please give these albums a listen.

Crime As Forgiven By - Against Me!

I'm sure that many of you have heard of Against Me! before. They recently signed to a major record label and have been touted about on MTV, VH1, David Letterman, the Warped Tour, and other musical graveyards just as Green Day was. But before they lost their meaning, before they sold out, before they started creating garbage like New Wave, they were one of the most amazing folk-punk bands out there. With socially aware lyrics and truly heartfelt riffs that will make you want to scream in the middle of a street until your voice is hoarse, Crime will destroy your pre-concieved notions of what an album can make you feel.

First of all, there is not a single record out there that can match the desperation, energy, and raw emotion of this one. All the production value, all the expensive recording tricks and cool effects in the world cannot cover up a crappy album(as demonstrated by Chinese Democracy). With the raw, unpolished sound of a band's first garage-recorded demo, Crime shows that flashy pedals and 30-piece drum sets are not required to make a hell of an album.

Against Me!'s first iteration has only two members: Tom Gabel on guitar and Kevin Mahon on drums. Both of them alternate vocals on the six tracks that make up the album. And while this is such a short album, while it has virtually no production value, it is still one of the most deepest albums ever concieved. In fact, I personally think that all of these aspects just make the end result that much more amazing.

Violence Violence - Ceremony

I saw these guys live before I had ever listened to any of their songs. And I noticed something: People went off to these guys. Moreso than any other other band. And it was one of the other bands' last show. I had never seen a band invoke such crazy, relentless, fury in their audience. So I picked this album up at the merch table and took it home. I gave it a few listens, and I was stunned. Of all the thousands of bands I had listened to, of all the live music I had seen, I had NEVER heard a band as angry as Ceremony. I had listened to so much metal, punk, and hardcore, that I thought there was no band that could really make me re-think what a genre meant.

But this album ripped up all of my notions of what hard music could be. The lyrics ranted about hating everyone you see. About walking down crowded streets and seeing nothing but emptiness in the eyes of those who pass by. About killing society, screaming in the face of every ignorant, materialistic asshole who measures success by salary. About how there's no love without hate, no happiness without depression. Never have I heard such blind fury contained in one album.

This album revived my faith in the hardcore genre. With such vanilla bro-core bands as H2O and Remembering Never mucking things up and leading the growing movement of being mediocre, I had almost written it off as a lost genre. But then I heard this album. It truly reinvigorated my love for hardcore.

Dead Mountain Mouth - Genghis Tron

There's a reason that Genghis Tron's MySpace page says Metal/Electro/Experimental. Why? Because they are marching down a less-than-traveled path in music. One that bands like Enter Shikari and Sky Eats Airplane have meandered around but never fully committed to. Genghis Tron has come up with some of the most interesting and innovative techniques in modern music. While their latest release, Board Up The House, has recieved critical acclaim and is becoming a household name due to tours with bands such as Converge, I believe that Dead Mountain Mouth is their most amazing work to date.

To me, it seems that Board Up The House was overthought. Dead Mountain Mouth seems that it was concieved, written, and recorded all within the span of about a week. This lends to the way the entire album flows from one song to another, wrenching your brain out of your ears, one cell at a time.

Anyway, Dead Mountain Mouth was a brave foray into uncharted terrain with a triumphant victory awaiting on the other side. If you are looking for something to spice up your playlists, check it out.

Is Music REALLY Your Life?

I'm sure you've seen them. The "Music is Life" shirts, hoodies, bags,and other paraphernalia that seem to be sweeping the youth like a California wildfire. Kids talk about music. They listen to it. They watch it. They appear to be truly dedicated to the cause of music, doing everything they can to support their favorite musicians and artists.

If you are one of the people who wears this apparel or makes these claims, what you need to ask yourself is this: Am I truly dedicated to music as much as I think and say I am?

Let's administer a test. I'll ask you a series of music-based questions. Tally up the amount of "yes"'s and "no"'s you gave. I don't need to know how you answered. Only you do.

Do you spend (literally) hours a day listening to music? Can you name off your top 10 favorite albums of all time in under a minute? Do you search for new artists on a daily basis? Do you go to record stores? Do you buy albums? Do you go to shows? Do you know what a show is? Do you know what "getting signed" means? Do you hate any bands? Do you know what kbps stands for? Do you know what vinyl is? Do you know what an EP is? A split? A 7 inch? A demo? A full-length? Do you actively play a musical instrument? So you support artists through purchase of merch? Has a band or song or album ever changed your life? Has it really? Do you avoid listening to the radio? Do you have a record player? Do you read zines? Do you know what a zine is? And most importantly: Does music make you feel like nothing else in the world, like there is no word or phrase or movement that could ever describe the euphoria you get from listening to your favorite song?

