Been a while, huh?
2020's been a bizarre year. Being stuck in lockdown for over nine months now has slowly sapped away all of my motivation. When this started, we all tried to take it in stride and use it as an opportunity for self improvement. I was working on various drafts for this blog (many never got published), going through an online course where you build a computer from scratch (I got the hardware and assembly language done but never finished writing its compiler), worldbuilding for my D&D campaign (still ongoing, but the campaign moves slowly enough where I can't really do much work in advance), etc. As the year has gone on, I've slipped into doing only the most passive activities which require the least amount of minimal effort just to distract myself until life returns to normal. This hasn't necessarily been a bad thing – I've experienced all of Final Fantasy XIV and am at the halfway point in One Piece, both massive projects I never would have done otherwise – but it has left me with little creative energy compared to what I felt this time last year.
All of this is to say that this has been a long time coming, and I was right to dub this series as "Irregular". Time to clean up a draft from...let me check my git history...November 16th(!) and get something published. Merry Christmas!
Songs of Moors and Misty Fields – Empyrium (1997)
To quote myself from another Irregular Album Roundup, "I like my black metal with folk interludes to break up the pacing and let my ears rest for a bit." As the winter's rolled in, the days gotten shorter, the wind grown bitter, and my patience for humanity worn thin, I've been drawn back more and more towards this style of music with melodic riffs, screeching vocals, gentle acoustic interludes, and moody synth passages.
Empyrium delivers all of that in spades on their sophomore album. I first sampled its follow-up, the entirely acoustic neofolk Where at Night the Wood Grouse Plays, and I'm sure glad I rewound back to an album more akin to Ulver's Bergtatt than its own neofolk follow-up Kveldssanger. This is more than a Bergtatt clone – the song structures all feel more refined and deliberate than just "black metal with some acoustic bits". Hell, I don't even know if black metal is a fair label for this group. The harsh vocals and general atmosphere feel closer to black metal than other subgenres, but even when the album is "heavy," there's always enough melody and slower tempos to stand apart from the frenetic tremolo picking riffs of its brethren. When the metal is put away, there's a ton of traditional folkish variety to be found, but none of it is ever overbearingly grandiose like the most excessive symphonic groups can. If there's a moment that captures what I like most in this album, it's the bridge around 3:41 in closer "The Ensemble of Silence". It's a quiet acoustic bit with a somber synth melody that challenges you to dim the lights, stare at the ceiling, and wonder what you could have done better in a year like this.
Recommended Tracks
- "Lover's Grief"
- "The Ensemble of Silence"
When The Night Comes - The State Lottery (2010)
The review that sold me on this album cites Bruce Springsteen, Paul Westerberg of The Replacements, The Gaslight Anthem, The Hold Steady, and Titus Andronicus. Look pal, if you wanted me to listen to an album that badly, could have you namedropped any fewer of my favorite bands?
When The Night Comes is my favorite album I've found this year from a band I didn't already know. Released in 2010 at the peak of Springsteen revivalist bar rock, The State Lottery bring out the best of the style - a vocalist who can't really sing but whose lyrics wear their heart on their sleeves, sloppy playing and production that reek of a boozey live performance, and snaking back and forth between conventional song structures and longer, more nuanced epics. If I had to boil it down to a few words, hopefully "Titus Andronicus's The Monitor, now with saxophone" will suffice. Most tracks are beer-soaked anthems for screaming alongside your pals before getting some late night Nando's. By the time you're finished with "Fourth Street", you just might be fooled into thinking you had a blast listening to this record.
Then "Spring, 2008, Detroit" kicks in. Suddenly, you've split from your pals at Nando's and are walking alone in the cold with naught but a beer jacket for comfort. All those pervasive thoughts that have been lurking in the back of your head come the forefront and are more crushing than ever. Slowly sobering up, you stumble over the curb and mumble to yourself about all the problems that you were hoping to avoid with this night out. Still feeling just a bit of the booze as you approach the door to your apartment, you softly sing a little chorus in a quiet defiance of the world: "And we hoped that the night would not come." Turning the key, a defeated follow-up slips out: "But it came. And it stayed."
So yeah, "Spring, 2008, Detroit" is the best punk ballad this side of Titus Andronicus's "The Battle of Hampton Roads." Check it out! Maybe you won't find it so delightfully depressing.
Recommended Tracks
- "Coming Alive"
- "Stories"
- "Little Song"
- "East Jordan"
- "Spring, 2008, Detroit."
Honeymoon - Beach Bunny (2020)
Have you ever wondered what would happen if Alvvays fully leaned into pop punk/power pop? Maybe it's just the similarity in their vocal styles, but I like to think they'd end up something like Beach Bunny.
