Downtempo electronic music with a lot of soul. Also, beautiful cover. I haven’t been following !K7 for quite a while and it’s nice to see their logo again.
Dominik Eulberg – Mannigfaltig
Prophets of Rage – Pop Goes The Weapon
All three singles released since the debut album are great, but this latest one definitely has the strongest hook. Both the beat and the words are just epic. This is one of those tracks where I feel the strongest that Prophets of Rage is getting a voice of its own.
They already wrote some awesome stuff, but there were a lot of echos of Rage Against The Machine or Street Sweeper Social Club, and that’s totally understandable and also something that I don’t mind. The musical heritage what these musicians represent is something that brings us under the flag of Prophets in the first place. But in this case that’s paired up with the killer flow of the MCs. And the latter aspect also shows in the lyrics. These MCs are hiphop MCs, they don’t come from where de la Rocha was coming from. In Rocha’s lyrics there were many repetitive revolutionairy slogans, but just little words without semantical meaning. Hiphop uses the language as a decorative tool as well or an instrument on its own, there are words that just keep the flow going, and this I feel is new here. Rocha would never have written a line that just says “La dee da dee”, but it’s here and this doesn’t diminish the seriousness of the words a bit. Or right in the title, they write “pop” and not “bang” or something more dramatic, which is so stylistic, so hiphop.
This is the first time these musicians found the exactly right place for these MCs they are working with. Or these MCs found their way around this music. Anyhow, it’s brewing and blending together better and better. Can’t wait for a next record to see where this goes.
Klein – Lifetime
This album has been around in my queue for a while, mainly because I love it’s cover art so much but could never get myself listen through the music itself. Today I did and it was not easy. It somehow annoys me and it’s not interesting. I almost never write about albums that I don’t like, so this one is an exception because I wanted to put down that the cover art, that photo is absolutely amazing.
Tool – Fear Inoculum
I need to put this out here so that I can move on with my Play Later playlist. Probably I rather want to listen to it a hundred more times than say too much about it.
My short summary is that Tool’s journey can be heard on this one again, like through each one of their records. Again, it’s more refined, more nuanced, and more soft. This also means that it’s less raw, less surprising, and less revolting. Some Tool fans are not satisfied with this journey, and I’m not one of those fans. I like everything about it, I like what their music has become. My only concern is that with Maynard’s works in other areas of life I cannot help thinking whether his full soul is still in this project, or it’s just something that he gave in to and tried to accomplish to the best of his efforts. However, I have no doubt that they did everything as good as they humanly could to accomplish this record.
The music is not something I could describe with words like great, wonderful, or such. It works on a very different level and scale. I love that there are the most number of 10+ minute songs so far, and I love the path all those take from beginning to end. I’m meh for the short filler pieces, but the arcs of the epic ones blow me away, those are the ones why I have this album on constant replay for a week now.
On another note, I just realized that each Tool album represents a completely different stage in my life. This is also probably why I will always like their latest album the best. The music part is not something that’s up for debate, I know that their work will always resonate with me. It’s just what I add and how I connect to it.
Rummelsnuff - Kraftgewinn
I call this avantgarde sailor EBM. And I don’t even know why I sense any trace of EMB around here, but somehow I feel that this has some kind of an odd relation to it. This thing is hard to explain, but there are some tracks that I just cannot keep re-listening. And this is my one post so far that could best make use of a smiley. This music demands a smile – it’s hilarious. Oddly though, it’s not a completely comedic way of hilarious, it’s just fun, easy, and non-serious. Probably not completely coincidental that it keeps reminding me of Eläkeläiset.
Schramm – Nuklear Fetish
Not an innovator but a pretty good industrial electro-metal record, like in the footsteps of Rammstein but more on the party industrial side of things. I listened to a whole bunch of new releases from the industrial and EBM domains, I wanted to highlight some great surprises, but there were not much to mention at all. This one however is easily one that I am happy to relisten.
Wulfband – Revolter
It’s a more agressive tone of EMB but not like TBM, more like going towards the industrial metal of Ministry or something electropunk.
Johanna Knutsson – Tollarp Transmissions
Relaxing ambient. The album, honestly, is nothing special. But it’s a great asset on a day like this when I want to enclose myself in my shell and wish noone talked to me. Headphones on and listening to this feels protective.
Robot Koch - Sphere
Slow moving, bass heavy, moody, atmospheric, ambient electro. For me it’s not that kind of dark to be dark ambient, but it has a gloomy scifi vibe for sure. Could be an alternative soundtrack to Moon.
Oliver Koletzki – The Arc Of Tension
Deep-tech house with an ambient vibe. Soothing and conveying energy at the same time. Great for work.