Because if you answered "no" to most of these questions, chances are that music is not your life. Chances are that music is just another minor form of entertainment to you. No more important than TV, or movies, or sports. You aren't dedicated to music. You just think you are.

So do yourself a favor and get rid of that T-shirt you got from Hot Topic. It makes the people who actually are dedicated to music look bad.

Musical Eclecticity

"Metal."

For many years, this was my answer to the ever-asked question, "What kind of music do you like?" I listened to metal and not much else. Meshuggah, Behemoth, Slayer, At the Gates, and everything similar were my bands and that was fine by me. Everything that I needed, I got from metal.

But over time, I began to question my unwavering faith in metal. What else was out there? Was metal really the end-all be-all form of music for me? Could I enjoy other forms of music? Looking back, I see how ridiculous these questions were. Of course there were other things to enjoy. It would be silly to think anything otherwise. But at the time it was a serious issue, one to which I had not the answer.

I experimented with listening to punk and hardcore. Remembering Never, Dead Kennedys, and things like that were what I first got into. You know, bands that were still good even though they were pretty well known. Then I took music recommendations from a friend of mine named Dant. He showed me numerous bands that eventually came to be some of my favorites, like Foxy Shazam, Test Icicles, and Band of Horses. And, funny though it may seem, Rock Band actually got me into a lot of classic rock. I downloaded The Who's greatest hits and found them to be quite amazing. That's when I started listing to things like The Police and Michael Jackson.

As of now, my answer to the musical tastes question is a resounding, "I don't know. A lot of random stuff." I have no specific genre that I say right off the bat, and I like it that way.

See, I think that more people need to broaden their musical horizons. Most people I know are like me. They listen to a lot of things and don't really have one genre that they prefer. But I also have many friends that like one genre and one genre alone. That's all they listen to, that's all they've ever listened to, and chances are good that that's the only thing they're ever going to listen to. And that's sad to me, because I know that they'll never even give other music a chance. They'll never know the endlessly amazing musicians out there that make truly good music and don't really tie themselves to a specific genre.

I guess the point of this whole post is to try and show that great music exists outside your immediate field of vision. You should give other music a chance. You might just find that it's better than you thought.

Hardcore: What It Means to Me

Now, let me start off by saying hardcore is certainly not the only genre I like. My tastes in music are not really tied to one specific sound; if I like it, I'll listen to it. Pop, classical, metal, punk, IDM, whatever. But there will always be a special place in my heart for hardcore, and I'd like to try and explain why.

Hardcore is such a widely defined genre that nobody who actively listens to it will like all of it. In fact, usually the opposite. People say they like hardcore, but have to name off a few bands to show what constitutes hardcore to them. There are so many bands out there that define themselves as "hardcore" that sometimes I find myself questioning what true hardcore is(Of course, a quick listen to Violence Violence by Ceremony always reminds me). And although the mainstream will always try to hijack, dilute, and rape it for all it's worth, I feel like they will never succeed.

MTV and VH1 will always ruin people's fun. They played Blink-182 and called it punk. Suddenly, everyone wanted piercings and patches. Job For A Cowboy came along and metal was all the rage. Bands like My Chemical Romance and Forever The Sickest Kids hijacked the "emo" name and created something completely different,something that suburban kids thought they could "relate to." Now, while all these genres have been defiled by numerous bands, I feel like hardcore can't be touched. No matter how many kids listen to H2O or Set Your Goals and call themselves hardcore, I feel like that can't affect me. When I liked punk and people shouted, "OMG Good Charlotte!" I was pissed. I ranted about how if they wanted punk, they should shove a Dead Kennedys album up their ass. When people heard In Flames and started throwing their horns incorrectly (A VERY dangerous thing to do), I nearly shit myself my anger. But I feel like the media can try as it might to take hardcore away from me, but it can never succeed.

Hardcore, for me, was always more about the music. Punks could keep their mohawks and peircings, metalheads had their crazy shows with lights and Pope blood. But we didn't need that. All we needed was a few guitars, a drumkit, and mic, and some seriously pissed off people. People who shouted lyrics that had changed their lives, lyrics that gave them something to believe in, something to fight for. Lyrics that wouldn't forgive and wouldn't forget. Lyrics that cut like barbed wire and smashed into your skull like a foot in a stage dive. Hardcore was not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for the heartless. No, my friends. Hardcore was it. Hardcore the last, best hope of humanity during times of desperation and oppression. Hardcore was us.

And no matter how hard the mainstream tries, no matter how many shit bands they manufacture, they can never take hardcore away from us. Because we won't let them. We don't follow the trends, but we do know this: Other people could never understand what hardcore is to us. And that's why we'll always win.