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Laughing Man

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Blog Entries posted by Laughing Man

  2. Laughing Man
    I think from time to time (read: whenever I feel like it) I'll do entries where I shamelessly plug amazing albums/songs that are available to download for free, legally, courtesy of the artists who created them
     
    starting off with probably the most wildly inaccessible band of the bunch, The Armed.
     
    anyone who digs really abrasive, chaotic hardcore punk/mathcore in the vein of Botch or The Chariot should look these guys up
     
    their entire discography is available to download free in either high quality MP3 (320kbps) or lossless (FLAC) formats, complete with high-res artwork and digital booklets
     
    they've got one full-length album, These Are Lights (featuring a spectacular cover of "Gave Up" by Nine Inch Nails), as well as three EPs: Common Enemies, Young & Beautiful, and the recently-released Spreading Joy, the latter of which is a likely contender for EP of the year for me.
     
    as a side note, all three of their EPs feature former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie, be it on only a couple tracks (in the case of Common Enemies and Young & Beautiful) or providing the drums on all of them (in the case of Spreading Joy)
     
    it's really good stuff but really, really impossible to enjoy if you don't already have a taste for that kind of music.
  4. Laughing Man
    so the indie pop band Tegan and Sara have released a new single from their upcoming 2013 album, entitled "Closer"
     
    it's
     
    different
     
    but good
     
    the emphasis is definitely on the pop this time around, it sounds a lot like a modern radio dance-pop track except.. it has a sort of M83 vibe running through the music, and overall is much stronger and more enjoyable to me than the radio-pop it resembles
     
    I hope they have more of their characteristic pop-rock fare on the album, but if the entire thing was electronic pop in this vein it might not be so bad
  9. Laughing Man
    absolutely loved it.
     
    without spoiling anything: 10 Cloverfield Lane is an all-around better film than Cloverfield, a very different film in some ways, a very similar film in other ways, and a worthy successor in every possible way.
  14. Laughing Man

    RIP Hostess

    By Laughing Man,

    screw your Twinkies and Swiss Rolls, my life will be meaningless without CupCakes =<
     
    also, I imagine Tallahassee would be very upset about this.. although it kind of explains why Twinkies were so scarce
  15. Laughing Man
    even having been a fan of the books and movies since before the TV series was even a thing that existed, I think I'm growing to like Mads Mikkelsen's portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lector even more than Anthony Hopkins'
  18. Laughing Man

    Paradise Lost

    By Laughing Man,

    over the past year these guys went from being a band I had a somewhat casual interest in to being a band I consider one of my all-time favorites. in the last few months I've worked to obtain all their essential albums and this is the result. I'm still missing their debut Lost Paradise, the more synthpop-oriented albums Host and Believe in Nothing, and the 2005 self-titled album, although most of those aren't as well-received as the ones I've got so they're not quite as high-priority. I would also like to get their recent rarities compilation Tragic Illusion 25 at some point, probably digitally.
     

     
    top to bottom:
     
    - Gothic (Icarus Argentina pressing)
    - Shades of God
    - Icon
    - Draconian Times
    - One Second
    - Reflection (best-of compilation)
    - Symbol of Life (US edition with bonus tracks)
    - In Requiem
    - Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us
    - Tragic Idol
    - The Plague Within (US digipak edition with bonus track. currently my favorite album of 2015.)
  20. Laughing Man
    Xinlo already posted an entry about this, but hey, I figured that as an admin it's my duty to shamelessly plug it too.
     
    ..to tTH4!
     

     
    tTH4 is the newest incarnation of the long-running and successful Bionicle forum the Toa's Hideout, which was originally founded by a group of BZPower members back in the year 2007. since then it has gone through several revamped incarnations, and we've had a lot of familiar faces among us over the years, including BZP staff and members of The Three Virtues podcast. an offshoot of tTH also briefly acted as an off-topic sister forum to the website Mask of Destiny.
     
    while we're a primarily Bionicle-based forum similar to BZP, we pride ourselves in having a much more casual, laid-back atmosphere and a greater focus on off-topic discussion, of subjects ranging from music and movies to friendly debate and daily life. we also have features like customizable-by-request member titles and personal blogging subforums that are given to you once you reach 100 posts. we consider the site to be aimed more toward older members of the Bionicle fanbase, but younger members who want to join are certainly welcome as well. we invite you to visit us any time.
  22. Laughing Man
    was gonna do a top 10 but I haven't actually gotten to listen to all of the albums I wanted to from last year, so I'm just gonna do the top 5 instead which I'm pretty sure of at this point. even if I did listen to the rest, the top 5 isn't likely to change.
     