Honeymoon is a breezy 25 minute listen replete with fun guitar hooks, catchy vocals, and a surprising amount of variety given the short runtime. Right off the bat, we've got straight pop punk in "Promises", unconventional Hop Along guitars in "Colorblind", and a gorgeous ballad I swear could have been an unreleased Alvvays song with "April". The Internet tells me "Ms. California" is ripping of "Stacey's Mom," and I guess it's there, but honestly all I hear is "You Belong With Me"-era Taylor Swift. I'm not complaining either way.
I showed this to my girlfriend, and she liked it with the caveat that "every modern indie girl sings like this." Well, I say keep it coming - I love this shit.
Recommended Tracks
- "Promises"
- "April"
- "Ms. California"
- "Colorblind"
- "Cloud 9"
Palimpsest - Protest The Hero (2020)
Well, this was certainly a surprise. 2005's Kezia struck a huge chord with me in high school as I realized a band younger than myself wrote a compelling progressive metal album about the wrongful execution of the titular woman told from the point of view of a prison priest, a prison guard, and Kezia herself. Meanwhile, all I'd accomplished in life was nearly complete the Sinnoh Pokedex in Pokemon Diamond as a fifth grader.
Yeah, the Sinnoh Pokedex, not the National Dex. And I didn't even finish it. Damn Milotic.
The moment that sold me on Kezia back then was the second half of "Turn Soonest to the Sea" where the technicality takes a backseat for two minutes as Rody Walker triumphantly belts out his hope for a future where "No woman is a whore" (OK, so maybe I was easily impressed by lyrics back then, but I genuinely like the politics of Kezia). It's one of the few moments where I remember hearing just one part of a song for the first time and rewinding it over and over on the spot. This huge hook provided an anchor to keep returning to while I slowly parsed out the diddly-do's of the technical riffs and cemented them in my head. After dozens of listens, I finally knew these songs in and out, even when they were at their hardest to follow.
Why does this matter with Palimpsest, Protest the Hero's first full album since 2013? Like "Turn Soonest to the Sea," the moment that sold me this time was the second half of "From the Sky," this time a searing chorus on how history and photography have downplayed the ties of the Hindenburg to Nazi Germany. I'm not here to get political or wax philosophical- I'm just here to say that, musically, this section is immediately powerful and once again serves as an anchor to the insanity that surrounds it. Palimpsest is rife with these moments, which make it accessible to newcomers while also being rich enough in detail to reward repeated listens as these riffs shift from proggy nonsense to catchy. Try not to headbang or fist pump to anthems like "All Hands".
Recommended Tracks
- "Canary"
- "From the Sky"
- "All Hands"
Shadowbringers: Final Fantasy XIV OST - Masayoshi Soken (2019)
We all knew this was coming. On November 14, I finally caught up in the story of Final Fantasy XIV seven months and three days after impulsively starting XIV the same weekend the VII Remake came out. I've already written extensively on my love of XIV, so I won't bore you with the details. I just want to quickly highlight how good the soundtrack to the most recent expansion, Shadowbringers, is.
Let's start with the main theme. It's got all the structure of a wild 6 minute prog song - after a short melancholy vocal line, we're thrust into a twangy guitar riff fit for a gun-slingin' badass starring in a Western and walking the final paces of a duel against the local sheriff. Hope you're quick on the draw.
Something's a little off with the vocals, though. Some are whispered, some are chanted, and some are digitally distorted beyond recognition. I don't listen to enough industrial music to label this as "industrial", but that's the word that feels best here, so I'm sticking with it. As the song twists and turns, the riffs move from sly chord progressions to straight rockers before the biggest kicker for me - a violin playing "Eternal Wind" from Final Fantasy III. As the lone Westerner who started the series with V and then III as a kid, hearing the main theme of an underappreciated childhood favorite featured so prominently is a thing of beauty.
The main theme has, like, at least five melodies that crop up as motifs across the soundtrack. A personal favorite is the boss theme "Insatiable" which turns up the vocal weirdness to 11. Parts are hype while others are moody and reflective, an unusual choice for a boss theme that works wonders in context of the story. I also have to call out Amh Araeng's theme, "Sands of Amber" which is literally a lofi hip hop beat to relax and study to. It even got my girlfriend's attention, and she normally hates Final Fantasy music after it's looped a few times.
Finally, I really don't want to say much out of fear of spoilers, but the last 20% of Shadowbringers is the best storytelling Square Enix has done since the turn of the century, and the environmental themes of these final areas, "Full Fathom Five" and "Neath Dark Waters", are somber, reflective pieces that will fill you with emptiness as you wonder if maybe these crazy cultists we've been fighting since 2013 aren't so bad after all.
Now put this album on Spotify with the rest of the soundtracks, you cowards.
Recommended Tracks
- "Shadowbringers"
- "Insatiable"
- "Sands of Amber"
- "Full Fathom Five"
- "Neath Dark Waters"