24. Thank You Scientist - Terraformer
Genre: Jazzy, Cinematic Math Rock
Put On A Playlist With: Coheed & Cambria, At The Drive-In, TesseracT
Off kilter kinda-prog rock with a little ska (there's a horn section), some post-hardcore and a decent amount of djent. Couple that with a vocalist who sounds exactly like the guy from The Mars Volta and a sci-fi underpinning...yeah, I'm sold. It's taken me three albums to really warm up to their spastic approach to songwriting, but there's some great hooks and ideas to explore here, especially on the X-Files inspired FXMLDR, the lovely zither-led New Moon and the relentless title track.
23. Magma - Zëss (Le Jour De Néant)
Genre: Zeuhl
Put On A Playlist With: Ruins, other Zeuhl bands.
If this turns out to be the "final" sequence in Christian Vander long running Kobaia sequence of works under Magma, then nobody could have asked for a better ending. Zëss is a wondrous cherry that's been placed on top of one of my favorite musical cakes, filled with gorgeous choral sections, lots of piano and of course the frenetic 70's jazz-rock meets opera energy that characterizes the Zeuhl sound. Not a bad way to close out a 40+ year saga.
22. Source - Totality
Genre: Post-Grunge, Smart-Rawk, "sounds like Tool"
Put On A Playlist With: Tool, Karnivool, Tool, Melvins?
Got recommended this awhile back: gimme those Tool clones baby! But in all seriousness, I think this was legitimately the album Tool actually wanted to make, but didn't quite know how. It's got all the existential noodling and groovage, but a stronger sense of melodic immediacy and "hooks" than what these fellas' more popular counterpart gave us with Fear Inoculum. It helps that the singer has his own "voice" that isn't a carbon copy of Maynard James Keenan, so points for that.
Last edited by Anteater; 11-28-2019 at 08:06 PM.
|