     

     
    5. Sorni Nai by Kauan
     
    This one took me completely by surprise this year, not having been familiar with this band prior and only hearing about the album through some positive buzz and word-of-mouth. Sorni Nai is a concept album based upon the Dyatlov Pass Incident in which a group of hikers perished under mysterious and bizarre circumstances on the mountain of Kholat Syakhl - some of you may be familiar with this story as the basis of the indie survival horror game KHOLAT that was released last year.
     
    The lyrics are almost entirely in Finnish, but even without understanding the words, the subject matter really sets the tone for this album: a blend of post-rock, doom metal, and folk that is cold and bleak, yet also extremely cinematic in its approach to atmosphere. It's pretty much the soundtrack to dying slowly on a mountain, and it's absolutely beautiful.
     
     

     
    4. The Plague Within by Paradise Lost
     
    Not much to be said about this one - after over 20 years, the gothic/doom metal stalwarts in Paradise Lost have returned to the sound they pioneered, fusing the melancholy dirge of doom metal with the raw intensity of death metal once again to fantastic results. Vocalist Nick Holmes is utilizing his death growls for the first time on a Paradise Lost album since 1992's Shades of God, and it's never sounded better. Paired with some of the heaviest riffs of their career (along with some of the most mesmerizing melodies) the resulting album stands up against their early classics as one of the best in their long and storied career.
     
     

     
    3. Holographic Violence by Grave Babies
     
    Another left field album for me, Holographic Violence is the sound of a former noise-punk outfit fully embracing 80s gothic rock with some industrial, shoegaze, and even grunge influences thrown in. This may sound like an unusual mixture, but against all odds the band makes it work incredibly well. icy post-punk basslines clash with distorted riffs and skittering electronics to create an album that is simultaneously dark, catchy, and at times unsettling - as I've described it to numerous people already, this sounds like if The Cure and My Bloody Valentine had a baby, gave it up for adoption, and it was raised by Nine Inch Nails and Alice in Chains. It's weird, atmospheric, kind of scary, and just plain fun.
     
     

     
    2. The Ride Majestic by Soilwork
     
    Anyone who knows me would know that this would be on here. Soilwork are one of my all-time favorite bands, and The Ride Majestic is without a doubt one of the best and most focused records they've ever released. After a string of albums of declining quality during the mid-2000s, the band rebounded hard with 2013's fantastic double album The Living Infinite, seeing them refine their melodic death metal sound whilst pitting the old against the new and throwing in some newfound progressive elements to boot. The Ride Majestic largely expands on this, focusing it even more while upping the heaviness, intensity, and atmosphere perhaps farther than they ever have before. All in all, The Ride Majestic is the newest peak on their continued upswing and a potential new classic for the melodic death metal genre as a whole.
     
     

     
    1. Abyss by Chelsea Wolfe
     
    Here it is - my favorite album of the year, and one of my new favorite albums of all-time. This album not only met my lofty expectations but blew them away. Although singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe's 2011 album Ἀποκάλυψις has been one of my all-time favorite albums for 4 years now, Abyss easily managed to surpass it in every possible way.
     
    While Ἀποκάλυψις dabbled in an experimental mixture of folk, noise rock, and doom metal and 2013's Pain Is Beauty was largely an industrial/electronic affair, Abyss seeks to unite all of it together into a work of art loosely based around the concept of sleep paralysis, something that Wolfe has had personal experience with throughout her life. The songs range from lush and gentle to dense and panicked with Wolfe's gorgeous vocals weaving through them like an ethereal fog, not only complimenting but enhancing the unique atmosphere created by each one. The result is an album that can be described variously as haunting, suffocating, terrifying, beautiful, dreamlike, nightmarish, otherworldly - truly a descent into the titular abyss that explores the emotions, worries, vulnerabilities, and darkness of the human mind.
     
     
    bonus: the names of some other albums I enjoyed last year, in no particular order
     
    - Permanence by No Devotion
    - Dreamcrash by Grave Pleasures
    - Opacities by Sikth
    - A Dream in Static by Earthside
    - Psychic Warfare by Clutch
    - The Children of the Night by Tribulation
    - Cold Inferno by Disarmonia Mundi
    - Untitled by The Armed
    - Beyond the Red Mirror by Blind Guardian
    - The Mindsweep by Enter Shikari
    - Feel the Misery by My Dying Bride
    - Purple by Baroness
    - Fugue by Rest Among Ruins
    - Under the Red Cloud by Amorphis
    - Luminiferous by High on Fire
    - Every Open Eye by Chvrches
    - Exhausting Fire by Kylesa
    - Extinct by Moonspell
    - Meliora by Ghost
    - Art Angels by Grimes
    - The Powers That B by Death Grips
    - Ours Is Chrome by Superheaven
    - Enki by Melechesh
    - Restarter by Torche
    - Better Nature by Silversun Pickups
    - VII: Sturm und Drang by Lamb of God
    - Time and Trauma by 36 Crazyfists
    - End vs. Beginning by Rise to Fall
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